Wrapped Read online

  “He served with my father,” Caedmon said quietly, in a tone that made me realize I should ask no more.

  Chapter Ten

  Mother hadn’t even noticed my absence the morning before, and Clarisse was as discreet as I knew she would be. But keeping my appointment with Caedmon the next afternoon presented a greater challenge.

  “But Aunt Rachel is out,” Mother said when I begged her to allow me to go to the dressmakers to see about a bit of ribbon for my presentation gown. Aunt Rachel’s absence was precisely what I’d counted on. She met with her missionary alliance from the church on our at-home day. I told Mother that the shopgirl had informed me that it would be the last shipment from the Continent for some time—so little was making it through the blockades of late—and that if I didn’t go now, there’d be slim chance of anything being left by tomorrow.

  Mother considered this.

  “You will need something for the train.”

  “All four feet of it,” I agreed, trying not to sound too eager. If I overplayed this, Mother might suspect I had other reasons for the errand. I rubbed the wing of my jade butterfly nervously.

  “And maybe a little something at the waist—just on the fifth rib where we agreed it would hit.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  I didn’t care if it hit the fifth rib or my second knuckle so long as she let me go.

  “But why such interest now?” she said, setting aside her embroidery.

  “It is my presentation dress. And I am making more of an effort, Mother. After I saw what Caroline Hallishaw wore at the unwrapping . . .”

  She rolled her eyes. “So inappropriate for a garden party . . . now what will they have her wear for her debut?”

  “Exactly,” I enthused.

  Mother hesitated. “Very well, but don’t be long, please. The Martins are to call later, and I can’t be made to endure her comparisons of her own silly daughter to you if you are absent.”

  “Back before you even know I’ve gone,” I promised.

  Mother relented with a wave of her hand. I popped down and kissed her cheek, dashing out the door before she could change her mind.

  The ribbon was the only believable errand that would put me in distance of my rendezvous with Caedmon. Woolsey, our carriage driver, deposited me at the curb in front of Boulton’s dress shop. While most of my contemporaries would be crowding the shops in Bond Street, Mother swore by the dressmakers near the river and London Bridge—and conveniently, the Tower.

  Inside, I hastily picked out ribbon as promised.

  “It’s lovely, miss,” gushed the clerk as she handed over the ribbon. “I only saw the fabric once, but from what I recall, this color ought to be perfect.”

  Boulton’s had imported the silk, but like the gown I’d worn for the unwrapping, Mother insisted that this dress be made away from prying eyes, and fitted at home when the time came. “All this secrecy is nonsense,” I offered.

  “We had a girl last week who insisted we bury her gown underneath piles of scrap muslin when we weren’t working on it,” the girl said, smiling. “Your mother’s not the only one afraid of spies.”

  I couldn’t help but smile to myself. “No,” I said, turning, “I suppose she’s not.”

  Outside, Woolsey leaned against the carriage, staring into the shop windows for a glimpse of a certain seamstress I knew him to be sweet on. I’d requested him—and not our other driver—for precisely this reason.

  I told Woolsey I’d walk awhile and inquire about a volume of poetry at the booksellers up the lane. He made no attempt to conceal his delight at having the good fortune to stay behind and stare at the pretty golden-haired girl through the windows of the shop.

  I made for the Tower. It was as lovely to be alone on a busy street today as it had been yesterday morning. But as I drew closer to the point at which I’d agreed to meet Caedmon, my thoughts occupied themselves with how best to proceed with this young man.

  While I was brave enough to flout convention with my appetite for education and my penchant for shirking a chaperone, I confess that even in my most rebellious of moods I had not conceived of spending time alone with a young man. Even close conversations with Showalter made me more than a little nervous, despite the constant presence of Mother or Aunt Rachel. So going to meet Caedmon—though an indiscretion born of necessity—was all the more unsettling. An indiscretion complicated by how very attractive and very irritating he managed to be at the same time.

  But there was nothing for it. Until I spoke with Father, there was little else I could do but follow where fate had led me.

  I found Caedmon sitting cross-legged like a child at the corner of the lawn, the gray-brown stones of the Tower piling up behind him, oblivious to the pungent smell rising from the stale waters of the moat behind him. He was staring intently at the scrap of paper on which he’d recorded the translation of the secret message yesterday.

  I thought of what it might mean if someone saw us together unescorted. Girls’ reputations had been ruined for less. Mother would lock me away for the rest of the season, perhaps longer. Showalter might withdraw his interest. And the fact that this prospect bothered me gave me even more pause. Could it mean that I was developing feelings for Showalter? Or that I was already so conscious of my pride that even the possibility of his refusal was difficult to stomach?

  But the fact that neither was enough to make me turn around and scurry back to the carriage meant something else entirely, I suspected.

  “Good afternoon,” I said. He looked up at me and scrambled to his feet.

  “H’lo,” Caedmon said. “Wasn’t sure you’d turn up.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  He nodded. “Thought you might have second thoughts is all.”

  I’d had third and fourth thoughts, but didn’t bother telling him that. He held the paper bearing his translation of the message out to me.

  “Honestly, I think if it were a proper code or cipher or hieroglyph it would almost be easier to make out.” He shook his head.

  “You’ve had no luck, then?” I said.

  “Maybe one bit. I think ‘standard,’ because it apparently belongs to somebody”—here he pointed to the possessive W—“can only be one thing.”

  I waited for him to finish. He waited for me to ask him to do so. I won.

  “I think it’s a standard like a king’s standard,” he said finally.

  “Like colors?” I asked, thinking of the ceremonial banners the guards carried at the front of a royal procession.

  “Spot on. Given the other possible meanings of the word, it’s the only one that really squares. Each pharaoh and even some of the generals had their own standards smithed. What Napoleon, if he is indeed the emperor referenced, might be seeking would be some carved or wrought-metal job they could affix to a wooden pole. Deacon can tell us for certain.”

  He steered me past the Tower grounds and into an alleyway with a hand lightly touching my elbow. I almost objected when his fingers landed there. Such a gesture by anyone other than my father or brothers was considered highly inappropriate, but Caedmon didn’t live in my world.

  And if pressed, I might have been forced to admit that I rather liked it. There was something familiar in the gesture, something comfortable.

  “Who is Deacon?” I asked, to pull my mind back to the matter at hand. A pack of ravens scattered as we approached.

  “My godfather. He was a military man, but his knowledge of Egypt and the artifacts outstrips even the most senior of men at the museum. My father served with him in Egypt. Pa thought he was tip-top, used to bring me along on visits to his place when I was younger, after they both returned to London. Of course that was before . . .” Caedmon trailed off.

  “Before what?”

  He hesitated. “Deacon was more than just a soldier, and he distinguished himself when my father served under him in Egypt. Pa was never clear about what Deacon was up to or how he helped him, but I have my notions.”

&
nbsp; “Notions?”

  He looked away. “You’ll think me cork-brained,” he said.

  “I might, if we weren’t having this conversation the day after finding a secret message attached to an ancient ornament.”

  Now he smiled. “I think Deacon was a bit of a spy,” he said slowly.

  I stopped. “A spy?” Suddenly I felt as if I were listening again at my fireplace.

  “Something like. When we visited him in the Tower, Pa told me Deacon worked for the ordnance board, devising explosives for the army and navy.”

  It was true the Tower had since fallen to this purpose, a strange evolution from its years as a prison so long ago. It also held a zoo, the crown jewels, and half a dozen other odd things.

  “He and Pa always talked about their time in Egypt or some new book or discovery. But other times, my father would send me from the office out to the grounds to chase the birds. Still, I heard enough. But short afore Pa died, something happened and Deacon was dished up. He shifted here.”

  He stopped and pointed to a nondescript door.

  “Difficult times,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders and brushed back a lock of hair that fell across his forehead. “He’s all right. Still awake about a thing or two. Forgotten more about Egypt than any of those triflers at the museum ever even knew, and if he was a spy—”

  “Then who better to help us with cryptic messages about Napoleon smuggled into Britain by way of a mummy,” I finished for him. He nodded and looked at me again, something like curiosity in his expression, a look he might give to some oddity under glass in the museum.

  He looked longer still, his expression perhaps sliding from curiosity to appreciation. Half-afraid of what might come next, I reached out and knocked hard and loud on the worn wood.

  The action broke the spell, as my knock elicited a string of oaths from beyond the door.

  “What?” growled a grizzled man as he pulled the door open a crack a moment later, bright blue eyes wincing in the light. First his gaze fell on me, annoyance morphing into confusion, then it found Caedmon, and his face relaxed. “Well done, lad,” he said. “Finally found yourself a girl.” The door fell open to admit us.

  I balked. Caedmon sputtered, “We—we need your help.”

  Deacon turned his back to us and hobbled toward a chair dwarfed by piles of books on either side. “Looks like you’re doing quite well—”

  “Uncle,” Caedmon groaned.

  I stepped across the threshold and spoke. “We’ve come to consult your expertise on another matter.”

  “Who is she?” the man asked.

  Caedmon found his voice again. “Er, sorry. Miles Deacon, meet Miss Agnes Wilkins.”

  Miles Deacon eyed me carefully. “Your father Lord Wilkins?”

  I swallowed the panic rising in me. If he somehow knew Father, he might even tell him before I had the chance to do so. “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded. “Good man. Always a friend to the service.”

  “I wasn’t aware Father had ties to the ordnance board.”

  He shot me a look, then said to Caedmon, “What kind of nonsense have you been telling her about me?”

  “Only that you might be able to help us with this,” Caedmon said hurriedly, reaching into his pocket and handing a small bundle of cloth to Deacon. The old man unfolded it.

  “Humph,” he said, examining the jackal’s head. Then he squinted at the characters on the attached piece of linen. “Gibberish. You must know that, Caedmon.”

  “He does,” I said, and quickly explained the object’s sordid history and our discovery of the hidden message. As I did so, Deacon’s face grew grave.

  “Let me see the translation,” he ordered after I finished. Caedmon passed him the slip of paper. He read it, first to himself, then in a hushed voice aloud. We were quiet a full minute as we waited for him to say something.

  “Bring the candle,” he commanded me, gesturing toward the tallow puddling on the mantel.

  Deacon held the scrap to the flame and the message once again came into view. He read it, then leaned in and sniffed the linen.

  “Written with lemon juice,” he said, sniffing again. “Or milk gone sour. Hard to tell the difference after a while.”

  He sniffed a third time, his eyes closed. After a moment, he looked up. “Well,” he said, sighing, “you’ve found yourself in the middle of more trouble than you could ever hope to imagine.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Deacon was transformed. Gone was the scowl. Gone was the hunch in his shoulders. And he’d shed that prickly attitude like an overcoat in August.

  “Tell me again how you came to possess this,” he commanded.

  I repeated my story; this time he interrupted me with more questions, trying to place the date of the mummy’s arrival in England, the condition of the wrappings around the object, the behavior of the man who followed me through the gardens.

  “And this was quite buried within?” he asked, tapping the iron of the jackal’s head with his fingernail.

  I nodded and related my observation regarding the variation in color of the wrappings at the feet.

  His face grew grave. “I warned them this would happen.”

  I looked to Caedmon. Them? What would happen?

  “Uncle?” he said, begging an explanation.

  Deacon sprang to his feet. “I told the ministry years ago that French sympathizers would find new ways to smuggle their information across our blockades. Nobody fancied they’d be so bold as to conceal it within a body, but I knew it wasn’t beyond them. And Bonaparte has had spies in Egypt since we ousted him. Any one of them might have had access to a shipment bound for the museum, none of which are searched properly for contraband. . . .”

  “Because anyone paying the expense of bringing them here would have a fit if the artifacts were disturbed before they’d made it to London. And if you’ve pockets deep enough to get the items, you can afford to bribe a port officer,” Caedmon finished.

  “But why bother with Egypt? Wouldn’t Napoleon’s intelligence resources be better used within England, collecting information on our deployments and strategy?” I asked.

  Deacon stopped and stared at me. “Got more of your father in you than just those eyes, haven’t you?” I blushed for the second time, and didn’t answer. He went on. “Boney’s got plenty of spies here in London working those angles, a few we know about, and too many we don’t. But to answer your question, it’s obvious he’s still looking for it.”

  “Looking for what?” Caedmon asked.

  “Come, boy. We’ve discussed this.” Deacon’s tone grew impatient.

  Caedmon looked confused. “The standard from the message?”

  “Of course the standard! It’s written right here, isn’t it?” he said, waving our transcription in the air.

  “But W?” I said. “What is W?”

  “Not what . . . who,” Deacon said ominously, letting the word echo in the silent room.

  Caedmon clapped his hands abruptly, making me jump in my seat.

  “Wepwawet!” he shouted, springing to his feet. He pounded one fist into his other hand and bolted for a stack of books in the corner.

  I played the name over in my mind and, coming up with nothing, looked to Deacon.

  “Wepwawet,” he began, reaching for the book Caedmon had extricated from the pile, “was an Egyptian deity. Very mighty. His cult”—he paused here to check the index in the giant volume, red leather creaking as the spine bent open—“was among the most powerful in all of Egypt, spreading the entire length of the Nile.”

  “Cult?” I asked.

  Caedmon took over as Deacon began thumbing through the moldy pages. “Religion in Egypt at the time wasn’t at all like it is today. There were thousands of recognized deities. A person had a great many more choices than, say, your average Londoner whose only real choice is which Church of England congregation to join.”

  Deacon resumed the thread. “They simply ascribed great
er devotion to one in particular. Sometimes their choice was based on geography. Sometimes on their vocation, or family tradition . . . or an appetite for influence,” he finished as he handed me the open book.

  “Wepwawet’s cult was powerful?” I asked.

  Caedmon nodded. “Wepwawet was the god of war, oversaw the funerary cult—”

  “How many cults could one person fall in with?” I asked, staring at the drawing of a regal-looking man, heavily armored. In his hands, he held a pole. Atop this pole sat a figure on a stool. The figure had the body of a man, but the head of a jackal, long-snouted, with pointy ears.

  I swung around to look at Caedmon. He nodded. “Wepwawet had the head and strength of a jackal. Cock of the walk, he was. And he could open the way between the living and the dead.”

  Deacon broke in. “Hence his position of importance in the funerary cult. Anyone mummifying a loved one would have prayed to Wepwawet to speed the body and soul along to the afterlife, and the waiting judgment of Osiris or the keeping of Anubis. And with the vast number of mummified remains throughout Egypt—”

  “His cult would have been enormous,” I finished.

  “And,” Caedmon said, “because of the war bits, the pharaohs were devotees.”

  “Then the cult itself was powerful as well.”

  Deacon hesitated, gave a slight nod. “Somewhat. We can only rely on what little of the surviving historical record we’ve been able to translate. We can never know if it was the cult’s high-level membership that made it influential, or if the magic itself merely attracted those souls. The Ptolemys were particularly devout.”

  “Ptolemy from the Rosetta Stone inscription,” Caedmon supplied.

  “But the message,” I said, shaking my head. “Unless Napoleon intends to have himself mummified, what does Wepwawet have to do with—”

  “He’s after the standard,” Caedmon said.

  “Why now?” Bonaparte commanded some half a million men at present, a force larger than any he’d ever assembled. The papers indicated that they were marching on Brussels, with the Prussians and English poised to converge on him.