The Buried Pyramid (51 page)

Jenny saw Neville shoot his friend a dirty look, but Stephen nattered on unaware of the breach of propriety.

“They believed in something like that. The paintings on the walls, and the little carved figures—
shabtis
—were meant to supply all the luxuries the deceased might need in the afterlife. This included someone to do your chores for you, and all the rest.”

“I wonder,” Neville said, speaking quickly enough that Jenny knew he was trying to make sure Stephen didn’t forget himself and talk about that provocative “rest,” “if there are any doors out of this chamber and into the tomb proper?”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” Stephen said, shrugging, and moving from Osiris to Maat. “Doorways into key areas of a tomb were usually very carefully concealed so that tomb robbers wouldn’t have easy access. Sometimes there were entire false passages, done up with art and polished stone floors.”

“I remember,” Jenny said, “something about that from our tour at Gizeh. I think it must have been a terrible amount of work for the laborers.”

“True,” Stephen agreed, “but what was being protected was more than gold and precious goods. If the body and its substitutes were destroyed, so were the essential elements for continuing in the afterlife. The laborers might have felt pretty good about being in on the deception. In the afterlife, the pharaoh became one with Osiris, and he would be more welcoming to someone who served him well.”

“Or,” Eddie said sardonically, “the laborers might have liked knowing what passages were good and which were dummies. After all, the robberies were probably inside jobs.”

There was an uncomfortable silence following that, and Jenny knew that, like herself, the men didn’t know whether to classify themselves as thieves.

If we don’t take anything,
she thought.
If we just look around and make notes, that’s not thieving. It might even be good for Neferankhotep. Didn’t Stephen say the Egyptians thought being forgotten was the worst thing that could happen?

They examined the chamber in detail, making sketches of the art and rough copies of some of the texts, but by that evening the lust for new discoveries had taken over.

“Why don’t we split our energies?” Stephen suggested over a bowl of mutton stew. “Neville seems to have a talent for figuring out the tombs. Why doesn’t he take over in the chamber? I could go on with the texts, and Eddie and Jenny could see if there are other doors. There might be one near this one, or, more likely, by one of the other sculptures.”

He suddenly stopped talking and blushed, realizing he’d been overstepping his authority. Sir Neville, not he, was patron of the expedition. Jenny hurriedly looked over at her uncle, but he didn’t seem affronted. If anything, he was amused.

“That sounds like a good plan,” Neville said. “And I appreciate the compliment to my skills. Eddie, what do you think about checking along the ridge to see if there are any more ventilation shafts?”

“I can do that,” Eddie replied, “especially if you can give me a clear idea what to look for. It would give me a chance to hunt as well—unless Jenny wants a go.”

Jenny shook her head. “I think there may be an opening over by Isis. I remember noticing when I was copying that the sand sloped oddly along one section of the wall. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but now I’d like to take another look.”

“It might be an offering chapel,” Stephen said. “Those were usually left open so the living could bring gifts for the deceased. It might hold some interesting sculpture, even a statue of Neferankhotep himself.”

“Now that would be something,” Neville said. “I know Egyptian art is more symbolic than representational, but there were portrait statues. Wouldn’t it be something if we could actually learn what Neferankhotep looked like?”

Jenny was about to agree, trying to find a tactful way to ask her uncle what his intentions were should they find something more portable than wall paintings, when she was interrupted by the sound of movement against the roof of the camelhair pavilion.

At first she thought the sound was her imagination, but then she realized that the men had gone very still. Mozelle, who had been trying to climb into Jenny’s lap—and her stew bowl—was staring upwards with unblinking blue eyes.

Without even realizing she had done so, Jenny drew her revolver from its holster. There was something moving up there, something heavy enough to dimple the fabric downward.

A bird,
she thought.
Maybe a hawk, like the one we saw on our way here. No. It’s too heavy for that.

She eased herself out from under the protection of the pavilion in time to see a small and agile shape leap from the roof and down, onto the rocks.

“Just a critter of some sort,” she said, her voice shaking as she eased her gun back into its holster. “Probably attracted by the smell of our dinner.”

Stephen, however, was picking something white off the ground, where it had slid off the pavilion’s peaked roof. Like one mesmerized, he unfolded it.

“ ‘Flee!’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘You have been discovered. Your enemies will strike with the coming of first light.’ It’s signed, ‘Sphinx.’ ”

Revelation hit Jenny so suddenly she nearly staggered.
So that’s who the Sphinx is . . . It must be. What are they doing here?

She didn’t have time to say anything about her revelation. Uncle Neville had rounded on Stephen and Jenny didn’t think she’d ever heard him sound so angry.

“Stephen,” Sir Neville growled, “this is not the time for one of your jokes!”

“It wasn’t me,” Stephen protested. “This isn’t even like my writing paper . . .”

Eddie came down from one of his watch stands, his manner taut and commanding.

“It wasn’t Stephen,” he said sharply. “I can’t see much detail, but there are campfires down there. Camels picketed along the edge. Whoever’s down there has camped close enough to the rock that I can’t see them—and I’m not getting myself shot climbing down.”

Jenny thought of the note’s futile warning. “Flee? We can’t flee! All that’s out there is desert.”

“How about the ruined village?” Neville asked. “Would that offer any cover?”

“None,” Eddie said, “and the canyons where I’ve been hunting are all dead ends where we could easily be trapped. We hold the high ground. If we go down there we’ll lose whatever small advantage that gives us. They’ll wait until morning. Even knowing what you’re doing, getting up here is a bad climb in uncertain light.”

“We could hole up in the chamber we found today,” Jenny suggested. Her heart was racing, and the stew she’d just eaten sat uncomfortably heavy in her gut. “The walls there would cover our back and flanks, and no one could get a drop on us from above, not without falling into the pit we cleared. It’s a shame we’ve made it so obvious, or we could close the door and hope they’d steal the camels and leave to look for us elsewhere.”

“Isn’t that chamber just as bad as a deadend canyon?” Stephen asked. “Why not stay in the open?”

“Because then they could surround us or shoot us,” Eddie replied. He was already gathering up key items of gear. “Because the chamber itself offers intangible protection.”

“What?” Stephen asked.

“As I see it, our enemies are one of two groups—either those Protectors of the Pharaoh or rival archeologists,” Eddie replied, tossing Stephen a handgun and belt. “Put that on.”

Jenny, busy filling empty canteens with water, completed Eddie’s thought. “And either way they won’t want the chamber damaged—archeologists because it’s a valuable find, and maybe the way into the tomb, and these Protectors because it belongs to Neferankhotep.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Eddie agreed.

“Closing the door to the chamber once we’re inside would be out of the question,” Neville said. He’d listened with intense patience, even to the mention of other archeologists—though he must have known to whom these oblique references applied. “All they’d need to do would be to find the ventilation slits and shut them off, and we’d suffocate. A door that let in so little sand isn’t going to let in much air—certainly not enough for four people to last very long without passing out.”

“Start moving food and water into the chamber,” Eddie ordered. “With water, we can hold out longer, maybe negotiate some sort of surrender.”

They did this, leaving the pavilion up, and making dummies from their bedrolls to lie alongside the fire. Eddie led a few of the camels to the top of the trail in the hope that they’d decide to wander and provide a distraction, but the animals seemed disinclined to leave.

“Why should they?” he said. “There’s water, and we’ve made sure they didn’t exhaust the forage.”

Eddie’s labors with the camels made Jenny remember Mozelle. It wouldn’t do to have the kitten wander, so she stuffed the tiny creature into a drawstring bag, leaving her head outside. Then she put it on top of one of their stacks of gear. Mozelle protested with a surprisingly shrill wail until she forgot why she was unhappy and fell asleep.

The rest of them were not so lucky. Even after the day’s hard labors, they could not rest. Sand trickled down from the edge of their pit, its unmetered flow reminding Jenny of a weird hourglass. Dawn’s first glimmer was hidden from them by the rim of the valley, but they knew it had come when a shuffling tramp and the falling of rock announced that several people were mounting to the rocky rim.

“They’re closing from several different directions,” Eddie whispered hoarsely, shifting his rifle and checking the load for the dozenth time. “It’s time to make our stand.”

The wait seemed unbearably long, but Neville knew it probably lasted no more than a few minutes. Those few minutes were enough to make him acutely aware of their predicament. They were trapped in a dead end—worse than a dead end, in a hole in the ground, their best defense not the guns they handled with varying degrees of confidence, but the nebulous value of some tomb paintings.

If these were the more normal sort of desert bandits, not the Protectors of the Pharaoh or rival archeologists, the art would be scant defense indeed. And even if their “enemies”—as the Sphinx’s last note had proclaimed them—were interested in the artwork, would they be willing to sacrifice such a nonportable sample to get the gear Neville and his crew had stowed in the chamber with them?

We only have the Sphinx’s word that these are enemies,
Neville thought frantically.
They could be others, come to use the water here.

If they knew of the water,
his traitor self responded,
then why didn’t they come up last night? They would have known the trail. Why are they sneaking up now, and from several directions? Whoever these are, they know we are here and they trust us not at all.

Neville shifted his grip on his revolver, wishing he’d taken more time to practice on the way out. He’d made certain Stephen learned the basics, but Jenny and Eddie had been the only two of their company to keep in practice.

After what happened last time, after what happened a few weeks ago in Cairo,
he thought,
you think I’d have taken this more seriously. Did I really somehow believe that if I ignored the possibility, it wouldn’t happen?

Neville was given no further opportunity for self-recrimination. Voices speaking Arabic were shouting to each other now. They’d found the camp, discovered it empty, and located the pit on the east side of the valley, one discovery following the other so rapidly that the words flowed over each other.

He translated for Jenny and Stephen, neither of whom understood colloquial Arabic well enough to follow the rapid exchange.

“They’re coming for us,” he ended. “Stephen, you’re the weakest shot. Drop back.”

The young linguist agreed, Jenny and Eddie had put their rifles aside, preferring handguns in such close quarters, where the angle at which they must shoot—if indeed they must shoot—would be steep.

Sand rained down the edges of the pit as a man came walking to the edge. Initially, all that could be seen was the hem of his long white robe and his booted feet. Then the man squatted, bending slightly forward so he could look into the pit. More sand showered down, not enough to endanger those within the chamber, but enough to remind them all too acutely of their danger. The man who looked down at them wore a curved sword at his hip. He handled a rifle with easy confidence, angling it so that the barrel pointed into the chamber below.