Chapter 3

CAROLINE, CAMbrIDGE, 1991

Sam Fadel, the PhD student tasked with cataloging the materials in the Willoughby Bequest, was tall, nervous-looking, and clearly only a few years older than me. He had a habit of poking his glasses up his nose for emphasis at the end of each sentence, an air of selecting every word precisely before he spoke. His voice was soft, his accent American—although his parents were both from Cairo, he explained, he had grown up in the States, majoring in ancient history as an undergraduate at NYU before moving to Cambridge. Like most PhD students I'd encountered, he seemed terribly kind, terribly earnest. He was obviously delighted to find someone he could talk to about his work.

We met for tea in the café on the ground floor of the Arch and Anth museum, where I explained my dissertation topic. He listened thoughtfully. There was an extraordinary amount of material, as I had probably gathered, he said. Not just the papers I had looked at yesterday but a whole room in the basement here was lined with shelves, dusty glass cases, crates, and boxes. He offered to show me around.

"What was it that Cyril actually collected?" I asked as Sam scanned us through a STAFF ONLY door.

"Mummies, funerary items, canopic jars. Lots of papyri. Many wealthy Europeans back then made a hobby of buying those items—legally or illegally—some of which the Egyptian government has been trying to repatriate for decades. But Cyril took collecting to an extreme—he was the sole heir of his father's railway fortune, so money was no object."

As he spoke, Sam led me down a flight of stairs and through a green-painted metal door. He pulled the string to turn the lights on, illuminating, after a couple of flickers, a very large room.

"All of these wooden drawers"—Sam indicated row after row of them, filling a wall from floor to ceiling—"contain Cyril's papyri. He began to acquire them as a Cambridge undergraduate in the early 1900s and he was still amassing them right up until his death in 1952. My job here is to make sure all of this is correctly ordered and labeled." He gave a wan smile.

I asked him if I could see one of the papyri. "Of course," he said, carefully opening a folder to reveal a plastic sheath which encased a ragged little rectangle with three columns of hieroglyphics on it: a bird, an eye, three parallel waves.

"This is well over two thousand years old. From a tomb near Thebes."

"What does it say? Some sort of curse?" I asked, half joking. Sam pulled a face.

"Actually," he said, a note of weariness in his voice, "the idea of the ancient Egyptian curse is a Victorian invention, an orientalist fantasy from colonial times, later amplified by Hollywood. If anything, this is the exact opposite of a curse: it's a blessing. This is a fragment of a funerary text—it would have been buried with a body, tucked into the bandages during the mummification—a scroll with sacred formulae on it, words of power and protection to help the deceased navigate the afterlife."

"Sacred formulae? Like prayers?"

"Or spells. Invocations of assistance from the gods. This fragment, for instance, is addressed to the goddess Aukert, and means something like ‘open to me the enclosed place, and grant me pleasant roads upon which to travel.' It is all quite practical stuff they are asking for, mostly. Which gives a fascinating insight into what they thought the afterlife was actually going to be like."

"Which was?"

"More of the same, basically. Which is probably also why they thought they'd need so much stuff."

Fascinating as all this was, it was the mystery of the journal I wanted Sam's help getting to the bottom of.

IN WALTER LOFTUS'S BIOGRAPHY of Erlich, Juliette remained a cipher, simply Oskar's young lover, her artistic ambitions a footnote to his achievements. I may only have deciphered her first diary entry so far, but it was clear Juliette's journal covered the period she had spent working on her great lost masterpiece, Self-Portrait as Sphinx, those final, fiercely creative months of her tragically curtailed life. Ringing in my head as I read—or tried to read—Juliette's handwriting was Alice Long's insistence that it was the duty of scholarship to correct decades of contempt and forgetfulness and neglect. That was the opportunity this journal had handed me, that was the task which faced me, and it was hard not to think there was a reason for that.

How I wished, holding the thing, turning its pages, I still had something like it of my mother's, one of the sketchbooks I watched her fill with exquisite, intricate drawings and watercolors when I was little. Some of my most treasured childhood memories are of waking up at night and slipping downstairs to find her at the kitchen table, illustrating one of the extraordinary stories she would make up for me at bedtime. Her transfixed expression. The way in which these projects seemed to transport her, to make everything else a little more bearable.

It was really in tribute to my mother I chose to study art history—if I could draw or paint or felt I had the imagination to write stories, I am sure I would have done that instead. It was the thought of how proud she'd be that had pushed me to work hard enough to get here and which made me want to take advantage of the opportunities I had now. My hope was that I was living up to her idea of what was possible in life, even if she was not around to see it.

Just like Juliette Willoughby, my mother had spent her last days immersed in her art and looking to the future, with no idea of the brutal suddenness of the fate that awaited her.

Sam asked me which box the diary was in and brought it down from the shelf. "My gosh," he said as we opened it. The envelope was tucked upright, exactly as I had left it. Gently, I slipped the pendant out and held it up to the light.

"Ah, well, this, you see, is a wedjat eye." He crossed the room, pulled a leather case from the shelf, placed it on a table, and unclipped the lid. Inside were stones of varying sizes and colors, pinned onto a pale blue velvet pad, all identical in shape to the locket from the envelope.

"Cyril had rather a lot of these, as it happens," Sam said.

"What were they for?" I asked.

"They symbolize the healing eye of the god Horus and were mounted in amulets worn to project the wearer from harm."

My first thought was that it did not seem to have worked in Juliette's case.

Next, I passed him the diary. He opened it very slightly, just wide enough to see the initials on the first page. I showed him the passport.

"There are two things I don't understand," I said. "First of all, how these things could have survived the fire."

He scratched his head, thought for a moment. "They're all items of value—perhaps they were stored in something that helped shield them from the flames."

This sounded plausible.

"The other thing I don't understand," I continued, "is how they all ended up here."

Sam was checking the outside of the box for any clue. He found none. "If I had to guess," he said eventually, "perhaps these were all the identifiable personal items that survived that blaze, and the authorities sent them back to England, to the family. And they ended up in her father's study, and got bundled in with the rest of his papers when they were given to the university. Something I would note about the bequest: it does not appear that any care was taken sifting through it, before it was donated. It was just thrown into boxes like they couldn't get it out of the house quick enough."

As he was walking me back to the entrance of the building, one more question occurred to me.

"The wedjat eye," I said. "It isn't just on Juliette's necklace I have seen it recently. Have you ever heard of the Osiris Society? They have the exact same symbol on the signet rings they wear."

He nodded. "They're a dining society, which basically—as I'm sure you know—means a drinking society. All male. All public school. A bunch of posh guys dressing up in white tie, eating roast beef and getting absolutely"—he shifted into an attempt at a British accent here—"hammered."

He smiled and pretended to shudder. It did sound awful, I thought. A roomful of braying Freddies.

"But why is it named after an Egyptian god? And why do they wear wedjat eyes?"

"Because like a lot of these societies, it has evolved over time. When it was first founded, it was a club for undergraduates with an interest in Egyptology to read each other scholarly papers and play show-and-tell with their latest ancient acquisition. I guess the only things that have stayed the same are the name, the building, and the fact that the president of the society has always been a Willoughby, when one happens to be studying at Cambridge."

"A Willoughby?"

Now I was really confused. Sam and I were standing back in the lobby of the building now. He smiled again. "Oh yes. That's how I happen to know so much about it. The Osiris Society was founded in 1901 by Cyril Willoughby."

PATRICK, CAMbrIDGE, 1991

Freddie sauntered around the corner half an hour later than we'd arranged to meet, five minutes before we were due at the Osiris clubhouse. I was loitering in front of the Round Church, smoking my seventh cigarette in a row, in a vain attempt to steady my nerves. He handed over a black sports bag and watched as I reluctantly removed five crisp tens from my wallet.

"We agreed to a hundred, didn't we?" he said.

"No, Freddie, we agreed to fifty," I corrected him.

With impressive speed and a licked thumb, he double-checked my counting and stuffed the cash into his pocket. I told myself I should be grateful. When I had woken up that morning, I still had no clue how I was going to procure an animal for tonight's investiture, uncertain whether I was really going to go through with this. In my dream I had just been telling the whole Osiris Society to go fuck themselves.

It was a sharp rat-tat-tat on the door that woke me. I expected it to be one of the college cleaners, come to empty my wastepaper basket. Instead, I found Freddie leaning against the banister, arms folded, looking even more pleased with himself than usual. He raised one amused eyebrow at my paisley silk dressing gown, another gift from my father. "Morning, Patrick. Just wanted to check if you're ready for tonight."

"What do you mean, ready?" I asked him.

"You know exactly what I mean," he said. "Because I'm going to the vet school today, so if you're not I can help."

"That's very generous of you, Freddie."

He told me how much it was going to cost. I thought this over for a moment or two before I reluctantly nodded. We discussed where and when we would meet.

This had better all be worth it, Dad, I thought.

The bag Freddie gave me was surprisingly light. I could not bring myself to inspect its contents. "What is it?" I asked him.

"Cat," he said.

"A dead cat?"

"It bloody well should be—it's been on ice in the vet school for the past month."

It was a three-minute walk from the Round Church to our destination. When we reached it, Freddie took the steps two at a time ahead of me, unlocking the front door with an almost comically large barrel key on a great jangling ring of them, and inviting me inside.

"Time for a quick drink before we start, if you want one."

I nodded and followed him down the corridor.

One of a terrace of brick-fronted Victorian houses in central Cambridge, the Osiris clubhouse was distinguished from the outside only by a small brass plaque. Inside, things got weirder. Freddie led me through to a living room with a battered Chesterfield sofa and a few threadbare club chairs. Vibes-wise, it was reminiscent of the sixth-form bar at a boarding school, the major difference being that in a glass case in the corner was a mummy—a shabby, haunted-looking thing, its wrappings brown and crumbling. I decided not to think too much about the fact that it had once been an actual person.

Freddie opened a drinks cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, poured two glasses, and sank his in one. I did the same, regretting it as soon as it hit my already uneasy stomach.

"Coats through here," he said, leading me to a small cloakroom with a little loo next to it. Freddie ducked in to the loo first, to straighten his tie, as he put it. "Little sharpener on the corner of the sink for you," he told me with a wink, on his way out.

For almost as long as I had known him, Freddie had been the go-to guy when anybody wanted drugs. At school it was hash and weed. Now it was pills, speed, and coke, with Freddie disappearing every so often off to London or Bristol for supplies.

"It's almost time, Lambert," he announced when I reappeared, gesturing toward the stairs.

On the first floor of the building, things got a little more glamorous. The curving staircase was lined with paintings of former Osiris presidents all the way back to Cyril himself. I spotted Harry's father, Philip, about halfway up. At the top, there was a long corridor of dark wood paneling, hung with brass sconces and old framed lithographs (a prospect of Alexandria, a view of one of the temples at Karnak).

Off the corridor was a series of doors.

"Take a look around," Freddie said. "I'm going to check if they're ready for you."

My father's son at heart, I couldn't help having a snoop. The first door I tried was locked. The second opened into a room lined with glass cases, each containing pots, jars, wooden carvings of ships and animals, fragments of painted plaster that looked to have been chipped off the walls of tombs. There was a stone sarcophagus in one corner. My God, I thought. If this was the sort of stuff that Cyril had filled Longhurst with, it was no wonder Juliette was interested in Sphinxes. It must have been like growing up in the British Museum.

Freddie was waiting for me when I emerged into the corridor. "They're ready for you," he said. "Don't forget your bag."

When I entered the dining room, everyone was already seated. I spotted Harry, Freddie, Arno, Benjy, Eric, Hugo. Others I knew too but less well: Douglas Burn, Toby Gough. The only light was coming from silver candelabras placed at intervals down the length of the dining table. Freddie took his place at one end, and, still holding my bag, I sat at the head. All of us were in white tie—mine inherited from my father (tight across the shoulders, short in the leg). No one spoke. No one made eye contact. I don't think I had ever seen any of them looking as stern or serious as they did now. What the hell have I let myself in for? I wondered, with alarm.

I was beginning to think that line of coke downstairs might have been a mistake too.

In front of me was a cone of incense, spewing smoke into the air, and an enameled silver platter. Next to the platter was a leather-bound notebook. Leaning forward, feeling very conscious of being the person in the room that everyone was looking at, I picked up the notebook and opened it. My heart sank. "This is all in Greek," I said.

"Ancient Egyptian, actually," said Harry. "Transcribed phonetically into Greek, by my great-uncle Cyril."

"You must remember some of your Greek from school, Lambert, a clever scholarship boy like you," Freddie added with a snicker.

Ga ba ka, baba ka, I silently read to myself. Ka ka ra ra phee ko ko.

"What about this?" I asked, pointing to the bag.

"Take it out and put it on the platter," Freddie instructed me.

I reached inside my bag and gingerly pulled out a small, damp ball of fur. A kitten, dark and soft, eyes closed, cold. I swallowed the urge to retch and gently placed it on the platter, silently apologizing to it for whatever I was about to do.

"And I'm supposed to read all of this?" I said, lifting up the notebook.

Nobody answered.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's an ancient incantation," Harry told me.

Still none of the faces around the table was showing even a hint of a smile. I flicked through the pages. I cleared my throat, ran a dry tongue over my lips, and began to read. Around the table people shifted and settled in their seats. After a while, as I chanted by candlelight those syllables I could enunciate but did not understand, I began to sink into something of a trance, everyone else in the room seeming to grow further away the more absorbed I grew in my task.

Ta ta ra ke re ko re.

Harry indicated to me with a gesture that I should raise the platter above my head, continuing to read the pages on the table in front of me. I did so, feeling increasingly ridiculous.

When I first heard the sound, I told myself I was imagining things. That it was nerves, exacerbated by the whiskey and cocaine. Then I heard it again. A scratching noise, above my head. I tried to ignore it, but then the weight of the platter shifted. It must have been my imagination, I told myself, my aching arms twitching. Then from above me there came a low, quiet mewl. I stopped reading for a second. There was another mewl, louder this time, distinctly animal in origin.

"Jesus fucking Christ."

The kitten, eyes open, clearly very much alive, leapt from the platter and attached itself to the front of my shirt. I could feel its claws puncturing my skin through the cotton, scratching my chest. I could see them hooking into and shredding the satin of my lapels. It seemed to be heading for my face. With a yelp I jumped backward, sending the silverware clattering to the floor, knocking my chair over with the backs of my knees. The kitten jumped, skittered along the table, gave a little cry, and zipped off.

"Jesus fucking Christ," I said again, looking up at everyone. Wondering if they had seen what I had just seen. It was only then that they all burst out laughing, with a laughter that was all the more raucous for having been bottled up so long.

"Ra ra fa so la ti do," said Hugo.

"Ta ta ra ke re ko re," chuckled Benjy. "Bit rusty on your pronunciation there, I have to say."

"Your fucking face!" said Freddie.

Arno cornered the kitten, scooped it up, and began stroking it.

"It wasn't dead?" I said. The entire room was howling with laughter.

"Did you actually think you had developed magical powers, Lambert? That the ritual was working? My God, you did, didn't you?" Freddie hooted.

"It was fucking sedated, wasn't it, you vet student cunt," I hissed, my heart still pounding. "You absolute..."

"Just a little ketamine," said Freddie. "A perfectly harmless tranquilizer. Let me know if you ever want to try some yourself..."

Toby Gough asked if it was time to get pissed yet. Hugo passed me a glass of red wine and Arno eyed it jealously as I gulped, so fast it stung my nostrils. Ivo poured me another. Eric Lam had the kitten in his arms now and was petting it.

Harry patted me on the back and handed me a gold signet ring and a key. "You've earned those," he told me.

On the far side of the room, I could hear Freddie doing an impression of me, and laughing.

Ga ba ka, baba ka. Ka ka ra ra phee ko ko.

They had always loved a practical joke, the Willoughbys. Oh yes, the Willoughbys had always loved a prank.