The Sleeper in the Sands (11 page)
Nothing disturbed us, however, as we began our work of sweeping the sand from the cadaver. It soon became clear, as first a second foot and then the two legs were exposed, that the body had been mummified naturally by the dryness of the sands. The process had not been total: in certain places the skin had given way to the bone, and despite my best hopes, it proved impossible to determine the sex of the mummy. I was able to assume, though, from certain wisps of rich fabric which had been preserved upon the limbs, that our cadaver had once been a person of high rank; yet it puzzled me that he or she had been buried in the sands, when even the meanest of Egyptians would have hoped to be laid to rest within a tomb.
An answer to this mystery, however, was not long in coming. As we continued to work up the length of the cadaver, sweeping the sand from first the pelvis and then the ribs, I began to realise that the body was twisted, as though from the agonies of a violent death. I wondered if Ahmed too had observed the same thing, for I noticed his hand had started to shake. At length, as I prepared to expose the neck of the corpse, he dropped his brush altogether and sat as though frozen, a look of mingled horror and fascination on his face. I met his stare fleetingly, before continuing with my work. Then I too suddenly stopped, and rocked back in surprise.
There could be no doubting now what the cause of death had been. Preserved against the passage of the centuries by the sands, twin flaps of flesh could still be made out, torn in opposite directions along the length of the throat. The victim’s hands were still clutching at the wound, the vain clawing of the fingers preserved for ever by the sands. And even as I considered that, I leaned forward again and began to work with a renewed, half-nervous energy, clearing the rocks from over the head, then sweeping back the sands to expose the corpse’s face. As I did so, I heard Ahmed gasp, and so also -- or was it only my imagining? -- I heard a noise from beyond the trench. But I did not pause, not until the face had been wholly exposed. As I finished, I realised how badly my arm had begun to shake. I glanced at Ahmed. ‘My God,’ I muttered. ‘You see what the power of imagination may be. This hellish thing has made me as nervous as you.’
Ahmed smiled, but his teeth were bared like the grin of a dead thing, and so wide and bulging were his eyeballs in their sockets that they seemed like baubles placed within a mask. His face appeared, in short, like a living skull; yet ghastly though it was, it was not so ghastly as the thing I had exposed. I could barely bring myself to look at the hideously preserved thing a second time, and when I did so - how it ashames me to admit it! -- I began to shudder terribly once again. Never had I seen such a human face before, so vilely, so loathsomely mutated and deformed! The skull seemed so vast that it quite overshadowed the face, which in turn appeared strangely shrunken, as though the cheeks had been pinched between two giant thumbs. There was very little to counter this impression of something barely human: some few tufts of hair remained upon the skull, and a layer of scaly skin stretched taut across the bone, yet no clues as to the living individual had endured, no hint as to what its sex, or age or race had been, for all that had been mortal had shrivelled utterly away, and only the strangeness of its form had been preserved.
‘Sir!’ Ahmed’s sudden cry was almost a scream. He pointed towards the darkness beyond the edge of the trench. ‘A noise. I heard a . . . noise.’
I strained my ears. All seemed quiet; deathly quiet. I was about to laugh - to chide Ahmed for imagining ghosts -- when suddenly I too heard something. A shuffling, very faint but unmistakable; and drawing nearer to us all the time.
Ahmed glanced at me, his eyes still very wide. Then he seized one of the torches, and raising it aloft, scrambled up the side of the trench. I called out to him to wait, but he did not pause, and with an impatient curse I hurried after him. As I did so, I heard the shuffling again. I could tell now that it was coming from behind me. I spun round, flashing my torch, but still I could see nothing. I crept forward. All had gone silent once more. Then suddenly, still from behind me, I heard footsteps, running now, and even as I turned I knew it was too late. I caught the briefest glimpse of my assailant -- an Arab, his eyes very cold, his smile very thin -- and then I felt a crimson pain across the side of my head before everything went black.
How long I remained unconscious I am still uncertain. I was revived by Ahmed splashing water on my face, but I knew even before he told me that he too had been attacked, for I could see how his hair was still matted with blood. Of the man who had struck me there was not a sign, save only a jumble of footprints; nor was he the only thing to have disappeared. For as I staggered to my feet, Ahmed pointed grim-facedly in the direction of the trench. I hurried across to it, but alas! -- my worst forebodings were to prove all too correct. The mummy had gone; so too the ornament which I had wrapped and laid aside so carefully. Of all my hopes and finds of that night, not a single trace remained.
My disappointment cut me especially deep, since I knew now that I would have no choice but to leave the next day for Cairo. I had briefly hoped that Ahmed might have recognised our assailants; but he, like me, had been caught by surprise, and when I attempted to describe the man that I had glimpsed he could only shrug and give a shake of his head. He promised, though, that he would launch a full investigation, to track down not only our mysterious assailants but also the mummy and the portrait of Tyi. Even as he vowed this, of course, I knew that he had little prospect of success; but I slipped him money all the same, and made him promise to keep me informed of any news.
Then I thanked him for all his many years’ service, and would have bade him farewell save that I could sense he had something he still wanted to say. He appeared strangely reluctant, however, to spit it out, and indeed, I was almost losing patience when he finally cleared his throat. ‘The tomb, sir,’ he asked me. ‘What about the tomb?’ ‘Tomb?’ I frowned.
‘The tomb, sir, in the story, with the demon inside. I told you of the lion with the woman’s head - how that was supposed to have been found beside the unopened door. But in the story, sir -- there was . . . yes -- there was something else as well. A withered body, with its throat torn apart.’
I narrowed my eyes and, with great deliberation, began to stroke the ends of my moustache. ‘Indeed?’ I said at length.
Ahmed cleared his throat again. ‘You cannot, sir, stay a few more weeks?’
I considered this option, then shook my head slowly. ‘No. Not with the present lack of definite proof
‘And . . . Mr Davis, sir?’
I glanced at him sharply.
‘Will you tell Mr Davis of what happened here tonight?’
As I gazed around me at the level sands, I thought of all the secrets, the treasures they might contain. I glanced at Ahmed again; I did not reply.
‘You will be back, sir,’ he whispered.
‘Inshallah,
the chance will come, and you will dig in the Valley of the Kings once again.’
I shrugged very faintly. ‘Let us hope so,’ I said.
It goes without saying, of course, that I profoundly regretted my transfer from Thebes; and yet for all my disappointment, I could not suppress a certain mood of excitement at taking up my new post. After the solitude and quiet of my former Inspectorate, how vast Cairo seemed, how impossibly full of colour and noise! In the desert, I might well have heard nothing for hours save the crying of a jackal or a hawk, but in Cairo the sounds of the streets formed an endless backdrop to my day. Even at night, the tramping of feet would never cease, nor the hubbub of conversation, nor the shouting of traders and the howling of dogs. And sometimes too there would come the summonings to prayer, a chorus as ancient as the city itself, so that standing upon my roof, scanning the minarets as they speared into the haze, I would imagine Cairo’s centuries melted by the cry. But then I would turn and stare towards the southern horizon, and see a skyline more vastly ancient by far. The pyramids of Ghiza, viewed from the roof of my house, appeared strangely insubstantial, as though afloat upon a mist; yet they would outlive, I suspected, all of Cairo itself. Nor did it cease to stir me, nor to fill me with pride, that it was I who had been charged with their continued protection - for the pyramids had been ancient even in Akh-en-Aten’s time.
Not that my interest in that King, nor in the mysteries of his reign, had been in any way diminished by my transfer to Cairo. I knew, of course, that the trails I had been following in Thebes would now be difficult to pursue. There were no sites near Cairo to excavate, nor any source of those folk tales which I had relied upon before. Indeed, only one faint line of inquiry still seemed open to me, for it would be my duty in Cairo, as it had previously been in Thebes, to keep a track of any smuggling of antiquities. With so many dealers in the capital, I feared that this would prove a near impossible task; but I also knew that the finest of Egypt’s many plundered treasures, all the richest loot of the Valley of the Kings, would infallibly end up in Cairo’s bazaars, where European collectors might then have their pick. When my other duties spared me the time, I began to visit these shops, making myself known to the antiquity dealers and closely inspecting their assembled wares. I particularly hoped to trace the portrait of Tyi, but that was not the only object I sought, for indeed I was interested in anything dating from Akh-en-Aten’s reign. Above all I hunted images of the sun, images with two worshippers praying underneath.
As I had suspected would be the case, however, I had little luck at first. Yet my calls upon the dealers were not wholly without point, for they served to establish my name amongst them and to establish theirs with me. I had soon come to identify where the true heart of the antiquities industry lay, in a souk just south of the Khan el-Khalili, the great covered market of the medieval city. It was there, accordingly, that I centred my search. And indeed, I thought, it was a fitting enough place in which to hunt for treasure; for the narrow, winding streets, with their spices and bright silks, their porters and donkeys, their cross-legged merchants and slowly-moving crowds, seemed a vision conjured from some oriental fantasy, some children’s book version of ‘The Arabian Nights’.
Several months after my arrival in Cairo, however, I was starting to grow discouraged. But then, just as I was on the point of abandoning my search altogether, I had a piece of luck -- one which was to lead me, as though I might truly have been Aladdin or Ali Baba, into a world full of dark and fabulous mystery. It happened one evening, as I was passing through the trinket-laden byways of the souk, that I observed a shop-front I must have overlooked before, for it was very narrow and stood in the shadow of a high, crumbling wall. I crossed to it and, brushing aside the curtain which had veiled the contents from my view, passed inside. There were two men sitting there. One was stooped and very old; his companion, however, seemed little more than a boy, and it was he who rose and came forward to greet me. I asked him if he had any antiquities for sale. He nodded, and beckoned me to follow him. Although he was only carrying a single lamp, I had already caught the gleam of metal ahead and, as I passed further into the shop, I began to make out goblets, jewellery and swords piled randomly amidst blocks of decorated stone. I soon realised, however, that the artefacts were all of an Islamic date. My disappointment must have been evident on my face, for the old man now came forward to see if he could help.
I described to him what I was looking for. As is ever the way of the Orient, the old man could not bring himself to admit that he did not have what a customer might want, and so he allowed me to continue with my questions, nodding and smiling and shrugging all the while. Then I asked him if he had any portrayals of the sun, and at last his smile seemed one of relief. He took me by the arm, still smiling broadly, and led me across to the blocks of stone. He pointed at one of them, but I shook my head, for I had seen at once that the decorations on its side were like all the others, of an early Islamic origin. But the old man insisted I look closer and so, for the sake of form, I bent down to inspect it.
At once, I felt my heart leap into my mouth. I stared up at the old man, wide-eyed, then back at the artwork on the side of the stone. For there could be no doubting that it was a portrait, not just of the sun but quite specifically of the Aten -- and beneath the disk were the figures of two crouching worshippers. It was identical, in almost every way, to the image I had found in the quarry with Newberry, and although the one before me now bore no inscriptions, it clearly dated from a similar period. Seeing my excitement, the old man began naming his price, but although I was perfectly willing to pay, it was information I wanted, not the piece of stone itself. I asked where it had come from. The old man shrugged and smiled, but then, when I pressed him, his smile suddenly dissolved into a look of fear. I pulled more money from my wallet.
All I want to know,’ I repeated, ‘is the source of this stone.’
But the old man, for some reason now terrified of my intentions, had declined with great suddenness into the most remarkable funk, and would say nothing at all. Instead he began to flap at me, as though to shoo me away I tried once again to calm his nerves by pulling out more money, but the old man appeared barely to see it, so abject was his terror, and still he flapped at me, moaning all the while. At length, accepting that I would get no sense from him, I turned and left, as infuriated by his terror as I was also intrigued.
I began to stride in a tense fury through the crowded souk. To be so close to such a remarkable breakthrough . . . and then to be denied! But it so happened, just as I was resolving to turn and go back, that I felt a tugging upon my jacket and, swinging round, found the lad from the shop. He grinned up at me. ‘The piece of stone, sir,’ he whispered, ‘it came from a mosque.’
‘What mosque? One here in Cairo?’
The boy’s grin broadened.