The luxor curse, p.1
The Luxor Curse, page 1
part #1 of Kathryn Black Series
The Egyptian Adventures of
Kathryn Black
~
THE LUXOR CURSE
Graham Warren
Copyright © 2011 Graham Warren
This edition published 2017
The author asserts the moral right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.KathrynBlack.co.uk
Dedication
To Renée, for being so special
Contents
Chapter 1 - Cleopatra’s Return
Chapter 2 - Meeting Cairo
Chapter 3 - Packing the Bags
Chapter 4 - Aggie’s Amnesia
Chapter 5 - Looking for a Man
Chapter 6 - It Was a Long Flight
Chapter 7 - Arrival in Thebes
Chapter 8 - All Together in Thebes
Chapter 9 - At Last the Valley of the Kings
Chapter 10 - Perhaps I Shouldn’t Have Spoken
Chapter 11 - The Unknown Tomb
Chapter 12 - The Clues Keep Coming
Chapter 13 - Hatshepsut, a Temple to Die For
Chapter 14 - The Tomb of Montuemhat
Chapter 15 - Blood is Shed
Chapter 16 - Revelations at Africa
Chapter 17 - Aggie Anger
Chapter 18 - Enforced Time with the Oldies
Chapter 19 - Thoth, a Notebook and an Attack
Chapter 20 - Revisiting the Tomb of Montuemhat
Chapter 21 - Tombed, I Tell You, We Are All Tombed
Chapter 22 - More Questions Than Answers
Chapter 23 - Traitors and Televisions
Chapter 24 - The End is Only the Beginning
Also from this Author
Chapter 1
-
Cleopatra’s Return
“Cleopatra lay low under the white sail of the felucca, feeling extremely pleased, as well as most satisfied, having given her private guard the slip. A guard, who at this very moment, would be tearing the town apart in a desperate search for her.” Lacking even the lightest of light breezes, the traditional Egyptian boat drifted gently, almost imperceptibly, with the lazy flow of the River Nile, under a clear blue sky, with a sun so strong that it pierced through the overhead canvas cover.
The Cleopatra here was thirteen-year-old Kathryn Black, Kate to her friends, and the ‘private guard’ she had escaped, was her guardian and grandmother on her mother’s side, Agnes Westbrook, referred to affectionately as Aggie, or less affectionately as … well … as the first thing that came into Kate’s mind. Usually rude, but always, Kate thought, appropriate.
The felucca drifted so slowly northwards that it gave every impression of being stationary, as it aligned itself with the ancient ruin that was Luxor Temple. The temple’s extremely impressive, massive grey columns of stone reached far into the sky, as though they were the fingers of giants. Each one embellished with hieroglyphs carved into every available surface. Many thousands of years ago these would have been filled with vibrant colours, however, any sign of colour that the ancient Egyptians had so lovingly applied, had long since been lost. Looking up from the Nile, Kate thought the temple to be far more impressive than from street level, even if at this distance she could only make out the very deepest cut hieroglyphs. Impressive as it was, it still required more than a little imagination to picture it as a fully functioning temple, a temple that was used by Tutankhamun, Ramses, Hatshepsut and countless other great pharaohs.
Kate lay back, closed her eyes and resumed her thoughts of Cleopatra: thoughts provoked by having had to sit through over three hours of Elizabeth Taylor in the classic film with Aggie, which had been part of Kate’s plan to make her more receptive to booking a holiday in Egypt.
“Okay, where was I? Oh yes, Cleopatra has escaped her guards. Now that’s a thought, I wonder if Cleopatra ever walked through Luxor Temple?” As thoughts rolled over each other in her now over active mind, she turned her head towards the temple, opening her eyes only slightly. The image she saw was one of a temple no longer grey, she looked upon a temple in its full glory. “This can’t be right,” she thought as her eyes widened, only to involuntarily close. Now blinking crazily, it took several more seconds before they adjusted to the glare. Yes, there it was in its full glory! In her excitement she sat up and stared, and yes, she really could see Luxor Temple in its full ancient glory.
This was not a trick of the light, as there were no longer inner columns visible to Kate. There were now complete outer walls, flags and even guards on the roof, in what she considered to be ancient Egyptian army uniforms, though it was the colours, and what colours, that were absolutely amazing. Vibrantly painted battle scenes and hieroglyphs adorned the outer walls, with the entire Nile side wall dominated by a single pharaoh in his chariot. Depicted many times larger than anything else, he was charging into battle with his arm raised, holding an implement of war far too large, also far too heavy, for any lesser man to wield. A single white horse kept the pharaoh’s chariot ahead of his entire army, who were painted miniscule by comparison, though somewhere approaching life size, on the lower sections of the wall.
The invading army entered from the right. These were carved even smaller, though in far greater numbers. Where the two armies met, it was an all too graphic massacre of the invaders. In every spare space there were hieroglyphs which were just as colourful, and must, Kate thought, tell the story of the battle as seen from the vanquishing pharaoh’s point of view. “It looks so real … it is real … but this cannot be real,” spun through Kate’s mind.
Before she had time to really take in the fine detail of all she was seeing, all she was being shown, the wash of a large cruise boat bounced her onto the floor of the felucca. It left behind a diesel fog of acrid black smoke. This coiled around Kate as an Egyptian cobra would before swallowing its prey. Instantly, she was brought back to a reality from which she had all too fleetingly escaped. What’s more, she now heard the screeching voice of Aggie, as she saw a small, almost jet like, police launch speeding towards her. Yes, there was Aggie, standing on the prow, arm raised, shouting, “There she is, there she is, don’t let her get away.”
“Get away to where?” thought Kate. “We are virtually stationary and feluccas don’t have motors!”
Aggie’s screaming and gesticulating had obviously raised unnecessary concerns within the Egyptian police lieutenant, who was now screaming orders in Arabic to the policeman in charge of the oversized, and extremely powerful, outboard motor.
Responding immediately to his superior’s orders, he pushed the control arm away from him, whilst at the same time twisting the handgrip just as far as it would go. The little craft now headed directly towards Kate at full throttle.
What actually possessed that same policeman to slam the outboard into reverse, quite so violently, as they neared her, Kate failed to comprehend. This action was the cause of Aggie’s airborne arrival on the felucca, which by any standard would, most certainly, not have scored any points for style.
“Cause and effect,” kept going through Kate’s mind. Those had been the favourite words of her physics teacher, words he had repeated several times during every class. “We must always remember cause and effect,” he would say, though until this very moment Kate had failed to appreciate their significance. Now, right in front of her, it was as though his words were lit in extremely large and extremely bright neon lights. The cause was the speeding police boat being so suddenly rammed into reverse, the effect was Aggie flying through the air as if she had been shot out of a ship’s canon.
In the time it took for everyone to have a look of horror on their faces, she safely landed on the canvas above Kate’s head. Any thought of safety, however, was soon dashed. Aggie was shouting, “I’m okay, I’m okay,” as a ripping sound travelled from stem to stern as fast as a bolt of lightning. Gravity dragged her through the torn canvas, her premature words of reassurance silenced upon landing heavily by Kate’s feet. She was out for the count, actually, she was out for several counts.
Kate’s concern for Aggie ran as shallow as ever, with her thoughts immediately turning towards hatching a plan. She had to get herself out of trouble, trouble she would face when Aggie finally came to, but oh, what an inconvenience. “I’m going to be grounded for this,” thought Kate. “I need more time, not less. We fly home in less than two weeks. How am I going to get everything sorted out if I’m grounded? It couldn’t be worse … think … think, there has to be a way out of this without being grounded.”
Kate was still thinking, as the police boat nudged the felucca to the banks of the Nile, where the tall, though extremely well-built Aggie, was unceremoniously manhandled from the boat. She was carried up some very well-worn steps, then along the Luxor Corniche the short distance from Luxor Temple to the Winter Palace Hotel, where she and Kate had a rather grand suite on the first floor. A suite which was grander than any of Aggie’s entrances, and oh, she did like to make the grand entrance.
When she entered a room in her look-at-me-mode, the family would say, ‘Here comes Isadora Duncan,’ and though Kate had absolutely no idea who Isadora Duncan was
An Egyptian doctor was summoned, who, after two cups of typical Egyptian tea – lots of sugar and no milk – did eventually make the quickest of quick inspections of Aggie. After injecting a vivid green liquid into her arm, he left her room, walked along the corridor to the first-floor landing, from where he pronounced, in good though broken English, that, “Mrs Westbrook will make a full recovery, thanks in no lesser part to my expert treatment.” A proclamation that was met with a round of applause by those who had assembled in reception. In his mind, the combination of the injection and the applause justified his extremely large bill. He felt no guilt, as any tourist who could afford to stay in a suite at the extremely expensive Winter Palace Hotel, could afford to pay, and anyway, he thought, “It’s about time I took the family for an all-expenses paid holiday, on the Red Sea coast.”
The sudden quiet, after all the hubbub, caused Kate to realise that she was now very much on her own. In many ways she had felt very alone whilst there was all the fuss around Aggie, as no one had acknowledged her, or even appeared to notice that she was there. This, in Kate’s view, was probably better than the alternative, otherwise she may well have received a dressing down by some overbearing and out of touch authority figure.
Looking around their suite, before walking along the corridor to the first-floor landing, Kate could see no one, not even Mohammed on reception. Retracing her steps back, she quickly checked on the unconscious Aggie, before flopping down on an old sofa.
This was Kate’s first visit to Egypt. She and Aggie had arrived at Luxor International Airport early on Monday morning. Now, not yet the middle of Tuesday afternoon, Aggie was already out of action, whilst Kate was living with the distinct prospect of being grounded. This was not the start to the holiday that she needed.
Now with time to think it over, Kate realised that she was actually rather relieved to be on her own, though still failed to understand why everyone had left quite so quickly. Had she known more about Egypt, she would have understood just how vital tourism was to the country. Egyptians knew only too well, that causing real problems for a tourist would more than likely lose them their job, or at the very least, cause them to spend a night in a police cell. Here we had an unconscious wealthy tourist, and it was the police themselves who had caused the infirmity. No wonder Kate was alone, very alone, though she could remember all too clearly the faces of all those involved. She thought that this was good insurance to have, when she was going to do what she was going to do, but that would be later, much later … perhaps tomorrow!
The Winter Palace was just that, a winter palace in the distant time of King Farouk. It had long since been converted into Luxor’s most famous hotel. Though well past its prime, its faded grandeur oozed history, at a price. Everything in Kate’s room was tired, though it offered the comfort of a favourite pair of old slippers that one was loath to throw away. High ceilinged, cool, comfortable, and large by any standard, but also bereft of anything to eat.
This would not normally have posed a problem for Kate, except that Aggie had made such a commotion at reception, just the day before, as they had arrived, that even the manager had ventured out to see what all the fuss was about. Everyone had heard her clearly state, in an increasingly haughty voice that “under no circumstances will I pay any bill I have not personally signed for, and this girl,” she had said, a she had pointed to a glowing red Kate, “is never to leave the hotel without my permission.”
Obviously, this had thrown down the gauntlet. Kate found that getting out of the hotel without permission, posed no problem for her at all. In fact, it had proved far too easy. Her problem right now was that there was no way an unconscious Aggie could sign for room service. Having already spent most of her daily allowance on bribing the doorman – the easy way of getting out of the hotel – the remainder had gone on the felucca. She made a mental note that next time she would pay for a felucca after she had got back, rather than before she left, because there was no way the felucca man could have charged her after what had happened today, not in front of the police. She would then have had enough money to be able to get something to eat. Kate considered this to be possibly a little unreasonable, but hunger, along with so many other things, failed to keep her reasonable.
Emergency action was required; it was time to ferret through Aggie’s suitcase. Aggie actually called it a handbag, but anybody else would have described it as a suitcase, as there was more than enough room to hold everything needed for a two-week vacation. After an extensive search of the bag, Kate failed to find anything useful, or rather, anything useful to her: no food, and worst of all, no money. Everything of value had to be in Aggie’s safety deposit box, so where would she have put the key?
Kate was busily turning the room upside-down in a somewhat desperate search for the elusive key, when a shrill bleep emanated from the phone by her bed. Being in a world of her own, the ear-piercing bleep caused Kate to jump. She was relieved that the ceilings were as high they were, because if they had not been, she was convinced that she had just jumped high enough to have hit her head and joined Aggie in the world of the unconscious.
Answering the phone in her usual bedroom manner, she blasted, “I’m doing my homework, so make it quick.” This always worked at home, as important people never phoned, they sent an instant message. It was only old boring people who phoned, and though the person on the end of the phone was certainly old, his words were anything except boring.
An offer of a free meal for two, along with drinks on the house, as the hotel’s apology for the trauma of the day, was music to Kate’s ears. Readjusting her frame of mind, Kate replied, “That’s very kind of you,” then added, “I’ll come down now, just in case you change your mind.” She did not mean to add the last part, but the words were out without a second’s thought.
“Oh, they will think I’m rude,” thought Kate. Though she never minded being intentionally rude – she felt it gave her the upper hand and therefore control of the conversation – she hated it when she was unintentionally rude, because this meant that she was not in control. The one thing Kate needed, now more than ever, after all that had happened to her recently, was to be in control.
Kate checked on Aggie again, though there was really no need. The sounds emanating from her room were confirmation enough that she was still alive. Aggie had gone from a quiet unconsciousness to a sleep which, though laying her just as unconscious, was far more typical of her. Snores so deep, as well as protracted, that had there still been hippopotamus in the Nile, bull hippos would have been invading the hotel in their frantic search for such a receptive mate.
At home this level of unconsciousness was usually brought about after several large glasses of Cointreau. Aggie had said on many occasions, that she did not drink Cointreau, she quaffed it, thinking this gave her an air of moving within royal circles. All it actually confirmed was that she drank to excess, and also had a very pretentious side to her character. Anyway, Kate was quite used to seeing Aggie in this state of sleep.
In the certain knowledge that Aggie would be okay, possibly even for a late breakfast tomorrow, food, for Kate, was now vitally important. Having only eaten a light breakfast, and with it now being just after five in the afternoon, her stomach was in danger of making noises which would rival Aggie’s snoring. It was time to take the hotel up on their offer. “Restaurant, here I come!”.
Chapter 2
-
Meeting Cairo
Kate asked herself if she should take the lift or the stairs, down to the restaurant. She opted for the stairs, as this way, she considered, she would be more in control. Leaving their room, she went along the corridor with almost a skip in her step.
