Tutankhamun Uncovered (20 page)

Davis’s mind was on other things. “Dammit, Carter, you just remember whose money is paying for all this. If you’ve got something to damn well show me I want to see it now!”

“Sir, with respect,” Carter softly responded, “I frankly do not think I can find it in torchlight. Too dangerous. You will enjoy it much more in the morning. I am tired. I am hungry. And, to be quite truthful, I could do without conversation this evening. If you’d rather pass on dinner that’s just fine. I’d be indebted to you if you would leave me alone as you have done thus far.”

“You damn British are a boring lot of bastards. Unsociable, stubborn, and damnedly ungrateful!”

As Davis mouthed expletives at Carter the houseboy brought in another martini.

“Ice, dammit, I want more ice!”

Davis’ attentions now on the houseboy and the imperfect cocktail, Carter took the opportunity to disappear into his room and prepare himself for bed. But no sooner had he pulled on his nightshirt than he heard Davis creating an awful commotion out on the porch.

“Goddam fuzzywuzzy! What the hell do you think this is? A goddam fruit punch? Bring the ice. I’ll mix the goddam thing myself. The ice, dammit!” He grabbed for the bucket himself. “Watch me, now, so you will get it right the next time.” He snatched the bottle of gin from the Arab’s hand and glugged it into his glass. “See that? Four fingers. Four!” He thrust four hairy digits at the unfortunate servant boy. “Four like that. Then...” He poured a dash or two of vermouth into the glass. “This much. See? Sonofabitchin’ camel dung’s got more brains.” And he drank the glassful down in one gulp, much of the ice falling about his waistcoat and onto the floor.

“Another!” he ordered, thrusting his empty glass at the boy.

Carter, astounded by Davis’s outburst and anxious to stop the onslaught before things got too ugly, emerged from his room in his dressing gown. He had worked long and hard to endear the Arabs to him and he wasn’t about to let an egotistical American destroy all the trust and respect he had built up over the seasons. He spoke to the boy softly in Arabic and sent him away. Alone with Davis, he walked around his chair until he faced him straight on. He made no allowances for his patron’s irrational state of mind.

“Mr Davis,” he announced firmly, “I think it better you leave my house at once. The Antiquities Service has no need for disrespectful bigots. Please be good enough to retire peacefully while I am inclined to believe it is the drink that is doing the talking. I hope you will be feeling better in the morning. If you do not, I may be forced to reconsider my options regarding this partnership.”

Davis, although somewhat sleepy with booze, was alert enough to comprehend fully the implications of Carter’s words. Much as he despised authority in others, he well recognised that this young man indeed held the power to revoke his licence to dig. Davis’s consuming passion to find an intact royal tomb, to return to the United States bedecked with trophies, and to receive the public honours attributed to those who donated such artefacts to the Metropolitan Museum transcended all other considerations. More than anything else, he wanted to publish and to have his name as a donor engraved on the description plate of a rare and beautiful display piece, there for all to see in perpetuity in the grand halls of the Met. He had better tread carefully from here.

Presented with what amounted to an ultimatum, therefore, Davis’s response to Carter was most thoughtful and, a first for Davis, totally submissive. “Howard, my apologies. I have been too long drinking on the porch. This will not happen again. Let us go tomorrow to this interesting place you mentioned, as you suggest. I am indeed most sorry for the rudeness of my outburst.”

“I understand,” said Carter. “I will bring the houseboy in and you will apologise to him as well. Then all will be put to rights.”

“Mmm? That really necessary?”

Carter nodded.

Davis did as he was told. They took dinner together after all, Carter in his nightshirt, Davis in his waistcoat, buttoned jodhpurs, boots and spats. They each had a final brandy and a cigar. By 10 p.m. Davis was on his way to his houseboat and Carter was in bed.

The late evening’s dose of humility took much out of Davis. Perhaps for the first time in his life he had failed to get what he wanted through sheer force of will. He chose not to share the evening’s events with Emma. His sense of failure allowed him little sleep that night. So it was the following morning that he was already at breakfast on Carter’s veranda before Carter was out of bed. As the sun broke the horizon and threw a reflective glare across the river, Carter emerged, still in his nightshirt.

“Mornin’, Howard. Not like you to sleep in, especially when we have work to do. You do remember your promise, don’t you? What is it we are going to see today?”

Carter breathed in the cool morning air, stretched and sat at the table opposite his patron. “Good morning to you, Mr Davis. What a super sunrise. Invariably remarkable from here. Best location on the west bank. Fair sets one up for the day.

“Abdel! Coffee, if you please.”

Davis wasn’t interested in pleasantries. “What’s in store for me today, Howard?” he repeated.

“Not sure you deserve anything after that exhibition last evening, sir.” Carter couldn’t resist the jab.

“But I apologised. Can’t ask for more than that.”

Carter had had his fun and decided to leave it. “Recognising your mood when I returned last night, I felt you needed something to spice up your senses, sir, but the martini issue got in the way. What I had in mind for you was a little pornography.”

Davis’s face lit up. “Glad you didn’t tell me, man. Had little enough sleep last night. With the extra anticipation, I may have had none!”

Following breakfast, Carter got dressed and they left the inspectorate house at about 7.30 Carter on Sultan; Davis on a mule; and the usual entourage of fellahs on foot and carrying supplies for their refreshment.

Carter led Davis southwest along the clearly defined margin that separates the fertile, green fields stretching to the riverside from the golden, lifeless desert. Then they cut inland towards the great amphitheatre of cliffs in which the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut stood, itself almost an extension of the rocks themselves. The excavation and restoration of the structure were now pretty much complete. Davis had visited the temple many times. He had marvelled at its architecture and the art on its walls, but since its discovery could never be attributed to him it bore less attraction than the mysteries that still lay hidden beneath it and, of course, inside the walls of The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.

“Pornography, Howard? I have been here many times. I have studied the reliefs and the paintings. They are beautiful. There is no pornography.”

“We are not going to the temple, sir,” said Carter. “We shall have to dismount shortly and climb the scree slope that leads up to the cliff over there. D’ you see that cavity there, to the right and to the rear of the amphitheatre?”

Davis, who was by now feeling considerable discomfort from his overindulgence the night before, could barely squint tightly enough to bear the punch of the sun off the blazing yellow cliff face. But he could make out a black spot in the brightness.

“All the way up there? Sonofabitch! Have y’ no mercy?”

Carter was unyielding. The trials Davis had put the poor fellahs through the previous night were still fresh in his mind.

“We begin our walk from here, sir,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.

The two men dismounted and Carter led Davis up the rubble slope. As they walked, their feet sank in the loose debris. The going was so soft it felt almost as if they were making no progress at all. But when Carter paused for a moment to look back at the temple below and the river beyond, it was clear to both of them just how far they had already climbed. To Davis the cave, the tomb entrance, or whatever it was, did not look so very far away after all.

They scrambled their way to the cliff face and then along the top of the scree slope to the left until they stood beneath the opening. It was about fifty vertical feet away. The climbing was now firm footing and Carter had no trouble reaching the mouth of the cavity. Davis, under the weather as he was, lost his footing a couple of times, but made it in the end. When, panting, he reached Carter’s side, it became clear that this was no cave. It was another rock cut tomb unfinished; uninhabited. No royal body had ever lain here.

Carter, stooping, led Davis into the crudely cut passage. The increasing darkness temporarily blinded them. Gradually their eyes became accustomed to the feeble light. All Davis could make out were the unfinished walls.

“There’s nothing here,” panted Davis. “Why have we climbed all this way?”

“Are your eyes not open, Mr Davis?” taunted Carter.

“Damn right they are. I see nothing. Not a damned thing. Just rock.” And then he paused for a moment. “Wait a minute...” He laughed. “Sonofabitch! It’s Hatshepsut being rogered by a serf, is it not?”

“In so many words, sir. At least, that is one interpretation,” said Carter. He continued clinically, “There is some controversy, however. The apparent lack of breasts a cartoon of a homosexual act? But the figure has the headdress typical in portraits known to be of Hatshepsut. She is often depicted as a man and, and...”

“Yes, yes?” urged Davis, now totally fascinated.

“Well... The triangle between the legs surely intended as a female representation.”

“And would y’ look at this guy waving his weener around!” Davis burst into laughter, then pulled out his sketchpad and penned a few lines for posterity.

On the way back, descending the scree slope and looking down on the magnificent spectacle of the queen’s temple below them, a thought struck Carter. To Davis’ surprise the inspector suddenly turned back and began to climb up the cliff again.

“Where the devil are you going now, man?” asked the aching millionaire.

“I just want to check something,” Carter shouted back. “Back in a minute.” And he disappeared over a ledge.

Five minutes in the unrelenting sun was far too long to expect Theodore Davis to wait. He made his way back to Carter’s house and took a light and unusually booze free lunch by himself. By late afternoon he was at the excavation site, his energies recharged by the food and the morning’s excitement. On occasion, he was to be seen down amongst the fellahs scrabbling about pulling rocks from the gradually lengthening corridor. It was by now quite deep and he found it so hot at the debris face that he could spend no more than five or ten minutes there at any one time. Even the candles were softening and bending on their holders. On his third trip out of the mouth of the tomb he met Carter coming down the valley side directly above the tomb entrance.

“Where the hell have you been all this time?” Davis asked. “I’ve been working m’ guts out down in the bowels of this thing and you’ve been gallavantin’ wherever y’ please. Found somethin’ up there, have you?”

“No. Found nothing, Mr Davis. But I have exercised a theory of mine. And when we have completed clearance of this tomb I shall perform a survey to see whether my theory has foundation. Until I climbed that cliff with you this morning I did not realise that the burial chamber, when we eventually encounter it, could be located beneath the innermost bowels of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple on the other side of this divide intentionally so leading us to conclude that this must be the queen’s tomb. It might explain the tortuous path we are now excavating. I believe the tomb makers started at the valley head and the point closest to the queen’s temple in an unfinished and abandoned tomb that for its first few feet ran entirely in the wrong direction. So, using this initial drop, they continued at the same angle of descent but gradually turned the corridor towards and beneath the temple’s innermost shrine. That would make it unique among the tombs in The Valley.”

The young archaeologist’s speculations appealed to Davis’ appetite for mystery and he decided to stay with the tomb clearance operations until they had been completed. But, with the air rapidly becoming too foul to breathe he first had to spend some additional money bringing an air pump to the excavation. Thankfully this was readily obtainable in Luxor and they had it at the site within twenty-four hours.

The season ended as expected, still tunnelling and with no end in sight.

With Davis back in the United States for the summer, Carter took off for Dendera with his palette and brushes, a sketchpad of heavy cartridge paper, and a folding canvas seat, for what he looked forward to as a pleasant, peaceful, uneventful, artistic interlude unencumbered with pampered, pestering hangers-on the like of TMD. He was to be sorely disappointed. The very first day turned out to be extremely uncomfortable, even horrific.

Seeking a shaded spot inside the halls of the great temple, Carter placed his chair at the base of one of the massive columns in front of an enormous frieze, a section of which he planned to paint. He looked up at the great ceiling high above him. Row upon row of vultures and serpents, their wings spread wide and painted in vivid reds, blues and gold, guided the eye towards the ceremonial entrance. The sunlight momentarily blinded him and he jerked his head back into the shade. As his eyes focused once more, the early light crisply picked out the engravings in the wall before him. The moment was too precious to miss. He pulled the pencil from his jacket pocket, licked the sharp lead point and leaned forward. Just about to make the first pencil stroke, he was disturbed by a commotion coming from outside the temple walls. The noise became louder as an Arab ran into the temple, his white robe fluttering all about him.

“Effendi! Effendi! Mr Carter, sir! Come at once! A body has been discovered! A body! Not two minutes from here.” The excited Arab gestured behind him.

Carter knew the man. He had from time to time been a senior helper in his excavation gangs. ‘A mummy?’ he thought. The adrenalin flowed. The heartbeat increased. All at once he forgot his painting. He rose to follow the man who was beckoning him hastily and already running back but looking at Carter to see if he was coming.