The Sleeper in the Sands (49 page)

Even as he said this to himself he felt resolved. Yes, he nodded, he -would indeed tell Lord Carnarvon. If it had to be done, then it were best to do it soon, and his patron, certainly, would not want to miss out on the fun. And at once Carter felt a thrill of renewed excitement, a golden flood of anticipation at the thought of penetrating, the very next night, the innermost sanctum of the treasure-filled tomb -- of finding, in all its magnificent panoply of death, the funerary shrine of a Pharaoh of Egypt.

Carter had chosen to make the opening at the very base of the doorway. ‘It will then be an easy matter,’ he had explained, ‘to conceal it, so that no one need ever know or suspect what we have done.’ Even so, his mood of unease had been palpable, and when at length the opening had been knocked through the masonry he glanced up at the guardian figures of the Pharaoh, one on either side of him, as though in silent apology.

He reached for a torch, then shone it through the hole he had made. An astonishing sight was revealed to him, for there -- within a yard of the doorway, and stretching as far as he could see -- stood what appeared to be a solid wall of gold, inlaid with panels of a brilliant blue faience. ‘We have him!’ Carter whispered in exultation. ‘Tut-ankh-Amen!’ He pointed to the gold. ‘There can be no doubt at all now that this is the sepulchral chamber, for within this shrine’ -- he pointed to the gold -- ‘we will discover in its very heart the coffin of the Pharaoh.’ He glanced back at Ahmed, and permitted himself a smile. ‘Not much chance of anything escaping from that. I think we are secure from any demon for a while.’

‘No, no,’ said Lady Evelyn breezily, ‘you are forgetting the Tale. It is not Pharaoh buried in the coffin, but a substitute, for Queen Tyi wished to be able to remove the true corpse without any bother.’ She smiled at Ahmed. ‘Is that not correct? The ghool might still be in there, at perfect liberty and waiting to pounce?’

She bared her teeth to display imaginary fangs, but Carter interrupted before Ahmed could reply. ‘Let us forget this talk of demons!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘There are wonders enough concealed beyond this door. Why, it is the very Holy of Holies of archaeological science!’ He glanced round at his companions. ‘Who will be the first to enter such a shrine?’

No one replied, until at length Lord Carnarvon shuffled and cleared his throat. ‘You, Carter. This is your find.’

But Carter shook his head. ‘I have already told you, we would not be here had it not been for you.’ He paused, then handed across the electric torch. ‘You must be the first.’

Lord Carnarvon crouched down by the opening and peered through it, his emotions very visible as he gazed at the wall of gold. He glanced back once, then seemed visibly to brace himself before wriggling, head-first, through the gap in the wall. The light of his torch bounced and played upon the gold and then, when he had passed through and stood up, seemed to vanish. ‘Hello?’ Carter called out. What can you see?’

‘You are right!’ came the answer, sounding muffled. ‘It is indeed the very Holy of Holies!’

Carter gestured to Lady Evelyn that she should follow her father through the opening; and then, having ordered Ahmed likewise through the hole, he finally passed into the inner room himself. The moment he climbed back to his feet, he realised that his initial supposition had been perfectly correct, for he was indeed confronted by a funerary shrine so enormous that it almost filled the entire area of the chamber, with only a space of some two feet between itself and the walls. He could see, turning to his left, that Ahmed and Lady Evelyn were inching along the gap, and so he turned to his right to see what might lie there. Once again, as he stepped into the stillness of more than thirty centuries, he felt a sense of profoundest wonder and awe, distilled from the secrets and shadows of the past, so that the very tread of his foot, the slightest noise, seemed a desecration.

When he glanced behind him, both Lady Evelyn and Ahmed appeared to have rounded the corner of the shrine. ‘Hello?’ he whispered. Nobody answered him. He flashed his torch the other way, at the corner of the shrine towards which he had been advancing. ‘Hello?’ he called out again, but there was still no reply. Very slowly, he began to slide forward once again. Suddenly, though, as he approached the corner of the chamber, he heard from ahead of him a soft, gasping moan, and then the muffled crashing of something upon the floor. At the same moment, the torch in Carter’s hand failed and the entire chamber was cast into darkness.

He heard a squeal of mingled panic and excitement from Lady Evelyn.

‘It is all right,’ he called out, ‘please, all is well!’ He wondered, though, whether it truly was. All had fallen silent again. He strained with his ears; the tomb now seemed as silent as it had been for millennia. Nervously, Carter took a further step forward and, feeling with his hands, turned the corner of the wall. Still inching onwards with the utmost care, he felt the wall suddenly vanish from his touch, and at the very same moment all the torch beams blazed back into life.

Carter could see now that he was standing by a doorway, not sealed as the others had been but opening on to a further chamber, smaller than the others and with a much lower roof. A single glance sufficed to tell him that he had before him the most beautiful treasures of all, for the chamber was filled with emblems of the underworld, a figure of a jackal, statues of the gods, so lovely that they made him gasp with wonder and admiration. There still seemed no trace of papyri, though, nor any inscriptions on the walls of the room, and he flashed round the beam of his torch in a sudden surge of desperation. He gasped a second time -- but now with consternation for he saw, rising dazedly from the floor, the figure of Lord Carnarvon, his face as white as dust.

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Carter, stepping forward to take him by the arm. ‘Did you have a fall?’

‘Went out like a light,’ said Lord Carnarvon, wincing as he dabbed at a cut on his cheek. ‘Terribly sorry. Bit of a shock.’

‘What happened, do you think?’

Lord Carnarvon frowned, and shook his head. ‘Really not sure.’ He glanced around him at the piled treasures. ‘All got a bit much, I suppose. Sense of the tremendous past and all that. You know what I mean. Black cloud, sudden mist of darkness. Strange, really’ He gazed about him again. ‘Very strange.’

‘Pups!’ Lady Evelyn emerged in the open doorway. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No worry’ he smiled, ‘no need for concern.’

‘You have cut yourself.’

‘Just a little scratch.’

‘We should leave.’ She reached for her father’s hand but then suddenly froze, conscious for the first time of the splendours of the chamber. ‘I say,’ she whispered at last, turning to Carter, ‘I have never known anything as exciting as tonight. I think it will prove the
Great Moment
of my life.’ She gazed once more at the figure of the jackal; then tugged upon her father’s arm. ‘Come on, Pups,’ she whispered, ‘you are still looking groggy. Your glands have gone up like cricket balls. Time to get out.’

She turned to Carter again and kissed him, so quickly that he did not have any time to step back; then she slipped out between the shrine and the wall, past Ahmed who stood waiting as Lord Carnarvon likewise stepped past. ‘What happened, sir?’ he asked urgently, once he was alone in the chamber with Carter.

‘He was . . .’ - Carter paused, then shrugged -- ‘overwhelmed.’

‘He saw nothing? Heard nothing?’

Carter shook his head. ‘Why would he, Ahmed? There is nothing here.’

But Ahmed swallowed, and gazed into the shadows. ‘How do we know? We have not yet fully looked.’

Carter grunted, and swung the beam of his torch about the room. The shadows danced, but in the pools of darkness all else remained still.

‘We should search, sir,’ said Ahmed. We should make doubly sure.’

‘No.’ Carter spoke with sudden firmness. ‘We have done more than enough even as it is.’ ‘Please, sir . . .’

‘No.’ Carter took Ahmed’s arm. ‘We must leave here at once.’ He gestured to Ahmed that he should continue towards the exit from the chamber. Reluctantly Ahmed did as he was ordered and Carter, following him, ensured he could not turn back. ‘The temptation to disturb or even to remove certain objects,’ Carter said as he followed Ahmed through the opening, ‘would have proved far too great, had we stayed within that chamber.’ And even as he said so he glanced behind him once again, longing to return to the tiny room, to see if some papyri might not be there after all -- but he tensed and clenched his fists, and forced himself on. ‘No, no,’ he muttered, ‘let the hole be sealed at once. Safer that way, safer by far.’

‘Safer, sir?’ Ahmed glanced at Lord Carnarvon who sat, still pale, against the furthest wall; but once he realised that Carter would not reply, he began the work of plastering up the tell-tale gap.

When all had been completed, Carter carefully arranged a basket to conceal the work, before leading his party back up the steps. Feeling the cool night air against his face, Lord Carnarvon breathed it in deeply, and Carter saw the colour begin at once to return to his patron’s face. ‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked.

Lord Carnarvon nodded. ‘So sorry’ he muttered. ‘Embarrassing, really. Very poor display’ Then he paused and absent-mindedly rubbed at his cheek, smearing blood upon his finger which he delicately sucked. ‘But I say!’ he exclaimed suddenly, a contented smile upon his face. ‘The Holy of Holies! Wasn’t it just the most marvellous thing?’

The next morning Carter arrived very early at the site, for he had been finding it hard to sleep. Early though he was, however, he was not the first; for as he approached the tomb he found Ahmed waiting for him, uneasy-eyed, his face bled of colour. ‘Please, sir,’ he whispered, ‘come and see.’ He led Carter down the steps, through the doorway and into the tomb; and once they had slipped through the second doorway into the antechamber, he pointed towards the third -- that same one through which they had passed the night before. Carter gazed at it in surprise, for the basket he had placed across the hole had been tossed aside, and the mortaring lay scattered in a pile across the floor.

‘Someone else has broken in!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who would dare do such a thing?’

‘No, sir,’ answered Ahmed, as he pointed to the rubble. ‘Someone -- something -- has broken out.’

Carter gazed at the debris in silence a moment; then he shook his head violently. ‘Your work last night -- it was clearly too hurried. It must have caved in.’

‘But, sir . . .’

‘No buts. Finish it again, and this time do it properly. And for the love of God’ -- he glanced towards the steps -
‘do it fast!
There will be others coming soon, and no one must know.
No one must find out!’

With a secret smile Carter removed the last stones of Ahmed’s brickwork, thereby effacing the proof of their clandestine entry several weeks before. It was all he could do not to turn to Lord Carnarvon, who had been sitting, he knew, amidst the other guests with a smile like that of a naughty schoolboy upon his face, clearly nervous at the thought that their stunt might be suspected. However, as he passed back the final brick, Carter did not catch his friend and patron’s eye but turned instead to face all the rows of gathered guests, seated upon their chairs in the antechamber. These men, Carter thought suddenly, who had come here for the official opening of the doorway, formed the very cream of Egypt’s archaeological community; yet upon all their faces were expressions of the utmost stupefaction, such as any untutored layman would betray. The same expression, Carter suspected, could be glimpsed upon his own face, even though he knew what lay beyond the doorway, even though he had passed inside it before.

He was the first to enter the newly opened room and then, once he had completed his own inspection and returned into the antechamber, he was followed by Lord Carnarvon. Neither man uttered a word as they passed each other; yet Carter, gazing upon his friend, saw that his brow was beaded with white drops of sweat and his lips half-parted in a foolish smile. He seemed in the grip of some profound emotion and Carter, who had never seen him in such a state before, felt a sudden surge of worry, almost of fear. As Lord Carnarvon finally emerged through the doorway from the funerary chamber, Carter studied him closely. He had a dazed, bewildered look in his eyes, and as he met Carter’s stare he threw up his hands before him, an unconscious gesture of impotence to describe what he felt. Nevertheless, crossing to the wall where Carter stood, he seemed eager to speak, to try to put his emotions into words after all. ‘The damnedest thing,’ he whispered, ‘the damnedest thing. The strangest feeling of desecration. Not of the rest of the Pharaoh, don’t you know, but of the flow of time itself, if that makes any sense at all. Do you know what I mean, Carter? The feeling that we have somehow knocked the boundaries away?’

‘Boundaries?’ Carter frowned. ‘Boundaries of what?’

‘Oh, how can I put it?’ Lord Carnarvon threw his hands up once again. ‘Those that should exist, I suppose, between the deep past and ourselves.’

Carter’s frown deepened, but he did not reply.

‘Not making much sense, I suppose,’ shrugged Lord Carnarvon apologetically. ‘But I do feel -- yes, I truly do feel it -- that we have mixed the currents of the past with the present, with the now. And so -- I cannot help but wonder . . .’

Carter raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

‘Well -- don’t you know -- whether it was wise.’

‘Why would it not be? We are archaeologists, after all. Introducing the past into the present is what we aim to do.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Lord Carnarvon shrugged once again. ‘You must think me foolish. But even so, I cannot help but wonder . . . Carter - my dear Carter,’ he suddenly hissed, ‘was it wise?’

A bright shaft of sunlight fell across the room, illuminating motes of slow-dancing dust, and causing Lord Carnarvon’s mirror to sparkle. He paused in his shaving, blinded for a moment by the gleam, then carefully angled his mirror round a fraction, to keep the glass from the early morning sun. As he gazed at his own reflection, however, he found that he barely knew himself. The face that met his own was lost in shadows, so that it seemed to him that it might be anyone’s at all. The shadows, he imagined, were billowing upwards, rising from the depths of he knew not what.