CHAPTER XII
Morning in Marazion
There was a scratching at Alice’s door. That would not be Mrs. Polgarth—housekeepers did not scratch at one’s door. Although Mrs. Polgarth was not quite a housekeeper. For one thing, this was not quite a house. Alice had been startled to see it when they arrived, two days ago.
After the fire and fury at the British Museum, they had slipped out the back and returned to the house in Soho, with Mr. Holmes stumbling ahead of them. Helen had led Alice firmly by the hand, saying, “Come on, Lydia. Don’t dawdle. We have a train to catch.” Queen Tera had walked along behind them, beside Margaret, with Margaret’s coat on. After all, one could not have a newly resurrected Egyptian Queen walking through Bloomsbury naked! Queen Tera was talking to Margaret in a strange language. “Is that Egyptian?” asked Alice.
Helen had answered, “It’s Greek. Tera was a queen in Alexandria, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. She speaks Greek as well as Egyptian.”
Alice had felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to say, Well, it’s all Greek to me! But of course this was no joke. Seven men dead—if she closed her eyes, she could still see the flames curling around them, as though in an embrace. She could not forget the startled and then agonized looks on their faces, or the horror of flesh burning in an impossible fire. Then Justine had been wounded. Could she have helped Justine in some way? She had tried to help Mr. Holmes, but to no avail. He was still too sick to help himself, or anyone else. And she had once again lost Mary. She had tried, as her mother pulled her out of the room, to look back and see whether Mary and Diana were all right, but the room had been filled with energic waves. She had never seen them like that, shimmering and sparking so they were visible to anyone, mesmerist or not. So this was Tera’s power! She knew that she should be terrified, but she was just so tired. She had not slept all night.
As they had walked along the deserted streets, dawn was breaking over the tenements of London. When they arrived back at the house in Soho, Margaret had told her, “Lydia, dear, I need you to get packed. We are going to my house in Cornwall. I would ask Gitla to help you, but I can’t find the Mandelbaums anywhere. I guess when the cat’s away, the mice will play! I always thought of them as such reliable servants, but I suppose they saw our absence as an excuse to take a day off. At any rate, make sure you pack warmly. We will be by the ocean, and it can be cold at night.” Alice had chosen three of the plainest dresses she could find in the wardrobe—no more of those silly fripperies for her!—as well as a warm shawl. Had Margaret noticed when she had tried to help Mr. Holmes? Had her mother noticed? Neither of them were treating her any differently. She was glad they still seemed to trust her. If she was to help Mr. Holmes and save the Queen, she must make them believe she was on their side.
An hour and a half later, they had been at Paddington Station, boarding a train to Penzance. Once they were seated in their first-class compartment, Queen Tera had looked at Mr. Holmes and said, “You are the detective, are you not?” When he nodded, looking particularly pale, she had continued, “You were sent by your Queen’s government to stop Moriarty. But you will not stop us. If you attempt to escape, I will electrocute you, as I did that man in the temple. Do you understand?” He had simply nodded again, then leaned his head back on the headboard, looking as though he were going to throw up. Alice wished she could have helped him in some way—at least wiped the sweat off his face. It was evident that he was very sick indeed.
From Penzance, they had taken a hired carriage to Kyllion Keep. The carriage had driven along a winding country road for a long time—too long for Alice, who had felt nauseous from the motion. The road had climbed steeply through a little town that Helen told her was Marazion. Then, they had drawn up to the ruins of a medieval fortress. Nothing of it now stood except a few stone walls, and one square tower that had formed its central fortification. That was the keep, about the size of a London house, built all of stone and looking almost impregnable. Around it was a moat with a little water at the bottom and a tangle of weeds growing out of it, chiefly stinging nettles, as Alice learned when she had accidentally brushed up against one.
Inside, the keep was equally forbidding. It lacked modern conveniences—there was no running water, only a well from which one could pump water in a small room off the kitchen, and the water closet was of the most primitive sort. The rooms that had been inhabited by Professor Trelawny himself were well furnished. His study, in particular, was fascinating, with Egyptian artifacts scattered on every surface. There were jars, both intact and in shards, as well as small statues, weapons of various sorts, a collection of papyrus scrolls… So many items that it would have taken Alice hours to look through them. But the other chambers were large, bare, and gloomy.
“Every penny my father could spare, he spent on his Egyptian excavations,” Margaret had explained on that first afternoon. Her voice as she said it was expressionless, but Alice wondered if that had made her angry. After all, those expeditions must have cost a great deal of money. Perhaps Margaret would have preferred some furniture for the other rooms, or paintings for the walls, or clothing for herself? Now, of course, she could do whatever she liked with his money and the keep itself. Evidently, she had chosen to spend it on resurrecting Queen Tera and conquering the world, starting with England.
This was the morning of the second day since they had arrived, and someone—or something—was scratching at the door. “I’m coming, Bast,” said Alice. It must be Bast. Who else would be scratching so persistently, and so close to the floor? She went to the door and opened it. Yes, there was Queen Tera’s cat, who slipped right in and wove herself around Alice’s ankle.
The first thing Queen Tera had done once they were settled into the keep was go through the artifacts Professor Trelawny had brought back from Egypt. Among them were a number of items from her tomb, including the mummy cat Alice had seen in the vision Helen had conjured up over breakfast in the headquarters of the Order of the Golden Dawn, now defunct because its leaders were piles of ash.
“Bast!” she had exclaimed when she saw it. “My Bastet. If only… But perhaps your spirit hovers around you, as my spirit hovered around me in my long sleep. Margaret, is any of the oil left from the ceremony?”
“A little.” Margaret had looked at Queen Tera dubiously. “But I thought you might want to keep it for emergencies. You told me it’s difficult to make.”
“Indeed.” Queen Tera had placed the mummy cat on the stone floor of the study. “It is pressed from the seeds of seven different plants, only one of which grows in your country. Eventually, we shall have more made, but what remains in that jar, we shall use now. I have lost everything—Egypt, my temple, my priestesses. But I can at least have my cat! To bring Bastet back to life, we need a sacrifice. What do you have that is expendable?”
“I’ll find something,” said Helen, turning and leaving the room. Alice had wondered where she was going.
Queen Tera had poured the last of the oil from a ceramic jar shaped like a cow’s head into a brass bowl that Margaret had taken from one of the many glass-fronted cabinets. Then, kneeling by it, she had raised the energic waves—they sparkled and flashed, as they had at the British Museum the day before, around the corpse of the mummy cat.