Page 70 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

Nina didn’t stop to think. She flung herself between the horse and the pram, catching the bit-ring and throwing her weight against the horse to bring it down and make it back a step.

She heard Trump barking, there were shouts and protests all around, and someone screamed – she hoped not Kitty – but she had the animal now, her weight stopping it from rearing, while being hemmed in on all sides stopped it bolting.

She fixed its rolling eye with her own and spoke to it in calm, soothing tones.

‘All right, all right, old fellow. It’s all right. It’s only a noise. It won’t hurt you.’

Quivering, the horse pulled back for a moment, jerking at her hands; and then gave in, dropping its head, relieved to have someone take charge, and let her stroke its cheek and neck.

‘Poor old thing,’ she said. ‘Easy now.’ It pushed its nose into her, trying to shut out the world, and gave a great trembling sigh.

The driver had jumped down, and was protesting volubly; a crowd was gathering, and any number of them were trying to help – the men wanting to take the horse from her, the women fussing over whether Louis was hurt (he wasn’t even startled), and everyone in general having an opinion over what should happen next, from hot sweet tea for the heroine to summoning a policeman to prosecute the motor-car driver.

Kitty was white. In some odd reaction she had picked up Trump, who was wriggling madly trying to get to Nina.

‘You were very brave,’ she said to Nina, her voice vibrating with shock.

She had seen the horse rear over her child; she had imagined the hoofs coming down and crushing him.

Nina had acted, had done the thing that had to be done, with no time to think, so she was not shocked, only embarrassed at being the centre of attention.

She was very glad when two footmen, despatched by Forbes from across the road, came and parted the crowd and escorted them back to the house.

Everyone was out, so Nina was able to divert attention from herself to Kitty, who was shaking, by telling Forbes to bring her a glass of brandy.

And then the news of the incident penetrated to the nursery, and Nanny and Jessie came steaming down into the hall in wild alarm, to check on the condition of their baby and to extrapolate from the incident the folly of ever allowing a mother to take a baby out unattended.

Giles had just turned into Piccadilly when he was hailed.

‘Ayton – I say!’

He turned. ‘Wolski! How are you?’

‘Good to see you! But I forgot, it’s Stainton now, isn’t it? Baxter said he saw you down at Ashmore, looking quite the earl!’

They clasped hands. ‘I don’t mind what you call me. You’re in England? I thought you’d gone out with Carter.’

‘I did – I was. I’ve just come back for a visit, do some business, collect some supplies. I say, what luck to run into you! Are you going somewhere, or have you time? My club’s just round the corner. We could toddle round for a drink and a natter.’

‘I’d like that,’ Giles said. To meet Max Wolski, an old friend and another archaeologist, just when he was feeling very unlike himself, with a head full of finance and jam and factories and export plans!

They turned together and strolled back down St James’s Street. ‘How are things going over there?’

‘Oh, great guns!’ said Wolski. He was a tall, thin, swarthy American, with thick black hair, and an outdoor tan. Giles always thought that, apart from his height, he could be Egyptian. ‘You’ve heard about KV60, I suppose?’

Giles shook his head ruefully. ‘These days, trapped down in the country, I don’t hear about anything but crop yields and milk fever.’

‘But you’re here now?’

‘Escaped for a couple of weeks, that’s all. What about KV60? Did you find anything?’

‘It seems it was ransacked, probably in antiquity, but it did contain two female mummies, and some mummified geese.’

‘Geese!’

‘A handy snack in the afterlife for our royal ladies, I imagine.’

‘What sort of condition are they in – the females?’

‘One’s very well preserved – still has her long red hair, and she’s lying in a coffin base. The other not so well – an older woman, quite obese. Not much in the way of funerary objects, and no clues as to their identity. But they both have the left arm flexed across the body, which as you know—’

‘Is the sign of a royal woman of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Max, you don’t think it could be—?’

‘Hatshepsut? Well, of course the idea always crosses your mind. But we didn’t really have time to go into it. Carter took the geese for investigation and resealed the tomb, because we had bigger fish to fry.’

‘KV20?’

‘Yes, of course. And we’re on the brink of marvellous discoveries. You know it’s never been explored beyond the first chamber—’

‘Because the corridor is blocked.’

‘Yes, and the fill is rock hard. It’s been the very devil to get through. And there are five descending corridors, very distinctive . . .’

They turned into the club together.

Giles walked home, his mind far away. The soft damp air of England, the London traffic, the smell of soot and horses, the people brushing past him in their multitudes, barely existed for him.

He was in a place of sharp, direct light, dry air, the susurrus of sand and the papery whisper of palm trees, the clink of hammer on stone, and the intense, focused concentration of minds on a time far distant from the modern world.

Max Wolski had said, ‘Come back with me! Carter would love to have you. There’s so much to do. Baxter’s there, and the Portwines – all the old gang. The fun is just beginning. You could come, couldn’t you? I mean, what’s to stop you?’

And he had said, ‘I can’t.’

‘Lord, just pack a bag, old boy!’ Max had said, clapping his shoulder.

‘You were born for this – I remember Percy Newberry raving about you. A born Egyptologist, he said. Wrap up your affairs, pack a bag, and head for the station. What’s to stop you?

’ And he had laughed. ‘You’re the earl now – earls can damn well do as they please, can’t they? ’

Giles positively ached with longing to go.

And it was true, wasn’t it? He was his own master.

The estate was beginning to run more smoothly – and Markham and Adeane knew what to do.

They hardly needed him. And he could leave Richard as his deputy.

There was money now, enough to keep things ticking over.

He wouldn’t need much for a trip to Egypt – living was so cheap out there.

He had done his duty – damn it, he’d done everything expected of him!

Married, brought in money, got an heir. It was time he did something for himself.

His father had spent his whole life indulging himself.

Giles wasn’t asking for his whole life, just a little bit, just a break from it all, just something .

KV20 was a royal tomb, one of the earliest. Probably the burial place of Thutmose I.

Suppose there were intact sarcophagi in there?

Identifiable mummies? And what of KV60 – was that really Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, who wore a false beard as a sign of rank, and reigned successfully for such a long time?

Why had Carter closed it up again? There was so much to find out.

He had to go. No reasonable person could deny him.

He ran up the steps at the front of Aunt Caroline’s house, and the door opened just before he reached it, in the unsettling way he had not yet quite got used to.

He could tell from the suppressed air of excitement that something had happened, and pretty soon he was enveloped in a confused story of how a mad runaway horse had almost killed his wife and child, and how Mrs Cowling had thrown herself under the horse without regard to her own life and saved them both.

It took a bit of untangling before he understood that Nina was not actually dead (something that seemed to be mildly regretted, though he realised it was only for the sake of the narrative and not because anyone wished her ill) and that no harm had come to Kitty or Louis either.

In the drawing-room he found Kitty reclining on a sofa with Alice sitting nearby and Aunt Caroline on the other side clutching a smelling-bottle (how traditional of her, he thought).

And on the other side of the fireplace, Nina was still there, Nina, seeming to attract all the light in the room to herself, leaving everything else in dusk.

‘Now what’s this I hear?’ he said. ‘Runaway horses and acts of bravery? People snatched from the jaws of death?’

‘It was nothing of the sort,’ Nina said stoutly, looking at him as if feeding something inside her that had been starving to death.

He knew that was how she felt because he felt the same.

‘Everyone’s making such a fuss. All that happened was that a horse was startled by a motor-car making that exploding noise.

It reared up, and I caught its bridle and held it so it couldn’t bolt. No one was ever in any danger.’

‘It was rearing up right over the perambulator,’ Kitty said faintly. ‘I thought it was going to kill Louis. Nina saved our son’s life, Giles. She was so brave.’

‘Please, Kitty, don’t talk like that,’ Nina said. ‘I wasn’t brave at all.’

The other three women started to talk at once, Trump helpfully added some barking, and into the scene rushed Richard, crying, ‘I seem to have missed all the fun! What’s this I hear, about you jumping onto a runaway motor-car and stopping it from killing hundreds of pedestrians?

How did you learn to drive a motor-car, Mrs Cowling? You are a dark horse!’

‘It was nothing of the sort—’ Nina began desperately.

Giles began to laugh. ‘No use, you’ll be a heroine despite yourself!’

‘One thing is sure, you’ll have to stay here for now,’ Richard said. ‘There’s a crowd gathering outside and I saw newspaper reporters.’