The Sleeper in the Sands (48 page)

‘How?’ asked Lady Evelyn.

Carter scraped some rubble away from the door. ‘There are some cartouches here as well,’ he explained, ‘carved into the stone. I have been awaiting your arrival before exposing them fully’

Well,’ said Lady Evelyn sunnily, ‘here we are!’

Carter glanced up at Lord Carnarvon, who slowly nodded his head.

‘Very well,’ whispered Carter. ‘Let us see whose tomb this is. Discover if all our conjectures are correct.’

Again, with great care, he brushed away the dust. For several minutes he worked in silence, and neither Lord Carnarvon nor Lady Evelyn spoke a single word. Then suddenly they heard Carter inhale very deeply; and they saw how he bowed his head and rocked back on his heels.

‘What is it?’ inquired Lady Evelyn impatiently. ‘What have you found?’

‘Here,’ said Carter, pointing to the outline of a cartouche. ‘Can you make it out?’

Lord Carnarvon crouched down. He dabbed at his brow, which was sheeny with sweat. ‘What does it say?’

‘It is a title,’ answered Carter. ‘ “He-who-is-the-very-manifestation-of-Amen, the-Beloved-of-Osiris”.’ He looked up. ‘The title of King Tut-ankh-Amen.’

The following morning, after the seals had been carefully photographed, the doorway was opened, and the great stone blocks removed. Beyond there stretched the rubble which Carter had observed three weeks before, piled to the roof of a sloping passageway. How far into the rock the passageway descended, and to what it might lead, it was impossible to tell.

Under the watchful supervision of Ahmed Girigar, the work of clearance was immediately begun. It was soon discovered that there were numerous artefacts intermingled with the rubble - potsherds, vases, alabaster jars, some of them stamped with the cartouches of Pharaohs, Akh-en-Aten, Smenkh-ka-Re or Tut-ankh-Amen. Despite Lord Carnarvon’s growing impatience, Carter insisted that even the tiniest fragment be preserved, sifted from the rubble and brought to him at once. He did not betray what he imagined he might find; but Lord Carnarvon observed, as his colleague laid each fragment aside, that he did so with a visible exhalation of relief.

Slowly, then, the work proceeded, and as evening fell it had still not been completed. There was no sign as yet of a funerary chamber, nor even of a door.

It was reached in the middle of the following afternoon. Carter emerged from the passageway, waving his arms, before plunging back into the darkness with Ahmed Girigar. By the rime Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn had joined them, the outline of the doorway could easily be distinguished, and Carter pointed with evident relief to the seals. ‘You see?’ he asked. ‘They have not been broken. Whatever was buried in there’ -- he gestured -- ‘still remains.’

‘Well?’ asked Lord Carnarvon. ‘Shall we take a look?’

Carter glanced at Ahmed, then shook his head. ‘The remaining debris is still to be sifted. Let us hurry nothing. We must at all times --
at all times
- conduct ourselves according to the principles of scientific investigation.’ Yet even as he said this his own impatience was evident on his face, and as he spoke to Ahmed he smiled with a sudden wryness, as though in an effort to ease his own tension. ‘For God’s sake,’ he instructed, ‘make it fast. I cannot endure to wait for much longer.’

Ahmed met this order in silence for a moment; then he turned to the workmen and, clapping his hands, cried out to them in Arabic. The work was continued at a redoubled pace and at last - at long last, as it seemed to the spectators -the debris was removed and the whole door stood revealed. Ahmed turned back to Carter. ‘Now, sir,’ he whispered. His stare was very glassy, his lips strangely pinched. ‘The moment has arrived.’

With trembling hands, Carter made a breach in the upper left-hand corner of the door. Only darkness could be made out. When a test was made with an iron rod, nothing could be felt save open space. ‘A candle,’ ordered Carter, ‘give me a candle, for there may be foul gases!’ A candle was lit and passed into his hand, and then, when the tests had been successfully completed, Carter sought to widen the breach a little more. His hands were shaking very badly by now, and it was all he could do to keep hold of the candle; yet he would not for his life hand it to anyone else. With a scattering of rubble, the widening was complete. Carter inserted the candle and at last, long last, he peered through the gap.

Even as he did so, he remembered the document from the Mosque of al-Hakim and the tale of what had been found in the tomb of Smenkh-ka-Re; but he sought to banish the memory from his mind. He did not know what he was hoping to discover but certainly, he thought to himself with a slight measure of self-contempt, it was not a Pharaoh waiting on a throne. He narrowed his eyes. He could make out nothing at all at first, for the hot air escaping from the chamber was causing the candle flame to flicker; but then gradually, as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room beyond emerged from the mist. Carter gazed in blank amazement; he felt his grip upon the candle beginning to grow numb. He sought to speak, but could say nothing at all.

‘What is it?’ inquired Lord Carnarvon anxiously as he reached up to place a hand on Carter’s shoulder. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘Yes,’ whispered Carter hoarsely. Wonderful things.’ But he found he could add nothing more; and for a moment, although he knew that he had to pull back his head and widen the hole so that all could see, he could not endure to tear away his gaze. Still he feasted upon the marvels of the chamber, upon a vision of strange animals, statues and gold . . . everywhere, everywhere, the glint of gold.

It had been, Carter reflected later that night, the day of days, the most wonderful that he had ever lived through, and certainly one whose like he would never see again. He pulled out the chair from his desk and sat down, stretched with the pleasure of a myriad images and emotions. Never, he thought, had he known such a feeling of awe as when that hole had been opened and the chamber revealed. Millennia had passed since the last human feet had moved across it, and yet, as he noted the signs of recent life about him -- the half-filled bowl of mortar for the door, the blackened lamp, the fingermark upon the freshly painted surface, the farewell garland dropped upon the threshold -- he had felt as though it might have been but yesterday. The very air he had breathed, unchanged throughout the centuries, had been breathed by those who had laid the mummy to its rest. Time itself, in the face of such details, had seemed annihilated.

Then, following the awe, had flooded other sensations: the exhilaration of discovery, the fever of suspense, the almost overmastering impulse to break down seals and lift the lids of boxes, the strained expectancy -- why not, Carter thought, confess it to himself? -- of the treasure-seeker. And what treasures, to be sure, had been revealed within that room! The effect had been bewildering, overwhelming, for it had been packed with wondrous objects, piled one upon another in seemingly endless profusion: exquisitely painted and inlaid caskets; alabaster vases; strange black shrines; bouquets of flowers; beautifully carved chairs; a confused jumble of overturned chariots; and gold, gold, always gold. Three great gilt couches especially had attracted Carter’s wonder, for their sides had been carved in the form of animals, curiously attenuated in body, as they had had to be to serve their purpose, but with heads of a startling realism. Carter smiled at the memory and closed his eyes, as the image of one of the heads, that of a lion, rose before his mind. Such beasts, so fierce, so strong, so magnificent, he reflected with sorrow, would never again be found in the Egyptian deserts; for they were dead, hunted to extinction, forever gone. Yet the head of the couch had been carved long before, when the lions, like the Pharaohs, had still ruled in Egypt; and Carter recalled how suddenly, as he had been gazing in wonder at its form - the brilliant surface picked out by the torch-beam, the profile throwing grotesquely distorted shadows on to the wall -- it had seemed to come alive!

Carter opened his eyes suddenly. Was it only his imagination, he wondered, or had he -- at the very moment when he had been remembering how the lion’s head had appeared to move -- heard a noise from the verandah outside? He rose to his feet and gazed out into the darkness of the night. There appeared to be nothing, and it was to be sure exceedingly late - it seemed unlikely that anyone would be abroad at such an hour. He returned to his chair and slumped back into it; yet even as he did so, almost despite himself he glanced towards the statue of Tut-ankh-Amen on his desk. Two such figures had been found within the tomb, portraits carved in black of the King, but life-sized and with headdresses sheeted in gold. They had been placed opposite each other like sentinels, and in their hands had been maces; upon each of their foreheads there had risen the protective sacred cobra. Carter wondered what they guarded. So far only the antechamber of the tomb had been revealed. What else might there not be waiting to be found? Treasures still more wonderful, Carter trusted - treasures beyond compare. No papyri had been uncovered yet: no documents or records from the time of the buried King. Without them, he thought, his manuscript would be worthless as a historical record, and his great find would somehow seem incomplete. But the corroboration was surely waiting somewhere. It had to be, Carter thought -- surely it did?

He gazed again upon the cobra on the head-dress of his statue.
‘Wadjyt’,
he whispered softly to himself. He felt he understood its purpose more clearly now.
Wadjyt
-- guardian of the wisdom of the waiting Pharaoh’s tomb.

Then suddenly Carter heard a noise again, and this time he could be certain of it, for it had come not from his verandah, but from outside his study door. There was a knock and Carter, rising and crossing to open the door, discovered Ahmed Girigar. Ah,’ he nodded, feeling almost foolish, ‘so it’s you.’ He gestured with his arm. ‘Please, will you not come in?’

‘I am very sorry, sir,’ Ahmed whispered, moving into the study, ‘to come here so late . . .’

‘It is no matter. I have only just returned from Lord Carnarvon.’

‘He must be, I think, a very happy man.’

‘We all are, Ahmed, are we not?’

But Ahmed did not reply, and his glance strayed towards the figure of the Pharaoh upon the desk. When, sir,’ he asked at last, his voice an even lower whisper than before, ‘will you open up the tomb?’

‘The tomb has been opened.’

‘No.’

Carter frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘The figures of the King which we found within the chamber -- is it not true, sir, that they are the guardians of a further doorway?’

Carter stroked his moustache. He did not reply.

‘Please, sir,’ whispered Ahmed, his tone now one of urgency, almost of desperation, ‘is it not true? For in the wall against which they stand - I have seen it for myself - there is the mortared outline of a further doorway. Must not something, then, be waiting beyond it? Is that not where the King will be found?’

Carter paused again. ‘Beyond any shadow of a doubt,’ he acknowledged at last.

‘Then I must ask you again, sir -- when do you intend to open up the door?’

‘It will be done in due course - when all has been prepared.’

‘No, sir!’ Ahmed shook his head violently. ‘It must be done now! It must be done this very night!’

Carter gazed at him in astonishment. ‘That is out of the question,’ he replied. ‘We shall have to clear the antechamber first.’

‘We cannot, sir, risk an opening of that doorway, not when all the eyes of the world will be upon it.’

‘It is I who am the head of this excavation, I would remind you.’

‘I have not forgotten it, sir. And yet I would remind you in turn, with very great respect, that you would never have discovered the tomb, nor even thought to look for it, if you had not been shown the secret of the Mosque of al-Hakim.’

Carter bowed his head almost imperceptibly.

‘You know, sir, why the secret was revealed to you.’

‘Yes,’ Carter answered, a degree of heat returning to his voice. ‘It was because you knew that in the end the tomb would be discovered, and you were afraid that it might be found by a man like Mr Davis. You wanted an archaeologist, did you not, Ahmed? You wanted a man of science? Well’ -he paused -- ‘that is what you have.’

‘Not only a man of science, sir.’

‘Indeed?’

‘A man, as well, who knows and loves this land.’

‘I know it -- and love it -- well enough, I think.’

‘Then do not despise its secrets. Do not believe it to be barren of what you may not understand.’

Carter breathed in deeply and half turned away. ‘You know I do not.’

Ahmed bowed, but did not reply.

‘And yet . . .’ Carter smiled mirthlessly. ‘You cannot expect me to believe there is a demon in that tomb.’

Still Ahmed stood, head bowed, in silence.

Carter sighed again. ‘It is too late tonight, at any rate,’ he said, turning again and crossing to his desk where he picked up the figure of Tut-ankh-Amen. ‘I cannot enter the chamber without telling Lord Carnarvon, and he is resting at present, for he is very tired.’

‘No!’ Ahmed gazed at him, startled. ‘No, sir, you cannot do that.’

Carter frowned. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Would you risk his life?’

‘Risk his life?’ Carter smiled. ‘His reputation, perhaps, along with mine as an excavator -- but nothing worse than that.’

‘I beg you, sir . . .’

‘No.’ Carter raised his hand. ‘So far I have gone, Ahmed -- but no further. If we are to enter the tomb tomorrow night, then I cannot do it without informing Lord Carnarvon. He is my patron -- and more, he is also my friend.’

Ahmed gazed at the figure of Tut-ankh-Amen. ‘Then you must tell him,’ he whispered, ‘of the danger he may face. And may Allah guide him, and guide you, and guide us all.’ He bowed. ‘Good night, sir.’

Carter was left alone again. He stood motionless a while, lost in thought, a phrase unbidden running through his mind. At length, as he crossed to his desk and placed back the statue, he muttered it to himself: ‘ “Death on swift wings will come, to whosoever toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh”.’ He half-laughed, and shook his head. ‘Nonsense,’ he whispered. ‘Arrant nonsense.’ He glanced again at the statue on his desk. ‘All sane people should dismiss such ideas with contempt.’