Going for Gold (5 page)

Our vision vanished in a storm of pixels.

“Bums!” Lola moaned. “We got the wrong queen!”

And not just any wrong queen. I was shaken to the core at this cosmic coincidence. With four thousand plus years of Egyptian royalty to choose from, we somehow had to zoom in on Sky’s fave royal, Queen Cleopatra.

Maryam hurried over. “Is everything OK?”

Lola and I explained in whispers. “We did it like you said, truly,” I told her. “How come we got it wrong?”

“I don’t know that you got it wrong. It was a little unexpected that’s all,” Maryam said gently.

Not only did we not get Nefertiti, but when we shared our experiences later with the group, we discovered we were a humiliating 1300 years off target!

It probably wasn’t a real time-stream at all, I thought gloomily. We had the Nile in front of us so we just automatically imagined a glamorous royal barge.

But why would Lola and I specifically imagine Cleopatra’s barge? And why would we both come up with a scenario of loyal courtiers sneaking into Seshet on some hush-hush mission? And how come we cooked up someone called Mardian, a name neither of us had heard before in our lives?

Back at the hostel a buffet lunch had been set up in a cool airy courtyard. Lola and I were trying to decide where to sit when Maryam and Khaled beckoned us over. It turned out they thought we’d picked up on a genuinely Cleopatra-related time-stream. The clincher was that name ‘Mardian’.

“Cleopatra’s most trusted adviser was a eunuch called Mardian.” Maryam explained.

Of course I had to be the one to ask what a eunuch was!

Sorry if this grosses you out, but apparently, some ancient Egyptian parents deliberately had their boy children ‘altered’ as my nan used to say, a v. drastic operation which humans only carry out on farm

animals or torn cats in my time.

Not being ancient Egyptian myself, I found this

hard to grasp, but parents actually did this to help their sons get on in the world. Then they could be taken on by important families as tutors, private secretaries or whatever, without the worry of big sex scandals.

“Since a eunuch couldn’t marry or have children, his work became his whole life,” Maryam told us. “Highly educated eunuchs, like Mardian, often secured good positions at court. Mardian had known Cleopatra since they were children. He was devoted to her and worked tirelessly for his country.”

“Wasn’t she a bit of a minx?” I asked, remembering Sky’s story.

Khaled laughed. “You’ve heard how she made Julius Caesar fall in love with her?”

I nodded. “She had herself smuggled into her own palace in a rug.”

“She knew how to use her charms to her advantage, that one!” Maryam chuckled. “After they’d become lovers, Cleopatra made Caesar promise he would never invade Egypt. They had a little boy together, Caesarian, which means Little Caesar. Unfortunately Caesar was assassinated in Rome a few years later. Once again Cleopatra and her kingdom were vulnerable to Rome. The new leaders distrusted this feisty Egyptian queen and summoned her to go to Tarsus, to appear before Mark Antony and answer for her ‘crimes’ against Rome.”

“Her advisors begged her not to go, saying she’d be sailing to her certain death,” explained Khaled. “But Cleopatra had a special reason for wanting to go. She and Mark Antony had what you’d call a history.”

Maryam took over the story. “They had met just once when he was a young captain and she was only twelve or thirteen. He was at a state banquet her father, the eccentric King Auletes, was giving for the Romans.

During the meal, the king got very drunk. He got up in the middle of a speech by one of the Roman VIPs, and danced all by himself. Mark Antony guessed how humiliated the young princess was feeling, and took the trouble to talk to her, asking her opinions, putting her at her ease, treating her not like a little girl but like the great queen she would one day become. She never forgot his kindness.”

“Her feelings for Mark Antony weren’t the only reason Cleopatra decided to go to Tarsus,” Khaled added hastily. “She was a woman, but first and foremost she was a queen, and she had thought of an extraordinary way to turn this meeting to her own advantage, saving herself, her throne and her country.” Khaled smiled at me and Lola. “This is where your vision comes in! Cleopatra’s plan could only succeed if she had her people’s help. She secretly sent messengers to every town in Egypt to seek out the best goldsmiths and glassworkers, the best entertainers…”

“They had to keep Cleopatra’s plan under wraps,” Maryam put in. “Rome had legions stationed in Egypt as part of their build-up to a military invasion. There were spies everywhere.”

“Omigosh,” I breathed. “Those guys were auditioning to see who got the royal contract!”

“Did her plan work?” asked Lola.

Maryam nodded, smiling. “Cleopatra saved Egypt and made Mark Anthony fall in love with her.”

Ooh-la la, I thought. That girl bowled men over like skittles!

-So what was this amazing plant” Lola’s eyes gli,,ted. This whole Cleopatra story had her hootod But Maryam and Khaled had to go off to a meeting .Maybe you’ll be able to locate the same t,me-stream before we finish the course,” Maryam Rested, smiling. “Then you’ll find ou, for yourself!”

Chapter Six

O
ur time-stream sessions were scheduled for early morning or evening, when cosmic vibes are at their most pure.

This left me and Lola with our afternoons free to do the tourist thing. As it turned out, my soulmate had arranged a v. special surprise.

When we came down into the foyer, the earth-angel boy on the desk shot out into the broiling street and gave a piercing whistle.

A horse-drawn caleche rattled up to the door. The driver in his traditional flowing djellaba had to be the toughest looking earth angel I’d ever seen: short, bald and absolutely unsmiling!

“Mel, meet Mohammed!” Lola beamed, adding in a whisper, “I thought it would be fun to play princesses for an afternoon!”

I did feel exactly like a princess as Mohammed silently handed us up into our hired carriage. A hot sweaty princess but who cares?

We snapped crazy pictures of each other under our fringed canopy, as Mohammed took us clip clopping through the town at higher speeds than you might naturally expect a horse and buggy to go!

Egyptian traffic is MAD: pedestrians, donkey-carts, bikes, trucks and buses all competing for the same space. At junctions Mohammed stood up like an old-style chariot driver, glowering over the mayhem, before hurtling off in his chosen direction.

Now and then he’d stop without warning, obviously expecting us to get out and wander around some suitable tourist attraction.

Like nice polite angel girls we did what we were told. We checked out a couple of local bazaars, and peeked shyly into a cafe where old men were smoking hubble-bubble pipes and having heated discussions, reading aloud to each other from Egyptian newspapers to back up their arguments.

Last on Mohammed’s private checklist was the local museum.

Can I be totally honest? I’m not a museums kind of girl. I get inside and I’m like - what am I supposed to be looking at again?

But as Mohammed was making it perfectly clear he was settling down for a long snooze, in we went.

We walked through dimly lit rooms past showcases filled with King Whosit’s second best chariot and whatever, and after five minutes, like usual, I was slowly losing the will to live. But after ten minutes, I was like, Uh-oh. Houston we have a problem.

Having acquired the knack of picking up time-streams I couldn’t seem to stop! The tiniest object would set an ancient Egyptian movie running in my head - and museums have a LOT of objects as you know. Also, just to increase the stress levels a notch, human tourists were constantly walking through us, a v. common angelic experience, but one I personally could do without.

I trailed after my friend, getting increasingly spaced, but not wanting to seem feeble, you know how it is. I was literally on the verge of passing out when I saw a sign. TO THE MUMMY ROOM.

Now I’m very nearly as fascinated by old mummies as I am by museums, but at that moment the scientifically-temperature-controlled mummy chamber seemed hugely desirable, mainly because it was blissfully free of humans.

“I’m going to check out the mummy,” I mumbled.

Lola’s eyes went wide. “Melanie! I can feel its vibes from here.”

With my divine radar on the fritz, I wasn’t thinking vibes, I was just thinking cool, empty.

“You’re on your own, Boo!” Lola called. Her voice had a panicky edge. “I’ve got a phobia of mummies, remember?”

“Won’t be long,” I quavered. Black spots danced before my eyes as I tottered up the steps. By then, of course, it was too late.

I could see myself reflected in the glass, an averagely pretty angel girl wearing a white cotton dress over cropped white cotton leggings - and an expression of growing horror.

Inside the glass case, propped up like a scarecrow in what must once have been a sumptuous, silk-lined coffin, was the dried-up shell of - I suppose the polite expression would be - a ‘former human being’.

I don’t know why the mummy was more disturbing than an average corpse but trust me, it was. All its bandages had rotted down to shreds, allowing its jaws to fall open, reminding me of a dead dog I’d seen once in Park Hall High Street. The mummy’s accidental leer exposed the stumps of four-thousand-year-old teeth.

Then some vague survival instinct kicked in and I flew out of that chamber like a baby bunny with its tail on fire.

Unfortunately I shot through the wrong door, finding myself in a bewildering corridor with offshoots going every which way.

Like my friend I was now seriously mummy phobic, so I couldn’t even think of going back. I just kept running, getting more and more lost, until I ran into a completely empty part of the museum. Empty of humans anyway.

Thoughtfully studying a display of ancient jewellery was the angel girl I’d seen from my balcony.

Do you ever have those dreams where you know exactly what’s going to happen next? She’ll turn and smile, I thought, and it’ll be like we’ve known each other forever.

The mysterious angel girl turned, flashing a wonderfully familiar smile. “I’m sorry,” she said as if we were in mid-conversation. “Why would anyone want to wear some gruesome old bluebottle on a chain?”

The similarity in our voices should have spooked me but it was actually the opposite. I felt fabulously safe, like I already knew everything about her. I pointed to a notice inside the showcase.

“It’s called THE FLIES OF VALOUR. It was a medal given for great courage in battle.”

She gave a scream of laughter. “They had a medal called the Flies of Valour?! How completely hilarious! Do you think they had one called the Cockroach of Loyalty or the Maggot of - I don’t know—?” “Majesty?” I suggested with a smirk. “The Maggot of Majesty’! Ooh I like it!” She wasn’t my physical double. She was too pretty to be my double. But in every other way she was my twin; her gestures, her sassy way of talking, even her little wrap dress and leggings were identical, except her outfit was brilliant poppy red. She wagged her finger accusingly. “You don’t remember me!”

“I do, I saw you early this morning,” I confessed shyly.

“I know! You’d be such a rubbish spy,” she giggled. “No, before that, Babe! We were on the same Soul-Retrieval course. Not that you’d notice me with gorgeous Indigo schmoozing around!”

I felt myself going pink. “I don’t think I saw you at our first time-stream session—” I said hastily changing the subject.

She shrugged. “I didn’t get here till, like, five this morning, so I grabbed a few minutes shuteye.”

“Wow, so you and Indigo must be at the same school? What’s it like at the celestial coll—?”

But she was already dancing on to the next showcase.

“Finally some jewellery a girl can relate to!” she bubbled. “I LOVE this gold ankh, don’t you?”

An ankh, if you didn’t know, is shaped like a cross except it has a loop thingy at the top. On our Egyptian field trip, Mr Allbright had explained that the loop let everybody know that this powerful sacred symbol belonged strictly to the gods, and was only, like, on loan to humans.

This particular ankh was made of solid gold studded with glittering dark gems. I thought it looked v. scary, but I dutifully said, “Wow.”

“Do you want it?” The angel girl impulsively stretched out her hand. I thought she was going to put it right through the glass!

She let out her contagious giggle. “Too slow, you lost out!”

I laughed nervously, not sure if she was making fun.

“I’ve had enough of this graveyard,” she said abruptly. “How about you, Mel Beeby?”

“Definitely!” I giggled, secretly flattered that she’d remembered my name from the course.

We emerged from the air-conditioned museum into a solid wall of heat. We both started fanning ourselves at the same moment, which made us laugh. “Sorry, I don’t know your name,” I said. The girl’s eyes sparkled, as if she’d been hoping I’d ask. “It’s Maia!” She pronounced it to rhyme with liar.

“Maia is my favourite name,” I told her shyly but she was checking her watch and didn’t hear. “Fancy hooking up later?” she asked casually. “Totally,” I beamed. “I know Lola would love to meet you.”