Tutankhamun Uncovered (57 page)

“You are right. Engelbach’s not here, Howard. So what do we do about it?”

They looked at each other. They both had the same thought.

“What they haven’t been witness to...”, Carter began.

“...They cannot choose to keep!” Carnarvon completed his sentence for him. In the absence of the authorities, the earl, particularly after so many lean years, was not about to share that which he might not have to share.

Carter smiled and made his decision. “We shall hide this one. For the time being at least. Where would be best do y’ think?”

Carnarvon thought for a moment. “Behind those cases. No one will think of looking there. I’m the only one selecting the wine for the evening. Put it back over there, Howard. Just like it was.”

Carter put the case back exactly where he had found it. He lifted the top open again for a moment to catch another glimpse of the face. The large, outlined eyes stared up at him through the strands of straw. He replaced the top of the crate and turned to Carnarvon. “Will y’ join me back at the dig, m’ lord?”

But there was no one there. The eager earl had already left.

When Carter got back to the steps, his lordship was issuing orders to Ali in a broken Arabic which the reis was struggling to understand, interpreting as best he could, and then doing what he thought his master was directing him to do.

Carter rushed to his patron’s side.

“M’ lord. Please leave the man be. Ali knows precisely what to do. Directing him otherwise will only confuse him and slow things up. Believe me, he and his men will find everything of value that there is to find in that corridor. They will bring it up to us with due haste. Have no fear.”

The earl showed no offence at Carter’s mild correction but, nevertheless, as the afternoon’s digging wore on, and in the continued anxiety of his impatience, he was unable to resist issuing the odd cautionary word to the reis.

By evening, the corridor had been half cleared to floor level. Carnarvon stayed until the shadows had grown across the pit and he was finding difficulty seeing anything in detail.

The darkening valley was a signal that it was time for the customary evening tipple, and the earl was well on his way back to his field wine cellar before Carter and Lady Evelyn had noticed he was absent.

Catching sight of him hobbling awkwardly down the valley track ahead of them, Carter turned to Lady Evelyn. “You go with him, Evelyn,” he encouraged. “I’ll be along presently.”

Carter finally assessed that the light was now poor enough that small or dull objects might be overlooked. He dismissed the men and set the guards in place. Dusting himself off, he walked back to the tomb of Ramses XI.

Supper was already laid and Carnarvon was on his third glass of claret. Evelyn, Callender and Sergeant Adamson similarly had been enjoying refreshment for some little time.

“You have been working too hard, Howard. Have a drink.”

Carnarvon greeted the tired archaeologist and drew up a chair. Carter turned to acknowledge the earl and, as he did so, a befezzed and white robed waiter smothered Carter’s face in his left armpit as he eagerly bent over him to pour the wine. Carter tweaked his moustache, squeezed his nose, and rolled his eyes. He pushed himself back in his chair to put some respectable space between himself and the armpit. All at the table chuckled and the echoes from within the confining stone walls awakened the dozing valley.

“An experience h’I wouldn’t relish meself, sir,” remarked the red-faced Sergeant Adamson with a wry grin. The sergeant had seated himself presumptuously next to Lady Evelyn. He was looking quite the part in his freshly laundered and crisply pressed uniform. He too was on his third glass of claret.

“Nearly finished, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. Don’t mind if I do...” And he proffered his glass for a refill.

Carter’s face took on an expression of authority. “Then you’d better go check on the guards. With the corridor partly excavated and Lord Carnarvon on the very threshold of discovery, I don’t want to give any idle tomb robbers a head start. About your business, if you please.”

“Sah!” Adamson hurriedly drained the bottom of his claret glass, pushed his chair back and snapped to attention. He took his leave of Evelyn, his boss and his lordship and disappeared into the twilight.

The following morning was the twenty-sixth of November, in the twelfth year of the reign of our sovereign, King George V, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty Two.

Carnarvon and his daughter were at the site just two hours after daybreak eagerly anticipating that the end of the corridor would be revealed some time during that morning. This time they were expected. Carter was standing at the edge of the pit watching Ali’s men. He saw the two approaching along the valley track and greeted them with a wave of his Homburg.

“Top of the morning to you, m’ lord; lady Evelyn. You are up betimes once more, I see.”

“Anxious not to miss anything, Howard. This could be the day of days I feel it in me waters!”

“I do wish you wouldn’t keep saying that, Father,” corrected Evelyn. “Wishing us such good luck will only assure us bad luck. And it will not improve the condition of your bladder either, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Lady Evelyn,” said Carter. “To ward off the evil spirits Abdel has brought along my canary. He is convinced it will bring us good fortune.”

Evelyn giggled. “Perhaps Porchy and the bird will cancel each other out. We shall have neither good nor bad luck just so-so.”

“You may well be right, Lady Evelyn,” returned Carter with a note of seriousness in his voice. “The work has been going slowly. We are taking great care to examine each load of rubble for signs of tomb debris. Odd fragments have been coming to light but, other than the wooden head of the boy king, nothing much of value certainly nothing in one piece. The indications so far small tomb debris in the corridor fill and obvious signs of robbery suggest we may be on the threshold of another cache of reinterred Pharaohs possibly not Tutankhamen himself. If so, a magnificent find in its own right, but not so much a prize as the burial of the boy king.”

At this moment Carnarvon came back with a set of commonsense observations that quite stunned his colleague all the more because they came from a relative layman. “With respect, Howard, I think you are quite wrong,” began the earl. “You unnecessarily belittle this find. Observe. The resealed robbers’ tunnel is too narrow to introduce one let alone several Pharaohs’ coffins. Furthermore, that which can’t go in, can’t come out. While small articles may well have been taken, the larger stuff may well have survived; perhaps damaged by the robbers, perhaps stripped of sheet gold, but otherwise still there.”

Carter just hadn’t come to expect this kind of deductive reasoning from his patron. In addition he felt truly embarrassed that he had not really taken the time to think the clues through for himself. Rather, he had allowed himself to enjoy the emotion of at last finding something, and something that had much pleased his patron.

The earl continued. “Last night, turning these observations over in my head, I hardly slept. Always I came back to the same conclusion. It is so exciting! There will be wondrous things in there, Howard, mark my words!”

There was the smile of a conqueror on the earl’s face. He had dared to invade the hallowed ground of Carter’s technical territory and he had got it right.

Carter was duly impressed. Nevertheless, as the professional he felt a natural and uncharitable inclination to correct the layman, even if only in a small way. But as he opened his mouth to respond to his lordship’s comments, his words were drowned out by Arthur Callender shouting from deep within the corridor.

“Carter! Your lordship! Come quickly! We see the top of another doorway!”

Callender was a big man, and when the other three had reached the bottom of the entrance staircase all they could see was the mass of a large, tweed suited figure kneeling near the top of the remaining rubble fill at the far end of the corridor, his body crouched beneath the ceiling. Callender turned to look over his shoulder at them. “Come up here and look at this, Howard. More seal impressions. And more scars of entry.”

Carter scrambled up the slope of limestone chippings to reach his colleague’s side. About two feet of the top of a second mud plastered door were visible. Several different types of seal impressions had been uncovered. Carter didn’t waste time examining them. He had already made a quick mental calculation. They were halfway through the afternoon. If they continued clearing at the pace they had maintained thus far, the door should be cleared to its base by early evening. They should be able to make a preliminary investigation beyond the door before closing down for the night.

“Ali! I want this passageway completely cleared of debris today so that we can examine the door in detail. Be sure to continue taking care to look for small objects. I do not want to miss anything.”

He descended the remaining rubble pile, pulling Callender after him by his lapel, and came face to face with his expectant patron. “A door it is, m’ lord. We shall know what lies behind it before sunset. Have a little patience. Enjoy the wait!”

To be truthful, for all of them patience was a commodity in short supply, particularly at this juncture. However, the discipline of Petrie’s training and his years of experience success and failure alike gave Carter the authority he needed to influence his colleagues. He was, when all said and done, the man in charge.

Carnarvon and Evelyn looked up at the lintel expectantly. The earl was hardly able to contain his anticipation. He was visibly trembling.

Evelyn took his arm and guided him gently back up the stone steps. “It will be some hours before we can address the door, Porchy. Why don’t we all go back to the comfort of Ramses Eleven and sit awhile?”

Carnarvon could hardly bear the wait. He had to concentrate hard to stop himself fidgeting. While they sat around the table in the other tomb Carter, normally relaxed and himself much more disciplined and practised in these situations, became alarmed at his own nervousness and found it difficult to participate in the conversation. The atmosphere was electric, all of them fit to burst at any moment.

Following a late tea, the earl found that he could stand the waiting no longer. “Going back to check on progress, Howard. Anyone coming with me?”

“H’if you would permit me, sir.” Adamson had awoken and was eager for some exercise. He handed the earl his panama. “H’if it’s all right wiv you... Carnarvon, h’I would be most h’onoured to accompany you to the h’excavation.”

“My pleasure, Adamson.”

“Sir.”

No one else seemed to be prepared to get up, and, without taking the time for a second request, the two left swiftly and disappeared into the brilliant sunlight of late afternoon.

His lordship hurried to the spot as fast as his dexterity with a walking stick would allow. Adamson helped him to the steps, fending off the labourers who, like so many beads on a moving rosary, were flitting in and out of the corridor with their baskets and loads in regular pulses. At the threshold, the infirm earl shrugged off his assistant, brought himself to aristocratic attention and stepped deliberately into the mouth of his discovery.

About an hour later, Adamson came running back to Ramses XI to tell Carter and his colleagues that the door was finally cleared and his lordship awaited them. The three left their seats together and followed the sergeant back to the tomb.

As he walked out into the sunlight, Carter shouted to his servant who was reclining in the shade of his robe. “Abdel! Go fetch Mr Burton at once. And get the electric light organised again. Hurry man!”

Abdel jumped to his feet and took off along the valley track for the tomb of Seti I.

As they descended the stone staircase, they quickly saw that the entrance corridor was not only cleared but, on Ali’s fastidious instructions, it had been swept spotlessly clean. At the base of the inclined shaft, the freshly exposed, dark and mysterious doorway stood beckoning before them.

“The probing rod, Ali.”

With a rapid swirl of his hand, Carter signalled urgently to his reis who, in anticipation of his master’s request, and grinning that awful, blackened toothy grin of his, immediately produced the rod from behind his back.

Carter took the rod and examined the door for a spot that was without seal impressions and where the mud plaster contours appeared to indicate the join of two bricks. He carefully bored into the mud, alternately twisting clockwise and anticlockwise, feeling sensitively for the line of least resistance, until the rod broke through to the opposite side. As the rod jerked inward, those intently watching him drew a sharp breath.

In the silence of the moment, there was a very faint but plainly audible hiss as the pressure of the ancient gases from within equalised with those outside. Carter looked back at the row of anxious faces. Without a word, he turned back to the door and slowly pushed the rod further inward, feeling for signs of resistance. He introduced it slowly, further and further and still further. To its full length of three feet there was nothing. He turned once more to his colleagues.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Another corridor, I’ll be bound. Fortunately for us, it seems there may be no more digging. We shall look into this next corridor this very evening. I am going to enlarge the hole so we can take a peek.”

Carter withdrew the probe and gently chipped away at the wall until he had excavated a hole large enough for him to introduce his hand and a source of light and still have some view of what might lie before him.

Callender was quickly by his side with a lit candle. Carter took the candle and raised it to the hole so that it shone its pale light through to the other side. There was silence in the corridor as the three behind waited for him to describe what he was able to see. No one expected him to see much, just the blackness of another corridor extending ever deeper into the tomb if they were lucky, perhaps some faint suggestion of wall paintings.

He was silent for some time, his eyes slowly accustoming themselves to the gloom. As he strained to make out what was before him his quickened breathing caused the candle flame to flicker. The limpid candle light fanned the walls of the room beyond with its faint energy. The flame threw dimly fluid, blurred shadows against the wall opposite. The pale light picked out shapes in the darkness. The images were indistinct but they were real.