Tomb of the Golden Bird, page 12
“Hmmm,” said her mother-in-law, seated across from them. “I confess to having some misgivings.”
“You were the one who wanted to take them on,” Ramses said.
“Professionally they suit admirably. But I did not consider fully the social ramifications.”
Nefret chuckled. “Bertie was only flirting with Suzanne to make Jumana jealous.”
“Jumana is jealous, but not of Bertie,” Ramses said. “She’s afraid she will take second place to Suzanne. Cyrus really ought to give her an official title and position. She’s earned it.”
“I agree,” his mother said. “You must speak to him about it, Emerson.”
“What?”
It was still early when they reached the house, to find Selim on the veranda drinking coffee. “A bit late for a call, isn’t it?” said Emerson.
“Don’t be rude,” said his wife. “It isn’t late. I suggested we leave the Castle early because we have an important matter to settle tonight.”
“What?” said Emerson.
For a moment Ramses thought his mother was going to fly at her oblivious husband. “Sethos,” she hissed through her teeth. It was a name made for hissing.
“Oh,” said Emerson, fingering his chin.
Selim, who usually enjoyed their exchanges, remained grave. “I have news, Sitt Hakim,” he said.
“I knew something had happened,” she exclaimed. “What?”
“The old man is dead. The beggar.”
Emerson sat up straighter. “What beggar? How? When?”
The old man’s body had been found that evening, behind a wall of the cemetery. How long it had been there no one knew; the spot was not often visited. Selim had been among the first to hear of it. He had gone at once to examine the body.
“There was no mark of violence, no wound. I could tell because he had been stripped of his clothing.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Nefret asked in surprise. “He owned nothing, he had nothing of value.”
“He might have done it himself,” Ramses said. “Sometimes he did. He would walk about naked, talking to himself or to God, until a kind person took charge of him.”
Selim nodded. “It is possible. His few pieces of clothing had not been taken away, they lay on the ground next to him.” With a sidelong look at Nefret, he added, “I deduce he died in the night. The stiffness had gone from his feet and legs.”
As experts know, the process of rigor mortis is affected by many variables, including the temperature and the victim’s physical condition. However, it was a reasonable deduction for Selim to make. He rather fancied himself as a detective.
“An excellent deduction, Selim,” Nefret said. “I suppose he has been buried?”
“No, Nur Misur. He is here.”
They had laid him out, as reverently as possible, on a table in the garden shed, covered with a clean white sheet. Fatima sat by him. The lamplight reddened the tears on her cheeks.
“I wanted to wash the body, but Selim would not let me,” she murmured.
“Good thinking, Selim,” Ramses said. Nefret lowered the sheet. It was a scene straight out of Doré, or one of the illustrators who specialized in Gothic horrors—the shifting light and elusive shadows, and the naked body, skeletally thin and pallid. Ancient dirt lay encrusted in the wrinkled flesh; a louse crawled out of the wispy gray hair. Normally one of the most fastidious of women, Nefret went over the body with professional detachment. Fatima let out little cries of protest.
“He is filthy and covered with insects, Nur Misur. Let me do that.”
“It’s all right, Fatima,” Nefret said. “Rigor is well advanced. No wounds on the face or skull. The poor man is covered with bruises and scrapes. Fatima, hand me that damp cloth. I want a better look at his throat.”
“He was always falling and running into hard things, God be merciful to him,” Fatima murmured.
“There are bruises on his neck, but no worse than the ones on the rest of his body,” Nefret reported.
“It wouldn’t take much to send a feeble old man like that into cardiac arrest,” Ramses’s mother remarked.
“Oh, bah,” said her husband, now fully attentive. “You are always looking for signs of murder, Peabody.”
She limited her response to an evil look, but Ramses knew exactly what she was thinking. The poor old man’s death couldn’t have come at a more fortuitous time for them and Sethos.
Selim cleared his throat. “I told the men who brought him here that he had run away from you, and that you could help him,” he said.
Nefret, scrubbing her hands with the soap and water Fatima had supplied, turned to stare at him.
“Help him from being dead?” her mother-in-law inquired caustically. “He was ice-cold and stiff, wasn’t he?”
“They believe you can do magic,” said Selim, scratching his beard. “He should have been buried tonight, but they believed me when I said…” He stuck there, unnerved by her sarcasm, and Ramses came to his rescue.
“You did right, Selim. The precise time of death is open to question. By the time the news spreads, people will confuse Fatima’s patient with the old holy man, who will be unquestionably dead. This is the perfect moment for our guest to reappear in a new identity.”
“That is what I thought,” Selim declared.
“Let’s have a little chat with—er—him,” said Emerson, heading for the door. Over his shoulder he added, “Ramses, fetch the whiskey.”
When our guests arrived for breakfast, we introduced them to the latest member of the staff. Sethos had reverted to his Anthony Bissinghurst role. Ramses had supplied him with a dashing black mustache and dye to turn his pale face a healthy tan. He had also supplied him with clothes, for they were almost of a size. He was proving to be a cursed inconvenience in every way; we would have to order new garments for Ramses, since his wardrobe had not been extensive to begin with.
A slow grin spread across Cyrus’s face when he recognized Bissinghurst. Bertie and Jumana were also acquainted with him and with his true identity, and had been sworn to secrecy; poor Bertie, not the cleverest of individuals, hardly spoke a word, so fearful was he of saying the wrong thing. His silence caused no remark, since he hardly ever got a word in when the rest of us were conversing.
Jumana’s dark eyes shone with pleasure when “Tony” bent over her hand. She had obviously been attracted to him when they last met and, as was his habit, he had been at his most dashing and courtly. Perhaps she preferred older men. If that was the case, Bertie was doubly disadvantaged. No one could have called the poor boy dashing.
Cyrus managed to have a word alone with me as we prepared to leave the house. Concern had replaced his amusement.
“What’s up, Amelia? That fellow never appears unless there is trouble brewing.”
“I will tell you about it another time,” I replied, wondering what the devil I could tell him.
“It better not be Carter’s tomb he’s after,” Cyrus muttered. “Emerson will skin him alive if he tries any tricks.”
We went first to Deir el Bahri, where the Metropolitan Museum crew was working, and then made the circuit of other temples before turning toward the Valley of the Kings. It was of necessity a cursory tour, but by the time we reached the entrance to the Valley, anticipation had mounted. The persuasive air of suppressed excitement (I am sensitive to such things) surprised me. Clearly the word of a great discovery had spread—not, as yet, to the general public, but among those who had a professional interest in such matters.
I glanced at Sethos, who was walking beside me. He looked tired but alert. A new and ugly suspicion had taken root, seeded by Cyrus’s remark. What evidence had we of the truth of Sethos’s story? Only a mysterious document, which could not be deciphered, and his own word. The attacks on him and on us might have been made by rivals in the antiquities game. If he had returned to his old profession, Carter’s tomb would present…interesting possibilities.
The tomb itself was something of an anticlimax. There was nothing to see except a pile of rubble that filled the stairwell and concealed the steps. After a glance Suzanne raised her shoulders in an elegant Gallic shrug and joined the tourists entering the tomb of Ramses VI. Bertie trailed after her and Jumana offered to show Nadji some of the more interesting tombs. The rest of us stood staring as if hypnotized at the heaped-up debris.
“No signs of digging,” Emerson muttered after a time.
“Even the experienced tomb robbers of Gurneh wouldn’t tackle that,” said Sethos, hands in his pockets and eyes intent. “If any of them have illegal intentions they’ll wait until the stairs are clear and the passageway—if it is a passageway—is open.”
“Is that what you would do?” Ramses inquired, his voice carefully neutral.
“It is what any sensible individual would do. Why go through all that hard manual labor, with very little chance of doing it unobserved, when you aren’t certain that it would be worth the effort?”
The tomb robbers of Gurneh were not always sensible. But Sethos was.
Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn arrived in Luxor on the twenty-third. We were in the West Valley, completing the clearance of Ay’s burial chamber—all of us except Sethos and Daoud. Sethos had shown signs of fatigue so I had insisted he rest. Daoud ought to have been with us; the fact that Emerson did not ask about him ought to have given me a hint about his activities. When he turned up we heard him coming long before he appeared, his large sandals rhythmically slapping the ground.
“They have gone to the tomb,” he panted. “Straight from the train.”
“Well, of course,” said Emerson. “Who could blame them?”
“Is it Lord Carnarvon and his daughter of whom you speak?” I asked. “See here, Emerson, I won’t have you haring off to the East Valley today.”
“Would I do that?” Emerson gave me a look of injured innocence. After a moment he added, “Tomorrow will be soon enough. It will take several days to clear the steps again.”
There was no restraining him. And I will admit, to the Reader, that my interest was almost as keen as his. After two weeks of uncertainty we were within a few days of learning the truth. I could only imagine the state Howard must be in. Really, we owed it to him to express our support and friendship, particularly if, as was likely, the tomb proved to be empty.
I did manage to convince Emerson he should wait until a reasonable hour next morning, pointing out that it would not be proper to anticipate the arrival of Lord Carnarvon, who would probably not be early. However, I had underestimated Carnarvon’s zeal. When we arrived—Ramses and Nefret, Sethos, Emerson and I—he and Lady Evelyn were on the scene, watching the workmen remove the debris under Howard’s direction.
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was of medium height and slight build, with features which one could only call unmemorable. His eyes were pale and his complexion, marred by the scars of smallpox, unhealthy. He had not been a well man since a serious motor accident some years earlier, though wintering in Egypt had improved his health (and aroused his interest in Egyptology).
I had met the young lady once before and found her somewhat silly and frivolous—a typical example of the young female aristocrat—but I had to admit she knew how to dress. Her skirt was mid-calf length and her laced shoes had low heels. However, they had been died saffron to match her sport suit and she wore a jaunty bow at her throat, of the same brown as her stylish toque.
“We dropped by to welcome you back to Luxor,” said Emerson, wringing Carnarvon’s hand. “And congratulate you.”
“You think it looks promising, then?” Carnarvon asked eagerly.
“Too soon to tell,” Emerson said. “You haven’t uncovered the lower part of the door yet.”
“Don’t be such a killjoy, Professor Emerson,” the young lady exclaimed. “It’s all so frightfully thrilling! Pups is frightfully bucked up.” She squeezed her father’s arm. Emerson winced. He detests coy nicknames.
“That is right,” I said. “Always look on the bright side. Is there anything we can do to assist? Our son, as you know, is expert in the Egyptian language.”
Howard came forward and Lady Evelyn turned a bright, admiring smile on him. Howard swelled up like a pouter pigeon. “I believe I can claim to have the ability to carry out a proper excavation. However—er—if any more seals turn up, a second opinion would be useful.”
He nodded at Ramses, who said gravely, “I would be happy to be of use, naturally.”
Emerson was peering down into the pit. “You won’t reach the bottom of the stairs before later this afternoon.”
“How do you know how many steps there are?” Lady Evelyn inquired pertly.
Emerson shrugged away the question as he would have shrugged off a fly. Glancing at him, Howard said, “The Professor bases his appraisal on the apparent dimension of the doorway, Evelyn. It is standardized in tombs of this period. Isn’t that right, sir?”
“Hmph,” said Emerson. His hands flexed, as if aching to grasp a tool.
No one was rude enough to tell us to go away. Nothing short of a direct order could have accomplished it, and Emerson would have ignored even that. We had waited for weeks to learn whether the doorway had been breached, and what lay beyond it. We stood round the edge of the stairwell, watching with pent breath as step after step came into view. Down below, the shape of the doorway lengthened, but it was impossible to make out details owing to the lack of light. Finally Reis Girigar called out, “Sixteen steps, mudir. The door is clear.”
Emerson was quivering like a hunting dog waiting to be released. He controlled himself, however, and so Howard was the first to descend. Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn were next. A mumble of conversation followed, broken by the young lady’s cries of excitement. Then Howard came back up.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “You don’t look at all pleased, Howard. Don’t tell me…”
“There are signs of forced entry. A hole. It was filled in afterward.”
“But that is encouraging news, Carter,” Ramses said. “If the tomb had been completely looted, the necropolis priests would not have bothered to close up the hole and stamp their seals all over the door. Are there any other seals?”
“Dozens of them.” Carnarvon gasped. His daughter helped him up the stairs. “Hundreds. Carter couldn’t read them…”
I should explain, in Howard’s defense, that the seals to which Carnarvon referred had been stamped into the wet plaster after it was spread across the stones of the doorway. The passage of time, and perhaps the hastiness of the ancient workers, had wrought considerable damage on these impressions. Crumbling and broken, they were not easy to decipher, especially by a man in a considerable state of excitement.
Nefret hastened to Carnarvon and took his other arm. “Sit down here in the shade, sir.”
“Yes, do, Pups.” Lady Evelyn looked doubtfully at Nefret. “You’re a doctor, they tell me? Is he all right?”
“It’s just excitement, I think,” Nefret said with a reassuring smile.
“I can’t rest until I know what those seals read,” Carnarvon insisted. “Is there a king’s name? Whose name?”
“Ramses,” said Emerson. “Relieve his lordship’s mind, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Ramses said. “Unless Mr. Carter would rather—”
“No, no,” Carter said. “That is…yes. Come along.”
They went down together. Knowing his father was about to burst, Ramses reported his findings in a loud, clear voice. “There are signs of entry at the top of the doorway—an uneven, roughly oval gap, which has been blocked up again and resealed. There are more necropolis seals—the jackal and the nine kneeling captives—and a number of cartouches.”
A cry from Lord Carnarvon was echoed by one from Emerson. “Whose?” they shouted.
“Most of them are illegible, or nearly so, but they appear to be the same name.”
Carter said something in a low voice—a question, to judge by the inflection. “I agree,” Ramses said loudly. “That is definitely a neb sign. And at the top, a sun disk.”
“Nebkheperure,” Emerson said.
“Possibly,” Ramses said cautiously.
“Not Tutankhamon?” Lady Evelyn asked.
“Nebkheperure is Tutankhamon,” I said.
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR A FEW MINUTES THE SILENCE WAS ABSOLUTE. HAD WE INDEED found the missing tomb of that shadowy monarch, the last of his line, the successor of the great heretic Akhenaton? When Howard and Ramses came up the stairs, Carnarvon burst out, “The doorway must be dismantled. Immediately.”
“That would be inadvisable, sir,” Ramses said, for Howard seemed incapable of speech. “We must preserve the seals if we can, so that they can be studied in detail. That will take a while. Anyhow, according to protocol, an inspector of the Antiquities Department should be present. I presume you notified Mr. Engelbach that you would clear the stairwell today?”
Howard nodded dumbly.
“Then where is he?” Carnarvon demanded. “Why hasn’t he had the courtesy to respond promptly to my message?”
“He is a very busy man,” I said. “He has all of Upper Egypt in his jurisdiction. But I am sure he will be along soon.”
The febrile color in his lordship’s cheeks faded, leaving him pale and shaking. Nefret lifted his limp hand and placed her fingers on his wrist.
“I would advise you to get your father to bed, Lady Evelyn. He is somewhat agitated, but a good night’s rest should set him right.”
“No, no,” Carnarvon said. “I’ll wait for Engelbach.”
We had to wait another half hour. I confess I began to share Lord Carnarvon’s frustration. One would have supposed the mere existence of a hitheto unknown tomb would have aroused the interest of the Chief Inspector for Upper Egypt, which included the Valley of the Kings; but when Engelbach finally turned up, accompanied by Ibrahim Effendi, his lieutenant, he shook hands all round before even looking at the cleared stairs. He was at that time in his mid-thirties; we had known him since he began his career in archaeology and we had always been on good terms. He was not on such good terms with Howard, whom he greeted somewhat cavalierly.
