Chapter VI
London - Southampton, 1912

Terribiles visu formae (Figures terrible to see)

- Virgil

t was last autumn when it happened," said the attendant, "The Mummy Galleries were part of Freddy Jenkins' beat after closing time, and he was doing his rounds just after midnight like he always did, when he sees this light in Room 60. We don't get many burglars in here, but there's always a first time, so in he goes, ready to give them what for, but there's no-one there, see? Just this sort of foggy glow around the mummy case. Then, he says, all of a sudden this horrible figure just sits up in it, and starts gliding towards him. It looked sort of like a woman, because he could see her face, all twisted and ghastly, but the rest of her was all ragged, like some old burial shroud that was coming apart." "Now Freddy takes off pretty sharpish," he continued, "since this thing's put the wind right up him, and no mistake. But it follows him, you see, chasing him down the galleries, glowing all yellow, and he can see it reflected in the cases in front of him, getting closer and closer. Then he gets to this door" - he indicated the doors that led to the North Staircase - "but it's locked, because he locked it himself earlier, only he's so scared he forgets, and he's trying to pull them open when the thing catches up with him, and he feels like there's some kind of trapdoor behind him, and it's trying to push him through it, so he lunges at it, trying to shove it away from him, and it just vanishes, like it was never there. He says he don't remember anything after that, and the first anyone else knows about it is when they find him the next morning, right in this very spot, lying there in a swoon. I'll tell you, my Lord, Freddy Jenkins isn't a fanciful man, and he's not the drinking type neither. He's been with the Museum over fifteen years, never given the Trustees any cause for complaint, and if he says this happened to him, then I for one won't say he didn't. Works the day shift now, he does, and it's only this past couple of weeks he's been able to set foot in Room 60 again." He paused, and took a deep breath. "And there's none of us," he concluded, "that isn't sorry to see the back of it. I think even Sir Wallis will be relieved, if only so he won't be pestered about it any more. I should warn you, my Lord, it's really not something he likes to discuss." "Tell you what," I said, "Why don't I just go on and pay him a visit on my own? I think I know where his office is. He doesn't have to know about our little chat." The attendant allowed that indeed he really ought to be getting back to flushing out the other stragglers. He hurried off towards the Middle Eastern Galleries, from which the echoes of boyish sniggers could faintly be heard, while I turned my steps towards the offices of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. So the spirit confined within the mummy case wasn't quite so confined after all. I wondered vaguely what it was she'd wanted when she had gone after the unfortunate Mr Jenkins. Just lashing out, as I'd suggested to Murray? Or maybe she hadn't had any choice in the matter. Presumably the casket let her out every so often to pep up its reputation, but was careful not to let her stray too far. Either way, she still sounded pretty miserable. The sooner I got her out of that thing, the better. And I had learned something of practical value here too. Don't let avenging spirits try and push you down imaginary trapdoors. No good can possibly come of it. Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was a portly fellow with a neatly trimmed, rather prissy moustache and small round spectacles over which he peered at me as I entered his high, book-lined office. There was a partially unrolled papyrus on the desk in front of him, the Teaching of Amenemope, by the look of it. I seemed to have interrupted a transcription session. "Lord Mortlake," he said slowly, "I didn't know you were in England. I thought you were still at Tel el-Amarna." At least he didn't produce an eighteen foot bullwhip, which suggested that he got on better with my Shadows than Dr Jones. "Just got back," I said, "Forgive the intrusion, but it's rather important. In a word, or rather a catalogue number, EA 22542." Budge scowled and sat back. "Your Lordship knows as well as I do that it requires an Act of Parliament just to sell a single potsherd from our collections," he said stuffily, "This isn't an antique shop. Although nor, I admit, are your own private collections," he added in a slightly more conciliatory tone, "I thought the position vis-à-vis the Trustees and yourself was one of uti possidetis." I gathered from this that we spent a lot of time in Egypt trying to outbid each other, but that by common consent it had been established that to the victor the spoils, with no subsequent attempts at poaching. "I'm not here to make off with the King's deer," I said, which was at least true in and of itself, "I'm here to study. Having said that, mind you, one can hardly but observe that you seem to be in the process of selling the artefact in question anyway." Budge harrumphed and shifted slightly in his chair, suggesting that the requisite legislative procedure might in this case have been circumvented. "Ah," he said, "You're aware of that, are you? Well, we're not actually selling it. We're exchanging it with one of the New York museums. Seems they have an excess of dinosaurs from Montana, while we have an excess of ... ah ..." "Cursed mummy cases?" I suggested. "I'm afraid you may have been paying a little too much attention to the popular press," said Sir Wallis, "Now I appreciate, Lord Mortlake, that your family has contributed a number of important artefacts to the Museum, and that you are engaged to the daughter of the Chairman of the Board of Trustees ..." He paused. "Were engaged," he amended, "but I'm really rather busy at the moment ..." Budge had a reputation, I recalled, as a particularly jealous custodian of the treasures in his care, to the extent of making it as difficult as possible for outside scholars to get anywhere near them. However, he also had a fondness for the kind of speculative theorising that left some of his more conservative colleagues distinctly dyspeptic. "The thing that puzzles me most," I tried, "is that you should be so eager to get rid of the only existing relic of a Queen previously considered to be purely mythical." Now that got my foot in the door. Budge blinked at me owlishly, and then finally waved me to a seat. "That was my guess as well," he sighed, "but I could find no way of confirming it. May I ask how you arrived at the same conclusion?" "Well," I said, marshalling what few diagnostic facts I had picked up during my travels, "It's obviously Old Kingdom, from the glyphs on the casing and the manner of construction. The ornateness of the mummiform design, however, is more reminiscent of the Middle Kingdom, and is indeed in some ways unique. Not unreasonable, then, to date it somewhere midway - late Sixth Dynasty or First Intermediate Period. The occupant was obviously a woman of royal blood, but all the cartouches bearing her name have been erased, and the inscriptions include no spells to guide the deceased to Amenti. In fact, they very specifically bar her from the Judgement Hall of the Dead. I think we can safely say that she did not die among friends." "Precisely!" said Budge, slapping his desk and nearly upsetting an ink bottle over the priceless papyrus, "All the circumstantial evidence is consistent with the legend of Nitocris, but the case alone doesn't demonstrate it conclusively. If only we had some other tomb artefacts, like the rest of the sarcophagus. Or if we could find the tomb itself ..." He trailed off longingly. "The Iliad of woes that the casket leaves in its wake is also a bit of a give-away," I pointed out. This elicited a snort from the great antiquarian. "I'll admit that there have been difficulties which some people insist on associating with the case," he said, "but mishaps happen even in the most carefully run institutions. Outwardly healthy men do have weak hearts. Photographers do sometimes get so wrapped up in their work that they don't look where they're going. That doesn't prove the existence of a curse. No, the important thing is that what we have here could be the most important Egyptological find since the Royal Mummy Cache back in ‘81." "And yet you're still selling it to, excuse me, exchanging it with the Americans," I said. Sir Wallis looked disgruntled. "No real proof, you see," he said, "If I had something, anything, to back up the Nitocris theory then I'd fight tooth and nail to hang onto it. But it's become an embarrassment to the Trustees, and frankly, I can't really blame them. It gives us all the wrong kind of publicity. Sometimes you can't move in Room 60 for mystics and spiritualists, especially after that fellow Stead started publishing his stories. When he was just badgering us to let him hold a séance, then we could laugh it off, just one crank and all that, but once the tale got into print we never heard the end of it. People came to see it and nothing else, harassing the attendants with their asinine questions. We had donations from all over the world, from Algeria, and New Zealand, to pay for flowers to be laid before the casket. To cheer the old girl up, I suppose. Sad to say, though," he added with just the faintest trace of a smirk, "I believe that these money offerings were absorbed by our hard-hearted Treasurer, and no flowers were actually bought. But in the end the Trustees decided that whole business had become detrimental to the Museum's reputation as a serious institution, and steps were made to find the case an alternative home." "I wonder," I said slowly, "if it might be an idea to take one last look at it before it goes. Maybe there's something that both of us have missed. I doubt that the Trustees would be quite so enthusiastic about swapping it for a pile of fossils if you could show them that it really was the inner sarcophagus of Queen Nitocris." Budge raised an eyebrow. "It's a bit late for that now," he said, "Didn't I tell you? It's already gone. The Trustees engaged the White Star Line to ship it to New York from Southampton, and I believe the ship leaves tomorrow. The mummy case is already aboard." Darkness was falling as I made my way back to my flat on the Strand, idly toying with the Shadow to make it likely that my arrival was not unanticipated, even if the real master of the house was a continent away, digging up Akhenaten's back-yard. So the wretched case was still one step ahead of me, but at least I now knew where it was and where it was going. Or did I? Shouldn't I be making for Southampton right this minute? After all, at any minute it could vanish once more between the interstices of reality. Yet something told me not to rush things. Every time I hared after it like a steeplechaser, it seemed to take flight again automatically. In short, I found it hard to avoid the conclusion that it knew when I was about to catch up with it. A more subtle, leisurely approach was surely called for, and few things are more leisurely than an ocean cruise. I could accompany it to New York, use the opportunity to study it, avoid any overt moves, and then, well, pounce. Nitocris, regrettably, would have to wait a little longer to be freed from her thaumaturgical bondage, but free she would be. And if the casket tried to give me the slip again, then I'd be straight off the starting block after it. No head start for the Shadow-hopping sarcophagus this time. In any case, I had acquired the strongest suspicion that the casket liked this Shadow. It had in short order accumulated a veritable history of havoc, and now had the opportunity to spread even more in the New World. It would be in no hurry to move on. On reaching my flat, I discovered that my alter ego in this particular reality had dispensed with both butler and valet, and had instead retained a live-in housekeeper by the name of Mrs Hopkins, who was possibly the most terrifying creature I had ever encountered. "I was expecting you back earlier, your Lordship," grumbled the aproned apparition, "That actress friend of yours called twice on your new telephone, utterly distraught she was, weeping and wailing, and me a respectable woman, and Lady Marion came round in person not two hours ago, couldn't understand why you returned all her letters, left again in a right huff let me tell you, and there was some other fancy woman loitering on the pavement nearly all morning, wouldn't give her name when I accosted her, but said she'd go straight to the newspapers if you wouldn't see her, and your supper's in the study, my Lord, only it'll be cold by now." Uh, quite. By the sound of it, the Damien Mortlake of this Shadow thoroughly deserved this tormentor of Phineus, but since my own conscience was reasonably clear I found myself wondering where I could find an Argonaut or two at this time of night. "Thank you, Mrs Hopkins," I said, "That will be all. I'll be going to America tomorrow, so you needn't wait up." "America?" said Mrs Hopkins, in much the same tone as a Roman might say "Sarmatia", or "Upper Germania". "All those savages whooping and scalping people," she went on, "Now there's a thing." "Yes," I said, sidling into the study, "and I hear that the Indians aren't much better. I'll be leaving first thing in the morning. Are these meant to be ... lamb cutlets?" "You'll be needing some warm clothes," Mrs Hopkins decided, "They say there's snowdrifts twelve feet deep in the mountains where they dig up all that gold, and bears too. Oh, and they've got deserts in America, haven't they, so I better pack your topee and your canvas boots. And I'll put in three sets of evening clothes, since I'm sure they don't have any proper laundries neither, always spitting their tobacco everywhere, filthy habit, and I suppose you should take your revolver too, but I'm saying nothing if you get into any gunfights, and if you bring back any buffalo heads then they'll have to go to Mortlake Hall, because there no room here." "I'll make a note of that," I said agreeably. Finally she bustled out, muttering darkly to herself: "Buffalo heads on my walls, and me a respectable woman." I suppose she wasn't a bad old bird, but I found it hard to imagine even the most deranged analogue of myself employing her except possibly to keep the rest of the world at bay. Such as the queue of jilted lovers and fiancées I seemed to spend all my time avoiding. No wonder I was in Tel el-Amarna. I was amazed I ever came back to London at all. Or maybe she was just an old family retainer I hadn't had the heart to get rid of. I'd had a couple of nursemaids like her back in Medmenham, although they hadn't lasted very long, for some reason. In the end Mother had reinstated Marianne once she'd promised not to teach me any more voudou. I dined on cold something-or-other, and then retired to bed. Once Mrs Hopkins stopped clumping about and sequestered herself in her own chambers, I then got up again and repacked the four bulging travelling trunks she had laid out for me. Everything I might actually require fitted neatly into one, with room for Wilkes, Dashwood and my notes on top. Then I hung a couple of spells, more to get a proper feel for the local magick of Shadow than anything else. And the next morning, I waved a cheery farewell to Mrs Hopkins as she ran after the car brandishing a pith helmet and a pair of snowshoes. How careless of me to forget them, I thought, as I turned the corner and she was lost to sight. Southampton was noisy, bustling and full of coal-carts working overtime now that the strike was over. I made the White Star offices my first stop, and sure enough, one of the First Class passengers had made a last minute cancellation. "Any particular reason?" I asked as I wrote out the cheque that secured me a suite with a single-berth stateroom and private promenade deck. On the whole I would have preferred it if my manipulations of probability hadn't reserved me a cabin at the expense of a death in the family. There were enough curses floating about this Shadow without me adding to them. "Oh, some silly premonition," said the clerk without thinking. Well, that was encouraging. He went crimson as he suddenly realised what he'd just said. "I mean, there's nothing to be concerned about, my Lord," he stammered, "Nothing at all. She's the safest ship afloat. They say even God Himself couldn't sink her." "Naturally," I said, "I mean, what's He going to do? Send a flood?" The clerk swallowed hard as he handed me my ticket, my boarding pass and a tastefully printed brochure. No doubt I had a reputation in this Shadow for blasphemy as well. "Don't worry," I told him, "I'm sure they can throw me overboard to be swallowed by a whale if things go wrong." "Enjoy your voyage with White Star," he said weakly. I went in search of my boat, and found it with precisely zero difficulty. Docked at Berth 44, she was a little hard to miss. The largest ship ever built, the brochure had trumpeted - 882 feet long, 92 feet wide, displacement 66,000 tons, triple screw with a top speed of 24 knots, double skinned hull, sixteen watertight compartments, capable of carrying 3,547 passengers and crew ... Figures, however, are a generally inadequate means of giving a true sense of scale. She was longer and higher than the entire frontage of the British Museum. Plonk her down in Great Russell Street and my friend the attendant would take one look at the obfuscation outside and instinctively set off on his night rounds. Looking up at her from the dockside was like looking up the face of a cliff, her four sternward-angled funnels resembling the towers of some lopsided fortress perched on the edge of the precipice. She wasn't exactly the largest moving structure I'd ever seen - quite apart from Corvallin, I could easily list a dozen or so vessels that would completely dwarf her. Still, she compared not unfavourably with the Royal Barge of Lemuria or Josiah Traveller's land-going folly the Prince Albert, and that was impressive enough in itself. A large crowd was milling noisily around me: embarking passengers; friends and families come to see them off; and several thousand sightseers gathered to witness the departure of the vessel on what was apparently her maiden voyage. Clerks and apprentices in cheap suits mingled with bewhiskered bourgeoisie, who in turn found themselves rubbing shoulders with aristocrats and captains of industry. Mill girls and secretaries in colourful hats crowded middle-class matrons and ladies of fashion. Baggage trains of various sizes wound their way through the crush. A porter wearing a White Star uniform decided that I'd probably be worth a decent tip, and offered to carry my luggage, so I let him haul the travelling chest along behind me as I reached the First Class Embarkation Point and strolled up the gangway. An obsequious steward took my ticket and boarding pass like Sir Wallis receiving the Papyrus of Ani. As he fussed, I paused on the threshold, sensing. Was she here? She was. The unique magickal signature of the mummy case was quite palpable, being located about two hundred feet to my left, towards the bow, and maybe three or four decks down. That was presumably where the forward cargo hold was. And this was no aetheric afterimage; this was the living aura of the genuine article, squatting balefully in the bowels of the ship. At last, on the eighth attempt, I had finally caught up with it. "... manservant, my Lord?" "Hmm?" I said. "Am I correct in understanding that you have brought no manservant, my Lord?" repeated the steward. "Absolutely," I informed him, "Problem?" The steward looked mortified. "Not at all, my Lord," he said hurriedly, "In fact, I can assure you that you will find that personal servants are something of a superfluity on this voyage. The level of service provided by the White Star Line puts the greatest hotels of London to shame ..." "I've read the brochure, thank you," I said, "Now, my staterooms?" The steward led me into the First Class Reception Room where newly-boarded plutocrats in top hats and hombergs were greeting each other like old business rivals, while their wives and daughters pretended to admire each other's dresses. "I see your stock's down a tad, old man." "Why yes, my dear, it's quite the new thing in Paris." "I say, isn't that Lord Mortlake?" This was going to be a scintillating trip, I could tell. An electric lift behind the Grand Staircase took us up to B-Deck, where my staterooms were located on the starboard side. I sent the steward away with a large gratuity, and the porter away with a larger one, since he was the one who'd done all the heavy lifting and hadn't babbled at me all the time. Then I took stock of my new quarters. The bedroom and sitting room were furnished in the Dutch style, with intricately bevelled wooden panelling and a rather riotous-looking floral wallpaper that put me in mind of William Morris as a hashish-fiend, or, now that I thought of it, a florescent version of the sky above Chaos. I think the designer had intended it to be lively and eye-catching. Instead it made the room feel hemmed in by an ever-growing enchanted thicket, a decor out of one of the less-sanitised versions of Sleeping Beauty. I decided I liked it. It seemed apt. I thought of the other sleeping beauty in the forward cargo hold, awaiting the kiss that would restore her to life, and quickly checked on her again. With two more decks between us, it was harder to pinpoint the mummy case with the same degree of exactitude, but I was able to satisfy myself that it was still there. I desperately wanted to hurry below and see it for myself, but with the ship an ants' nest of activity I made myself wait. There would be plenty of time tonight. I briefly unpacked a few essentials, inspected my private verandah, and then wandered topside to the Promenade Deck to bid farewell to Southampton. We were on the verge of casting off, and the best part of a thousand passengers were thronging the port side railings, handkerchiefs aflutter. Southampton waved back. A few stragglers ran up the gangways from the Steerage Boarding Point near the stern, and then the doors were closed, the gangways retracted. Steam hissed and whistles blew as mooring lines were disengaged. Tugboats took up the strain and water began to open up between us and the dockside. Southampton Dock was a billowing sea of arms and faces, waving and cheering. "I suppose this must have been what it was like for those poor lads sent out to die in the South African War," said a voice beside me, "Did you know that the Government has first call on these liners as troop-ships in the event of conflict?" The speaker was somewhere in his sixties, possessed of classical features and an untamed white beard that was about two parts Dickens to three parts Marx. "I didn't actually," I said cautiously, "Is that good or bad?" "A strong navy is a deterrent to war," opined my companion, "I've always said so, in public and in print. But to take a magnificent piece of British craftsmanship such as this and fill it to the gunwales with the blood of our bravest and brightest young men ... Why, I can't think of a better illustration of the folly and blasphemy of war." "I think you'll find that strictly speaking the craftsmanship is Irish," I replied noncommittally. Was I supposed to know this person? The bearded gentleman laughed. "You have me there, sir," he said, "You have me there." He held out his hand. "William Thomas Stead," he said, "Delighted to make your acquaintance." Oh, bugger. "Damien Mortlake," I said blandly, shaking the proffered hand, "And what takes you to the New World, Mr Stead?" This was apparently the very question he wanted to hear. "I'm attending a peace conference at Carnegie Hall on the 21st," he said, puffing himself up until his beard threatened to become a menace to shipping, "at the invitation of President Taft himself. I shall also be adding my modest efforts to the New York campaign of the Men and Religion Forward Movement." Nothing to do with a certain sarcophagus, of course. I had no doubt at all that he'd be pestering the new owners to hold hands and concentrate before they'd even unpacked it. I made a few vague comments about a mixed business-and-pleasure trip, and the possibility of acquiring a few dinosaurs for my private collection. Stead didn't seem to pick up on the allusion. Maybe his presence here was a coincidence. I'd still have to keep a close eye on him, though. This ship seemed to have been designed to include every imaginable luxury. It even had Turkish baths and a squash court. Somewhere, I imagined, there would also be a room set aside for shipboard séances. I excused myself politely and wandered off. The tugboats were guiding us out into the River Test towards Southampton Water. The vessel was rumbling gently as her engines turned over, and smoke was beginning to belch from the first three of her four smokestacks. The crowd on the dockside gradually receded, although the wharves downstream and the vessels moored alongside them were also lined with people determined to wave the massive liner on her way. I turned my attention to my fellow passengers, alert for rivals once again. There were a few non-European faces visible, mainly in Steerage, but I recognised none of them and in any case nearly all of them appeared to be in family groups. Not, of course, that I expected Abd Reis to be up on deck waving a little lace handkerchief. In his position, I'd keep well out of sight, and send out lackeys to do my bidding. Well, actually I wouldn't, but in his position, that was what he would do. Probably. And if he had any sense, he'd make sure that his lackeys were Europeans, too, so that they would blend in a little better than ghûls and reanimated cadavers. I wondered if Crowley existed in this Shadow, and whether he was a respected alpinist or a dissolute magus who didn't know his own power. I started concentrating again, trying to seek out other signs of magick, but felt nothing. Just the mummy case up near the bow. All right, maybe I was making myself paranoid unduly. Maybe Stead's unexpected presence had just set me on edge. But, I realised, something else had been nagging at me ever since I'd reached Southampton, some colloquialism that Esmée had picked up on Flora's Shadow Earth. Something that suggested that maybe I ought to be at least mildly concerned about this voyage, with or without the mummy case on board. I meandered along the crowded deck, brooding. What had I overlooked? "Have you noticed that there are people sitting on the promenade right outside our window?" I overheard one elegantly attired woman say sniffily to her companion, "We shall have to ask the stewards to rearrange the deck chairs." Ah, I thought. That Titanic.

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