Amelia Peabody Omnibus 1-4 (15 page)

‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘No doubt you are right. Then I will supervise the workers tomorrow and see what I can ascertain. What are you digging up at present, Walter?’

The conversation became technical. Evelyn showed us the progress of her drawing; this time Emerson unbent far enough to mutter, ‘Not at all bad,’ and suggest that Evelyn might copy some of the tomb reliefs when she had finished the pavement.

‘A trained artist would be a godsend on expeditions like this,’ he exclaimed, his eyes flashing with enthusiasm. ‘We cannot save all the relics; we are like the boy with his finger in the dyke. But if we had copies of them before they are destroyed …’

‘l would like to learn something of the hieroglyphic signs,’ Evelyn said. ‘I could copy them more accurately if I knew what they meant. For example, there seem to be a dozen different kinds of birds, and I gather each has a different meaning. When the inscriptions are worn it is not always possible to see what the original form was; but if one knew a little of the language …’

Emerson beetled his eyebrows at her, but it was clear that he was impressed; before long he was drawing birds on his napkin and Evelyn was attempting to copy them. I looked at Walter. His ingenuous face was luminous with pleasure as he watched his admired brother and the girl he loved. Yes, he loved her; there could be no question of that. She loved him too. And at the first declaration from him, she would ruthlessly destroy their happiness because of a convention that seemed more absurd the more I considered it. Knowing what was in store, my heart ached at the sight of Walter’s face.

We sat late on our little balcony that night, watching the afterglow fade and the stars blaze out; even Emerson was companionably silent under the sweet influence of the scene. Perhaps we all had a premonition of what was to I come; perhaps we knew that this was our last peaceful evening.

I was brushing my hair next morning when I heard the hubbub below. Within a few minutes Walter came running up the path and shouted for me. I went out, fearing some disaster; but his expression was one of excitement rather than alarm.

‘The men have made a discovery,’ he began. ‘Not in the ruins of the city – up in the cliffs. A tomb!’

‘Is that all? Good Gad, the place is overfurnished with tombs as it is.’

Walter was genuinely excited, but I noticed that his eyes strayed past me to where Evelyn stood before the mirror, listening as she tied a ribbon round her hair.

‘But this one has an occupant! All the other tombs were empty when we found them – robbed and rifled in antiquity. No doubt this new tomb has also been robbed of the gold and jewels it once contained, but there is a mummy, a veritable mummy. What is even more important, Miss Peabody, is that the villagers came to me with the news instead of robbing the tomb. That shows, does it not, that the fancies I expressed last evening were only fancies. The men must trust us, or they would not come to us.’

‘They trust Mr Emerson because he pays them full value for every valuable object they find,’ I said, hastily bundling my hair into its net. ‘They have no reason to resort to antiquities dealers under those conditions.’

‘What does it matter?’ Walter was fairly dancing with impatience. ‘I am off, I cannot wait to see, but I thought you might like to accompany me. I fear the trail will be rough …’

‘I fear so, too,’ I said grimly. ‘I must apply myself to the question of appropriate costume. My rationals are an improvement on skirts, but they do not go far enough. Do you think, Evelyn, that we could fashion some trousers out of a skirt or two?’

The trail
was
rough, but I managed it. A few of the villagers accompanied us. As we walked, Walter explained that the tombs we were inhabiting were known as the Southern Tombs. Another group of ancient sepulchres lay to the north, and were, logically enough, referred to as the Northern Tombs. The newly discovered tomb was one of this group.

After several long miles I finally saw a now-familiar square opening in the cliffs above us, and then another beyond the first. We had reached the Northern Tombs, and a scramble up a steep slope of detritus soon brought us to the entrance to the new tomb.

Walter was a different man. The gentle boy had been supplanted by the trained scholar. Briskly he gave orders for torches and ropes. Then he turned to me.

‘I have explored these places before. I don’t recommend that you come with me, unless you are fond of bats in your hair and a great deal of dust.’

‘Lead on,’ I said, tying a rope in a neat half-hitch around my waist.

I had Walter thoroughly under control by then. He would not have argued with me if I had proposed jumping off a pyramid.

I had been in a number of ancient tombs, but all had been cleared for visitors. I was somewhat surprised to find that this one was almost as clear, and far less difficult than Walter had feared. There was a good deal of loose rubble underfoot, and at one point we had to cross a deep pit, which had been dug to discourage tomb robbers. The villagers had bridged it with a flimsy-looking plank. Other than that, the going was not at all bad.

Walter too was struck by the relative tidiness. He threw a comment over his shoulder.

‘The place is too well cleared, Miss Peabody. I suspect it has been robbed over and over again; we will find nothing of interest here.’

The corridor ended, after a short distance, in a small chamber cut out of the rock. In the centre of the room stood a rough wooden coffin. Lifting his torch, Walter looked into it.

‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ he said, misinterpreting my expression. ‘The wrappings are still in place; will you look?’

‘Naturally,’ I said.

I had seen mummies before, of course, in museums. At first glance this had nothing to distinguish it from any other mummy. The brown, crumbling bandages had been wrapped in intricate patterns, rather like weaving. The featureless head, the shape of the arms folded across the breast, the stiff, extended limbs – yes, it was like the other mummies I had seen, but I had never seen them in their natural habitat, so to speak. In the musty, airless chamber, lighted only by dimly flaring torches, the motionless form had a grisly majesty. I wondered who he – or she – had been: a prince, a priestess, the young mother of a family, or an aged grandfather? What thoughts had lived in the withered brain – what emotions had brought tears to the shrivelled eyes or smiles to the fleshless lips? And the soul – did it live on, in the golden grain fields of Amenti, as the priests had promised the righteous worshipper, as we look forward to everlasting life with the Redeemer these people never knew?

Walter did not appear to be absorbed in pious meditation. He was scowling as he stared down at the occupant of the coffin. Then he turned, holding the torch high as he inspected the walls of the chamber. They were covered with inscriptions and with the same sort of reliefs to which I had become accustomed in the Southern Tombs. All centred on the majestic figure of pharaoh, sometimes alone, but usually with his queen and his six little daughters. Above, the god Aten, shown as the round disc of the sun, embraced the king with long rays that ended in tiny human hands.

‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Will you excavate here, or will you remove the poor fellow from his coffin and unwrap him in more comfortable surroundings?’

For a moment Walter looked unnervingly like his shaven brother as he tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip.

‘If we leave him here, some enterprising burglar will rend him apart in the hope of finding ornaments such as were sometimes wrapped in the bandages. But I don’t hope for much, Miss Peabody. Some tombs were used for later burials, by poor people who could not build tombs of their own. This looks to me like just such a late mummy, much later than the period in which we are interested, and too poor to own any valuable ornaments.’

He handed his torch to one of the villagers and spoke to the man in Arabic – repeating the comment, I assumed. The man burst into animated speech, shaking his head till the folds of his turban fluttered.

‘Mohammed says our mummy is not a commoner,’ Walter explained, smiling at me. ‘He is a prince – a princely magician, no less.’

‘How does he know that?’

‘He doesn’t. Even if Mohammed could read the hieroglyphs, which he cannot, there is no inscription on the coffin to give the mummy’s name. He is only trying to increase the backsheesh I owe him for this find.’

So Mohammed was the discoverer of this tomb. I studied the man with interest. He looked like all the other villagers – thin, wiry, epicene, his sunbaked skin making him look considerably older than his probable age. The life span in these villages is not high. Mohammed was probably no more than thirty, but poverty and ill health had given him the face of an old man.

Seeing my eye upon him he looked at me and grinned ingratiatingly.

‘Yes,’ Walter said thoughtfully. ‘We must take our anonymous friend along. Radcliffe can unwrap him; it will give him something to do.’

Emerson was delighted with the find; he fell on the mummy with mumbled exclamations, so after making sure his temperature and pulse were normal, I left him to his ghoulish work. When he joined us on the ledge that evening, however, he was vociferously disappointed.

‘Graeco-Egyptian,’ he grumbled, stretching his long legs out. ‘I suspected as much when I saw the pattern of the wrappings. Yes, yes; the signs are unmistakable. I am familiar with them from my own research; no one has done any work on this problem, although a chronological sequence could be worked out if one – ’

‘My dear fellow, we are all of us familiar with your views on the deplorable state of archaeology in Egypt,’ Walter broke in, with a laugh. ‘But you are wrong about the mummy. Mohammed swears it is that of a princely magician, a priest of Amon, who placed a curse on this heretical city.’

‘Mohammed is a scurvy trickster who wants more money,’ growled Emerson. ‘How does he know about heretics and priests of Amon?’

‘There is another project for you,’ Walter said. ‘Investigating the traditions and folk memories of these people.’

‘Well, his folk memory is wrong in this case. The poor chap whose wrappings I removed this afternoon was no priest. It frankly puzzles me to find him here at all. The city was abandoned after Khuenaten’s death, and I did not think there was a settlement here in Ptolemaic times. These present villages did not occupy the site until the present century.’

‘I doubt that the tomb was used by the official who had it built,’ Walter said. ‘The reliefs in the corridor were not finished.’

‘What have you done with our friend?’ I asked. ‘I hope you are not planning to make him the third occupant of your sleeping dormitory; I don’t think he can be healthy.’

Emerson burst into an unexpected shout of laughter.

‘Being dead is the ultimate of unhealthiness, I suppose. Never fear; the mummy is resting in a cave at the bottom of the path. I only wish I could account for his original position as easily.’

‘I might have a look at the tomb in the morning,’ I said. ‘That would leave the afternoon for working on the pavement – ’

‘And what do you expect to find?’ Emerson’s voice rose. ‘Good God, madam, you seem to think you are a trained archaeologist! Do you think you can walk in here and – ’

Walter and Evelyn broke in simultaneously in an attempt to change the subject. They succeeded for the moment, but Emerson was sulky and snappish for the rest of the evening. When I tried to feel his forehead to see if he had developed a temperature, he stalked off to his tomb, fairly radiating grumpiness.

‘Don’t mind him, Miss Peabody,’ Walter said, when he was out of earshot. ‘He is still not himself, and enforced inactivity infuriates a man of his energy.’

‘He is not himself,’ I agreed. ‘In normal health he is even louder and more quarrelsome.’

‘We are all a little on edge,’ Evelyn said in a low voice. ‘I don’t know why I should be; but I feel nervous.’

‘If that is the case we had better go to bed,’ I said, rising. ‘Some sleep will settle your mind, Evelyn.’

Little did I know that the night was to bring, not a cure for troubled minds, but the beginning of greater trouble.

It is a recognized fact that sleepers train themselves to respond only to unfamiliar noises. A zoo keeper slumbers placidly through the normal nightly roars of his charges, but the squeak of a mouse in his tidy kitchen can bring him awake in an instant. I had accustomed my sleeping mind to the sounds of Amarna. They were few indeed; it was one of the most silent spots on earth, I think. Only the far-off ululation of an occasional love-sick jackal disturbed the silence. So, on this particular night, it was not surprising that the sound at the door of our tomb, slight though it was, should bring me upright, with my heart pounding.

Light penetrated cracks in the curtain, but I could see nothing without. The sound continued. It was the oddest noise – a faint, dry scratching, like the rubbing of a bony object on rock.

Once my pulse had calmed, I thought of explanations. Someone on the ledge outside the tomb – Michael, keeping watch, or Walter, sleepless outside his lady’s chamber? Somehow my nerves were not convinced by either idea. In any case, the sound was keeping me awake. I fumbled for my parasol.

The frequent mention of this apparatus may provoke mirth in the reader. I assure her (or him, as the case may be) that I was not intending to be picturesque. It was a very sturdy parasol, with a stiff iron staff, and I had chosen it deliberately for its strength.

Holding it, then, in readiness for a possible act of violence, I called softly, ‘Who is there?’

There was no response. The scratching sound stopped. It was followed, after a moment or two, by another sound, which rapidly died away, as if someone, or something, had beaten a hasty but quiet retreat.

I leaped from bed and ran to the doorway. I confess that I hesitated before drawing back the curtain. A parasol, even one of steel, would not be much use against a feral animal. The scratching sound might well have been produced by claws; and although I had been told that there were no longer any lions in Egypt, they had abounded in ancient times, and an isolated specimen might have survived in the desolate region. As I stood listening with all my might I heard another sound, like a rock or pebble rolling. It was quite a distance away. Thus reassured, I drew back the curtain and, after a cautious glance without, stepped onto the ledge.