The Stolen Queen

Chapter Two

Charlotte

Egypt, 1936

When Charlotte Cross signed up to study abroad in Egypt for four months, she did not expect her responsibilities to include administering antivenom to counteract cobra bites. As the only undergraduate among an international team of professional archaeologists and PhD candidates, she was there to observe, assist, and pretty much stay out of the way as the others excavated the ruins of a small walled village where ancient Egyptian artisans and craftsmen had once resided.

So far, the majority of the artifacts unearthed from the villagers’ brick homes were flakes of limestone covered with writing, called ostraca—the equivalent of ancient Egyptian notebooks. The team, under the leadership of a curator from the Met Museum named Grayson Zimmerman, had amassed bills, wills, wedding announcements, medical diagnoses, and prescriptions, dated as far back as 1500 BC, which all together told a detailed story of the average ancient Egyptian’s life. One of Charlotte’s duties was translating some of the items into English, a painstaking process that left her right hand sore but which she performed with great zeal. Just that morning, she’d spent two hours transcribing a contract between a scribe named Ankhsheshonq and a master craftsman that involved detailed instructions for altering existing reliefs, as commanded by the reigning pharaoh, before turning to a transcription of a shopping list written by some long-lost servant girl.

That afternoon, though, a group of strangers approached the camp, led by a grim-looking Bedouin with a bloody bite between his finger and thumb. One of his fellow tribesmen carried a limp six-foot-long serpent. The dig team’s leaders were off in Luxor, overseeing the transfer of artifacts onto a barge on the Nile, which meant there was no one else present who knew what to do, other than Charlotte.

Not that Charlotte was all that qualified. She’d grown up in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where snakes were only read about in books or viewed postmortem in dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. But her father was a doctor and her mother suffered from diabetes, requiring regular injections, which made Charlotte less queasy about grabbing the medical kit from the dispensary, located next to the kitchen tent where she’d been helping the cook prepare lunch (another one of her assigned duties that had nothing to do with digging, but which she gladly performed). Box in hand, she found the Bedouin sitting stiffly in one of the camp’s foldable chairs. His hand was already the size of a grapefruit and the color of a plum; Charlotte didn’t have much time.

Charlotte knelt beside the Bedouin and opened the emergency kit, withdrawing the prefilled syringe with care.

“I don’t see why we should waste our supplies on the natives,” murmured a voice a few feet behind her. She recognized it as that of Leon, an archaeology doctoral candidate from England who was never satisfied with his lot, always wanting to have the first go at a promising location and quick to move on if his desultory efforts weren’t rewarded.

She ignored him. By now, a large cohort of the team had gathered. One of the other archaeologists, Henry, who’d only recently joined them from England, knelt beside her. “What’s going on, can I help?” he asked brightly. But his demeanor changed when he caught sight of what was in Charlotte’s hands. He blinked a couple of times, then stared intently into her eyes. For a split second, she thought he was flirting with her. Even though she was the only woman in the group, the work was dirty and backbreaking, and at the end of the day, everyone simply wanted a bath in one of the two galvanized iron tubs, followed by bed. There was no time or energy left for such silliness as flirtation, a fact she appreciated.

But Henry wasn’t flirting. He was staring hard at her face because he couldn’t bear to look back at what she held in her hand. She stifled a smile. The poor man obviously had a deathly fear of needles.

“That’s fine, I can handle it,” said Charlotte. Henry, looking relieved, ducked away, and Charlotte turned her attention back to the Bedouin. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

One of the Egyptians on their team translated, and the Bedouin did as he was told.

She cleaned off a spot near the top of his arm and quickly administered the shot. The man didn’t flinch. After, she brought him water and waited to see if the swelling went down, as the others headed to the long table where their group of twenty gathered every afternoon for lunch.

She brought a glass of water to Henry as well.

“Oh, thanks.” He gulped it down. “I needed that.”

“Maybe more than he did,” said Charlotte, pointing her elbow in the direction of the Bedouin.

“Was it that obvious?” Henry wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Just a little.”

“I swear, nothing else gets to me. I can stand heights, small spaces, spiders. But needles—” He shuddered.

“I’d recommend you stay far away from cobras, in that case.”

“Let’s hope I do well here, then, so I don’t end up working at the Regent’s Park Zoo.” Henry had large ears that stuck out either side of his head and brown hair that had been flattened by the wide-brimmed pith helmets they both wore. His was hanging off his neck, and his Adam’s apple bobbed just above the strap.

Charlotte laughed. “I guess that means you’re from London?”

“Correct, and you?”

“New York City.”

“You’ve come from quite far for the glory of being a notetaker and de facto medic. King Tut, I presume?”

Even though Henry was a little older, probably in his early twenties to Charlotte’s eighteen, their generation was united in their love for all things Egyptian thanks to the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb by the Englishman Howard Carter. The poor man had been digging for years in the Valley of the Kings, the royal burial ground for pharaohs, without finding much of note, and was close to having his funds cut off by his wealthy patron. Since most of the tombs had been plundered and stripped of their riches in ancient times, the chances of finding a tomb intact were slim to none, but Carter held out hope. At the eleventh hour, he came upon a step that eventually led to the burial chambers of a pharaoh named Tutankhamun, who’d reigned for around ten years and been entombed with a wondrous treasure trove of artifacts. His burial chambers were stacked to the ceiling with gleaming antiquities, including thrones, jewels, three golden coffins, and even a royal chariot. Charlotte had been four years old when the discovery captivated the world, and she decided then and there that finding buried treasure would be her life goal. In her teens, she spent copious amounts of time at the Metropolitan Museum and the New-York Historical Society, reading everything she could on ancient Egypt, including Amelia Edwards’s marvelous account of her 1874 travels, A Thousand Miles up the Nile . By the time Charlotte enrolled in New York University at seventeen, she was already fairly proficient in translating hieroglyphics, which gave her an edge when she applied to be part of an excavation team funded by the Met for her study-abroad program.

“You’re right, it was Carter’s discovery that pulled me in,” she admitted. “Although, being here now, I understand what a small part of history King Tut actually takes up. That there are thousands of other stories that are just as interesting, if not more so.”

“That’s certainly true.”

The Bedouin was beckoning Charlotte, so she excused herself to attend to him. He was already able to gently flex his thumb—a promising sign—and addressed her in a low, solemn voice. One of the Egyptian workers translated. “Mehedi says that you will always be sacred to his tribe, and you will always be safe.”

A lovely sentiment, thought Charlotte. She thanked Mehedi in Arabic and they nodded to each other, and then Charlotte invited him and his tribesmen to join them for tea before they headed back out into the desert. They politely declined, and eventually the robed men disappeared over the sandy ridge to the west.

Charlotte returned to the lunch table and began collecting the team’s dirty plates and glasses.

“You seem to have made an admirer out of our visitor,” said Leon as Charlotte reached past him to grab an errant spoon. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back to make you his concubine.” He twisted the gold ring he always wore on his pinky, embedded with an ostentatious yellow jasper stone.

“That’s enough, Leon,” said Henry sharply.

By the end of the working day, the team leaders had returned from the shores of the Nile, along with provisions carried on the backs of donkeys. Mr. Zimmerman was sorry to have missed the Bedouin and complimented Charlotte for a job well done. “I think you’ve earned a chance to do some real work, don’t you?” He regarded her with his pale blue eyes.

He was one of the best Egyptologists in the world, and Charlotte was lucky to land under his tutelage, even if it mostly consisted of observing. Until now.

“I’d welcome the opportunity,” she said.

Later that evening, she climbed the steep ramp to their living quarters, located in an empty tomb that branched off into a series of smaller chambers and offered neither running water nor electricity. At night before bed, she refilled the cups of water that sat under each leg of her cot to prevent scorpions from climbing up, a detail that she made sure to omit in her letters home. She had a small desk and chair, as well as a basin where she could wash her face and hands. The caverns were cool and quiet, and she’d never slept better.

As the sun set, she liked to sit outside and watch the sand drift across the desert’s edge and listen to the howl of hyenas. To the east, the Nile River lazed its way north to Cairo and then Alexandria before draining into the Mediterranean Sea. The majority of Egyptians lived along its shores, an area that took up a mere four percent of the entire country. But every spring, the Nile would flood, spreading silt far across the fields, a rich nourishment for the next planting. The ancient village they were currently excavating, as well as the Valley of the Kings, was located only a few miles away from the fertile plains of Luxor, but it might as well have been on the moon. Beyond the flood zones, the landscape changed dramatically into a barren desert, not a palm tree in sight. It was like working in an oven on days when the temperature climbed.

In high school, Charlotte had learned that the deserts to the west and south and the seas to the north and east of Egypt offered the country protection from the threat of invaders. That, together with the rich abundance of food from the fertile Nile valley, meant that most of the ancient Egyptians lived well, with time to study the sky and create an accurate solar calendar, build follies like the pyramids of Giza, form a written language, and make great strides in civil engineering and medicine, all long before Christ was even born.

And now here she was, in a place she’d only dreamed about. The orange sun set in a hazy sky full of dust particles as Henry joined her, bringing along his own wooden chair.

“How was your day?” he said as he planted himself next to her. “Translate anything of interest?”

“A shopping list that was eerily like ours of today. Oh, and a contract between a master craftsman and Ankhsheshonq about altering some images.”

“Ankhsheshonq?” repeated Henry. “He was a scribe to Saukemet II, I believe.”

“You would be correct.”

“Sounds like a camel’s sneeze.” He covered his nose with his hand. “ Ankhsheshonq! ”

“Gesundheit.”

He laughed. “Here’s a question for you: Why are we called ‘Egyptologists,’ yet no other country has a name as a job? ‘Greece-ologist’? ‘Italiologist’? You can’t think of one, can you?”

“Now that you say it, I can’t. Although ‘Italiologist’ is fun to say.”

He sat back, looking quite pleased with himself; she liked the way his eyes twinkled in the dimming light.

“It’s probably because the ancient Egypt civilization lasted for three thousand years,” she said. “Compared with Rome, which eked out one thousand, and Greece with fifteen hundred, I would say the Egyptians deserve their own ‘ology.’?”

“Good point. And how has your experience as a budding Egyptologist been so far? Between treating snakebites and cleaning dishes, I imagine it has been a bit of seesaw between moments of high adventure and hours of painful monotony.”

“I don’t mind the dish-washing. I’ve learned so much from listening to the conversations between the rest of the team. It’s enough to write an entire book.”

“Is that what you’d like to do?”

“Maybe.” She could only imagine the face her mother would make when presented with the idea. Her parents had reluctantly allowed her to go on this trip after meeting with Grayson Zimmerman in person, when he assured them she’d be safe under his wing. They expected her to be back home by Christmas, and, after graduating, to become a history teacher. This trip was a lark, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, in their minds. She was only a girl, after all.

Sometimes, as Charlotte translated the ostraca, she wished she’d been born in ancient Egypt, when women and men had many of the same rights under the law. If a woman divorced or her husband died, she retained a third of the property. Divorce and remarriage weren’t frowned upon, nor were children born out of wedlock, nor sexual relations between unmarried people. In fact, life in old Luxor sounded a lot more fun to Charlotte than life in the modern world, where women had limited rights and the idea of a dalliance was considered shocking and immoral.

“I understand Grayson is offering you a chance to get your hands dirty,” said Henry, cutting into her thoughts.

“He is. Do you think he’ll make good on his promise?”

“He’s a good man. I would bet on it. Just don’t get your hopes up. Not everyone can be a Howard Carter.”

The last of the sun faded into the horizon. Called Ra, the sun was the ultimate god to the ancient Egyptians, the king of the other deities and the father of all creation.

“Maybe so,” she answered. “But not everyone can be a Charlotte Cross, either.”

Four weeks later, Charlotte was still waiting for her chance to excavate. However, after finishing up their work at the village, the team was given permission to relocate three miles away at the final resting place of the pharaohs of Egypt, including Tutankhamun: the Valley of the Kings. But Mr. Zimmerman had put off Charlotte’s entreaty, saying that logging everyone’s findings was a more valuable activity for her than taking over a man’s spot. It didn’t help that this was the final dig site for everyone involved—not only Charlotte—as funding issues connected with the Great Depression meant that the Met Museum would be withdrawing its presence from Egypt.

With only a couple months left on the site, the members of the dig team were feeling peevish at the thought of having to return home. The one bright spot was that they were no longer living in caves, but had taken up residence at the swanky Metropolitan House, the home base for the museum’s expeditions in the Valley of the Kings. The long, pale building, tucked into the hillside, boasted several domes and a spacious veranda behind thick arches. Its decor was spare but comfortable, with a library, a dining room with a long oak table, and dozens of bedrooms. The air inside was cool and the furniture modern.

One evening at the Metropolitan House, after a hearty dinner and multiple rounds of drinks, Charlotte and Henry slipped away at the same time.

“Can I ask you a favor, Charlotte?” asked Henry, one hand on the doorknob to his room.

“Of course.”

“I need a haircut, badly. Any chance you can lop off the long bits?”

“I have absolutely no experience as a barber. You might regret it.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

In his room, Henry pulled the chair from the small desk and placed a towel around his shoulders as Charlotte stood awkwardly in the entranceway, hands clutched together as if she were in church, unused to being alone in a man’s bedroom. Once Henry was seated, he handed her a pair of scissors. Gingerly, she pulled out a curl at the back of his neck and clipped off a couple of inches, the only sound their breaths and the metallic slice of the blades.

As she worked, the silence stretched on. Henry had gone very still and the air felt strangely electric.

“Are you worried I’ll take off your ear?” she said, attempting to alleviate whatever weirdness had descended upon them. “I promise to avoid any bloodshed.”

He laughed. “No. It’s not that. It just reminds me of my mum. When I was a very small child, she’d cut my hair. I’d completely forgotten that until just now. She was lovely. Died when I was seven. From then on, I was at the mercy of the school barber.”

“I’m sorry about your mother,” said Charlotte.

“Thank you. She always said it was easy to cut my hair because we had the exact same curls.”

“My mother and I share the same silver streak.” She pointed to her right temple, where a stripe of gray had appeared a year ago, just as it had when her mother was eighteen, and her grandmother before that. Charlotte’s mother covered hers with hair dye, but Charlotte refused. “I overheard one of the boys at college say it reminded him of a skunk.” She hadn’t told anyone that before.

“He should be shot. It lends you an air of gravitas and fierceness, which is required for anyone crazy enough to dig in this infernal Egyptian sandbox.”

She turned pink from the compliment and quickly changed the subject. “I overheard Leon saying you attended the same boarding school. Sounded quite fancy.”

“It was, but I certainly wasn’t. My father was the school’s maintenance man, and I attended on a scholarship. The rest of the students were the sons of the aristocracy, like Leon.”

That explained a lot. Out in the field, Henry stood out from the other archaeologists, winning the local Egyptian workers’ respect by addressing them without condescension, or charming the upper-crust wife of some duke who’d insisted on viewing a dig as part of their around-the-world itinerary. He was a chameleon in many ways, and she found him intriguing, drawn in by his authentic charm as well as his unerring knowledge when it came to the field of ancient Egyptology. Not to mention the fact that he was near fluent in Arabic.

When she was finished with his haircut, Henry examined the results in the mirror. Charlotte had gotten carried away trying to make both sides even, which meant his large ears stuck out even more than they had before.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” she said, barely holding back her laughter. “I warned you.”

“I’m sure it will improve my hearing greatly, not having those pesky curls in the way.”

“Oh, you hate it, don’t you? I’m sure you’re sorry you ever asked.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but perhaps some form of punishment is in order.” He gazed at her in the mirror, a look that made her stomach flip.

“Now you have me worried.”

“As you should be. How about this? On our next day off, you are required to accompany me to the ruin of my choosing.”

She quickly agreed.

But to Charlotte’s dismay, Leon invited himself along to their field trip to the Temple of Karnak. Although he and Henry were childhood friends, they couldn’t be more different. Where Henry was easygoing, Leon found fault wherever he could, complaining that the food was overcooked, his bed too soft, or the servants lazy. It would be a long day in his company.

Karnak spanned two hundred acres, more than they could possibly explore in one visit. Its vast complex consisted of temples, chapels, pylons, a sacred lake. Outside the entrance, they stopped in front of a single eighty-foot-tall obelisk.

“Its twin was given to France in the early 1800s and now looms over the Place de la Concorde,” said Henry.

Charlotte tilted her head back. “It’s a shame they handed it over. It belongs here. This other one looks slightly lost without it, don’t you think?”

“The French have been very helpful in finding lost tombs and antiquities, shouldn’t they get some of the spoils?” Leon countered. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“The point is to preserve what’s here and learn about the ancient history.”

“Someone has to pay for it, and who would do that without getting something in return?” He cast Charlotte a sidelong glance. “Maybe some New York rich kid?”

Charlotte resented the implication that she was wealthy just because she came from New York. “Or perhaps some pompous British viscount?”

Leon laughed, then shrugged. “I may have a title, but there’s nothing left of the family money. What was once a grand estate now looks a little like this.” He looked out across the ruins. “Actually, worse. Everything burned to the ground, and my father couldn’t afford to rebuild, so it’s basically a pile of rubble. Which wouldn’t be so terrible, I suppose, if my parents had found a way to cope with the loss instead of collapsing along with the walls and ceilings.”

Henry placed a sympathetic hand on his friend’s shoulder. They were all silent for a moment until Charlotte said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” And she was sorry. That explained a lot about his sour behavior, and she promised herself that she would take it easier on him going forward, the way Henry did. “What will you do when the dig is closed down? Where will you go?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Leon. “I’ll attach myself to another group, maybe the French or the Polish. Zimmerman’s already promised to make introductions.”

“I’m sure they’ll welcome your insights.”

As the day wore on, Leon drifted away to check out the Festival Hall, while Henry and Charlotte lost themselves in the Hypostyle Hall, a large gallery consisting of 134 giant columns that soared almost seventy feet high, like a sandstone forest. The clerestory roof was no more, but inscriptions and reliefs covered almost every surface, carved by artisans under the reigns of multiple pharaohs.

Charlotte marveled at the quiet beauty of the ruins. “Imagine what this was like back then, with the walls and columns painted in bright colors. I could stay here all day just admiring the hieroglyphs and carvings. Each one tells a story. I mean, here’s a relief of Saukemet II leading an attack in battle, while over here he’s offering incense to the gods during a festival.”

“Quite a sight.” But Henry wasn’t looking at the temple; he was watching Charlotte. He cleared his throat when she caught him and stared absently about, as if he’d only just noticed the artwork. “The festivals must have left quite an impression on the average Egyptian.”

She ducked behind a column and he followed her. “The people of ancient Egypt sure knew how to have a good time.” She glanced back at him with a smile. “My favorite would be the festival of Bast.”

“Ah, right. Honoring the birth of the cat goddess. Is it because she’s the protector of women and children?”

“Sure. I love that women were free to do whatever they pleased during Bast. They drank, danced wildly, played music, became loud and boisterous.” She suddenly remembered that the festival also famously included the “raising of the skirts”—where women flashed men as a way of celebrating fertility and female sexuality. Mortified, Charlotte pretended to be absorbed in a bas-relief sculpture.

“Wait a minute, there was something else involved in the celebrations,” Henry said, tapping his cheek with his index finger. “Hmm. I can’t think what it is.”

“Is that so?” she teased back, daring him to say it out loud. He was as shy as she was, when it came down to it. She loved that she knew that about him. “And what would that be?”

Henry turned bright red, and they both burst out laughing.

They were usually surrounded by other people, and to be alone with Henry in this magical space was lovely. Over the past few weeks, Charlotte hadn’t realized how much she ached to be seen by him, to be near him. When he sat next to her at meals or caught up with her as she walked back to the Metropolitan House after a long day at work, she reveled in the fact that he had sought out her company.

Henry took a step over to her and touched her hand with his. “The Egyptians certainly knew how to enjoy life.”

“I envy them.” They were deep in the shadows of the temple’s walls.

Slowly, as if Charlotte might dissolve into the earth if he wasn’t careful, Henry leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth. She took hold of the lapels of his jacket and pulled him close, drawing courage from the women of the past who weren’t afraid of desire. As the kiss grew deeper, his breath became ragged and a delicious tremor ran through Charlotte. They stayed there, swaying slightly, only pulling apart when the sound of Leon calling their names echoed through the columns and up into the African sky.

The next morning, Mr. Zimmerman took Charlotte aside and told her the time had come for her to dig, and she eagerly headed to her assigned spot, a vault where several fertility statuettes had been already found. The Valley of the Kings had been chosen by the ancient Egyptians as a burial ground due to its secluded location in the dusty hills east of the Nile, and Charlotte knew the geography of the place well, having ventured deep inside the most famous tombs, from the brightly decorated one belonging to King Tut to Seti I’s final resting place, with its mesmerizing hieroglyphs.

After just a few minutes of digging, Mr. Zimmerman came over, looking sheepish.

“I have a favor to ask you, Charlotte,” he said.

“Yes?”

“As you know, Leon hasn’t had a find yet this season. He asked if he could work at your site instead. Do you mind switching? I feel bad for the guy.”

Charlotte was certain Leon wouldn’t have made the request if she had been a man. But she hated to put Mr. Zimmerman in a bind. He’d been so kind to her.

“Of course.”

Leon’s spot was located on the eastern side of the cliffs, near the mouth of a tomb that had already been thoroughly examined by the French, which meant there probably wasn’t much to discover. After several hours of fruitless labor, the lunch bell rang. Charlotte’s back was sore, her shoulders ached, and the rays of the sun burned feverishly on any exposed skin. But she stayed on, determined to make the most of her one opportunity, which meant she was alone when her spade hit something hard. Her fatigue faded away at the sight of a smooth surface, one that had been purposefully laid down, most likely thousands of years ago. She worked faster, her breath catching in her throat, and eventually uncovered what was unmistakably a stone step situated only a few feet from the entrance to the other tomb. An odd placement, but not unheard of. She let out a small cry of triumph, one that came out strangled as she hadn’t stopped to drink water in ages.

She breathlessly informed Mr. Zimmerman of her find. He brought over two of the strongest Egyptians, who used pickaxes to carve out the space around the step, which led to another. And then another. By the end of the day, the stairway had been cleared and part of a door was visible.

A door to a previously undiscovered tomb.

While the excavation season had yielded several important artifacts such as oil lamps, wine jars, and the fertility statuettes, unearthing a new tomb was a remarkable feat. And what if it was another Tutankhamun—an unspoiled tomb full of riches?

It would take another day to fully clear the entrance. That evening at dinner, Charlotte buzzed with excitement, as did the rest of the team, and she was treated like an equal, with Henry insisting on clearing the dirty dishes so she could continue answering everyone’s questions. The only sourpuss was Leon, of course, who sulked in the corner.

The next morning, even though Charlotte could tell Mr. Zimmerman was as eager as she was to get inside, they first had to wait for the arrival of an inspector from the Department of Antiquities, as a representative was required to be present for any new discoveries. The man arrived after an excruciating hour-long wait, and then he and Mr. Zimmerman spoke quietly with each other before the man gave a nod and they were allowed to proceed.

Outside the entrance, Mr. Zimmerman held out his hand. “After you, Miss Cross. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”