Page 142 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

Kitty was white. In some odd reaction she had picked up Trump, who was wriggling madly trying to get to Nina. ‘You were very brave,’ she said to Nina, her voice vibrating with shock. She had seen the horse rear over her child; she had imagined the hoofs coming down and crushing him. Nina had acted, had done the thing that had to be done, with no time to think, so she was not shocked, only embarrassed at being the centre of attention. She was very glad when two footmen, despatched by Forbes from across the road, came and parted the crowd and escorted them back to the house.

Everyone was out, so Nina was able to divert attention from herself to Kitty, who was shaking, by telling Forbes to bring her a glass of brandy. And then the news of the incident penetrated to the nursery, and Nanny and Jessie came steaming down into the hall in wild alarm, to check on the condition of their baby and to extrapolate from the incident the folly of ever allowing a mother to take a baby out unattended.

Giles had just turned into Piccadilly when he was hailed.

‘Ayton – I say!’

He turned. ‘Wolski! How are you?’

‘Good to see you! But I forgot, it’s Stainton now, isn’t it? Baxter said he saw you down at Ashmore, looking quite the earl!’

They clasped hands. ‘I don’t mind what you call me. You’re in England? I thought you’d gone out with Carter.’

‘I did – I was. I’ve just come back for a visit, do some business, collect some supplies. I say, what luck to run into you! Are you going somewhere, or have you time? My club’s just round the corner. We could toddle round for a drink and a natter.’

‘I’d like that,’ Giles said. To meet Max Wolski, an old friend and another archaeologist, just when he was feeling very unlike himself, with a head full of finance and jam and factories and export plans! They turned together and strolled back down St James’s Street. ‘How are things going over there?’

‘Oh, great guns!’ said Wolski. He was a tall, thin, swarthy American, with thick black hair, and an outdoor tan. Giles always thought that, apart from his height, he could be Egyptian. ‘You’ve heard about KV60, I suppose?’

Giles shook his head ruefully. ‘These days, trapped down in the country, I don’t hear about anything but crop yields and milk fever.’

‘But you’re here now?’

‘Escaped for a couple of weeks, that’s all. What about KV60? Did you find anything?’

‘It seems it was ransacked, probably in antiquity, but it did contain two female mummies, and some mummified geese.’

‘Geese!’

‘A handy snack in the afterlife for our royal ladies, I imagine.’

‘What sort of condition are they in – the females?’

‘One’s very well preserved – still has her long red hair, and she’s lying in a coffin base. The other not so well – an older woman, quite obese. Not much in the way of funerary objects, and no clues as to their identity. But they both have the left arm flexed across the body, which as you know—’

‘Is the sign of a royal woman of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Max, you don’t think it could be—?’

‘Hatshepsut? Well, of course the idea always crosses your mind. But we didn’t really have time to go into it. Carter took the geese for investigation and resealed the tomb, because we had bigger fish to fry.’

‘KV20?’

‘Yes, of course. And we’re on the brink of marvellous discoveries. You know it’s never been explored beyond the first chamber—’

‘Because the corridor is blocked.’

‘Yes, and the fill is rock hard. It’s been the very devil to get through. And there are five descending corridors, very distinctive . . .’

They turned into the club together.

Giles walked home, his mind far away. The soft damp air of England, the London traffic, the smell of soot and horses, the people brushing past him in their multitudes, barely existed for him. He was in a place of sharp, direct light, dry air, the susurrus of sand and the papery whisper of palm trees, the clink of hammer on stone, and the intense, focused concentration of minds on a time far distant from the modern world.

Max Wolski had said, ‘Come back with me! Carter would love to have you. There’s so much to do. Baxter’s there, and the Portwines – all the old gang. The fun is just beginning. You could come, couldn’t you? I mean, what’s to stop you?’

And he had said, ‘I can’t.’

‘Lord, just pack a bag, old boy!’ Max had said, clapping his shoulder. ‘You were born for this – I remember Percy Newberry raving about you. A born Egyptologist, he said. Wrap up your affairs, pack a bag, and head for the station. What’s to stop you?’ And he had laughed. ‘You’re the earl now – earls can damn well do as they please, can’t they?’

Giles positively ached with longing to go. And it was true, wasn’t it? He was his own master. The estate was beginning to run more smoothly – and Markham and Adeane knew what to do. They hardly needed him. And he could leave Richard as his deputy. There was money now, enough to keep things ticking over.