Tutankhamun Uncovered (77 page)

The excavation team returned this season in blissful ignorance of what awaited them. Plots had been hatched, designed to follow closely on the heels of Mace’s passing. A virtual viral soup had been brewed and liberally distributed amongst them.

“There’s a bit of everything in this,” Marc Antony had revealed to the king.

The first to come down with it was Alfred Lucas. He was diagnosed with typhoid.

Carter was in no shape to manage in Lucas’s absence, not to mention the possibility that he might never see him again. He was still trying to cope with the death of Mace. Abdel observed him as a crouched figure in the laboratory, his head in his hands, motionless for many minutes at a time. Carter attempted to console himself by acknowledging that things could be a whole lot worse... They got worse.

Harry Burton arrived late as usual. Almost immediately he began complaining of pains in his limbs.

“I am not surprised,” commented Carter with authority. “It’s those awkward positions you have to get yourself into in order to take those shots. Take some aspirin, old man, and get a good night’s sleep.” He was trying hard to be upbeat and helpful.

Burton did as Carter had instructed and got a good deal worse very quickly. It was dengue fever.

And then Carter himself began to feel out of sorts. In the absence of professional help, he took to his bed at Castle Carter. This was unusual for him. Had he had anyone fit enough to work with him, he would have attempted to shrug off his illness. But now there was no one. Both of his principal colleagues were sick really very sick so he might as well take the time to rest. By the time he recovered, perhaps they would be well on the mend and the team could get back to work together, adequately refreshed.

He had thought he could relax on his bed at Castle Carter, catching up on his notes, perhaps doing a little work towards the last volume. But he found himself becoming progressively more feverish and listless. Soon he subsided into a fitful sleep.

The three of them tossed about in their individual distress.

Lucas was delirious most of the time. His consciousness was in another time and place. He was the lucky one of the three.

Poor Burton felt everything. He had never felt so awful in his life. He tried to keep up his spirits by telling himself that if he disciplined himself to keep taking the tablets, following the next dawn he would begin to feel a little better. Every dawn, it seemed, he felt more and more wretched.

Carter, languishing in his bed at home and uncomfortably damp on sweat soaked sheets, tossed around in dream interrupted slumber.

‘What is that damn dog doing in the room?’ Carter couldn’t believe his eyes. There was a dog in the room. It was tall, lean, with a pronounced ribcage and narrow waist. It was black. It also had pointed ears and an even longer, bushy tail.

As he watched, the dog looked about itself and, apparently satisfied that there was little of a threatening nature in the immediate vicinity, gradually settled down with its skinny front legs stretched out before it. Its head alert, it stared straight ahead, directly into Carter’s eyes.

Carter squinted at the beast. The gaunt, black silhouette gradually dissolved in front of him. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, muttered something under his breath and, the weakness returning, fell back, his head once more on the dank pillow.

‘What the hell is happening to me?’ he thought. ‘Must be delirium.’

He shivered with cold and rose to get his dressing gown. The moment he pulled the heavy sheets away from his body, the black dog reappeared at the end of the bed. It lay outstretched as before, poised precariously on the footboard. In the flicker of the hurricane lamp, its cold, dark eyes glinted with life.

The dog barked.

Carter caught his breath. Taken by surprise he instinctively reached for his revolver. The gun, unfortunately for him, was on his desk, and to get it he had to get up and take at least four steps across the room. But, as soon as his legs took the weight of his body, he realised how little strength he had and, allowing his own weight to tip him backwards, he managed to steer his tottering body back onto the bed for a soft landing. He lay still for a moment, inhaling deeply. Then he raised his head to see if the dog was still there.

‘The damn creature’s smiling, I do declare!’ thought Carter.

To be sure, there was a definite upward curl to the join of its lips.

Carter stared directly into the dog’s eyes and raised his finger. “Go... Go away, damn you.”

The animal continued to stare at him dispassionately.

Carter’s finger slowly dropped. He could not muster enough strength to keep his arm up. But he kept watching. And, as he watched, behind the staring dog something else began to form.

It was all out of focus at first. Above him, beyond the end of the bed, a golden orb took shape. Then, within the orb, a face began to form. Something brightly coloured began to frame the face. Now beneath, piecemeal, the features of a torso materialised. The chest was naked. The arms were encircled with glittering bangles, the fingers with many heavy gold rings and golden thimbles on each fingertip. The waist was hung with a circlet of gold and beads of coloured glass, a decorated leather belt with a dagger and sheath of embossed gold, and a skirt of fine, white, pleated linen. Below this were firmly muscular brown legs, the feet set in thonged, golden sandals, with golden covers on each toe.

As the apparition came into focus, Carter swallowed hard. ‘Nothing more than a dream,’ he told himself. ‘Nothing more.’ Then it spoke. “You violate my sepulchre. You, your colleagues, you shall all die for this.” Carter shook his aching head. ‘There is no curse. This is a dream. An hallucination precipitated by my sickness. It shall pass.’

Despite his conviction, he felt irrationally compelled to respond in his defence and spoke out loud. The words that emerged demonstrated a coherency that belied his woeful condition.

“What we do is not for avarice. What we do, with reverence and great care, is so that our generations may learn of yours, from yours, and thereby enrich their knowledge. We are not reckless and greedy as the peoples of your own generation. We do not tear your tomb apart for profit. We preserve it. The profit is in learning. Learning about your ancient ways. Knowledge for many generations to come. I promise that your mortal remains will reside there for eternity.”

The image began to dim.

“No! Don’t go! Don’t go! You must understand me!”

Carter’s subconscious, in the haze of his fever, was totally absorbed in the paranormal.

As the apparition faded into the blackness, and with it the dark figure of the dog, the frightful conclusion dawned on him. He had never thought; he had dismissed all thoughts of the possibility that Carnarvon’s loss could have been anything more than a tragic, albeit most untimely accident. But then Mace; and then the radiographer; the others; and now, perhaps, all of them? It had been unthinkable, preposterous, sensationalist newspaper fodder; but now...?

In the discomfort of his fever, the litany of tragic coincidences, and the insecurity of his loneliness, a cold fear crept over the Egyptologist. Along with it came a great feeling of weakness. Finally, overcome by fatigue, he fell back into a deep and blessedly restful sleep.

The king returned to his queen’s side. His mood was subdued. Hers, too.

“What ails you, my queen? Why do you mope so?”

There was a long pause. She turned and looked him in the eyes. “You are feeling the same emotions as myself, my king. I have observed what you have observed. We have been touched alike. He speaks much logic. He speaks from the heart. He speaks the truth. There is nothing avaricious about this man. He genuinely believes in your preservation so that future generations may become enriched, not for possession of our gold, but for the knowledge of our culture.” The queen paused again. “What unjust and terrible thing have we set in motion? Is there to be no going back?”

Tutankhamun looked down at Carter’s prone body, once more given up to unconsciousness.

The king smiled. “I can turn them all for the better, my queen. I can do this.” He looked back at his wife. “Forgive my hate. It was great. I shall make amends. For those who remain alive at this point, no real harm has been done. And those who are already passed we shall welcome to the precincts of our celestial palace. They shall be rewarded with personal enrichment in our culture.”

“That would be reward indeed!” said the queen.

Marc Antony appeared at the doorway to the royal couple’s room.

“My lord, I am happy to report that my engagement has been wholly successful. I am sure that your Majesties have observed that they are dropping like flies, one after the other.”

“Ah... Yes.” The king looked at his wife. “There has been a change of plan, centurion.”

“A change of plan?”

“Aye. The dying is to stop. At once. We have changed our minds.”

“Changed your minds? May I be so bold as to ask what has caused this redirection?”

The king ignored the Roman’s question.

“What I have done may not be undone.”

“You have done as we had asked. You have done well. Perhaps, for our current purposes, a little too well. But we have the powers to lift the evil you have implanted in these mortals. We have nothing but praise for your untiring devotion and loyalty and, in reward, offer you solace here for as long as you wish.”

“That is most generous. However, if it is all the same to your Majesties I will continue my quest for Pharaoh Ptolemy’s daughter.”

He politely took his leave.

There was much to do and very little time. The royal couple descended to Carter’s bedside. He was still asleep. Perspiration continued to trickle from every part of his body and into his soaking mattress.

With a gentle wave of his hand, Tutankhamun turned the tide of the fever.

That morning, after a fitful sleep brought upon him by his ugly sickness and his eventful dream, Carter awoke glad to be alive.

That was not all. There was an awareness. “It all fits. They killed his lordship. They killed Arthur. They killed what’shisname, the X-ray specialist. They probably killed George Gould and the two from the Service. Perhaps they are killing us all.”

At the same time, however, he felt remarkably energetic considerably better than he had been overnight. He pulled his legs out of the bed and drew himself up not the slightest dizziness; no feeling of instability. His strength was back. He felt completely recovered.

He washed and dressed as quickly as he could, took a hearty breakfast and left in pursuit of the welfare of his colleagues.

Neither Lucas nor Burton were to be found in their hotel rooms, nor in any part of the hotel. Concerned that they may have been removed to the military hospital, Carter enquired at the reception desk. He was told they had left for the west bank that very morning and at the usual time. Much relieved, he took off back across the river and drove up into The Valley.

As he arrived, the sun was still low on the horizon and The Valley lay in a subdued, almost melancholy orange light. Carter drove faster than usual, eventually skidding to a stop at the mouth of KV15. He switched off the engine, pulled on the handbrake and stepped out. The cloud of dust that he had created in his haste to catch up with his colleagues quickly overcame car and driver, temporarily obliterating Carter from view. He emerged from the yellow pall coughing and dusting himself off.

Lucas and Burton had heard the motor coming. Immediately they stopped what they were doing and came out to greet him.

“Feeling better, old boy?” said Burton.

“Much. (Cough). Much. And you chaps?”

“Fully recovered. Skunk of a thing while I had it, but feel like I’ve pulled through without a sense of ever being under the weather.” Burton seemed ecstatic.

“Me, too,” followed Lucas. “One minute I was wishing for the last rites; the next I was up, washed, shaved, freshly pooped, dressed, and away to work. Feel bloody marvellous, too! You...?”

“Not bad at all.” Carter cleared his throat again. “Not bad at all.”

It was as if each of them had just returned from a long and restful holiday. They needed to feel that way. They were not counting, but they had four more years of hard labour ahead of them before the tomb would finally be declared cleared.

It was Lacau himself, on one of his duty visits to the museum, who noticed the odour first. To a shooting man it was unmistakable. He felt the chill of fear. “Cordite! Gun powder! From somewhere through there, I think. Quickly everyone!”

He called to the museum guards standing in the mummy room. “Follow me!”

The group dashed to the door at the rear of the hall and disappeared into the room beyond. Lacau stopped and sniffed about him. He could still smell it but the odour was fading and he couldn’t detect where it was coming from.

Then one of the guards excitedly shouted, “There, sir! Smoke! From under the storeroom door.”

They dashed to the double doors and threw them open. A great ball of acrid smoke belched over them and almost immediately there was a brilliant flash of red as the smouldering rags, refreshed with the breeze from outside, burst into flame. Within seconds the flames were on the sides of the packing cases stacked two high all over the floor. Fanned by the draught, they quickly took hold, clawing at the dry wood, the glowing embers leaping from case to case until the entire room became an impenetrable inferno.

Lacau and his men, pulling off their jackets, attempted to beat down the flames, but soon they were beaten back themselves. The heat was unbearable. As the temperature built inside one of the wooden crates, and before the flames tearing at their outer sides had seared through the heavy planking, the piece of golden furniture inside that had patiently tolerated the drying process of three thousand years literally exploded into fire, the gold plate and gilding quickly breaking away and turning swiftly to the consistency of treacle. The gold dribbled to the ground. The inlaid faience floated in the liquid gold and dropped, as if in slow motion, drop by drop, piece by piece onto the ashes beneath.