Valley of the Kings (10 page)

I loved it. That single picture told me more about the occupant of my tomb than anything else we had found or were likely to find until we reached the mummy. Given the amount of material between me and the burial chamber, which all had to be sorted and identified and preserved, we would not set eyes on the mummy for quite some time. But the throne was there, clear and irrefutable evidence.

They were young, that couple, and they were in love. Probably they still worshiped Aten in private—in their hearts. So young, they would have been innocent of the problems and power of rule. They must have lived in a close little paradise, where everything they could remotely wish for was provided for them at once, while the officers of their court schemed and connived around them.

Sometimes, looking at that appealing little scene on the throne, I was filled with a curious wishfulness, as if I had been there once and longed to go back again.

“Carter, are you in there?”

“Yes,” I said, short. I had just got to work again. Kneeling by a box, I was picking out the beads of a necklace with tweezers. The string had rotted to dust and the beads had to be removed one by one and their relative positions marked to preserve the design. It was difficult work, especially in the glaring lights we had installed. Each interruption strained my powers of concentration.

Carnarvon came down the passageway into the chamber behind me. “Carter, these news people want another photograph.”

“I'm in the middle of this,” I said.

“We'll just keep you away from your work for a few minutes, sir,” said the photographer. It was not my American friend, who kept out of my way. Three cameras hung around his neck, and he carried a valise and a three-legged stand in his hand.

“Do it without me,” I said. All this modernity offended me.

“Howard,” Carnarvon said. “The nobility obliges.”

“I have work—no! Not there—” I lunged at the photographer, who was putting his valise down on a shrine. I snatched the valise out of his hands. The photographer gave me the look reserved for madmen.

Carnarvon burst out laughing. “Come along, Howard— the sooner you yield, the quicker we'll be gone.”

While we were posing stiffly among the relics, Evelyn came down.

She had been working above, taking notes; there was a pencil stuck behind her ear. Her short, trim hairdo was covered by a flat scarf.

“Lord Allenby has arrived, Father,” she said.

“Excellent,” Carnarvon said. “You'll have tea with us, Carter.”

I grunted. I saw the day draining away from me. The photographer was hunched over his tripod. The barrel lens of the camera swung up and down. Over the flat back of the man taking the picture, Evelyn smiled at me. She caught her father's eye and fingered her cheek, and he touched his own cheek. There was a tiny bit of sticking plaster on his skin; he had cut himself shaving. He picked it off.

“Hold still, please,” the photographer said, and made a gesture like a conductor with his right hand, but nothing happened.

“Damn.”

“Father,” Evelyn said. “Lord Allenby—”

“I beg your pardon,” Carnarvon said to the photographer. I was holding still, my eyes were sore, and a stubborn ache was clamping a hold on the back of my skull. One of the lamps, suspended directly over me, was cooking me lightly in my own juices.

“The flash failed,” the photographer said.

“Lord Allenby is waiting,” Evelyn said.

The photographer was rummaging madly in his valise. “Just a minute—just a minute—” He plucked the offending lamp out of its socket. “Just a minute—”

Carnarvon was already moving toward the door. Smiling, leisurely, he brushed by the photographer. “I beg your pardon.”

“My lord!”

The Earl switched on the arrow beam of his torch. “Take your picture of Carter. After all, he found it.” He went into the passageway.

The photographer swore again. He glared at me obliquely and took his camera off the tripod. Evelyn and I watched him pack away the pieces in his valise. Little straps with snaps held everything in place inside the leather compartments. At his every move, I twitched, my hands leaping out, to shield the precious things in the room from his blundering, stupid ignorance. With one last oath he followed Carnarvon out.

“Poor Howard,” Lady Evelyn said. “You didn't realize this would happen, did you?”

I knelt down again by the box with the loose necklace beads. “Do you know how much mail I've received? I didn't know there were so many cranks in the world.”

She laughed. Taking the pencil from her soft hair, she put it into the flapped pocket of her jacket. “You deserve it. Not the cranks, the recognition. Are you coming to tea?”

I closed the lid of the box. “One man wrote to ask if I'd found any connection between the tomb and the Belgian murders in the Congo. And someone else in America was furious at me because—he says—the world will end now that I've found the tomb.”

“I'll answer them for you,” she said serenely.

I collected my notebook and straightened. We stood alone in the room, among the artifacts. I had tagged each with a number on a white card. The place looked like a museum. She raised her face to me, soft and warm and alive. Her eyes were clear and steady as a hunter's.

“Lady Evelyn,” I said. “Evelyn.” I reached for her hand. I was ready to tell her how I felt about her, how tender, how kind, and how I wanted her, now that I was worthy of her.

She backed away from me. “Howard,” she said, “no.” She shook her head, unruffled. “No.” Turning away from me, she went into the darkness of the corridor. I stood gaping at the place where she had been. My hand was still stretched out. I felt like a dupe. I stayed down there, unable to work, my head pounding, until it was time to go home.

My house in Kurna was near the north end of the village. Three or four little steps led up from the street. As I went up to the door, a woman rose from the top step.

“Mr. Carter?” She strolled toward me in a sinuous walk like a film star. “I've been waiting for you all day.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

The twilight veiled her face. A long, white hand reached for my shirt front. “Shall we go inside?”

Her hand fingered my shirt buttons. The fabric of her skirt rustled like snakes in a pit. I went on past her toward my house. She followed me, saying, plaintively, “Mr. Carter?” I slammed the door shut in her face.

My headache had taken over my whole head. My stomach churned. I sat on the chair in the front room for fifteen minutes before I could summon myself up to light the lamp. I heard the woman prowling around outside; once I saw her at the window, peering in.

When I was sure she had gone, I trimmed the lamps. The light shone feebly around the room, burnishing the bare walls. There was no furniture here. I was only here to be closer to the tomb. I had never missed having furniture before; now I did. My head hurt. I poured a shot of whiskey into the cup I had drunk my tea from that morning.

There was a knock at the door. Thinking it was the strange woman, I swore and strode across the room to yank the door open, determined to drive her away. But it was Lady Evelyn.

“Well,” I said.

“I'm sorry to bother you, Howard. It's my father. He's ill.”

Just the sight of her added to my anger. The serenity that had charmed me now was an affront. How dare she be so unmoved by me. I put my hand to the back of my throbbing head.

“Ill,” I said.

“Did he seem well to you this morning?”

I stepped back into the room, so that she could pass by me through the door. “Come in. No, I didn't notice him to be out of sorts. What is bothering him?”

She stood in the middle of the little room, her hands clasped tight before her. “He cut himself while he was shaving. He felt strange in the afternoon, so he went back to Luxor, and now he has a fever. He won't let me call the doctor in.”

The teacup of whiskey was sitting on the low table by the lamp. I drained it and poured another. “You should. This is Upper Egypt, not Surrey.”

“I'm sorry to bother you,” she said, her voice stiff. Disapproving.

“So am I. I have a filthy headache.” I drank my whiskey.

“Oh. I am sorry, then. You think I should call the doctor for my father.”

I put the whiskey bottle on the shelf. “How high is his fever?”

“One hundred and two.”

“He cut himself? I think you ought to take him to Cairo. It sounds to me like a good case of blood poisoning.”

Suddenly her face was very white. “Yes,” she said. “Come help me.”

Carnarvon was sitting in the parlor of their suite, his chin on his fist. He looked sick. His cheeks were papery with fever and he was obviously in some pain, although he refused to admit it.

When Evelyn told him that we were taking him to Cairo, he said, “Don't be ridiculous.”

“Howard is here,” she said, “and the motorcar is outside.”

“Carter?” he said. “Tell my daughter she's a goose.”

He took his chin off his fist. His eyes were shining, and he gave me a look desperate with fear. I cleared my throat.

“No, she's being wise. Evelyn, have you packed?”

“No,” she said, behind me.

“Then put some things in a bag. Night things, his toilet gear.”

I went to help Carnarvon out of his chair. At first I thought he was resisting, but he really needed my support. He was almost too weak to walk.

The motorcar took us down the thread of road, from one silent, darkened village to the next. We were seldom out of sight of the Nile, glossy in the moonlight. For a while the canal ran beside us on the other side of the road. The tiny villages stood like outposts among the wide orderly fields of cotton, the towering stands of palm trees. The slender stalks of the trees rose from clumps of exposed and tangled roots, like stage scenery whose feet, being out of the audience's sight, need not be papered over. Here and there, a canal cut through the landscape, straight as a rule.

I drove. In the back seat Evelyn sat beside her father.

“He's asleep,” she said, presently.

“Good.”

Probably he was unconscious.

“Howard, what happened today, between us—”

“Let's not talk about it.”

The open road was bordered by eucalyptus, planted there for wood for the railroad ties. The pavement was littered with droppings of leaves and bark. The old moon was rising. It was a long way to Cairo; she would have to drive part of the way. I wondered if she knew how. I was sure she did. Like the short hairdo and the independence of mind, driving a car would be a mark of her citizenship in the postwar world.

“Howard,” she said, “what does it all mean to you? The tomb. Why is it so important?”

“It's the greatest find ever made in Egypt,” I said.

“Yes, I know, but why was it so necessary that you find it?”

I shifted my back against the leather seat. My ankles were already stiff from driving. “Someone had to.”

“Why?”

“Don't be foolish, Evelyn. Ignorance is not bliss. Or don't you believe in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake?”

“Knowledge,” she said, in a dreamy voice, “is an elusive quantity. How can we know anything about the past? Especially a past as remote as pharaonic Egypt?”

“There's evidence. The tomb is evidence. The more such we uncover, the more we know.”

“The more we think we know.”

“Evelyn, what are you driving at?”

“Well, it seems to me that the only reality about any time in history is the sort that never leaves a trace. I mean the way people felt about their lives.”

She was making me angry. She was trying to tell me everything I did was for nothing. I said loudly, “Rubbish.”

She was still. In the rearview mirror I could see her watching me.

“The trained mind can infer something of people's attitudes from the evidence,” I said. “We piece together this idea and that one—”

“The trained mind interprets,” she said. “In the end one can interpret only by reference to one's own experience. It's a circle, Howard, isn't it? You may look into the past, but it's only a mirror, it can show you only yourself.”

I drove on a long while down the empty road before I could even try to answer. Finally all I could say was, “If I accept that, dear, I'm pitching out my whole life.”

“Why?” she said, passionately. “Is it so useless to understand yourself?”

“You're being melodramatic, Evelyn, calm yourself down.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

She did not sound sorry; she sounded sarcastic. We did not speak for several hours after that.

Later, when she was driving, and the sun was up, she said, “What are you thinking about?”

“I should have sent someone out to guard the tomb.”

“Ahmed will watch over it.”

“Ahmed! He's the one I want the tomb guarded from.”

She threw me a look of startled amazement. “What?”

“Ahmed is from Kurna. He's a tomb robber. His people have robbed the tombs of the Valley of the Kings for centuries.”

Ahead of us a man was driving a water buffalo down the road. She braked and steered the car around the beast. On its withers, between the broad backswept horns, a child lay asleep. We flew on into the morning.

“I think you're wrong,” she said, when she had the car up to speed again. “Ahmed is dedicated and hardworking, and, besides, he's devoted to you.”

That made me laugh. I did not bother to explain Ahmed's reasons for giving me trouble.

“Well, not to you, exactly,” she said. “But to the work. He loves the work, he's always right there where the hardest and most productive work is—”

“Watching,” I said, “for something to steal.”

“Really, Howard,” she said. “You aren't just single-minded. You're immovable.”