Gold of the Ancients Read online

  Alex had only just put a steaming cafetière, cream and four mugs on the coffee table as Dr Margretti arrived. Nobody took sugar. After all the usual pleasantries and a refill of the cafetière, Quentin told them all of his latest awards. Normally he would talk for ages, but it was obvious to all that collecting awards no longer meant much to him. He was far more excited about returning to Egypt.

  “While we are taking about Egypt, Dad, we had a minor problem here tonight.” Alex explained and Emmy added in a few facts which he omitted.

  Quentin looked as though something else was on his mind, so it was Dr Margretti who spoke up. “Well, it had to happen sooner or later. There are bound to be a few of the warlock’s followers left hanging around. Nothing at all to worry about,” he said in a somewhat dismissive tone. Dr Margretti had all the features of a vampire and dressed in a manner which would have looked more at home in the time of Sherlock Holmes. He was in fact an ancient. Pharaoh Akhenaton to be precise. He was the pharaoh who broke all the rules. He rid Egypt of the multitude of ancient gods, replacing them with his one god, the sun god, the Aton. Now, in the afterlife, he was still breaking all the rules. Ancients could only walk on the land as it was in their time. They could only use things from their time. Not so with Dr Margretti. Quite the opposite in fact. He never walked on ancient ground and neither did his assistant, Joe, who had just entered the room.

  Joe was the biggest and strongest assistant that anybody could have wished for. He looked more like a bouncer than an assistant. Joe was not one to spend time on pleasantries. “I silenced the silent alarm.” Alex wondered how you silenced a silent alarm, but decided it was best not to ask. “Wiring short circuit in an electronic door lock. This blew both the lock and a junction box in the wall.”

  “It would have given us more than a short circuit if that magic had hit us,” Alex thought.

  “ART dealing with the repair. Estimated time of two hours without breaking into a sweat,” Joe said with military abruptness.

  “Well, no good pushing them when the museum doesn’t open until tomorrow,” Dr Margretti said.

  “Them?” Emmy asked. “How many people here are called Art?”

  Dr Margretti chuckled. “Oh, my dear, ART is not a person, it is a team of people.”

  “What?” Alex exclaimed from the kitchen.

  “Ancients Repair Team to be precise. Of course it does not mean that they repair ancients.” Dr Margretti gave a little chuckle and as usual his shoulders moved a little too much. “They are there to rectify the mess that ancients make. Silly me, I should have told you about them. Of course, in Egypt, we never had to worry about this. Everything there is either old or poorly constructed, so if it falls down it is only to be expected. Here we have cameras everywhere. Systems … procedures … insurance. ART goes in to repair and rectify. We have it down to a fine art in most museums. Elsewhere, we have to do what we can. Ancients can be a real problem at times.”

  “Yes, you have told us many, many times that ancients can be a real problem,” Alex said as he returned from the kitchen with a cup for Joe, some sugar and yet another cafetière refill. “The thing is, Dr Margretti, we have not met an ancient since we came back from Luxor, not until tonight.”

  “Thebes!”

  “Yes, Dad, we all know you like to refer to Luxor by its Greek name. I remember all too well how you and mum used to row over what it should be called.” Alex immediately regretted mentioning his mother.

  “Do you miss her, Alex?”

  “Dad, this is not the time!”

  “Why not, we are amongst friends. If we talk about her now, it will save us having to tell them later.”

  Alex knew something had happened which had annoyed his father immensely, in fact they all did. “What has happened, Dad? Have you received another nasty letter from her solicitor?”

  “Please tell me, Alex, do you miss her. I need an honest answer.”

  Alex thought about how honest he could be. Yes, he was adopted, yes he had a skin colour which was slightly darker than an average Egyptian, while Quentin and Babs both had fairer skin than most, but they were the only parents he had ever known. “Do you really want me to be totally honest?”

  “If you are going to answer each of my questions with a question, we could be here all night.” Quentin paused before saying, “Sorry, that was rather rude of me. Honestly, Alex, it would help me if you would be totally honest. I need to know exactly how you feel.”

  “Well …” Alex paused for far too long. Dr Margretti, Joe and Emmy looked uncomfortable. “To be totally honest, and this is probably not what you will want to hear, I have not missed her at all.” Alex reflected on why he had said ‘her’ rather than ‘mum’.

  “What would you say if I told you that you will never see her again?”

  Again Alex had to think. Not about how he would feel, but about how he would answer the question. It was at this point that a shiver went down his spine. “Mum is dead, isn’t she?” Quentin could not bring himself to speak, though he did manage a single nod. Emmy put her arms around Alex as he asked, “How, Dad?”

  “With all those unnecessary solicitors letters I wished her dead, and now that she is …” he paused to try and find a better way of saying it, but in the end he just said it as it was. “I wished her dead, and now that she is, I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. I feel relieved. I do not think I should feel as I do. It all feels wrong.”

  “But what happened, Dad?”

  “Apparently, this morning, she tripped downstairs and broke her neck. I received the message at the airport just minutes before I flew home. They told me she would not have suffered.”

  “Where was she living?”

  “I was in turmoil as I got onto the plane. I knew that I should have felt sad, possibly destroyed, but all I could feel was the greatest sense of relief. I would no longer have to deal with her solicitors, her unreasonable demands. During the flight I could not come to terms with my feelings. All I felt was the greatest sense of relief.” Quentin paused and looked at everyone, one by one, before asking, “Why would I feel like that, as I loved her once.”

  “Did you really, Quentin?” Dr Margretti asked.

  Quentin looked back at him and his face went blank. He sank a little deeper into the sofa.

  “Where was she living?” Alex asked again.

  “I believe it was in a cottage somewhere in Norfolk.”

  Alarm bells went off in Alex’s head and he could see that they had also gone off in Dr Margretti’s and Joe’s.

  “Cottage, you say,” Dr Margretti said.

  “Yes, apparently she was renting it.”

  “In Norfolk?”

  “Yes!”

  Even Emmy was now looking concerned. Dr Margretti had told them that there were more trees than people in Norfolk, but he had impressed on them that there were also more ancients than living people in Norfolk. A fall downstairs would not have immediately rung any alarm bells, due to ancients not being able to walk upstairs in all but the oldest buildings, but this was a cottage, so where were the stairs?

  “What was she doing?” Dr Margretti asked of Quentin.

  “What do you mean?

  “Well! Was she getting out of bed and going downstairs? Did she trip on her dressing gown?”

  “If you really want to know, apparently she was fetching coal from the cellar.”

  You could hear a pin drop, possibly in Norfolk!

  Chapter 3

  -

  Lack of Sleep

  Nobody except Quentin slept soundly. Even Dr Margretti, who experienced no difficulty in sleeping through the most violent of sandstorms, had an unusually turbulent night. The death of Babs could have been nothing more than a tragic accident. It really could have been, though her death in Norfolk while on her way to the cellar, a place that must have been either at, or below, ancient ground level, was a real cause for concern.

  When Alex combined the death of Babs with the attack on him and Emmy later
the same day, he drew an obvious and unwelcome conclusion. Alex attempted to rationalise his thoughts. He had no wish to enter the world of the paranoid. Lying on his bed fully dressed he stared at the ceiling while his mind mulled through every option. It was no good. However hard he tried, he came back to the same thought over and over again. Nothing had happened to them in just over a year. No attacks, no ancients. This coincidence was too much of a coincidence, and Alex already had a deep seated mistrust of coincidences.

  He thought about the British Museum library. To be totally correct it should be called the British Museum Reading Room. A vast rotunda situated in the centre of the Great Court. This used to be the main reading room of the British Library, but it now sat empty while it waited for some bright spark to realise that it should be returned to its original purpose. Alex did not have to wait for said bright spark, as Dr Margretti had shown him how to enter the library in order to see and use it as it used to be. At a time when the most fabulous leather bound books filled the walls from floor to ceiling. As it looked when it was used by famous leaders and authors such as Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mahatma Gandhi, Karl Marx and Lenin, to name but a few. Alex had never met any of them, though he had made a point of reading about the lives of each of them, just in case.

  Emmy usually visited the library with him. Last night was no exception, and they had left the library together. They had walked across the Great Hall, along by the cloak rooms, and rather than walk through the ground floor room, home to the very largest Egyptian pieces which thousands of visitors looked upon in awe every day, they had taken the stairs down. It was while they were in these lower rooms of stored, though mostly unboxed, ancient Egyptian artefacts that their problems had begun. Only researchers ever saw these rooms because they were not open to the public.

  As hard as he tried, Alex could not remember if he had walked that way back on any previous occasion in the last year. Because if he had that would have made last night’s attack anything except a coincidence. He racked his brain, though nothing was forthcoming. It was only when he said to himself, out loud and in a positive frame of mind, “I am not going to live in fear,” that it came to him. He had indeed walked that way back, and on several occasions.

  Marie Curie, the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize, jogged his mind. Her quote, Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood, had been used by the British Museum at some time in the recent past. It had been printed on large boards, which having served their purpose, were now stacked one in front of the other against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. To be stored, reused or discarded Alex did not know. What he now recalled was that he had quite involuntary read the quote every time he had walked down the stairs to the lower Egyptian rooms. He arrived in the living room at a run.

  “Morning, Alex,” Quentin said, as he wiped the remains of a very runny egg from his chin. He was sitting on a tall stool at the breakfast bar. His cases were by the door, he was dressed and almost ready to leave.

  “Do you have to go to Egypt today?”

  It was clear that Quentin was torn. “Well … I suppose any trip can be cancelled. Has the death of your mother suddenly hit you?”

  “No, not in the way you may imagine.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I meant, I am really concerned that Emmy and I were attacked here last night on the same day as mum died.”

  “Coincidence, Alex, nothing more than coincidence.”

  Alex wanted to shout that there were no coincidences where ancients were concerned, and if Quentin was in any doubt of this then he should ask Dr Margretti. However, he did not say anything. He had promised Dr Margretti never to let on to his father that he was an ancient. It was complicated. Quentin had failed to ‘see’, though he knew all too well of ancients and ancient gods. Knowing that there were ancients, speaking to ancient gods, and even meeting Ramses II, Nakhtifi and Cleopatra was one thing. Finding out that your lifelong friend was an ancient, was quite another. The bond, the trust between them, would melt as fast as an ice cube on a hotplate.

  “Why don’t you come with me? I can book you a ticket to Cairo, and then we can go on to Thebes to see how the digs are progressing. Come on, it will be good for you.”

  Alex could not see how it was going to be good for him if he waltzed back into Egypt without knowing what was going on. If indeed anything was going on. “How long are you going for?”

  “Just a month, or it was. Of course, I will come back for the funeral.”

  Alex was worried about his father’s security in Egypt. Quentin, however, was not, and that was where the conversation stopped. Alex was still waving goodbye to his father, as he left in his taxi for the airport, when Dr Margretti and Joe walked past him without saying a word.

  Emmy made him jump as she took hold of his hand. “Come on, Alex, no time to explain.”

  They all walked towards a decent sized delivery lorry. Dark green with a large box back and an air-condition unit over the cab onto which was emblazoned, ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, purveyors of vegetarian groceries,’ with royal crest and all. The driver’s window powered down as the driver turned and then lowered his head to look directly at Dr Margretti. Alex could have sworn he saw the driver’s eyes turn yellow for a split second. He thought it must have been a trick of the light. A door automatically opened and steps folded out just behind the cab. Dr Margretti stepped up and into the back of the lorry. Joe urged Alex and Emmy to hurry along.

  No sooner had the door closed, the lorry moved off. Both Alex and Emmy were amazed as this was no ordinary delivery lorry, because it was no delivery lorry at all. The air-condition unit was obviously there to keep the mass of electronics cool. Massive flat panel monitors were attached to each wall. They had a complete view of where they were going, what was behind them, and what they were passing on either side. There was so much cool looking equipment, though, for now, most of it appeared to be turned off.

  “Sit, sit, sit,” Dr Margretti gestured towards small black chairs mounted on over engineered poles, each with its own footrest. Once seated, the occupant was completely isolated from the movement of the lorry.

  “So, what do you think, Alex?” Dr Margretti asked.

  “I think that you are going to be in serious trouble for using that obviously false, ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen,’ sign.”

  Dr Margretti’s face clearly showed his disappointment with Alex’s answer. “I had hoped you were going to tell me of your considered thoughts about the events of yesterday, rather than worry over an irrelevant sign.”

  “It won’t be irrelevant when you are arrested for illegally using it. They take misuse of royal signs very seriously in this country.”

  “What makes you think it is not genuine, Alex?” Emmy asked.

  “All this electronic equipment for a start. There’s no way a lettuce as ever been in here, and anyway, there is no way the Royal family are vegetarian. They go off shooting deer and game of all sorts. It is what they do!”

  “Alex, my boy,” Dr Margretti said in a somewhat frustrated tone, “you need an adventure to get your mind working, really working.” Alex looked offended. “No need to look at me like that. If you thought about it, really thought about the sign, you would not have been so crass.” Alex was now really offended and went to say so, but stopped when Dr Margretti held up a hand. “Think on this, before we really get down to the job at hand. Firstly: where do Royals live? Secondly: how could they acknowledge our invaluable work?”

  Alex felt really stupid. His face flushed.

  “I can see that it has dawned on you.”

  However, it had not dawned on Emmy. “Sorry, Dr Margretti, but I still do not understand. Could you possibly explain?”

  “Of course, my dear. Royals live in castles and houses which are many hundreds of years old. Where ancients are not just confined to ground level
. They are quite able to roam around the whole building, and frequently do.” Emmy now understood, but Dr Margretti continued. “In our lessons over the last year, I am sure you will both remember me talking on many occasions about the English and their fascination with ghosts. And that ancients and ghosts are just different words for the same thing. Ghosts are ancients which appear in a less than solid state. Do either of you remember what the English call ancients who appear in solid form?”

  “Eccentrics,” Alex and Emmy said as one.

  “Good, good … at least some of what I have taught you has sunk in. Well, I can tell you for a fact, we have helped many royals with the removal of eccentrics. We could not have a ‘By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, removers of eccentrics,’ now could we. So, and I am sorry to disappoint you, the sign is totally genuine. We are definitely ‘By appointment’.”

  “I think you are right, Doctor, I really do need to get my brain working,” Alex said. His face showed no sign of returning to its normal colour.

  “If the two of you had been dealing with ancients as long as I have, then you would be worried. A prolonged period without ancients having to be kept in order usually means they are planning something.”

  “A party, an orgy, or world domination, we never know beforehand.”

  “Thank you, Joe, that paints rather too vivid a picture.” The Doctor took a few moments for reflection during which a smile came to his face. Neither Alex nor Emmy thought he was reflecting on an attempt by ancients at world domination. Dr Margretti pulled himself together. “As for you, Alex, and also you, Emmy, I wouldn’t worry too much. A year is nothing when you have lived as long as I have. Often there are tens of years without any major incident, during which time it is only natural for people who ‘see’ to become dulled.” Dr Margretti then said very firmly, “That is why I told you both, over and over again, to never become complacent.”

  Joe spoke after putting his mobile away. “Doctor?”

  “Yes?”