19

‘Guns?’ My jaw dropped. ‘What, with bullets and everything?’

‘They are loaded, yes,’ Pepe said quietly.

I glanced at Tulip, at Oz. I’d already put them through enough: this was extra danger we didn’t need.

‘What do we do now?’ Tulip whispered.

Pepe raised a finger. ‘Be quiet!’

I did, on tiptoe, straining my ears. The guard’s footsteps above us got fainter, stopped, started again, then thankfully were gone. All I could hear was the desert. It wasn’t like being down by the river, which buzzed with insects and people. Up here, where there was nothing but rocks and sand, the silence made your ears hum. I’d never known quiet like it, though that wasn’t what Pepe meant.

About two hundred feet below us lights appeared once more. I was relieved to see how close we now were to the official tomb of Tutankhamun. Pepe’s route had almost brought us back to the spot we’d started from, only this time we were seeing the Carter dig from above.

‘They’re coming out of the tomb!’ Oz hissed. ‘Are they carrying any loot?’

‘I can’t see anything obvious.’

‘It’s not theirs to take,’ Pepe reminded us.

‘Death shall come on swift wings,’ Tulip murmured.

Yet none of the group looked remotely spooked or worried. Even from up here, I could sense their excitement. Mr Carter had an arm around Pecky’s shoulders, Lady Evelyn had taken her hat off and was holding her head like she was stunned.

When the group finally mounted their donkeys and tottered away across the sand, I took a long slow breath. Now it was our turn.

‘What about the guard?’ Oz was worried. ‘He’s still out there somewhere. There might be more than one, you know.’

I glanced at Tulip, who was crouched low on her camel, shivering.

‘We’ll have to risk it.’

*

A few minutes later, we arrived at the very top of the cliff. There was no sign of anyone else up here. It was more bare rock, more sand. What we now had to do was find which way was east. By my reckoning it had to be at least two or three o’clock in the morning, if not later. Mrs Mendoza would be back from her cocktail party. If she was anything like my mum she’d be fretting herself silly about where we’d gone, but it was best not to think about that now.

‘To find east,’ Oz told me, ‘you look at the stars.’

The trouble was, there were so many. Oz was scratching his head, looking confused. ‘That’s Venus, there. No, wait, it might be that one. Or is it Jupiter?’

‘Ask Pepe,’ I told him.

Meanwhile Tulip had slid off her camel and was peering intently at something on the ground. She picked it up, holding it suspiciously at arm’s length. ‘Look at this.’

It was a notebook, like the ones Mrs Mendoza used, covered in that funny dots-and-dashes writing reporters did incredibly quickly. It wasn’t wrinkled or dirty, either. Someone must’ve only recently dropped it.

‘That man we saw just now – it’s got to be his,’ Tulip said excitedly. ‘I wonder if he’s been watching Howard Carter too.’

‘You think he’s a reporter? Not a guard?’ I asked, hopefully, because it’d mean we weren’t about to get shot at least.

Before she could answer, Tulip threw up all over Oz’s shoes.

After that she agreed to lie down. In the shelter of a heap of rocks, Pepe made her a pillow from his scarf. Chaplin, who I think had taken a shine to Tulip, dropped down nearby. Charlie stayed standing, swishing his tail like he was in very deep thought.

Together, we worked out where Venus was in the sky.

‘Sunrise will be in an hour or so,’ Pepe seemed to think.

Oz, shoeless and rather miffed, admitted Pepe knew more about stars than he did.

Once we’d found east, we started looking for a tomb entrance. I still had in my head the official one we’d seen down in the valley, which was set into the rock like a bunker. Back in England, Grandad had also shown me pictures of the Rameses tombs whose entrances were wider than the front door at the Winter Palace.

But we weren’t looking for an official tomb, I reminded myself. We were searching for something so small and quiet it might easily be mistaken for a hole in the hillside or the resting place of an ordinary boy.

There was a ledge that ran just below the top of the cliff for ten, maybe twenty yards. In daylight, the views out over the valley from here would probably be terrific. It was as good a place as any to look, though at first glance there was nothing there – just more rock. More boulders to step around.

Behind me Pepe said something I didn’t catch.

‘Sorry?’ I turned around a bit too fast. My right foot slipped off the ledge. Arms whirling, I fought to keep my balance. But everything was in the wrong place and there was nothing to hold on to but air. I panicked.

‘Grab the rock!’ Pepe yelled, waving frantically at a boulder that stood between us.

Just as I felt myself toppling over the edge, I latched on to it. First with one arm. Then the other. I squatted, hugging the boulder for dear life. When I finally felt safe enough, I fumbled to check my satchel was still there: it was, thank goodness.

It was then I felt air against my cheek. It came from behind the boulder – just once – and was warm, like someone’s breath. I was also aware of a shift inside of me. As if my head was clearing, or I’d just stretched my tired legs.

No, that wasn’t it. Not quite.

It was the absolute opposite of the gloomy, heavy feeling I’d dragged around ever since Grandad fell ill. When Lysandra guessed what Maya had done with Kyky’s heart, she’d said it was like a lock opening. It was the best way I could think of describing it too.

‘Pepe?’ I said, trying to stay calm. ‘Can you come here a sec?’

We were more careful this time. Oz was under strict instructions to keep way back from the edge. The boulder wasn’t much bigger than a motorcar tyre, but it took both Pepe and me to move it even a little way. Behind it was an opening. It was small – cupboard-door sized, probably. We crouched around it, trying to peer inside. But when I reached in with my arm I couldn’t feel the end of it, and if anything, it seemed to get wider further along.

‘It’s the size for one person,’ Pepe said.

‘I’m the smallest,’ Oz pointed out.

‘And the youngest,’ I reminded him. ‘Your sister would go berserk if anything happened to you.’

‘Aren’t we a team?’ he asked, sounding upset.

I looked at him. He was standing just back from the ledge, big-eyed, springy-haired. The boy who never went to school or spoke to strangers, here on a mountainside in Egypt in the middle of the night. He still wasn’t one for hugs, mind you, so I patted his arm. ‘We are a team,’ I told him. ‘None of us would’ve done this on our own.’

He sniffed. ‘But—’

‘Sssh,’ I stopped him. ‘This last bit I’m doing for my grandad, all right? Stay with your sister. I won’t be long.’

Hands stuffed in his pockets, Oz picked his way back along the ledge.

Pepe, though, didn’t.

‘I haven’t enquired till now what exactly you are doing, English girl,’ he said, folding his arms. ‘But the time has come for me to ask.’

All I did was open my satchel and take out the jar. Even though it was still dark, I sensed the jar’s power, its gleam of gold, the Anubis head, the heavy, important weight of it.

Twenty-two years ago, an Egyptian boy had stumbled across Kyky’s tomb and the jar inside it. Very soon he regretted what he’d found. And out of nowhere, I thought of what Dad had said that day I’d stood up for Tulip in school.

Being English didn’t give me the right to sort out other people’s problems, not when they could solve them themselves.

‘Here.’ I handed the jar to Pepe. ‘We’re returning it to where it belongs.’

He did look amazed, I’ll give him that. Even more so when I mentioned what was inside, wrapped in old linen, and what Lysandra had told us about the boy pharaoh whose official tomb Mr Carter was feverishly exploring directly below us in the valley.

For a very long moment, Pepe held the jar to his chest.

‘His heart?’ he murmured, like he couldn’t quite believe it, and who could blame him? When he’d recovered, there was a new determination in his face. He tucked the jar inside his gown.

‘Let’s begin,’ he said and, crouching down, climbed in through the opening.

I followed. Crawling inside was the easy bit. I went on my belly, using my elbows, until the passage was wide and tall enough that I could get up on my hands and knees. Pepe must’ve gone fast because I lost him immediately. The quiet in here was thicker even than the quiet outside. All I could hear was the blood thumping in my ears. I was shaking a little – from tiredness, from the unbelievable thrill that this was it. I was here.

Then I got my first surprise. I expected the passage to keep going horizontally into the hillside. It didn’t.

‘Whoa!’ I was falling.

Not far, thankfully. I landed with a jarring thump on what felt like a step down. With my outstretched foot I could feel more steps cut into the rock. It was then, a little way below me, I saw a light.

‘Pepe?’ I called out.

‘It’s me,’ he answered. ‘These steps are risky. Here, have the torch.’

As Oz would’ve predicted, the torch was on the blink. There was just enough dim light to see steps spiralling downwards, though not in the logical way a staircase would: these took you by surprise. Pepe was just ahead of me, treading slowly and carefully. It took every ounce of my concentration not to stumble into him. Some of the steps were shallow, some deep; one was so far from the next that you had to leap to get to it. By the time we reached the bottom, my legs felt like string.

The torch went out.

The darkness was thick and total – not spooky, exactly, but rather queer. The air felt thick and stuffy, the walls a bit too close on all sides.

‘We’re burying the jar here?’ Pepe whispered, sounding unsure.

Doubts, as doubts do, chose their moment, and suddenly my head was full of them. What if this wasn’t the right place? Was I too late? Had Grandad already died? Was Tulip about to? Were the bad omens going to come true?

Tulip would have told me to pull myself together. Mum would have reminded me I had Grandad’s spirit, and Dad, well, he’d have said our hard work had paid off. My brain, for once, listened.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is the place.’

A rustle of cloth as Pepe dug into his pocket. I sensed he now held the jar in his hands. When it started giving off a low, golden light, I thought it was just me imagining it. And maybe I was. Yet the glow got stronger. Not quite a torch beam, this was softer, more warming. It lit up Pepe’s face. He said something in a language I didn’t know.

As the light grew stronger, we could see we were in a little chamber. The floor was sandy, the walls curved on all sides – not bare rock, but decorated faintly with little figures and flowers. Open-mouthed, I turned slowly to take it all in. With a little bit of light, the tomb was beautiful.

In front of us was an arch that led to another chamber, above it a picture of a person in white robes, sitting on a throne. On his head the familiar tulip-shaped hat, the skin on his face blue. He was Osiris, god of the underworld who, Grandad once told me, was killed by someone in his own family who wanted to take his throne. How fitting to find his picture here, in Kyky’s tomb.

There were other pictures – jackals, owls, cobras. To be truthful, I’d seen fancier ancient art back home in the British Museum, yet I’d never felt like this just from looking at it. Seeing it here, in Egypt, where it was supposed to be, meant something deeper – a connection, a sort of tingling in my chest. There was no gold, no lapis – apart from what Pepe held in his hands. I wondered what Mr Carter would make of this little place, whether if he saw it now he’d think it important enough to dig up and document. But then, maybe that was the point.

The tomb was private. It was the burial place for a beloved friend. What I really hoped most of all was that when Pepe and I climbed the steps out of here, no one would ever come down them again.

Yet one thing didn’t add up: Maya said he’d chosen the spot for its position, because it would catch the sun. I couldn’t think how any sun would ever get in here.

What caught my eye now was the arch below the Osiris drawing. Looking closer, I saw it wasn’t a separate chamber at all, but two stone shelves running vertically into the rock. On each was a shape wrapped and wrapped again in cloth.

My throat tightened as I moved closer, the light from the jar growing ever brighter. As Pepe angled it towards the shelves, I could see what was, in fact, the top of a head. The shape of the body – the shoulders, the waist, the place where the feet would be – was just about visible under the fabric. Another mummified body lay on the shelf below. They were Lysandra and Maya, I felt sure of it.

‘Are there people buried here?’ Pepe asked in a hushed voice.

‘Yes, they were all friends.’

I started to cry.

I’d expected the tomb to be just for Kyky’s heart, but how stupid of me: without a decent family, his friends were his heart. I knew how that felt – not that my family weren’t decent, but friends can be as important. And tears aren’t always sad, either. Sometimes – like now, for instance – they could be a tangle of all sorts of feelings.

Very gently, Pepe put the jar on the top shelf. This mummy was the slightly bigger of the two, so I guessed it was Maya. The jar seemed to agree – if jars can do that. The light dimmed a little. It flickered, and then, with a fizzing, spitting sound, went out.

We waited. I didn’t know exactly what I expected to happen, but I didn’t think, somehow, that this was the end. The dark pressed in again, but only for a moment.

I blinked, stunned, as the whole chamber filled to the brim with light. This time it came from above, from the sky. Maya’s measurements had been absolutely spot on. The first beams of the sunrise poured into the cave. It hit the far wall where the bodies lay. For a minute, or maybe for always, the three friends were together in the sun.