Amelia Peabody Omnibus 1-4 (39 page)

But I perceive, with surprise, that I am becoming angry all over again. How foolish, and what a waste of time! Let me say no more – except to admit that I derived an unworthy satisfaction in beholding Lady Carrington’s ill-concealed envy of the neatness of the room, the excellence of the food, and the smart efficiency with which butler, footman, and parlourmaid served us. Rose, my parlourmaid, is always efficient, but on this occasion she outdid herself. Her apron was so starched it could have stood by itself, her cap ribbons fairly snapped as she moved. I recalled having heard that Lady Carrington had a hard time keeping servants because of her parsimony and vicious tongue. Rose’s younger sister had been employed by her… briefly.

Except for that minor triumph, for which I can claim no credit, the meeting was an unmitigated bore. The other ladies whom I had invited, in order to conceal my true motives, were all followers of Lady Carrington; they did nothing but titter and nod at her idiotic remarks. An hour passed with stupefying slowness. It was clear that my mission was doomed to failure; Lady Carrington would do nothing to accommodate me. I was beginning to wonder what would happen if I simply rose and left the room, when an interruption occurred to save me from that expedient.

I had – I fondly believed – convinced Ramses to remain quietly in the nursery that afternoon. I had accomplished this by bribery and corruption, promising him a visit to the sweetshop in the village on the following day. Ramses could consume enormous quantities of sweets without the slightest inconvenience to his appetite or digestive apparatus. Unfortunately his desire for sweets was not as strong as his lust for learning – or mud, as the case may be. As I watched Lady Carrington devour the last of the frosted cakes I heard stifled outcries from the hall. They were followed by a crash – my favourite Ming vase, as I later learned. Then the drawing-room doors burst open and a dripping, muddy, miniature scarecrow rushed in.

It cannot be said that the child’s feet left muddy prints. No; an unbroken stream of liquid filth marked his path, pouring from his person, his garments, and the unspeakable object he was flourishing. He slid to a stop before me and deposited this object in my lap. The stench that arose from it made its origin only too clear. Ramses had been rooting in the compost heap again.

I am actually rather fond of my son. Without displaying the fatuous adoration characteristic of his father, I may say that I have a certain affection for the boy. At that moment I wanted to take the little monster by the collar and shake him until his face turned blue.

Constrained, by the presence of the ladies, from this natural maternal impulse, I said quietly, ‘Ramses, take the bone from Mama’s good frock and return it to the compost heap.’

Ramses put his head on one side and studied his bone with a thoughtful frown. ‘I fink,’ he said, ‘it is a femuw. A femuw of a winocowus.’

‘There are no rhinoceroses in England,’ I pointed out.

‘A a-stinct winocowus,’ said Ramses.

A peculiar wheezing sound from the direction of the doorway made me look in that direction in time to see Wilkins clap his hands to his mouth and turn suddenly away. Wilkins is a most dignified man, a butler among butlers, but I had once or twice observed that there were traces of a sense of humour beneath his stately exterior. On this occasion I was forced to share his amusement.

‘The word is not ill chosen,’ I said, pinching my nostrils together with my fingers, and wondering how I could remove the boy without further damage to my drawing room. Summoning a footman to take him away was out of the question; he was an agile child, and his coating of mud made him as slippery as a frog. In his efforts to elude pursuit he would leave tracks across the carpet, the furniture, the walls, the ladies’ frocks….

‘A splendid bone,’ I said, without even trying to resist the temptation. ‘You must wash it before you show it to Papa. But first, perhaps Lady Carrington would like to see it.’

With a sweeping gesture, I indicated the lady.

If she had not been so stupid, she might have thought of a way of diverting Ramses. If she had not been so fat, she might have moved out of the way. As it was, all she could do was billow and shriek and sputter. Her efforts to dislodge the nasty thing (it was very nasty, I must admit) were in vain; it lodged in a fold of her voluminous skirt and stayed there.

Ramses was highly affronted at this unappreciative reception of his treasure.

‘You will dwop it and bweak it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Give it back to me.’

In his efforts to retrieve the bone he dragged it across several more square yards of Lady Carrington’s enormous lap. Clutching it to his small bosom, he gave her a look of hurt reproach before trotting out of the room.

I will draw a veil over the events that followed. I derive an unworthy satisfaction from the memory, even now; it is not proper to encourage such thoughts.

I stood by the window watching the carriages splash away and humming quietly to myself while Rose dealt with the tea-things and the trail of mud left by Ramses.

‘You had better bring fresh tea, Rose,’ I said. ‘Professor Emerson will be here shortly.’

‘Yes, madam. I hope, madam, that all was satisfactory.’

‘Oh, yes indeed. It could not have been more satisfactory.’

‘I am glad to hear it, madam.’

‘I am sure you are. Now, Rose, you are not to give Master Ramses any extra treats.’

‘Certainly not, madam.’ Rose looked shocked.

I meant to change my frock before Emerson got home, but he was early that evening. As usual, he carried an armful of books and papers, which he flung helter-skelter onto the sofa. Turning to the fire, he rubbed his hands briskly together.

‘Frightful climate,’ he grumbled. ‘Wretched day. Why are you wearing that hideous dress?’

Emerson has never learned to wipe his feet at the door. I looked at the prints his boots had left on the freshly cleaned floor. Then I looked at him, and the reproaches I had meant to utter died on my lips.

He had not changed physically in the years since we were wed. His hair was as thick and black and unruly as ever, his shoulders as broad, his body as straight. When I had first met him, he had worn a beard. He was now clean-shaven, at my request, and this was a considerable concession on his part, for Emerson particularly dislikes the deep cleft, or dimple, in his prominent chin. I myself approve of this little flaw; it is the only whimsical touch in an otherwise forbiddingly rugged physiognomy.

On that day his looks, manners, and speech were as usual. Yet there was something in his eyes…. I had seen the look before; it was more noticeable now. So I said nothing about his muddy feet.

‘I entertained Lady Carrington this afternoon,’ I said in answer to his question. ‘Hence the dress. Have you had a pleasant day?’

‘No.’

‘Neither have I.’

‘Serves you right,’ said my husband. ‘I told you not to do it. Where the devil is Rose? I want my tea.’

Rose duly appeared, with the tea tray. I meditated, sadly, on the tragedy of Emerson, querulously demanding tea and complaining about the weather, like any ordinary Englishman. As soon as the door had closed behind the parlourmaid, Emerson came to me and took me in his arms.

After an interval he held me out at arm’s length and looked at me questioningly. His nose wrinkled.

I was about to explain the smell when he said, in a low, hoarse voice, ‘You are particularly attractive tonight, Peabody, in spite of that frightful frock. Don’t you want to change? I will go up with you, and – ’

‘What is the matter with you?’ I demanded, as he… Never mind what he did, it prevented him from speaking and made it rather difficult for me to speak evenly. ‘I certainly don’t feel attractive, and I smell like mouldy bone. Ramses has been excavating in the compost heap again.’

‘Mmmm,’ said Emerson. ‘My darling Peabody…’

Peabody is my maiden name. When Emerson and I first met, we did not hit it off. He took to calling me Peabody, as he would have addressed another man, as a sign of annoyance. It had now become a sign of something else, recalling those first wonderful days of our acquaintance when we had bickered and sneered at one another.

Yielding with pleasure to his embraces, I nevertheless felt sad, for I knew why he was so demonstrative. The smell of Ramses’ bone had taken him back to our romantic courtship, in the unsanitary tombs of El Amarna.

I left off feeling sad before long and was about to accede to his request that we adjourn to our room, but we had delayed too long. The evening routine was set and established; we were always given a decent interval alone after Emerson arrived, then Ramses was permitted to come in to greet his papa and take tea with us. On that evening the child was anxious to show off his bone, so perhaps he came early, It certainly seemed too early to me, and even Emerson, his arm still around my waist, greeted the boy with less than his usual enthusiasm.

A pretty domestic scene ensued. Emerson took his son, and the bone, onto his knee, and I seated myself behind the teapot. After dispensing a cup of the genial beverage to my husband and a handful of cakes to my son, I reached for the newspapers, while Emerson and Ramses argued about the bone. It
was
a femur – Ramses was uncannily accurate about such things – but Emerson claimed that the bone had once belonged to a horse. Ramses differed. Rhinoceroses having been eliminated, he suggested a dragon or a giraffe.

The newspaper story for which I searched was no longer on the front page, though it had occupied this position for some time. I think I can do no better than relate what I then knew of the case, as if I were beginning a work of fiction; for indeed, if the story had not appeared in the respectable pages of the
Times,
I would have thought it one of the ingenious inventions of Herr Ebers or Mr Rider Haggard – to whose romances, I must confess, I was addicted. Therefore, be patient, dear reader, if we begin with a sober narrative of facts. They are necessary to your understanding of later developments; and I promise you we will have sensations enough in due course.

Lord Henry Baskerville (of the Norfolk Baskervilles, not the Devonshire branch of the family), having suffered a severe illness, had been advised by his physician to spend a winter in the salubrious climate of Egypt. Neither the excellent man of medicine nor his wealthy patient could have anticipated the far-reaching consequences of this advice; for Lord Baskerville’s first glimpse of the majestic features of the Sphinx inspired in his bosom a passionate interest in Egyptian antiquities, which was to rule him for the remainder of his life.

After excavating at Abydos and Denderah, Lord Baskerville finally obtained a firman to excavate in what is perhaps the most romantic of all Egyptian archaeological sites – the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Here the god-kings of imperial Egypt were laid to rest with the pomp and majesty befitting their high estate. Their mummies enclosed in golden coffins and adorned with jewel-encrusted amulets, they hoped in the secrecy of their rock-cut tombs, deep in the bowels of the Theban hills, to escape the dreadful fate that had befallen their ancestors. For by the time of the Empire the pyramids of earlier rulers already gaped open and desolate, the royal bodies destroyed and their treasures dispersed. Alas for human vanity! The mighty pharaohs of the later period were no more immune to the depredations of tomb robbers than their ancestors had been. Every royal tomb found in the Valley had been despoiled. Treasures, jewels, and kingly mummies had vanished. It was assumed that the ancient tomb robbers had destroyed what they could not steal, until that astonishing day in July of 1881, when a group of modern thieves led Emil Brugsch, of the Cairo Museum, to a remote valley in the Theban mountains. The thieves, men from the village of Gurneh, had discovered what archaeologists had missed – the last resting place of Egypt’s mightiest kings, queens, and royal children, hidden away in the days of the nation’s decline by a group of loyal priests.

Not all the kings of the Empire were found in the thieves’ cache, nor had all their tombs been identified. Lord Baskerville believed that the barren cliffs of the Valley still hid kingly tombs – even, perhaps, a tomb that had never been robbed. One frustration followed another, but he never abandoned his quest. Determined to dedicate his life to it, he built a house on the West Bank, half winter home, half working quarters for his archaeological staff. To this lovely spot he brought his bride, a beautiful young woman who had nursed him through a bout of pneumonia brought on by his return to England’s damp spring climate.

The story of this romantic courtship and marriage, with its Cinderella aspect – for the new Lady Baskerville was a young lady of no fortune and insignificant family – had been prominently featured in the newspapers at the time. This event occurred before my own interest in Egypt developed, but naturally I had heard of Lord Baskerville; his name was known to every Egyptologist. Emerson had nothing good to say about him, but then Emerson did not approve of any other archaeologists, amateur or professional. In accusing Lord Baskerville of being an amateur he did the gentleman less than justice, for his lordship never attempted to direct the excavations; he always employed a professional scholar for that work.

In September of this year Lord Baskerville had gone to Luxor as usual, accompanied by Lady Baskerville and Mr Alan Armadale, the archaeologist in charge. Their purpose during this season was to begin work on an area in the centre of the Valley, near the tombs of Ramses II and Merenptah, which had been cleared by Lepsius in 1844. Lord Baskerville thought that the rubbish dumps thrown up by that expedition had perhaps covered the hidden entrances to other tombs. It was his intention to clear the ground down to bedrock to make sure nothing had been overlooked. And indeed, scarcely had the men been at work for three days when their spades uncovered the first of a series of steps cut into the rock.

(Are you yawning, gentle reader? If you are, it is because you know nothing of archaeology. Rock-cut steps in the Valley of the Kings could signify only one thing – the entrance to a tomb.)