Lord of the Silent: A Novel of Suspense (16 page)

of your time." Lansing was young, still in his early twenties, and unmarried. He accompanied them to where they had left the horses and insisted on helping Nefret to mount. "You going to be here long?" he asked hopefully. "It would be swell to have you all back in Luxor." "There's not much chance of that this year," Ramses said. "But one never knows. We'll stay for a few weeks anyhow." "Come by any time." He stood by Nefret, his hand on the saddle, looking up at her. "And you must come to us one evening," Nefret said. "Both of you. We will decide on a time and let you know." "Any time," Lansing repeated. "Another victim," Ramses said, as they rode off, trailed by Jumana and Jamil. "Or two." "Now don't start behaving like Father. Not every man I meet falls in love with me." "Kuentz did, though. Didn't he?" He tried to speak lightly, but the attempt was not a success. Nefret glanced at him in surprise. "Darling, it was years ago! You were off on one of your solitary excursions, trying to avoid me, and he was . . . well, he was very attentive and rather attractive and ... I told you about him." "I'd forgotten until Lansing mentioned his name." "I told you about all of them," Nefret said. "Which is more than you've done. You know everything about my past affairs, if they can be called that, but you've never talked about yours, and I'd be willing to bet they were a lot more interesting than mine! There was that girl in Chicago, and Christabel Pankhurst, to mention only two, and I've always wondered what went on between you and Enid Fraser, and-" "Men don't discuss such things," Ramses said self-consciously. "It wouldn't be gentlemanly, would it?" "Are you trying to start a quarrel?" "I'm ready whenever you are!" She was absolutely right; he was in no position to criticize her past behavior, or even ask about it. He said so, adding, "We'll talk about it another time." "Ha," said Nefret. "Where are we going now?" "Deir el Medina. It's the first specific piece of information we've had. If one of the shifty beggars was digging there, Kuentz will be able to tell us where." When they reached the site of the workmen's village, there was no sign of life. The mud-brick walls of the simple houses stood in regular alignment. Only a small part of the site had been cleared. Perhaps Kuentz was investigating the tombs that lay in the slopes of a shallow bay near the ruins. Some of the entrances gaped open, black against the pale sandstone of the cliff. On the chance that the excavator was stretched out somewhere in the shade, taking a nap, Ramses called out. Initially there was no response. They were about to turn back when a voice hailed them, and a man came scrambling down the slope. He was wearing a galabeeyah and turban, and as he trotted toward them Ramses thought he looked familiar. "You are looking for the Mudir? He is not here. He left me to stand guard." Over what? Ramses wondered. The workmen's huts had yielded no treasures, only a few objects the former occupants had left, and the tombs were those of the workers themselves-relatively humble sepulchres, most of them robbed in antiquity. There had been one spectacular exception, that of the tomb of a royal architect, which an Italian expedition had discovered in 1906 with its grave goods intact, but another such find was highly unlikely. "Have thieves been at work here?" he asked. He remembered the man now; he had once worked for them at Drah Abu'l Naga. Like so many of the locals, who could not afford medical or dental care, he had aged rapidly, his face wrinkled, his beard graying. "No. But if they come, I will be ready for them!" He flexed stringy arms and bared decaying teeth in a threatening grimace. He had ignored Jumana, but when she began scribbling in her omnipresent notebook, he gave her an uneasy glance. "What is she writing?" he demanded. "I don't know," Ramses said truthfully. "Tell the Mudir we were here and will come again." "Do I ask questions now?" Jumana demanded. 'I have much to say." "I'm sure you do," Ramses said. "Nefret, are you ready for a rest?" Her hand shielding her eyes, she was scanning the slopes of the hills. "Perhaps it was one of the workmen's tombs the thief was clearing." "Lansing said it was behind the temple, but he may have been mistaken. Shall we have a look?" Jamil, who was carrying the water bottles, shifted the bag to his left shoulder. "It is a hard climb, and there is nothing to see," he announced. "The tombs are empty." "You've been in them, have you?" Ramses's tone was not accusatory. Jamil grinned and stroked his beloved mustache. "I and many others, Brother of Demons." "' 'Tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true,'" Ramses said. He didn't bother to translate; Shakespeare would be wasted on Jamil. He went on, addressing Nefret, "Weigall finally got round to installing gates over the most interesting of the tombs, but not before the reliefs had been damaged." The climb was not precipitous, but it was steep and long, involving a scramble up the loose stones at the base of the cliff, and by the time they reached the crumbled remains of a small mud-brick pyramid Ramses had had second thoughts. "This is wasted effort. I haven't seen any signs of recent disturbance, and we may not be in the right place." "Let's rest a bit before we go back." Nefret dropped gracefully into a sitting position, legs crossed, and beckoned to Jamil. "It's not a very thrilling site. All those poor little battered pyramids! Not even Mother would get excited about them. Where are the tombs of the Saite princesses?" "The what? Oh, those." Ramses handed Jumana one of the water bottles. "They weren't the ladies' original tombs." "Where were they buried, then?" "Medinet Habu. You can still see their chapels, or parts of them. The tombs themselves are empty. Two of the sarcophagi were dragged all the way over here and up the hill, by people who wanted to use them for their own burials." Seeing that Jumana was watching his mouth as if pearls of wisdom were about to fall from it, he sighed and prepared to do his pedagogical duty. "The princesses were the high priestesses of Amon at Thebes during the last dynasties. They had the titles of God's Wife of Amon and Adorers of the God-" "Adoratrixes," said Nefret, through a mouthful of bread. "Far be it from me to deny a lady her feminine ending," said Ramses, "but I find that title frightfully clumsy. Anyhow, the ladies were daughters or sisters of the pharaoh, sworn to celibacy-er- sworn to remain unmarried, for they were the brides of the god. Each of them adopted a successor, who was also a royal princess." "So they were very powerful and very veeery rich," murmured Jumana. "If they were not in their tombs at Medinet Habu or in their sarcophagi, where are they?" "A good question," Ramses admitted. "Three thousand years ago most of the royal tombs had been robbed and the mummies violated. The priests gathered up what was left and hid it in the royal cache at Deir el Bahri and in the tomb of Amenhotep the Second. But that happened five hundred years before the last of the God's Wives died and was buried at Medinet Habu." "So perhaps," said Jumana, her eyes shining, "their tombs were also robbed, later, and their bodies were moved to a secret hiding place like the one at Deir el Bahri." She was a sharp little thing, and the gleam in her dark eyes aroused what his mother would have called strong forebodings. He hoped he hadn't stimulated a hereditary interest in tomb hunting. Nefret was thinking the same thing; he heard her chuckle. He was glad she found it amusing. He had a horrible vision of Jumana scrambling over the hundreds of square acres of broken cliff on the west bank, looking for the "lost tomb of the princesses"-falling, breaking her leg, or fracturing her skull ... "That is what we call pure speculation," he said sternly. "It means we do not know. Scholars do not waste time looking for something that may not be there." "Where?" Jumana asked, not at all disconcerted by his minatory tone. "Anywhere! Didn't you understand what I said?" "He means you are not to go into the mountains alone," said Nefret, corking the bottle. "But we do it all the time! Don't we, Jamil?" She stretched out her leg and nudged Jamil with her foot. He glowered at her. "No. Not since we were children. You are not a child, you are a woman. Women do not climb the cliffs, they stay at home. Our father should have found you a husband before this. He will not allow-" "That's enough, Jamil," Nefret said. Jumana's eyes were bright with tears. She was a fine little actress, but Nefret thought her distress this time was genuine. She and her brother must have been good friends when they were young, before the conventional separation of the sexes and Jamil's masculine ego destroyed their closeness. They spent the rest of the day at the Ramesseum, climbing over fallen walls and columns and chatting with the local men who lay in wait for tourists. "Ramses the Great" was one of the few pharaohs known to most visitors, and the ruined colossus of that monarch was famous because of its association with Shelley's sonnet. "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies . . .'" Since the poet's time, the legs had been shattered too. As they passed the tourists gathered round the pieces, they heard a plumy voice declaiming the only phrase the average person seemed able to remember-Shelley's ironic commentary on the futility of human vanity:" 'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.'" The entire court was littered with statue fragments, bits of column and other debris; but the black granite head, which had been part of a smaller but even finer colossus of the king, was conspicuous by its absence. They hadn't expected to find any evidence of how the thieves had managed to remove it-tracks of feet, carts, or animals had been well trampled by now-and Ramses's attempts to question the "guards" were unsuccessful. Some melted quietly away when they saw what he was looking at; the ones he managed to corner expressed complete ignorance of the affair. They had all been somewhere else at the time. "Some of them must have been bribed to be elsewhere," Ramses said. "No doubt," Nefret agreed. "But they know we can't prove anything." She led the way into the Hypostyle Hall. "At least the reliefs appear to be untouched," she said. "Yes, I don't see any fresh gaps. Old Ramses was a combative bas-fellow, wasn't he?" The scene they saw showed the Egyptian forces attacking a city in Palestine. Mounted in his chariot, the pharaoh drove over the bodies of the slain, while his sons thrust and struck at a row of kneeling enemies. "Even Thutmose III didn't revel in fallen bodies so enthusiastically." "You're aching to copy them, aren't you?" Nefret asked. "I'd leave that to David. Ramses lost the damn-" Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jumana scribbling busily, and revised his comment. "He lost the battle, you know. All this is pure propaganda. Reminds one of the War Office, doesn't it?" "All war offices," Nefret murmured. "Down through the centuries." The back part of the temple was in ruinous condition. Nudged by Nefret, Ramses delivered another lecture. "The chapels dedicated to the king and various gods were the most remote and sacred parts of the temple, where only priests could go. In the morning the attendants would open the doors of the shrines, anoint the statues and dress them in fresh robes, and make offerings." "They put clothes on the statues?" Jumana asked incredulously. "Fine linen and royal linen, and ornaments of gold and precious stones. The offering vessels were also of the finest materials-or so we assume." He added, "The actual food was eaten by the priests, after the god had finished with it." Jamil was leaning against a fallen pillar, arms folded and eyes half closed. His ostentatious boredom inspired Ramses to continue. "The most important shrines were at Karnak and Luxor Temples, but the gods, especially Amon-Re, were represented in various other temples. He traveled around quite a lot, too; his statue was carried from Karnak to Luxor every year, and he also visited his sanctuary at Deir el Bahri. It must have been quite a thing to see: the barges on which he was carried shining with gold, the crowds of devoted worshipers lining the route." Jamil covered his mouth with his hand, presumably to hide a yawn. "Where shall we go tomorrow?" Jumana asked, as they retraced their steps. She was taking it for granted that she would make one of the party. He hadn't the heart to deny her, especially with Nefret watching him. "The West Valley, I think." "Mr. Carter won't like that," Nefret said. "I am not planning to steal his damned tomb, just see if there are any signs of recent activity." "Don't swear," Nefret said, in a fair imitation of his mother's voice. She laughed, and added, "You sounded alarmingly like the Professor." "Good Lord, did I? Unlike Father, who would like nothing better than an excuse to interfere with someone else's excavation, I meant precisely what I said. We'll head out that way tomorrow." When they reached the Amelia they turned the horses over to Jamil, and Ramses said, "What about a change of scene and cuisine tonight? Maaman's cooking is first-rate, but it's becoming a bit repetitive. We could have dinner at the Winter Palace or the Luxor and perhaps buy a newspaper. We've been out of touch for weeks." "Not tonight. Do you mind? I'm a little tired and we really ought to write a few letters." FROM LETTER COLLECTION T

Dear Mother and Father, I'm afraid we haven't much to report thus far, except the most important thing-Tetisheri is safe! Not even a bat got past those iron doors, though some idiot tourist-the same one who left his odd little cryptogram all over Amarna-risked his neck climbing up-or down-into the cleft. It was an eerie experience, to stand in the dark, empty burial chamber and remember all the excitement of that wonderful season. There's no place quite like Luxor, is there? We've spoken with M. Legrain and Mr. Lansing and a few others, but haven't learned anything of interest. However, I have acquired a protegee. I never had one before! She is Yusuf's daughter, a bright and beautiful little person who aspires to be an Egyptologist. Yusuf agreed to let her go with us when we visit the various sites. He thinks it's only a temporary arrangement, and I see no reason to inform him of my intentions until I see how she works out; but prepare yourself for piteous complaints from Luxor if and when I remove her from under the paternal roof. Her brother Jamil is our official escort. He's beautiful too, but not at all bright, and as vain as a peacock. There's no way of ridding ourselves of him without offending Yusuf though. That's about all the news, except that we are suffering from permanent indigestion! You know the family. It's getting late, so I must stop. Here's Ramses. Dear Mother and Father, Nefret has covered the main points. Nothing else to report as yet, but we will keep you informed. Sorry to hear about Bertie. I'm sure Mother will soon set him right. Your affectionate son, Ramses Dear Mother and Father, It's two o'clock in the morning. Ramses is sleeping-soundly, I hope-and I am crouched over the table in the saloon scribbling as fast as I can by candlelight and glancing guiltily over my shoulder at every sound. I am glad you warned me about finding that poor man's body, but please don't tell me anything else you don't want him to know; he kept asking to see your letter and I had to lie like a trooper to keep it from him. It makes me miserable to lie to him, and when I'm miserable I act like a shrew because I feel guilty, and he's so sweet and understanding and that makes me feel even guiltier! I'll slip this note into the envelope with my other letter before I post it. Fondest love, Nefret