The Sleeper in the Sands (2 page)

And at once he remembered what he had in his bag. He tried to look for the nightjar again, but it was gone, and so he turned instead into the house, carrying the bag. Feeling the weight of what lay wrapped up in its folds, he flushed with sudden uneasiness. He had always been proud to follow the highest standards of his profession, he thought, to work to illumine, not purloin, the hidden past - for what other justification could there be for the excavation of tombs, save that of the cause of enlightenment and science? Certainly, he reflected, he had never before removed an object from a dig, unlike many of his colleagues, richer, more amateur, less scrupulous than he. Yet on this one occasion, surely, he had been justified in his action? He knew how superstitious the natives could be. He could not afford to lose them now, not when his goal was so tantalisingly near - not on account of foolish rumours and fears.

His servant appeared and at once Carter found himself gripping his bag more tightly, almost clutching it to his chest; then, muttering a brief salutation to the man, he hurried past. He continued briskly on his way through the house into the study; once arrived there, he closed the door and lit a lamp. All was silent. The canary, brought back earlier that evening, appeared asleep, and nothing stirred save the flickering shadows. Carter stood motionless a moment more in the wash of the lamp, then carried it to his desk and pulled up a chair. He laid his bag down before him and unfastened it; he reached inside. Very gently, he drew the tablet out.

He parted back the folds to expose it. As he did so, he realised that his heart was beating fast and that he had begun to twist the end of his moustache. Furious with himself, he sought to steady his nerves. Such folly! He was a professional, a man of science! Had he fought so hard to gain that status for himself only to betray those efforts now, at the very climax of their success? Carter shook his head impatiently. He began to study the line of hieroglyphics again, tracing the pattern of each one with his finger. When he had finished, he sat back in his chair.

‘ “Death”,’ he whispered, ‘ “on swift wings will come, to whosoever toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh”.’

The words still seemed to linger in the silence which followed.

He repeated the translation aloud once again -- and then, despite himself, he glanced suddenly round. He was certain he had heard something. A blind was stirring very gently in’ the breeze, but the room was empty and there was no one there. Carter rose briskly and crossed to the window. Outside everything was still, save for the twinkling of the stars in the warm velvet sky.

Carter returned to his chair. As he sat down again, his attention was caught by a statue on the desk, silhouetted by the flickering of the lamp. He reached for it. The statue was only small, carved from a block of the blackest granite, but the detail was exquisite -- as fresh, so Carter imagined, as when it had first been fashioned, almost three and a half millennia before. He gazed at the figure. Its face was a young man’s, no more than twenty at the very most; yet for all its youth there was an implacability to the statue’s stare, and a timelessness to its features, which made it seem a thing of death, barely human at all. In his hands the young man grasped the symbols of immortality, and upon his head he wore the regalia of a Pharaoh of Egypt. Carter gazed at the cobra still preserved upon the head-dress: the sacred
uraeus,
hooded and raised, poised to spit poison at the enemies of the King.
Wadjyt
-- the guardian of the royal tombs.

And suddenly, even as he thought this, Carter felt his dread start to evaporate and his mood of triumph and excitement to return. He laid the statue aside, and turned to inspect the tablet again. What could its imprecations mean, after all, save that what he had discovered was indeed a Pharaoh’s tomb -- nor just any Pharaoh’s, but the very one he had long sworn to find? He glanced at the statue again, then felt in his pocket and drew out his keys. When he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk, he saw to his relief that the faded papers were lying folded as he had left them. He drew them out and placed them gently on the tablet, then laid them back with the tablet at the rear of the drawer. He secured the lock. There they would stay until such time as Lord Carnarvon could arrive in Egypt. For now that the tomb had been located at last, there was much, Carter knew, he had sworn he would explain - to his patron at least, if to no one else. The secret had always been a burden to shoulder, and Carter realised -- almost with surprise, for it was his custom to think of himself as a self-sufficient man -- that he would welcome the chance to share its weight at last.

He reached for a scrap of paper, then unscrewed the lid from the top of his pen. ‘NOVEMBER 4TH,’ he wrote down. ‘1922. TO LORD CARNARVON, HIGHCLERE CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND.’ he paused a moment, then continued to write. ‘AT LAST HAVE MADE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IN THE VALLEY. A MAGNIFICENT TOMB WITH SEALS INTACT. RE-COVERED SAME FOR YOUR ARRIVAL. CONGRATULATIONS. CARTER.’ He blotted the message. He would have the cable sent the following morning - as early as possible. Carter smiled grimly. He could endure to wait, but he had no wish needlessly to extend the torture of delay.

Before he retired to bed, he reached once again for the statue of the king and placed it upon the message to serve as a paperweight. He was gazing into its face, holding the lantern aloft, when all of a sudden the eyes appeared to blink. A trick of the light, though -- for even as Carter inspected the face more closely, he saw how its stare grew blank once again, the blackness deeper and more pitted by shadow.

There was much to keep him busy in the following days. Lord Carnarvon had wired back promptly: he would be arriving in Alexandria within the following fortnight, accompanied by his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. He had lately been ill, he confessed, and was still somewhat under the weather; yet news of the tomb had been just the tonic he had needed. Both he and Lady Evelyn were filled with the utmost excitement.

That they might not be disappointed in their anticipation, Carter filled the two weeks with meticulous planning. There was equipment to be gathered and experts to be recruited, problems to be foreseen and opportunities second-guessed. Planning was all. Carter had not come so far, nor endured so long, to rush and stumble at the final fence. The steps to the doorway were buried under rubble; the tablet and his papers were locked within his drawer. In his mind too, he sought to keep them hidden, where they could not be disturbed nor even beheld.

In his sleep, though, in his nightmares, the bonds of self-restraint were easier to slip. Again and again, Carter would dream that the steps had been unearthed. He would imagine himself standing before the doorway, now wholly exposed. In his hands would be the tablet, and its curse would seem written in symbols of blood. He would know that the seals had to stay unbroken -- but he would order the doorway opened all the same. As he did so, the tablet would shatter in his hands, and Carter would think himself suddenly awake. But the dust of the tablet would linger in the darkness, and seem to form the shadows of strange figures in his room.

Such nightmares, when he truly awoke from them, angered Carter. Drawn so near at last to the object of his quest, he discovered that he could not endure to be reminded of that mystery which had led him to the very doorway of the tomb, and which he had chosen to keep locked within the drawer of his desk. He began to blame his sense of guilt that he had ever removed the tablet from the sands; yet he knew he could not return it there, nor announce its discovery, for he was still unwilling to provoke the workmen’s fears. Nor could he keep it upon his person, for he did not care to feel that he was somehow grown a thief. A vexing problem, exceedingly vexing -- and yet Carter knew that a solution had to be found.

For all the while, as the date of Lord Carnarvon’s arrival drew nearer, so his dreams were growing steadily worse.

He had regretted bringing it almost at once. As it had done before, when he had brought it from the site of the discovery, the tablet weighed heavily in his bag. Carter shifted it from one hand to the other. A boy approached him, offering to take the portmanteau; but the very prospect of surrendering his precious burden made Carter grip it all the more tightly. He ordered the boy away.

He watched as the rest of his luggage was loaded upon the felucca. Only when all was readied did he prepare to board the vessel himself. He clambered along the gang-plank and for a brief moment, just the briefest, he thought of turning round, taking the bag and its load back to his house. But he knew there could be no delay: he could not afford to miss the train, for Lord Carnarvon was expecting him in Cairo, and he only had three days to spare in the capital - there was no time to lose. So Carter continued up the gang-plank, greeting the captain and then taking his seat. He nestled the portmanteau by his side, and watched as the boat began to drift out from its moorings to join the widening flow of the Nile.

Carter shifted and looked about. He could see a night heron above him, soaring gracefully through the early-morning light, still abroad in the last half-hour before sunrise. Nervously, even as he watched the bird, Carter began to fiddle with his bag and, despite not meaning to, pressed on the catch. He opened it; peered inside; felt with his hand to support the evidence of his eyes, that the sheaf of papers were still where he had placed them, sealed within an envelope at the bottom of the bag.

Then, almost by accident, he brushed against the tablet with his fingertips. At the same moment he glanced round guiltily, to make certain that no one had been observing him. As stealthily as he could, he drew out the tablet and rested it upon his lap, then stared over the side of the boat. The Nile was flowing deeply, its waters very dark.

Carter sat hunched a long while, frozen by his feelings of doubt and self-reproach. He knew that what he was planning was an act of cowardice, and worse -- a dereliction of all he had ever sought to be, a betrayal of every standard he held dear. He glanced back inside his bag, at the thick, sealed envelope, and shook his head. For almost twenty years the contents of that envelope had served to draw him on, strengthening his resolve, granting him self-belief, even when direct corroboration had been lacking. Now at last, so it seemed, proof of the manuscript’s value lay upon his lap -- for what, after all, had its argument been, if not that the Pharaoh’s tomb was indeed beneath a curse? Carter smiled to himself ruefully, and stroked his moustache. He knew, of course, that there was no need to take such nonsense literally. Indeed, it had been the very presence within the manuscript of fantastical wonders, and secrets born of long-abandoned superstitions, which had first persuaded him that it might hint at something more, for he had long since learned how the myths of an age can be as distinctive as their tombs, and just as important for the archaeologist to date.

Why then, knowing all that as he did, had he found himself so unsettled by the warning on the tablet? He glanced down at it once again. Had he simply lived too long with the manuscript, he wondered, with its worlds of mystery, and impossible powers? Had it touched him more than he had ever dared to think?

Carter sighed. It was the dread that his reason might indeed have been affected, the dread that it might even come to inhibit his work, which had decided him in the end. He had been presumptuous in his fears of the workmen’s superstitions; for his own, it appeared, were far more insidious a threat. Carter smiled faintly. If it took a single sacrifice to put them to rest, to appease them, well . . . the Ancients at least might have understood.

He glanced round again, to make certain that he was still not being watched. Satisfied, he raised the tablet from his lap. He rested it on the boat’s edge . . . then let it drop. There was a soft splash. Carter stared behind him at where the tablet had sunk, as the boat glided on. The waters of the Nile flowed as silently as before. Only the night heron, disturbed by the noise, wheeled and cried in a startled manner as it flew away before the coming of the dawn.

At the same moment, in Carter’s house, his servant was sitting on the front porch, listening to the notes of the canary in its cage, when suddenly there rose a faint, almost human cry. It was followed by a silence and the servant, straining to hear more, realised that even the canary’s song had been stilled. He rose to his feet, then hurried to the room from where the scream had seemed to come. It was Mr Carter’s study and upon entering it, almost instinctively, the servant turned to gaze at the cage.

It seemed filled by a monstrous form. As the servant drew nearer, he recognised the hood of a cobra, and saw that the canary was already limp within its jaws. A flicker passed through the cobra’s coils, and it began to sway its head as though to strike once again. But then it reduced its hood and, dropping the bird, slipped out between the bars. As it glided towards him the servant backed against the desk, then watched in horror as the cobra drew nearer still. Fumbling desperately behind him, he found a small figurine; turning again, he raised it in his hand, but the cobra was already slipping past him, coiling up around the leg of the desk, then out through the window until, with a final, dismissive flicker of its tail, it was gone.

The servant pushed the desk aside, and hurried to the window to mark the cobra’s progress across the empty yard outside. But he could see no trace of it, not even a trail left upon the dust. He shuddered suddenly, and muttered a prayer -- for it was as though the cobra had vanished into air.

He turned back and crossed to the cage. Reaching inside it, very gently, he scooped out the corpse of the bird. It was only as he did so that he realised he was still clutching the tiny figurine in his other hand, and as he inspected it, so his knuckles whitened even more. For he could recognise the statue now: it was a figure of the King whose tomb had been found, and was soon to be disturbed; whose head-dress bore the figure of a cobra upraised -- the King whose name, he had learned, had been Tut-ankh-Amen.