The Buried Pyramid (23 page)

At closer inspection, Eddie’s English heritage was still evident. His nose was short, his weathered skin—where it was not covered by beard—showed a faint patterning of freckles beneath the tan. His hair had bleached slightly from exposure to the sun, giving the effect of greying, and thereby added dignity to the man’s overall presence.

The stiff bow with which Eddie greeted the company mingled the oriental and the occidental in style, but when Papa Antonio gave his newly arrived guest a chiding look, Eddie grinned and embraced the old man. Introductions followed, and soon their party was settled in the courtyard, where the plashing of the fountain waters would assure that they not be overheard by the other residents.

The father of the Copt family, serving in the capacity of butler, brought coffee, sweet wine, and desserts, then withdrew. Neville suspected that the butler’s frequent forays over to the two or three other clusters of guests spread about the courtyard were as much to assure that they were not in a position to overhear this conference as to assure their comfort.

Neville longed to move directly to business. His trip with Stephen into the bazaar earlier that day had made him even more eager to move his project forward. However, he knew such directness would be rude, even in England, and certainly here in Egypt. He wasn’t certain how much Eddie had embraced oriental custom along with the outer appearances, but that turban and all it implied warned him to take care.

“How are Miriam and the children?” Neville began.

“Very well, thank you,” Eddie replied taking out tobacco pouch and papers, and beginning to roll a cigarette. “Allah has blessed us with three sons and two daughters. If He continues to favor us, we will have another child before the end of spring.”

In response to questions from Papa Antonio, and spurred by Stephen’s desire to make certain he understood the dynamics of an Arab family, Eddie discussed his children, his wife, his wife’s relatives (many of whom lived with them), and something of his business.

Neville had known Miriam’s father and one of her brothers, and considered them ample reason for Eddie to avoid the entire clan. He thought he was hiding his impatience well, but before he had smoked his first cigarette, Eddie gave him that wry, irreverent look that had made him so unpopular with many of the Army officers under whom he had served.

“But I see that Neville is fidgeting,” Eddie said, “impatient to get on to business. I’ll start. I can go with you, Neville. Your letters made clear when you planned to arrive, and so I haven’t accepted anything that would take me from Cairo overlong. I have a few day jobs to complete, but since these can be combined with making arrangements for you, they will not delay you.”

Neville nodded. “We’ll need camels, but it would be best if we were able to pick them up at Luxor rather than bring them from here. Can you arrange that?”

Eddie puffed a smoke ring.

“I can. Now that the Nile is subsiding it’s easy enough to get messages upriver. May I assume you are going ahead with your mad venture?”

Stephen interrupted, a good thing, for Neville had felt an unwise spike of anger at Eddie’s manner of referring to his dream.

“Mad venture, Mr. Bryce?” the young man said. “Do you mean Sir Neville’s expedition specifically or archeology in general?”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth lifted in half a smile.

“I do,” he said, “though I have my doubts about archeology.”

He paused.

“By the way, I’d prefer if you’d call me Eddie or even Eduardo as Papa Antonio does. I’m neither your master nor your servant. You’re going to be trusting your lives to my skills, and so we’d better start being friends.”

Stephen beamed at this, his momentary defensiveness at Eddie’s criticism of archeology vanishing, just as, Neville suspected, Eddie had known it would.

“And you should call me Stephen,” the linguist replied cordially.

“And me Jenny, please,” that young lady said. “You, too, Stephen. I’m getting real tired of this Miss Benet stuff.”

Neville noted that departure from
Neptune’s Charger
and the English passengers had had a deleterious effect on Jenny’s English. It was becoming more and more broadly American, and at that not American of the best. However, he had other things to worry about than his niece’s diction. Before he could return to matters of transport and supply, Stephen was pursuing Eddie’s aversion to archeology.

“Why do you dislike archeology, Eddie?”

“I don’t dislike archeology as such.” Eddie spoke slowly, as if determined to find precise words to express his objections. “I’ll even admit to finding some of the conclusions archeologists reach interesting. I just wonder at the amount of energy smart people put into digging up other people whose only wish for the afterlife was that they wouldn’t get dug up. Seems a bit wrong, when you look at it from their point of view.

Stephen leaned forward. “Actually, as I understand it, the first wish of the ancient Egyptians was that they not be forgotten. Their entire mortuary tradition has evolved from the making of offerings by the living to the dead, offerings that were meant to assure that those who had died would continue in comfort in the afterlife.”

“The tomb treasures,” Jenny added, obviously eager to show she had done her lessons, “were meant to represent those things the departed would need in the afterlife. Some archeologists think that even the poor had similar items placed in their graves, though they had to make do with simple drawings and clay figures rather than elaborate painted frescos or statues made from gold and alabaster.”

Eddie nodded that he understood. “But you do admit that they didn’t want to get dug up.”

“No,” Stephen admitted. “They didn’t, but mostly because that would hurt their chances of being remembered after death and receiving offerings from their descendants. For an ancient Egyptian, being erased from memory was a fate worse than death.”

Neville interrupted, aware that his tone was a touch mocking, and wondering where that mockery came from. “So in a sense, we could be doing old Neferankhotep a favor by finding his tomb and making his legend current once more. He certainly has been forgotten.”

Eddie directed a too sharp glance toward Neville.

“Has he?” he asked softly.

Speaking in a more general tone, Eddie turned again to Stephen and Jenny.

“Still, you’ll admit that the majority of archeologists aren’t motivated by a desire to keep the dead from being forgotten.”

“True,” Stephen said. “Yet, without archeological excavation and the information we gather, the history and culture of the ancient Egyptians would be completely lost to us.”

“Does that matter?” Eddie asked, clearly enjoying his role as devil’s advocate.

From the eagerness, completely free from any anger, with which Stephen responded, Neville guessed that the young linguist saw this in the light of an intellectual debate and did not feel personally attacked.

“Certainly,” Stephen said. “Without the work that archeologists have done, we would still be in the position of those who saw the ancient Egyptians as peculiar magicians or as all being like the horrid tyrant mentioned in the Bible.”

Jenny added, “In your work, Eddie, you must have met those people who still want to think of the ancient Egyptians as having some arcane powers. We traveled on the steamer with a woman who could go on for hours about how the pyramids could not have been constructed without magical assistance, or how the hieroglyphs were magical symbols, potent in themselves.”

“Seems to me,” Eddie said with a grin, rolling another cigarette and accepting a fresh cup of coffee from the curiously silent Papa Antonio, “that even the ancient Egyptians themselves felt that way. Weren’t things like the Eye of Horus or the scarab beetle considered talismans to ward off evil and misfortune, the way a Christian might use a cross?”

Neville interrupted. “There will be ample time to discuss such matters on the way up-river or in field camps—more than ample.”

“Fine,” Eddie replied. “However, this hasn’t been as useless as you might think, Neville, old man. I do need to know what you’re hoping to bring out. If it’s just knowledge, well, we don’t need as many pack camels, but if you’re for looting the tombs . . .”

Stephen flared, honestly offended. “Collecting artifacts is not looting!”

Eddie looked at him levelly. “If we’re going to work together, Stephen, we’re going to need to be honest. You know as well as I do that the majority of archeologists aren’t motivated by a desire for knowledge. They toss old pots aside in their eagerness to find gold and precious stones, even though those pots and the things written on them could teach a whole lot. Most of the people funding expeditions are hoping to find some of the beautiful things the ancient Egyptians buried with their dead. Interest in the relics of the ages—and the value some people give them—has been a later development, and one that is far from universal.”

Stephen paused and Neville could see him swallowing some angry retort.

“Eddie, I agree,” Stephen said a bit woodenly when he finally spoke, “Archeologists like Belzoni at the beginning of this century were little more than tomb robbers. I’ll admit it. But what about Denon? He worked even earlier, and certainly his painstakingly careful renderings of the tomb paintings and the tombs themselves were not motivated by greed.”

“They didn’t need to be,” Eddie said. “Denon was on Napoleon’s payroll, so he had the luxury to indulge in art.”

Jenny pressed Stephen down when the young man surged to his feet.

“Mr. Bryce—Eddie—why are you baiting Stephen? If you don’t want to be part of Uncle Neville’s expedition, for any reason, then I think you should say so and why. Whatever people did fifty years ago, whatever some of them are still doing now, Stephen isn’t responsible.”

Eddie laughed, a drawn-out, good-natured sound that immediately eased the tension.

“You’re right, Jenny. I was baiting him. I have my reasons—and some of them are as practical as how many camels I should arrange for us to take with us. It’s one thing to talk about Denon’s paintings and ancient knowledge, but if in the end I’m going to find myself being asked to haul out gold-plated furnishing and statuettes I need to be ready in advance. A camel’s a good beast, and strong, but it isn’t a steamer that can be loaded to the capacity of the hold, and fed brush because the coal has been left behind to make room for artifacts.”

“Have people really done that?” Jenny asked.

Before Eddie could answer, Neville cut him off.

“Eddie, you said you are willing to work for me. Have you changed your mind?”

“Certainly not based on anything these young folks have said. You, though, you’ve been remarkably quiet, Nev.”

“Can’t get a word in,” Neville replied, forcing a laugh. “Can we start making arrangements?”

“First one question,” Eddie said. “Does Stephen—and Jenny, since I understand you’re the only family she has left—do they know about how your last attempt to go after this Neferankhotep got stopped?”

“I told them,” Neville replied, “even before we left England. I told them everything, even what I thought I heard the one would-be assassin say.”

“ ‘So is the Lawgiver avenged against sacrilege. So is the good king’s peace preserved,’ ” Eddie replied. “I still think that this good king is not forgotten, Neville. If I am to assist you, I insist on one term. We will not speak of this expedition to anyone. You have been convinced to take a trip to Luxor—perhaps by Mr. Holmboe, who wishes to see the Valley of the Kings. I have a very reliable agent in Luxor, a cousin of my wife’s mother. Cambridge-educated man. Daud knows how to keep silence. So do I.”

Neville sensed the other man’s implied criticism.

“And so do I,” he said indignantly.

“Do you?” Eddie said. “You just admitted that you have confided in your niece and in Stephen.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“She’s my family—my only family, as you so aptly reminded me. Mr. Holmboe is an expert I need in order to do my work. I don’t read hieroglyphs well enough to translate any inscriptions we might find. However, I won’t take him out without giving him fair warning.”

“And what would you have done if he’d been scared off? How would you have stopped him from telling your story to others?”

Neville felt himself growing unreasonably angry.

“Would you have had me kill Stephen if he had refused to take the risk? I think you have been living among the Bedouin too long, Mr. Bryce.”