The Sleeper in the Sands (14 page)
My consideration of these mysteries, however, was suddenly interrupted again by a scuffling, very faint but unmistakable now. I swung round and this time, in the beam of my torch, I caught the silhouette of a human form. It stood frozen a moment in the doorway to the hall, and although I could not make out the man’s features I knew at once who he was, for I could see the glittering of his eyes, and I remembered them from Saqqara and the Valley of the Kings. ‘Stop!’ I cried out; but the man was already running down the stairs. ‘Stop!’ I called again, starting to pursue him and hoping that some of the guards would hear me. But by the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs, all was silent again; and though I searched with my torch, I knew I would never find my quarry, for in a place as vast and cluttered as the museum, there were an infinity of places where a man might hide himself. Indeed, I doubted he would even still be lurking in the place. Where might he have gone to, then? Where might such a man have his secret base?
I left for the mosque of al-Hakim at once. My cab made good speed at first, for it was by now very late and the streets of Cairo, although they are never empty, were not as crowded as they might have been. As we drew nearer to the mosque, however, I could sense my driver’s mounting unease until at length, while we were still some streets from our destination, he pulled in his horse and refused to go further; nor could all my exhortations or inducements serve to change his mind. In a fury, I gave up on him at last and continued on foot, for I knew, in truth, that it was not too far to the mosque. But although I had thought that I recognised the way, I soon found myself lost. The streets seemed to wind and double back upon themselves, like a maze in a nightmare which never comes to an end, and by the time I stumbled upon the mosque at last, I knew it was too late -- I would never be able to surprise my man now. Nevertheless, I climbed the stairway of the minaret and, reaching the door, cried out for it to be opened. But there was only silence; and the door remained shut. I ran back down to the courtyard of the mosque. It was bleached a sickly white, as on my previous visit, by the moon. I could see that it was empty. Still, though, I called out for my quarry, for the old man, for anyone at all. But nothing answered me. The mosque would not speak.
I returned to my old house in Cairo for a few hours’ sleep, then took the train back to Tanta. I arrived there in the late evening, dispirited and tired, wanting nothing so much as an undisturbed night. As the cab which had brought me from the station drove away, however, my servant came running out through the door, moaning and sobbing unintelligibly, and though I sought to get him to make some sense, all he could do was point towards the house. I hurried in through the front door. Everything appeared to be as I had left it, but then, just as I was about to turn to my servant and demand an explanation, I saw that the door into my study had been smashed.
Feeling somewhat tense myself now, I crossed over to it. In the doorway I stood rooted to the spot, suddenly frozen by what I saw in the room beyond. ‘Damn them,’ I whispered. ‘Damn them to hell.’ I realised to my surprise that my eyes had begun to water and, not wishing to be seen by the servant, I had to pause a moment more to brush the tears away. Only then did I enter the study and, bending down, pick up my dead birds. So light and small they were that I could hold all their bodies in my hands . . . my birds, my beautiful, beautiful birds. Their tiny bodies had been ripped open; their blood had been used to scrawl a warning on the wall. It was one I had already been given before. ‘Leave for ever,’ I read. ‘You are damned. You are accursed.’ And then behind me, above my desk, had been daubed a second verse. ‘Have you thought upon Lilat, the great one, the other? She is much to be feared. Truly, Lilat is great amongst gods.’
It was evident they hoped to frighten me with their voodoo spells. In my case, though, I thought, they had got the wrong man, for I have always had that tenacity of purpose which the unfriendly will call obstinacy, but which I call resolve. I had been given, as it seemed to me, not a warning but a declaration of war. That same evening, I sat down at my desk and, writing to Monsieur Maspero, informed him of my immediate intention to resign.
I left for Thebes. I had no firm plan of action; I knew only that I needed to order my thoughts. In the Valley of the Kings I might find fresh clues, discoveries of which Davis had not thought to inform me. I would also need to provide for myself, and I hoped that in Thebes, where I had been well known amongst the wealthy tourists, I would be able to scrape a living as a painter and guide. But above all, after the shock of what had happened in my study at Tanta, I wanted nothing so much as to feel secure -- and Thebes, more than anywhere, had come to seem like home.
Even so, I suspected that there was nowhere in Egypt, and certainly not by the Valley of the Kings, where I could be truly safe from my unknown enemies. My most urgent consideration was to warn Ahmed Girigar of the danger, for he had been with me when I had first been attacked, and I had heard nothing from him since that night in the Valley. Accordingly, when I arrived at Thebes, my first port of call was the village where he lived and I was much relieved, as I approached his house, to see him sitting hale and hearty, puffing on his pipe. He rose to greet me, his face radiating that expression of unfeigned welcome which is so typical of your Egyptian. ‘Mr Carter!’ he exclaimed, bowing low, then shaking my hand. ‘I am so glad to see you - and so sorry to hear that you have resigned your post.’
‘How did you hear it?’ I frowned. ‘The news is not yet public’
Ahmed’s smile did not falter. ‘You know this country, sir. Secrets always travel very fast.’ ‘Not every secret,’ I answered.
‘Ah.’ Ahmed gazed at me closely. ‘Then you are still on the trail of your mysteries, I see.’ He gestured at me to sit down as he called for coffee; then, once it had been brought to us, he began to tell me of the latest developments in the Valley. I found it hard to concentrate, however, even on such news, for I could not help but continue wondering how Ahmed had heard of my resignation. But I knew that I should accept his explanation: not only had it been a credible one - all too credible -- but in my present mood I was afraid that I was coming to scent conspiracies everywhere. And so I sipped my coffee, and sought to banish my suspicions, and listened with more attention to all that Ahmed had to say. He must have observed my change of mood, for he suddenly paused and leaned over to me. ‘Is it not as I foretold, sir?’ he smiled. ‘Did I not say how, Allah willing, you would dig here once again?’
I was touched by his loyalty, but I could scarcely share in his expectations. For he had little of much value to tell me: he had not been working on Davis’s excavations, and was even uncertain as to whether the amulets were still appearing in the tombs. From Davis himself I could expect few favours, and certainly not the chance to renew my own excavations. Having originally secured the concession to the Valley for him, I knew that I would now have to wait for him to retire from archaeology before I could hope to dig there once again - and Davis, unfortunately, did not seem in a retiring mood at all. ‘Why, Carter,’ he would crow, ‘I’m digging up a tomb or two every goddam season! At the rate I’m going, it won’t be long before the whole Valley is exhausted!’ And then, despite myself, I would know that my frustration was all too visible upon my face, for he would lean across to me and pat me on the arm. ‘Don’t worry, though -- when I find the tombs of Queen Tyi, and Smenkh-ka-Re, and Tut-ankh-Amen, you’ll be the first to hear of it.’ Then his grin would slowly broaden. ‘Why’ he would sometimes add, ‘I’ll do more than just inform you! After all - who better than Howard Carter to paint my finds for me?’
I took this with all the good humour I could muster. At least I could reassure myself that the Valley was not yet entirely exhausted, and I was careful, in an unobtrusive manner, to study Davis’s work there as closely as I could. There were certain areas -- very promising, I thought -- which he had excavated in only the most cursory way, and so I duly noted these for future reference. But there were also areas where Davis still had to dig -- and one of these, the most promising of all, was the site where I had uncovered the portrait of Queen Tyi. It was this which caused me the greatest worry. I was almost certain -- remembering the corpse we had exhumed, and the attack which had followed my attempt to dig further -- that a tomb lay buried there -- and not just any tomb. For if it was in any way linked to the folklore of the area, then it might surely be linked to something much more - to those secrets which the Mosque of al-Hakim appeared to shelter, and to a conspiracy which seemed almost vertiginously old. What, then, might happen if Davis did find the tomb? And if he opened it, what might be waiting there inside?
But I knew that there was nothing I could do to hold him back. Indeed, so tense and frustrating did the situation grow that I sometimes found it hard to continue in Thebes. There was still research to be done in Cairo, of course, and since I did not have the money to pay for even a servant, I had to carry out all the work there myself. During my time in the capital, I was able to map out the mosque as carefully as I could. I found little new of any great significance save that, above the doorway to the second minaret, I was able to trace the script of a second inscription. Like the first, it mentioned the mysterious word ‘al-Vakhel’, but this time I could make sense of the phrase as a whole. ‘Al-Vakhel,’ I read, ‘had this warning inscribed, that by sheltering the darkness, the light might be preserved.’ As I read this, I glanced up at the opposite minaret. ‘The darkness,’ I wondered. What darkness? What was it which lay locked away there, behind a door surmounted by the sun of Akh-en-Aten?
As to the identity of al-Vakhel himself, I could find no further clues. I had been hopeful at first, for I had discovered many traditions relating to the Caliph al-Hakim, sixth of the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, who had ruled at the turn of the tenth century and whose cruelty and displays of blasphemy, even at such a distance, were still spoken of by the Faithful in terms of horror and awe -- certainly, it did not surprise me that his mosque should be considered cursed. Yet though it appeared that such had his madness been that he had ended up proclaiming himself a god, I found there were also those who proclaimed the Caliph a saint; who insisted that he had never died; who whispered that he had discovered the very elixir of life. Certainly, it appeared that his assassination -- for such, according to the history books, had been the Caliph’s ultimate fate -- had in truth been an exceedingly mysterious affair, and I began to wonder, in the context of such a business, what the role of al-Vakhel might not have been, for wherever there was mystery there I would look out for his name. But I could still find no mention of him -- nor, although I continued with my research month after month, could I discover any lead at all.
And then one evening, when I had returned disconsolate to my shabby hotel room, I found a letter waiting for me, scrawled in Arabic, and laid upon my bed. ‘Mr Carter, sir,’ I read, ‘come quick. The tomb of the buried demon has been found. Urgent.’
It had been signed in the name of Ahmed Girigar.
I left for Thebes at once. For the whole length of my journey I was plagued by the strongest doubts and fears, not only on account of the uncovered tomb but also by the letter which Ahmed had sent, for I had not given him my address, and it perturbed me to wonder how he might have obtained it. When I arrived at my destination, therefore, I did not, as I had formerly done, approach Ahmed for the latest news from the Valley, but headed off there myself at once. Passing through the narrow gorge which formed its entrance, I met with the archaeologist hired by Davis to conduct his excavations, an Englishman like myself and a decent enough fellow, if lacking in expertise. I asked him if it were true that a fresh tomb had been found. He nodded, but appeared exceedingly flustered and tense as he did so. Intrigued, I asked him what the matter could be. The poor man breathed in deeply. ‘Davis,’ he hissed.
He began to explain to me, as he escorted me to the site, that everything about it was a puzzle and a mess. The tomb had been plundered; but there were countless objects still scattered on the floor. It clearly dated from the time of Akh-en-Aten; but every name on the walls had been chiselled away. There was a corpse inside a coffin; but the face on the lid had likewise been destroyed. Even the skeleton was a mystery. ‘Davis, though,’ my colleague explained, ‘is convinced he has found the remains of Queen Tyi.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘We found a large gilded shrine within the tomb -- partially dismantled, it is true, for it had been used to block off the entrance to the chamber, but nevertheless clearly marked with Tyi’s cartouche.’
I frowned. ‘Then why do you think that the body isn’t hers?’
‘Because we had a doctor come up this morning, and he says that it was a man’s -- probably adolescent, certainly not more than early twenties.’
‘Ah. And what has Davis said to that?’
‘You know what he’s like. You might as well try to stop an avalanche as try to get him to change his mind.’
I nodded sympathetically. By now we were emerging from the ravine into the broader expanse of the Valley of the Kings. My companion pointed to the new tomb and I recognised it at once, with a sinking of my heart, as the site where I had found the portrait of Queen Tyi. The entrance-way had been only partially cleared, but even as I stared at it I saw a couple of workmen emerging from the darkness, carrying various objects in their arms. I turned to my companion in disbelief. ‘What the hell are they doing?’ I demanded. ‘Don’t you realise that if you empty the contents before you’ve inspected the tomb, you may be destroying critical evidence?’
‘Of course I realise it,’ my companion snapped back. ‘But as I said -- Davis has ordered it, and Davis must have his way’
I snarled an imprecation and hurried to the tomb. Inspecting the doorway very hurriedly, I could see there was evidence of the original brickwork having been breached and then repaired, but could find nothing to indicate when this might have happened. Nor were things any better in the chamber beyond, for there, just as I had feared, the objects had already been hopelessly scattered and dispersed. I sought to find some proof of the legend I had heard from Ahmed, that the tomb had been entered in the Muslim period, but even as I did so I could tell that it was already too late. I cursed again, startling the hapless workmen with the violence of my language, then emerged from the darkness into the blinding brightness of the day.
