The Ape Who Guards the Balance (14 page)

The morning after our arrival I tried once again to persuade Emerson to a more sensible course of action. My approach was, as always, subtle and oblique.

“Cyrus and Katherine Vandergelt have asked us to dine this evening,” I remarked, looking through the messages that had awaited us.

Emerson grunted. He had covered half the breakfast table with his notebooks and was looking through them. I removed one of them from his plate, wiped off the buttery crumbs, and tried again. “Cyrus is planning to excavate in the Asasif this year. I am sure he would appreciate assistance. His staff—”

“. . . is adequate for the purpose.” Emerson looked up, scowling spectacularly. “Are you at it again, Amelia? We will start work today on the tombs in that small side valley—if I can locate the sketch map I made last year. Ramses, have you been borrowing my notes again?”

Ramses swallowed—he had just filled his mouth with the last bite of his porridge—and shook his head. “No, Father. Not those notes. I took the liberty—”

“Never mind.” Emerson sighed. “I suppose you and David won’t be joining us.”

“As I told you, sir, we intend to begin copying the inscriptions at the Seti I temple. But if you want us . . .”

“No, no.” Another deep sigh expanded Emerson’s muscular chest. “Your publication on the Colonnade Hall of the Luxor Temple was a splendid piece of work. You must continue with your copying. A series of such volumes will make your reputations and be an invaluable record.”

“If the boys were to help us we would be done sooner,” I remarked.

“No, Peabody, I will not allow it. Ramses is right, you know.”

“Ramses right?” I exclaimed. “What about?”

“About the importance of preservation over excavation. As soon as a monument, a temple or a tomb, is uncovered, it begins to deteriorate. There will come a time, in the not too distant future, when the only remainders of vital historical data are copies like the ones the boys are making. What Ramses and David are doing is of greater value to Egyptology than the totality of my work.”

His voice was low and broken, his brow furrowed. He bowed his head.

“Good Gad, Emerson!” I cried in alarm. “I have never heard you speak like this. What is wrong with you?”

“I am waiting for someone to contradict me,” said Emerson in his normal tones.

After Emerson had enjoyed his little joke at our expense, he admitted his earlier announcement had also been in the nature of a jest.

“We need not begin work for another day or two. I would like to have a general look round the Valley before I decide where to begin. The rest of you may do as you like, of course.”

Not surprisingly, everyone decided that a visit to the Valley was precisely what would suit them. As was our habit, we followed the path that led up the cliffs behind Deir el Bahri and across the plateau. Emerson forged ahead, holding my hand, and the children fell behind. Nefret was encumbered with the cat, who had indicated a desire to accompany her. She treated him like a kitten, which he was not (by a good fifteen pounds), and he took ruthless advantage of her.

The slanting sunlight of early morning outlined rocks and ridges with blue-black shadows. In a few hours, when the sun was directly overhead, the barren ground would be bleached to pale cream. Blistering hot by day, bitter cold in the winter nights, the desert plateau would have been considered forbidding, even terrifying, by most people. To us it was one of the most exciting places on earth—and beautiful, in its own fashion. The only signs of life were the marks on the white dust of the path we followed: the footprints of bare and booted feet, the hoofprints of donkey and goat, the slithering curves that marked the passage of snakes. Some of the more energetic tourists came this way, but from the other direction, after visiting the Valley. The only persons we met were Egyptians, all of whom greeted us with the smiling courtesy of their race. The graceful (if tattered) folds of their dusty robes suited the scene.

As did my spouse. Striding briskly, tall form erect and face alight with anticipation, Emerson was in his natural element here, and his casual attire set off his muscular frame far better than the formal garments convention forced upon him in civilized regions. Bronzed throat and arms bared, black hair blowing in the breeze, he was a sight to thrill the heart of any female.

“You were joking, Emerson, weren’t you? I agree with you about the importance of copying the records, but what you are doing is a kind of preservation too. If you had not found Tetisheri’s tomb, those wonderful objects would have been stolen or destroyed.”

Emerson looked at me in surprise. Then his well-cut lips curved in a smile. “My darling Peabody, it is like you to be concerned, but quite unnecessary, I assure you. When have you ever known me to suffer from a d fi eciency of self-assurance?”

“Never,” I said, returning his smile.

“I am the most fortunate of men, Peabody.”

“Yes, my dear. What do a few boring tombs matter? We are here, where we love to be, with those we love best.” I looked back over my shoulder. “What a handsome trio they are, to be sure, and how friendly with one another! I always said, Emerson, that they would turn out well.”

       
(vii)
    
From Manuscript H

Nefret was lecturing again. “You said we would tell them after we left Cairo. Then you put it off until we reached Luxor. What are we waiting for? I agree with David, if we’re going to be scolded—”

“There’s no
if
about it,” Ramses said dourly.

“Then let’s get it over with! Anticipation is always worse than actuality.”

“Not always.”

“It is for me. When I looked in the mirror this morning I found two new wrinkles! Haven’t you noticed how pale and drawn I have become?”

Ramses looked down at the golden head near his shoulder. She was absolutely irresistible when she was in this mood, stamping along like a sulky child and scolding him in a voice that always held an undercurrent of laughter.

“No, I hadn’t noticed,” he said.

“You wouldn’t. I know what it is. You want to prove to the Professor and Aunt Amelia that you can handle a mess like this one with no help from them. You don’t want to show them the papyrus until you can tell them where it came from and hand over the thief, dead or alive—”

He was sure he had not reacted except by a slight break in his stride, but Nefret caught herself with a gasp and turned her head to look up into his face.

“I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I thought you’d got over it.”

“Over what?”

He began walking faster. She broke into a trot, keeping pace with him. “Damn it, Ramses—”

“And don’t swear. Mother doesn’t like it.”

Nefret stopped. “Hell and damnation!” she shouted.

“Now she’s looking back,” Ramses said apprehensively. “And Father is glowering at me over his shoulder. Could you please stop yelling and try to look pleasant before you get me in serious trouble?”

Nefret gave him a calculating look. Then she threw her head back and let out a piercing soprano peal of laughter. It rose to an even more piercing shriek as Horus stuck all his claws into her. He didn’t like people to yell in his ear.

“And put the damned cat down!” Ramses’s fingers itched with the urge to remove the beast from her arms and find out whether a cat always lands on its feet when it is dropped from a height. He knew better than to try it, though. “You can’t carry him all the way to the Valley, he weighs almost twenty pounds.”

“Would you . . .” Nefret began.

“I would gladly die to please you, but I draw the line at carrying that lazy carnivore.”

Nefret glanced at David, who was staring fixedly at the horizon. He didn’t care for Horus either. With a martyred sigh, she lowered Horus gently to the ground. The cat gave Ramses a malevolent look. He knew who was responsible for this indignity, but he had discovered early on that heavy boots were impervious to teeth and claws.

They went on, with the cat stalking after them. Ramses knew Nefret was angry with herself for probing that old wound, and with him for refusing to talk about it. No doubt she was right, it would have been better to get his feelings out into the open and accept the consolation she was aching to offer; but reticence was an old habit that was hard for him to overcome. A damned annoying habit too, he supposed, to Nefret, who never left anyone in doubt as to how she felt about anything. A little moderation wouldn’t do either of them any harm.

She hadn’t meant to upset him. How could she have known it would hurt so much, when he himself had been caught unawares? He seldom thought about that ugly business now, except on the rare occasions when a bad dream brought back every grisly detail of the desperate struggle in the dark and its unspeakable ending—the sound of bone and brain spattering against stone.

She remained silent, her face averted, and Ramses took up the conversation at the point it had reached before her unwitting blunder.

“I admit I wouldn’t mind showing off a bit, but there’s not much hope of our succeeding. We’re working in the dark, and in part it’s because Mother and Father still treat us like helpless infants who require to be protected—especially you, Nefret.”

Ramses kicked a stone. It missed Horus by a good two feet, but the cat howled and rolled over onto his back. Nefret picked him up, cuddled him, and crooned endearments. Ramses scowled at Horus, who sneered back at him over Nefret’s shoulder. One way or another Horus would get what he wanted.

They were approaching the end of the path and the steep descent from the plateau into the eastern Valley. Nefret’s shoulders sagged, probably from the dead weight of Horus, since she sounded quite her old self when she spoke.

“You’re right about that, and I intend to take steps to change it. I adore both of them, but they do infuriate me at times! How can they expect us to take them into our confidence when they won’t tell us what we need to know?”

:

T
he path leading down into the Valley is steep but not difficult if one is in fit condition, which all of us were. I persuaded Nefret to put the cat down and put her hat on. Horus complained, but even Nefret had better sense than to attempt the descent with her arms full of cat. The tourists were out in full force; this was the height of the season and the tombs closed at oneP.M. Some of them stared impertinently at our party, especially at Horus. Emerson scowled.

“It gets worse every year,” he grumbled. “They are all over the place, buzzing like flies. Impossible to find a spot remote enough where one can work in peace without being gaped at and subjected to impertinent questions.”

“The side wadi where we worked last year is relatively remote,” I reminded him. “We were not often interrupted by tourists.”

“That is because we were not finding anything that was worth a damn,” said Emerson. Tourists always put him in an evil humor. Without further ado or further comment, he stamped off along the cleared path that led, not to the rocky ravine I had mentioned, but toward the main entrance to the Valley and the donkey park.

“Where is he going?” Nefret asked.

I knew the answer, and—of course—so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me. “He wants to have a look at numbers Three, Four and Five. He has not given up hope of being allowed to excavate them, especially number Five.”

Not even I can claim to be able to identify all the tombs in the Valley by number, but all of us knew these particular tombs. We had heard Emerson rant about them only too often. All had been known to earlier archaeologists; none had been properly cleared or recorded; no one particularly wanted to clear them; but the terms of Emerson’s firman did not permitHIM to investigate them, because they were considered to be royal tombs. Cartouches of Ramses III had been noted in number Three, though that monarch had actually been buried in another, far more elaborate, tomb elsewhere in the Valley. Number Four, attributed to Ramses XI, had been used as a stable by Christian Arabs and was assumed to have been thoroughly ransacked. The name of Ramses II had been seen in number Five, but he also had a tomb elsewhere, and attempts to investigate this tomb—the latest by our friend Howard Carter five years earlier—had been frustrated by the hard-packed rubble that filled the chambers.

Emerson would have been the first to admit that the possibility of discovering anything of unusual interest was slight, but it infuriated him to be prevented from making the attempt because of an arbitrary, unfair decree. The firman granting permission to look for new tombs in the Valley of the Kings was held by Mr. Theodore Davis and it was strictly enforced, not only by M. Maspero, but by the local inspector, Mr. Arthur Weigall.

“We had better catch him up,” I said uneasily. “If he should encounter Mr. Weigall he is sure to say something rude.”

“Or do something rude,” said Nefret with a grin. “The last time he met Mr. Weigall he threatened to—”

“Hurry,” I begged.

Most of the tourists were going in the opposite direction from ours, so our progress was slower than I would have liked. I had to agree with Emerson’s assessment; in general they were a silly-looking lot, unsuitably attired and vacantly gaping. The men had the advantage, since they were unencumbered by high-heeled shoes and corsets. Men and women alike stared at Nefret, who strode as easily as a slender boy in her sensible boots and trousers. At my insistence she wore a coat, but her shirt was open at the neck and golden-red locks had escaped from her pith helmet and curled round her face. She paid no heed to the impertinent stares—critical on the part of the women, quite otherwise on the part of the gentlemen.

As I had expected, we found Emerson planted firmly in front of tomb number Five. Only those tombs containing painted reliefs had been provided with locked gates. The barrier that prevented entrance to this one was equally effective—heaped-up rubble and miscellaneous trash that concealed all but the outline of a door.

I was sorry to see that my premonition had been accurate. Facing Emerson, his back to the tomb, was a young man wearing a neat tweed suit and a very large pith helmet—Mr. Weigall, who now held our friend Howard’s former position of Inspector for Upper Egypt. Neither their postures nor their expressions were combative, and I was about to dismiss my forebodings when Emerson swung his arm and struck Mr. Weigall full in the chest. Weigall toppled over backwards, into the half-filled opening.