The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, page 14
“It’s all right,” said Mace placidly. “We’ve got the mirrors aligned, more or less.”
“Mirrors!” called Carter. “Where are the mirrors?”
And just like that, there was a whispering and padding, like the wind through the reeds, and I suddenly realized there was someone standing next to me, dark and tall, motionless and invisible, and for a brief moment the air was full of fairies, just as it had been in the Hodsons’ compartment on the train, and then the light came flooding in from the outer world, honest sunlight, carried from one hand-held mirror to the next, punching through the darkness all the way to the heart of the tomb.
“Here are your mirrors, Watson. Perhaps we’ll find the smoke farther down.” Holmes spoke glibly, but if I’d known what lay ahead, I’d have quailed.
I was to learn that Burton generally preferred natural light for his pictures rather than using flashbulbs. So he had brought the sun in— with mirrors, all of them held in place by these tall, uncannily silent assistants, constantly in motion to catch the light, who barely seemed to breathe and had to be carefully stepped around to reach our goal. Each time we stepped in front of a mirror, the light blinked out, so it was slow and clumsy going with our group. All we had were those flickering beams to navigate by, so there was much tripping and muffled cursing. I think I may have even heard some from the ladies. My feet counted sixteen steps downward, sliding them along without ever picking them up, certain I was going to break my fool neck. I could feel that same claustrophobia welling up inside that had attacked me in the pyramid. I would have stopped, at least to catch my breath, but Holmes was behind me, prodding me forward with his stick in my back.
“Who’s Engelbach?” asked Beauchamp.
“Rex Engelbach, chief inspector of antiquities,” answered Lady Evelyn.
“He’s in charge of electricity for the whole valley. Lately he’s been playing these games with us,” grumbled Carter.
“What about torches?” asked Beauchamp.
“Not enough air down here. We’d suffocate,” came Carter’s biting reply.
We paced some twenty feet farther down a corridor. Did I believe in curses after all? No, but the way was narrow, and the air had a sour, dead smell. The sweat pricked along my brow and slid down my nose. I felt panic bubbling up inside me. I was being buried alive. I pushed the feeling down, but it pushed back just as hard.
At last we reached—what? An empty room. Flashes of light danced about the walls like . . . like fairies! And at once it was revealed to me how Hodson had conjured his fairies on the train. The candle on the table. Mirrors, tiny mirrors, all arranged, so that if the candle was moved ever so slightly—ah, the cunning of it. A wave of relief passed through me as I put that puzzle to rest. Then there was a scream that put terror in my heart, and the lights went out.
“What happened?” Carter’s voice.
“Oh, I stepped on Ahmed’s toe, I think, and he ran off wailing like a banshee.” That was Merton. I didn’t realize he had followed us down.
“Burton, are you all right?” called Mace.
“I’d be doing better with a bit of light,” came an answer from the far side of the chamber. The only thing I could see over there was a glimmer of a long stone box of some sort. It took me a bit of orienting myself to recognize it for what it was—Tutankhamun’s sepulcher. The two bats’ wings that brooded over it were reflectors on a couple of arc lamps—probably quite handy when there was a modicum of electricity on hand. The sepulcher was cambered to the left, where the mirror light could not quite reach.
“This is the antechamber,” said Carter, as if he was showing us Versailles. His voice echoed in the emptiness. Then he did something that made me want to strangle him—he took a torch out of his pocket and shone it all about. That would have been useful on the way down.
The light revealed nothing but bare grey walls and bare floor.
“Where is everything?” asked Mrs. Roberts.
“We took over seven hundred items out of here,” he answered proudly. “Most of it has been moved to the Cairo Museum, though some of it still waits in the laboratory.”
Was Holmes sniffing the walls? Thank heaven it was dark.
“Will that stop your—?” asked Miss van V. of Mrs. Roberts.
“No, no—the spirit has not been removed,” she vouched.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Carter erupted, dropping any semblance of patience.
“I heard you dabbled in spiritualism yourself, Carter,” said Beau-champ.
“Oh, yes!” chirped Lady Evelyn. “Did I tell you about the time when my father held a séance at Highclere? Helen Cunliffe-Owen started speaking in tongues, and Howard swore it was Coptic!”
The Beauchamps laughed together, and I caught a glint of mirth in Holmes’s eye.
“I was joking. It’s only a party game to me, all that table turning and parlor tricks,” retorted Carter.
Mrs. Roberts’s disapproval was palpable, even in the dark.
“I’d be careful of party games if I were you,” warned an asthmatic voice from the corner. “I nearly broke a toe last Christmas playing blindman’s buff.”
“Who’s that?” said Carter, swinging his light on the far wall. I glimpsed a few heads bobbing up from behind the sarcophagus.
“Douglas-Reid,” the voice drifted back.
“Ah, Sir Archibald, didn’t realize you had got in.”
“Yes, we’ve just been discussing your problem. Any idea how you’ll dislodge your mummy from his casing?”
“It all depends on the resin’s composition. Lucas is testing a sample now. We may have to chip him out if he can’t devise some sort of solvent.”
“That would be a shame. At any rate, I can’t take X-rays till you’ve removed him from the sarcophagus.”
“Agreed. I’m sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” said Carter. His manner was far more collegial than with us.
“Not for nothing, sir. I’ve had a chance to renew many old acquaintances. And of course,” he said, peering at Holmes’s silhouette, “another chance to risk the curse of King Tut.”
“I sincerely hope you may not fall under this sentence,” Holmes returned with frigidity in his voice.
And then, when my eyes had finally acclimated to the darkness, without warning a dazzling light flooded the room. I was blinded once again. The arc lamps had popped on, as well as the bulbs, which were strung up haphazardly everywhere. We were granted light.
“Lady Evelyn, I didn’t realize you were here.” Two men emerged blinking from behind the sarcophagus, followed by three natives, whose arms were full, one with a camera and tripod, the other two with loads of glass plates. The sarcophagus itself was a heavy sandstone block, some seven feet in length. Above it, suspended from a sort of cat’s cradle of ropes strung everywhere, hung the granite lid. Massive. I was not at all sure I wanted to risk my neck under that.
Burton was a natty little fellow with thinning hair and a perpetually nervous smile.
“Mr. Burton, yes, it’s lovely to see you again. And this is my husband, Brograve Beauchamp.”
“Oh, yes. Condolences on your father. And congratulations on your marriage. Off to the darkroom now. Oh, and this is our radiologist, Sir Archibald Douglas Reid.”
Sir Archibald could have been Burton’s brother, or his law partner, although I was informed later that he was one of the most distinguished pioneers in the field of radiology. He was, it is true, sallow of skin, and thin enough to be called wasted, but there was that same air of bland superiority and aloofness about him that the photographer displayed. Perhaps it was the identifying mark of the photographic specialist.
Carter did not bother himself with introductions, though both men eyed us with curiosity. How far had Holmes fallen in the estimation of society? How far had I fallen by association with him?
“You’re finished, then?” Carter asked.
“Hardly. Hours yet to go,” returned Burton. “But I’m off now to do some developing.”
“There’s a darkroom?” Holmes’s curiosity was piqued.
“KV55.”
I had read about these designations. KV meant King’s Valley. The tomb we were standing in was KV62, the sixty-second discovered thus far. Not that they expected to find any more. But then, they hadn’t expected to find this one, had they? Lord Carnarvon had been so dispirited he had very nearly packed it in. Or so the story went.
“Another tomb? It sounds made to order for a darkroom. Who was the former tenant?” Holmes asked.
“Akhenaten, near as they can guess,” replied Burton.
“Akhenaten? The heretic king? But that tomb’s surely cursed!” gasped Mrs. Roberts, blanching. She was hardly an expert on pharaohs, but Mrs. R. knew her curses.
“Well, it’s certainly dusty, which is curse enough for my work. You must be Sir Sherlock,” Burton said, offering his hand.
“And these are my associates, Dr. Watson and Mrs. Roberts.” We shook hands all round, like polite society.
“Heard you were coming, of course. A bit of insurance against curses can’t do us any harm. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Burton’s little band filed out, leaving us to wonder whether his words were sincere or subtle mockery.
“Now you may view the sepulcher,” Carter announced. “I suppose that’s where your interests lie. Touch nothing! Do nothing that the lady Evelyn has not explicitly approved. As for me, I shall return to the laboratory. I don’t think I could stomach the sight of all your shenanigans. Good day.” With those frank and frankly brutal words, he left us.
“I’m sorry. He was close to my father. This talk of elementals has upset him badly,” apologized Lady Evelyn.
“The atmosphere here lends itself to a certain moroseness,” Holmes ceded.
“He’s definitely cleared everything out. I didn’t realize it would be so empty,” said Mrs. Roberts wistfully.
“Oh, no, it’s not empty at all. There’s the annex”—Lady Evelyn pointed—“and the treasury there are as yet untouched. There are thousands of items yet to be cataloged.”
I could just make out the cracks in the walls that confessed to those hidden rooms she had mentioned. I wondered whether there might be others, still undiscovered. What might be hiding behind them? Dogheaded men? A hellhound? The place was beginning to play tricks on my mind. I wondered about the quality of the air in this hot, stuffy little tomb.
We shuffled toward the burial chamber. I remembered that they had taken down a false wall that separated the two chambers, as well as the four nested shrines that had protected the sarcophagus. It was plain where the antechamber ended and the burial chamber began. Bare walls gave way to a torrent of frescoes in bright yellow, blue, and red, describing, so far as I could make out, the life and death of Tutankhamun. I suppose the afterlife as well, although on the western wall it appeared that the pharaoh had taken a boat ride to meet a delegation of baboons. The sarcophagus itself was a massive block of quartz. At each corner was carved some sort if winged guardian—an angel?
“Isis, Nephthys, Selkis, and Neith.” Lady Evelyn traced over them caressingly with her fingers. That didn’t leave me any the wiser. “Goddesses of protection,” she added.
They hadn’t exactly done a crackerjack job protecting their lad Tut, I thought, unless one subscribed to the whole elementals theory, in which all of us would die horrible deaths. I studied the walls. The entire room was incised with hieroglyphs, mainly eyes and birds— always Egyptian favorites. I wouldn’t like to be the fellow tasked with translating them. Perhaps this was what had caused Hugh Evelyn-White to blow his brains out. I silently blessed the ancient fellow who invented the alphabet.
“Eve!” squawked Beauchamp. “It’s solid gold!”
I heard gasps all around me. I stepped up beside the rest to peer inside the sarcophagus, still conscious of the lid hanging precariously over my head. At first I was too dazzled to make out a thing, then I thought of my sunglasses and donned them. The whole thing slowly came into focus. All I could think of were Carter’s words, as reported in the Times, when he first set eyes on the interior of the tomb. Lord Carnarvon had asked him if he saw anything.
“It was all I could do to get out the words ‘Yes, wonderful things.’”
Under the photographer’s hot lights, it was almost blinding, even with dark glasses on.
I had thought he must have been an unusually tall pharaoh, since the sarcophagus was over seven feet long. But now I could see that there were actually one, two, no, three coffins, each set one within another, like Russian nesting dolls. Two were of gilt wood, but the innermost was indeed solid gold. The mummy’s body was blackened, covered in the pitch Carter had mentioned, down to his feet, which were sheathed in golden sandals. He was in fact about my height, or shorter. He was the boy king, after all.
His face and shoulders were covered by a mask, which . . . Well, you must have seen the mask in the papers, so you’ll understand how difficult it is to describe—the eyes of precious gems, the vulture and cobra sitting upon his forehead (the latter, I was told, poised to spit fire upon the pharaoh’s enemies), the full golden lips. I have read since that Carter describes it as having a “sad but tranquil expression.” He had neglected to mention that it was also a sight most unnerving, those large eyes staring up at you from centuries past, the oddly delicate, almost feminine features. I will never be quit of that unyielding golden face, nor the unasked question that seemed to hang upon his lips. It was a look of betrayal, such as I had witnessed on the faces of those whose last sight was their murderer’s face. Could Tut have been murdered? If so, his murderer would be three thousand years beyond justice by now.
I made the mistake of mentioning those feminine features out loud, and Lady Evelyn launched into a long diatribe, telling me he was only nineteen years old when he died, a virtual child, and then going on to tell me everything that was known about his wife, his mother, his father, and his father’s father. I kept expecting her to run out of steam. Several times Beauchamp interrupted, correcting her, which she did not appear to appreciate. She corrected him in turn, rather snappishly, and somewhere in there I drifted off. But I did notice out of the corner of my eye that Holmes had turned away from the coffin altogether and was meticulously scraping some sort of brown fungus off the wall and sealing it in an envelope, as if it were tobacco ash that he could analyze later to find out who’d murdered the boy pharaoh. I don’t know that he even looked at the mummy. I also noticed Mrs. Roberts was looking none too healthy, wrung out and breathing hard, and it just occurred to me that she was about to faint, when she burst out with “Get out!” so loud it stunned everyone in the chamber to silence, which embarrassed her. “I’m sorry, but I need silence to concentrate,” she crackled.
That brought Lady Evelyn’s lecture to a merciful halt.
“Concentrate on what?” asked Beauchamp in a disagreeable tone.
“The voices. Can’t you hear their tumult?”
It was quiet enough in that tomb that I could make out the breathing of seven separate souls. Nothing beyond that. Then Merton snapped a picture, and it sounded loud as an avalanche. Holmes glared at him.
“You wish us all to leave?” Holmes asked carefully.
“The nerve!” said Beauchamp. “We can’t just leave a stranger—”
“It’s why we’ve brought her here. Come, husband.” Lady Evelyn leaned against him, shifting him toward the exit. Husband yielded. Merton backed away. Holmes and I moved after them.
“Except Dr. Watson. If you’ll please stay.”
What could I do but accede to her request? Perhaps I felt a little flattered. She knew I could certainly hold my tongue with the best of them.
“Shall I stay by you also?” asked Miss van V. Mrs. Roberts shook her head. The Dutch girl left, looking disconsolate. The others cleared the chamber.
Now what? I awaited her instructions.
“Please stay silent. Don’t move, whatever you may see or hear,” she told me.
Since I didn’t expect to see or hear anything, compliance did not seem too terrible a boon to ask.
Mrs. Roberts herself stood perfectly still at the head of the sepulcher. She began mumbling to herself. She leaned over the mummy, pressing her hands upon its golden shoulders. Slowly she began rocking her head back and forth. Suddenly her head snapped back. I was startled to see the whites of her eyes.
“I can’t hold her,” she said, almost choking on the words.
She spoke again, but the voice was different, silken, with an accent. The voice I had first heard in the Aeolian Hall in London. Louise’s voice.
And this is what it said: “John Watson? John? Where is Sherlock? You swore to stay by him. He’s in danger! You swore!”
I was about to answer her, to comfort the mother, to reassure her. Then I remembered that Mrs. Roberts had sworn me to silence. But over and over, you swore, you swore—
I stepped back, distressed by her rebuke. I could feel the heat of the photographer’s lamps on the back of my neck and the sweat trickling down my spine. Then I heard an unearthly sound, like an oak being riven by lightning. Mrs. Roberts cried out, shuddering as though racked with pain. But she had abjured me from moving. I stumbled and reached out.
Then the smoke came. And the flames.
They shot up from cracks in the floor, fed by a hot subterranean wind. The heat singed my eyebrows. The golden face in the sepulcher started to melt, the eyes swimming to either side, lips stretching, mouth gaping. The smoke rose, obscuring my view of Mrs. Roberts. There were flames all about her. Her head was thrown back so far I thought her neck would snap, yet she did not move, as though she were in a death rictus. I took a step toward her, and she threw up an imperious hand: stay where you are!
My coat had caught fire. I wrestled it off, blinded by the smoke.
Then there was blackness. And bitter cold.
Another voice, this time as old as time, terrible in its thirst for vengeance: “He has stolen the true name.”
That was when I heard screaming. It wasn’t Mrs. Roberts’s voice. It wasn’t like any voice I had ever heard. I remember realizing with a start that my hands were burning, watching in horror as they blackened and popped and withered away before my eyes. The smell of burning flesh was revolting. I must have fainted, though I am ashamed to admit it.
