The Book of the Dead Read online

  The Petrie Room had been closed for several weeks ahead of the Princess’s arrival while the exhibition team prepared. Boards were wheeled in, wires taped down and ramps locked into place. Glass cases and black-painted plinths, each carefully arranged and labelled, were rolled into position and hooked up to lighting and climate control systems, to alarms and motion sensors and a thousand other devices. They sat, elegantly lit and empty; waiting for her.

  The royal procession went on for hours: long after the crowds at the gate had gone, long after the museum had closed for the night and the last curious visitors had been ushered past the Petrie’s doors as crate after crate was wheeled inside. The civilised chaos continued well into the early hours and the sound of electric screwdrivers and hammers echoed around the deserted halls with only the statues to hear them.

  The exhibition would not open to the public for some days: not until labels had been checked and rechecked, not until the VIPs had been given their private tours – the donors and the Board and the handful of politicians who had pulled strings at their respective departments – escorted in hushed solemnity from case to case while champagne fizzed in glasses on silver trays; leafing through exhibition catalogues with all the Princess’s otherworldly goods laid out in tableaux, her life dissected and made fit for display. Her death, too. Her afterlife. Her hair combs and bangles. Her cups and her game boards. Her shoes, her pets and her gods. Her heart, neat in its cat-headed jar: a rare find, according to the tag, for by the time she lived and died the fashion was to leave the heart intact and where it had lain in life – a just reward for a job well done.

  But the Princess was a princess, in death no less than in life – more so, it seemed, for even a royal household could not have sustained so many Keepers and curators as were crowded around the glass coffin where she lay in state, awaiting her public from seven o’clock the next morning.

  That night, that quiet night when the work was done and the last of the VIPs had downed the last of the champagne and accepted their complimentary postcard packs; when the museum was silent and still, Dave found himself on the rota to cover the graveyard shift in the Petrie Room. It wasn’t often that the Petrie had its own guard – after all, for nine months of the year it was a largely empty space, used for lectures or workshops or (to the joy of all the staff) a lunch room for school visits. That night, however, as Dave plodded along the empty corridors, was different.

  It would be his own private view of the exhibition – an audience, he thought, with Her Royally Departed Highness. He let himself into the Petrie quietly, turning off the usual motion detectors as he went. The Director had been getting greyer and greyer as the week had gone on, and Dave didn’t think he would thank him for a midnight wake-up call. Not tonight. Not any night, come to think of it.

  His feet made no sound as they sank into the thick grey carpet specially laid for the exhibition. Everything was muffled and hushed, and it felt like being in church as he pottered about between the displays, picking his way through the unfamiliar layout. There would be plenty of time to get to know it properly, thought Dave: she’d be there for three months, and with Mike off on holiday soon and Ricky still on paternity leave, he and the Princess would get more of their share of late nights together.

  He stopped beside one case, looking in at a bowl inlaid with what was once coloured glass. Or maybe it was enamel. He didn’t read the label. Beside it on the velvet-covered shelf there was a scrap of cloth. “Papy-rus” he said, and the sound of his voice startled him as he read the tag aloud. On the shelf below, a collection of beads – wooden and clay – lay strung together on a golden wire. “Nice enough, if you like that sort of thing.”

  The cases were laid out in a loose spiral, forming a labyrinth with her at the centre. Raised on a dais, she lay in a gilded sarcophagus – the decorated lid lifted up and away – propped at an angle within the case to raise her head. At her feet, the canopic jars sat in a row, the heart in the middle; the carved animal stoppers watching him as he stepped onto the platform.

  Dave leaned as close to the case as he dared, peering down through it at the sarcophagus. His breath misted on the glass.

  “So you’re what all the fuss is about, are you?”

  Her golden mask stared back at him impassively. Below it, he could see the edges of the linen strips which bound her – and it struck him as strange that the hand which had wound them, had taken such care and pain, was long dead itself and little more than dust by now.

  “Makes you think, doesn’t it?” he asked the room. “Makes you feel small.” He turned his attention back to her mask, gazing at it. It was beautifully made: there was no denying it, and as fine after all these years as it must have been the day it was made. What kind of woman, he thought, could command such love? Such attention, such devotion – even in death?

  But for all the love and devotion, she was still alone, wasn’t she? Alone, and trapped in a tomb made of glass.

  Before he quite knew what he was doing, Dave found himself patting the top of the case. “Don’t you feel lonely, love. I’m here.” Embarrassed, he stopped.

  “Well. Best be off.” He tapped a finger thoughtfully on his watch. “Big day for you tomorrow; you’ll be needing your beauty sleep.”

  He stepped down from the dais and, pushing his hands into his pockets, began to work his way back through the maze of her possessions to the door, arming the alarm once more as he passed it. The sound of his whistle – an off-key attempt at an aria he’d heard in an advert – echoed through the museum.

  In the stillness of the Petrie Room, the Princess slept… but as Dave’s whistle faded into the night, a new sound took its place. A faint, muffled thump – almost too quiet to be heard at all.

  Thump.

  And then it came again.

  Thump.

  Thump-thump.

  Thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump.

  It was coming from the cat-headed jar at the feet of the Princess.

  Dave had never found it easy to get to sleep after a night shift, and that day was no exception. Barely three hours after he had gone to bed he gave up chasing the darkness and dragged himself out of his bedroom and to the sofa. The lunchtime television news was covering the official opening of the exhibition, and there was the Director on the front steps of the museum, the Egyptian department’s Head Keeper beside him. They were framed against the queue snaking through the Grand Plaza, out of the gates and down the street. Dave fumbled for the remote control and turned up the volume. They were talking about the importance of museums, of government funding, of the exhibition, of the artefacts on display… the same things the Director always talked about in interviews, in the vain hope that the more he talked, the less chance there was of their funding being cut. It hadn’t made a difference so far, but that didn’t usually stop him. The picture cut abruptly to the crowds inside, panning across the backs of heads and shoulders to settle on a vase, the sole of a sandal, a scroll… and finally, on her; on the Princess herself.

  Artefact. Dave turned the word over in his mind. Was that all she was? A show? Was that what she had become? Whoever had wrapped her, tightened those bandages, set the mask over her face… they hadn’t thought that, had they? It didn’t seem right, somehow, to make her the same as the coins and the broken pots and old arrowheads dug up in some muddy field and which now filled gallery after gallery in the museum. She wasn’t the same – not the same at all. She’d been a person, hadn’t she? She had a name – even if he couldn’t quite remember what that name was.

  Struck by a pang of sudden guilt, Dave wrapped his old grey bathrobe more tightly around himself and shuffled over to the kitchen, switching on the kettle. As he waited for it to boil, he picked up the copy of the exhibition catalogue he had found in the security office at the end of his shift. He flicked through it, listening to the water bubbling and the newsreaders moving on to a heart-warming story about a three-legged dog who rode the escalators at Bank station. The catalogue was full of
artful close-ups of bits of old wood, strips of cloth and paintings of men with funny-looking beards – rows of them with their hands raised and all of them wearing what looked like white dresses. Turning further pages showed him torn scraps of papyrus and what looked like a rat wrapped in bandages – but which, on closer examination of the notes printed alongside it – turned out to be a mummified cat.

  “Funny bunch, them Egyptians,” said Dave as he poured the milk and the water into his mug and dropped a teabag in after them. Sitting down at the table, he carried on flipping. He turned one more page… and froze, the cup halfway to his lips.

  There she was.

  It was not a photograph; rather, it was an artist’s impression of how she might have looked (put together, no doubt, by the archeological art department who lived in the museum’s basement and seemed to get through almost as much coffee as the IT department). She had long, dark hair – braided and oiled and swept back from her face. A soft face and a wide mouth. Dark-ringed eyes which stared defiantly out from the page, meeting his gaze and holding it – and he set down the mug with a shaking hand, his tea forgotten. How young she looked – how young and how sad. And just as he had thought before, how alone.

  He leaned back in his chair. Alone. She’d been by herself for so long, hadn’t she? All the Keepers in the world couldn’t change that; alone in a tomb, in the dark and the cold – and now, alone in a sea of people who thought of her as nothing more than another artefact. Something to tick off in their guidebooks, something to look at with the same respectful indifference that they would show an antique vase.

  … What was her name again?

  By the time Dave clocked in for his shift that evening, he had read the entire catalogue. Twice. Sitting at his kitchen table – still in his threadbare robe and slippers – he had scoured the pages looking for… everything. Something. Anything that would help him to understand her. He had read about heart scarabs, about the Field of Reeds and the Books of the Dead. He had read about spells to open mouths, to change form or to drive away crocodiles. He had learned about the Princess – about her life and her death (just as the exhibition title promised) and the gods who watched over her. And as he buttoned his collar, he felt like he knew her – at least a little better than before.

  Just after midnight, he let himself into the Petrie Room once again, switching off the alarm as he had done the previous night. This time, however, he did not follow the labyrinthine path through the displays – instead, he cut straight to the centre. To her. There she was, just as he had left her: the golden mask still resting across her face… a face that he now knew to be warm and soft and full of life (or had been once). He wondered what her voice would be like if she spoke to him: high and soft, girlish, or confident and commanding? The catalogue could not tell him that.

  “Hope you don’t mind…” he said to the quiet of the room. “Brought my tea.” He held up the carrier bag containing a thermos flask and a sandwich wrapped in film. “Thought it might be nice to have a bite to eat together, as it were. I’ve been reading about you.” He whispered the last words as though afraid someone else might hear. Unwrapping his sandwich, he tore it in half and set one piece down on the carpet beside the glass case. “Prawn. I hope you like it – it’s just… I didn’t have a lot in. The book said you ate a lot of fish, so…” He tailed off – embarrassed – and poured a little tea into the lid of the thermos, putting it next to his little offering and chewing thoughtfully.

  “Well. This is nice,” he said.

  The Princess did not reply.

  His sandwich finished, Dave dusted the crumbs from his hands.

  “I’ll…” he stopped. What should he do with the tea and the sandwich he’d offered her? Should he clear it up or leave it? It wasn’t like she was really going to eat it, was it – but on the other hand, was it some kind of insult if he took it away? He resolved to consult the catalogue as soon as his shift was finished. The book would tell him what to do. In the meantime, he decided to err on the side of practicality and he collected up the sandwich as best he could.

  “My boss, you know,” he said by way of apology, gathering up his thermos and the carrier bag.

  “Well. I’ll come by again later.” He scrunched the bag into his fist and tucked the thermos under his arm – and he was just about to reactivate the alarm when he heard something…

  Thump-thump.

  Thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump.

  Dave frowned, listening. Whatever it was, it was coming from inside the room – and had most certainly not been there the night before. He listened a moment longer, then unclipped the radio from his belt and pressed a yellow button on the side of it.

  “Charlie? Make a note to get Maintenance over to the Petrie when they get in, would you? The air-con’s on the blink again.”

  He keyed in the code for the alarm, and closed the door behind him.

  The days and nights passed. The former, Dave spent either at home, reading and rereading the exhibition catalogue until its pages were loose and dog-eared – or (much to the amusement of his colleagues) in the Egyptian department, where the librarian had taken a bemused but supportive interest in his sudden enthusiasm and had set aside a pile of books for him to read. The nights he increasingly spent in the Petrie Room – hurrying the rest of his round so that he could sit beside her. Sometimes he would take the newspaper, reading aloud the stories he thought she might like. Sometimes he took a book from the archives – reasoning that it hadn’t left the building – and read her pages from that… although then he worried that it might make her homesick, so he stopped. Occasionally, they did the crossword as he sat on the carpet beside her; he found the cryptic a bit of a struggle, but she seemed to prefer it so he soldiered on.

  The noise was still there – that quiet, insistent thudding sound he had heard weeks before – and although Maintenance had checked the fans, the ducts and the vents for the air conditioning system as far away as the third floor, they could find no fault with it. But yes, they admitted, there was a noise, and it was definitely coming from something in the Petrie Room. As soon as the exhibition left and the space was broken down again, they would put in for a work order to take the floor up; hopefully that would solve the problem.

  This conversation had upset Dave. It had upset him so much that he had excused himself, hurrying along the corridors and up the grand staircase to the second floor where – watched over by the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket – he had sat on a bench and rocked back and forth, sobbing into his palm. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that one day, one day soon, the exhibition would leave. That she would leave. He knew she didn’t want to go: he could feel it. After all the time they had spent together, he knew what she wanted better than anyone else. Better, even, than she did. He had tried so hard to understand her; to be the kind of man she deserved. He had taken to oiling his hair like the books said; to anointing himself with cedar and juniper oils, bought specially from a shop in Covent Garden and wrapped by the smiling assistant in tissue paper the colour of an Egyptian sky. He had assumed they were a gift – for a relative, a colleague or a friend, and he had let him. The oil had given him a rash which burned beneath his shirt and which was starting to run to sores – but she needn’t know that. All she need know was that he loved her. She was a princess. Love was what she deserved.

  On the final day of the exhibition, he dragged himself to the museum several hours before his shift began. He didn’t want to miss a moment with her; didn’t want to arrive and find her boxed and labelled and ready to be stolen away from him. Besides, his sleep had been no better. He’d dreamt of sitting in a large room with a high ceiling and grey-painted wood panelling on the walls. There were tables arranged in rows, laid for a meal, and tall, glass doors opening onto a terrace. Beyond lay a vast glass pyramid, its sides glinting in the sunlight.

  She stood on the balcony, her back to him; silhouetted against the shining glass.

  “It’s a dream,” she had
said – and her voice was just as he had come to imagine it.

  “How do you know?” he had asked, knowing all the while that she was right.

  “This is the Louvre. Not your museum at all.” She pointed to the pyramid ahead of her and there was a rustle of fabric, paper-dry. “I liked it here. But the river, it carries me always on, and I am weary.” There was a sadness in her voice that made his throat tighten.

  “The Louvre?” He stumbled over the unfamiliar word. “That’s the French one, isn’t it?” Something nagged at the back of his sleeping mind. “How can I be dreaming it? I’ve not been there.”

  “But I have…” And as she spoke, she turned to face him – and he saw a sudden flash of her face in the light: blackened with age, her soft lips shrivelled and parched and peeling away from where her teeth should have been. Her skin was cracked and harder than bone, and there were dark hollows where once there had been warm cheeks. Empty eye sockets met his gaze and held it.

  He woke with a scream, his bedsheets clammy and stuck to his skin.

  It was only a dream. His, or hers…

  The last of the visitors had gone. The staff were, one by one, filtering into the Petrie Room for the Director’s traditional speech. At the end of every visiting exhibition, he would thank them – as though there wasn’t still a museum to run, paperwork to be done, artefacts to be stored or retrieved or cleaned…

  Dave hung back, his eyes locked onto the glass case on the dais.

  There was a polite round of applause as the Director finished speaking. Dave stood in the shadows beside the display board, dwarfed by the larger-than-life photo of the Princess’s golden mask. He waited, listening to the sound of trolleys being wheeled down the hallway.

  They were coming.

  They were coming to take her.

  They were coming to take her and she didn’t want to go.

  He knew her. He knew she didn’t want to go.

  She wanted to stay. To stay here. To stay with him.