Curse of the Kings (25 page)

Ramadan meant that I saw more of Tybalt.

ne must never offend them on a religious issue,he told me. ut it galling. I need these workers desperately at the moment.He went through some papers with me and then he put an arm about me and said: oue been so patient, Judith, and I know it isn quite what you expected, is it?

had such absurdly romantic ideas. I imagined myself discovering the entry to a tomb, unearthing wonderful gems, discovering sarcophagi.

oor Judith. I afraid it doesn work out like that. Is it any compensation if I tell you that you have been of enormous help to me?

t the greatest consolation.

isten, Judith, I going to take you to the site, tonight. I going to show you something rather special.

hen you have made a discovery! It is what you came for!

t not as easy as that. What I do think is that we may be on the trail of something important. Maybe not. We could work for months following what appears to be a clue and find it leads to nothing. But that the luck of the game. Few know of this, but I going to take you into the secret. Wel go down after sunset. Ramadan moon is nearly full, so therel be enough light; and the place will be deserted.

ybalt, it so exciting!

He kissed me lightly. love your enthusiasm. I wish that your father had had you thoroughly trained so that I could have had you with me at critical moments.

erhaps I can learn.

oue going to get a grounding tonight. Youl see.

can wait.

ot a word to anyone. They would think I was being indiscreet or such an uxorious husband that I was carried away by my wish to please my wife.

I felt dizzy with happiness. When I was with him I wondered how I could ever have doubted his sincerity.

He pressed me to him and said: el slip away this evening.

The moon was high in the sky when we left the palace. What a beautiful night it was! The stars looked solid in the indigo velvet and no slight breeze stirred the air; it was not exactly hot but delightfully warm relief after the torrid heat of the days. Up in the sky instead of blazing white light which was the sun was the glory of Ramadan moon.

I felt like a conspirator, and that my companion in stealth should be Tybalt was a great joy to me.

We took one of the boats down the river and then an arabiya took us to the site.

Tybalt led me past the mounds of earth over the brown hard soil to an opening in the side of the hill. He slipped his arm through mine and said, read warily.

I said excitedly, ou discovered this then, Tybalt?

o,he answered, his tunnel was discovered by the previous expedition. My father opened this up.He took a lantern which was hanging on the wall and lighted it. Then I could see the tunnel which was some eight feet in height. I followed him and at the end of the tunnel were a few steps.

magine! These steps were cut centuries ago!I said.

wo thousand years before the birth of Christ to be exact. Imagine how my father felt when he discovered this tunnel and the steps. But come on and you will see.

ow thrilled he must have been! This must have been a miraculous discovery.

t led, as so many miraculous discoveries have led be-fore, to a tomb which was rifled probably three thousand years ago.

o your father was the first to come here after three thousand years.

hat may well be. But he found little that was new. Give me your hand, Judith. He came through here into this chamber. Look at the walls,said Tybalt holding the lantern high. ee those symbols? That is the sacred beetlehe scarabnd the man with a ram head is Amen Ra, the great Sun God.

recognized him and I am wearing my beetle at the moment. The one you gave me. It will preserve me, won it, in my hour of danger?

He stopped still and looked at me. In the light from the lantern he seemed almost a stranger.

doubt it, Judith,he said. Then his expression lightened and he went on: erhaps I can do that. I daresay I would manage as well as a beetle.

I shivered.

re you cold?he asked.

ot exactly but it is cool in here.I think I felt then as they say at home as though someone was walking over my grave.

Tybalt sensed this for he said: t so awe inspiring. We all feel that. The man who was buried here belonged to a world whose civilization had reached its zenith when in Britain men lived in caves and hunted for their food in the primeval forests.

feel as though I entering the underworld. Who was the man who was buried here or was it a woman?

e couldn discover. There was so little left. The mummy itself had been rifled. The robbers must have known that often valuable jewels were concealed beneath the wrappings. All that my father found here when he reached the burial chamber was the sarcophagus, the mummy, which had been disturbed, and the soul house, which the thieves thought was of no value.

haven seen a soul house,I said.

hope I will be able to show you one one day. It a small model of a house usually with colonnades in white stone. It is meant to be the dwelling house of the soul after death and it is left in the tomb, so that when the Ka returns to its home after its journeyings it has a comfortable place in which to live.

t fascinating,I said. seem to gather fresh information every day.

We had come to another flight of steps.

e must be deep in the mountainside,I said.

ook at this,said Tybalt. t is the most elaborate chamber as yet and it is a sort of anteroom to the one in which the sarcophagus was found.

ow grand it all is!

et the person buried here was no Pharaoh. A man of some wealth possibly, but the entrance to this tomb shows us that he was not of the highest rank.

nd this is the tomb which was excavated by your father.

onths of hard work, expectation, and excitement, and this is what he found. That someone had been here before. We had opened up the mountainside, found the exact spot which led to the underground tunnel and when we found it Well, you can imagine our excitement, Judith. And then, just another empty tomb!

hen your father died.

ut he discovered something, Judith. I certain of it. That was why I came back. He wanted me to come back. I knew it. That was what he was trying to tell me. It could only mean one thing. He must have discovered that there was another tombhe entrance to which is here somewhere.

f it were, wouldn you see it?

t could be cunningly concealed. We could find nothing here that led beyond this. But somewhere in this tomb, I felt sure, there was a vital clue. I may have found it. Look!

You see this slight unevenness in the ground. There could be something behind this wall. We are going to work on it keeping it as secret as we can. We may be wasting our time, but I don think so.

o you think that because your father discovered this he was murdered?

Tybalt shook his head. hat was a coincidence. It may have been the excitement which killed him. In any case, he died and because he had decided not to tell anyone, not even me, death caught up with him and there was no time.

t seems strange that he should die at such a moment.

ife is strange, Judith.He held the lantern and looked down at me. ow many of us know when our last moment has come.

I felt a sudden shiver of fear run down my spine.

I said: hat an eerie place this is.

hat do you expect of a tomb, Judith?

ven you look different here.

He put his free hand to my throat and touched it caressingly. ifferent, Judith, how different?

ike someone I don know everything about.

ut who does know everything about another person.

et go,I said.

ou are cold.He was standing very close to me and I could feel his warm breath on my face. hat are you afraid of, Judith? Of the Curse of the Pharaohs, of the wrath of the gods, of me ?

not afraid,I lied. just want to be out in the air. It oppressive in here.

udith

He stepped towards me. I couldn understand myself. I sensed evil in this place. All my instincts were crying out for me to escape. Escape from what! This mystic aura of doom? From Tybalt!

I was about to speak but his hand was over my mouth.

isten,he whispered.

Then I heard it distinctly in the silence of this place a light footfall.

omeone is in the tomb,whispered Tybalt.

Tybalt released me. He stood very still listening.

ho is there?he called. His voice sounded strange and hollow, eerie, unnatural.

There was no answer.

eep close to me,said Tybalt. We mounted the staircase to the chamber, Tybalt holding the lantern high above his head, cautiously going step by step resisting the impulse to hurry, which might have been dangerous I supposed.

I followed at his heels. We went into the tunnel.

There was no one there.

As we passed through the door and stepped over the heaps of brown earth, the warm night air enveloped me with relief and a pleasure that was almost bliss.

My legs felt numb; my skin was damp and I was trembling visibly.

There was no one in sight.

Tybalt turned to me.

oor Judith, you look as if youe had a fright.

t was rather alarming.

omeone was in there.

erhaps it was one of your fellow workers.

hy didn he answer when I called?

e might have thought you would have been displeased with him for prowling about there at night.

ome on,he said, el get the arabiya, and go back to the palace.

Everything was normal nowhe Nile with its strange beauty and its odors, the palace, and Tybalt.

I could not understand what had come over me in the depth of that tomb. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the atmosphere, the knowledge that three thousand years or so before a dead man had been laid there; perhaps there was something in the powers of these gods which could even make me afraid of Tybalt.

Afraid of Tybalt! The husband who had chosen me as his wife! But had he not chosen me rather suddenlyn fact, so unexpectedly that the aunts, who loved me dearly, had been apprehensive for me? I was a rich woman. I had to remember that. And Tabitha, what of Tabitha? I had seen her and Tybalt together now and then. They always seemed to be in earnest conversation. He discussed his work with her more than he did with me. I still lacked her knowledge and experience in spite of all my efforts. Tabitha had a husband

There was evil in that tomb and it had planted these thoughts in my mind. Where was my usual common sense? Where was that trait in my character which had always looked for the challenge in life and been so ready to grasp it?

Idiot! I told myself. Youe as foolish as Theodosia.

On the river side of the palace was a terrace and I liked to sit there watching the life of the Nile go by. I would find a spot in the shadet was getting almost unbearably hot nownd idly watch. Very often one of the servants would bring me a glass of mint tea. I would sit there, sometimes alone, sometimes joined by some member of our party. I would watch the black clad women chattering together as they washed their clothes in the water; the river seemed to be the center of social life rather like the sales of work and the socials over which Dorcas and Alison used to preside in my youth. I would hear their excited voices and high-pitched laughter and wondered what they talked of. It was exciting when the dahabiyehs with their sails shaped like curved Oriental swords sailed by.

Ramadan moon had waned and now it was the time of the Little Bairam. Houses had been spring cleaned and I had seen rugs put on the flat roofs of the houses to dry in the sun. I had seen the slaughter of animals on those rooftops and I knew that this was part of a ritual, and that there would be feasting and salting of animals which were to be eaten throughout the year.

I was becoming immersed in the customs of Egypt and yet I could never grow used to its strangeness. ,

One late afternoon just as the palace was awaking after the siesta Hadrian came out and sat beside me.

t seems ages since wee had one of our little chats,he said.

here have you been all the time?

our husband is a hard taskmaster, Judith.

t necessary with slothful disciples like you.

ho said I was slothful?

ou must be or you wouldn complain. You be all agog to get on as Tybalt is.

e the leader, my dear Judith. His will be the kudos when the great day comes.

onsense. It will belong to you all. And when is the great day coming?

h, there the rub. Who knows? This new venture may lead to nothing.

he new venture?

ybalt mentioned that he had told you or I should not have spoken of it.

h yes, he showed me.

ell, you know that we think we have a lead.

es.

ell, who shall say? And if we do find something tremendous, that is going to bring glory to the world of archaeology but little profit to us.

ot still worried about money, Hadrian?

ou can depend on my always being in that state.

hen you are highly extravagant.

have certain vices.

ouldn you curb them?

will try to, Judith.

glad of that. Hadrian, why did you become an archaeologist?

ecause my uncleour papardained it.

don believe you have any deep feeling for it.

h, I interested. We can all be fanatics, like some people I could name.

ithout the fanatics you wouldn get very far.

id you know, by the way, that we are to have a visit from the Pasha?

o.

e has sent word. A sort of edict. He will honor his palace with his presence.

hat will be interesting. I suppose I shall have to receive him or perhaps Tabitha.

ou flatter yourselves. In this world women are of small importance. You will sit with hands folded and eyes lowered, and speak when you are spoken to rather difficult feat for our Judith.

am not an Arab woman and I shall certainly not behave like one.

didn think you would somehow, but when youe in Rome you do as the Romans do and I believe that is a rule for any place you might mention.

hen is the great man coming?

ery soon. Ie no doubt you will be informed.