• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Didlington Hall was a palatial fortress eight miles south of Swaffham. It was the county seat of Lord Amherst, a member of Parliament with a penchant for styling his hair in the foppish manner of Oscar Wilde. Seven thousand acres and sixteen leased farms surrounded the great home. There was a large, pristine lake, a paddock, a falconer’s lodge, a boathouse, and a ballroom that had been host to grand and important parties for more than a hundred years.

But it was the library that Howard Carter loved most, and he couldn’t stay out of the room.

Fortunately, Lord Amherst was a nice man with five daughters; Carter was the closest thing to a son he’d ever had. He recognized the slender, strong-jawed young man’s innate, sometimes fierce curiosity and saw in him something of himself.

He and young Carter both wanted—no, that would be too soft a description—demanded answers about what had come before them. They were obsessed with the ancient past.

So rather than kicking Carter out of the library, Lord Amherst proceeded to walk him through the wood-paneled room, patiently explaining the significance of the more notable books.

There was a priceless collection of Bibles, for example, many printed centuries earlier. There was a section devoted to incunabula, books printed shortly after the invention of the printing press. There were books with fancy bindings, first editions by famous authors, and so forth and so on.

And then there was the Egyptian collection.

In addition to owning tome after tome detailing the known history of ancient Egypt, Lord Amherst had rather obsessively decorated the library with Egyptian relics. The taller statues were bigger than a man and loomed like sentinels among the overstuffed wingback chairs and oil reading lamps. There were dozens of smaller statues too, and rare texts printed on papyrus that had been sealed behind glass so human hands like Howard’s couldn’t damage them. Amherst had bought the collection from a German priest two decades earlier and had added to it every year since.

“Not only is it one of the largest and most important collections of Egyptology in all of Great Britain,” he told Carter, “it is the joy of my life.”

“And mine as well,” Carter chimed in.

The tour concluded with a history-changing announcement: Lord Amherst was hereby offering the young man unlimited access to his collection. Never mind that something as simple as bumping into a statue could cause thousands of pounds’ worth of damage—Amherst had seen the passion in Carter’s eyes as he told him of the mysteries of Egyptian culture, with its strange alphabet and belief in the afterworld and the amazing burial chambers.

Amherst encouraged Carter to immerse himself in Egyptology. And that was precisely what Howard Carter did—until the day he died.

Chapter 5

Didlington Hall

1891

IT WAS LATE MAY, almost June. Howard Carter, now seventeen, strode up the Watteau Walk toward the white columns marking the south entrance of Didlington Hall.

There was a fragrance of fresh grass in the air but a weariness in his step. He had spent the day as he spent most every other day, sketching household pets. It was a living—not a good living, and certainly not an exciting living, but he had no other skills and little formal education. Though he had grown accustomed to being treated as family by the Amhersts, the fact of the matter was that while he could put on airs with the best of the nobility and was always welcome to spend hours in Lord Amherst’s library, he was doomed to a life of very modest income and minimal prestige.

He simply had to accept the fact that he would be a nobody, accomplishing nothing. But it made him grumpy. Very much so.

Chapter 6

Didlington Hall

1891

CARTER STEPPED into the cool entryway. This was much better. The great expanse was lined with expensive paintings and other works of art, some of which dated to the eleventh century.

A butler showed Carter to the library.