The Spoils of Egypt

by Michael Pearce

  Tomas joined him, holding a torch. The two workmen were also carrying torches, the big, kerosene-soaked ones used inside the temple. Out here in the moonlight they were redundant, mere pinpricks of light.

  Tomas stepped into the colonnade and raised his torch. By its light Owen saw a forest of receding pillars with dark spaces between and behind them. There was no obvious path through them.

  Owen walked past Tomas, deep into the forest, to where it was all dark. He looked carefully into the darkness for any answering pinprick, shifting his position in case it was masked by pillars. He saw nothing, however.

  He waited a little while and then came out.

  ‘Let’s go up to the next terrace,’ he said.

  The workmen, relieved that he was not going further in, came more willingly this time.

  He repeated the process on the second terrace and then again on the third. On the top terrace Tomas went in with him and gave a great shout. As the echoes died away they listened carefully but there was no answering call.

  They descended to the lower terraces and shouted there too, but still there was no reply.

  When they came out, Tomas looked at him.

  Owen stood uncertainly. There was no point in plunging at random into the depths of the temple. It would be better to wait for daylight and the return of the diggers. There was, after all, still no real reason to suppose that anything had happened to Paul and Miss Skinner. A small voice, though, was beginning to whisper: surely not again?

  He set off down the ramp. The stone of the courtyard below was white in the moonlight, except that close in to the wall of the ramp there was a little patch of shadow. When he got to the bottom he turned back into the court and went back to it.

  It was the door which led down to the sanctuary and also to the chamber into which Miss Skinner had fallen previously. He told Tomas to wait outside with the torches and then walked down into the tunnel, guiding himself with his hand against the wall.

  When he was well away from the light of the torches he stopped and looked. There was no light, just the rough touch of the wall and continuing, deepening, musty darkness.

  He tried to remember whether there was a turn in the tunnel and decided there was, the room where one fork had led on down to the sanctuary and another had gone off down to what he thought of as Miss Skinner’s chamber.

  He went back out to where the men were waiting and told them to follow him. They did so unwillingly.

  This time the descent seemed endless. It was partly that the men crept along, examining every bit of ground, their torches held high, before they moved. Well, that was not stupid, given what had happened to Miss Skinner, or what she said had happened to her. But he missed the casual assurance of the Der el Bahari diggers.

  They came to the tunnel leading off to where she had fallen. Owen decided it would be foolhardy to go down that without more knowledgeable people. There might be other spots where the wall was weak or the floor crumbling. No, he would go down to the sanctuary, look there and then come back.

  As they went on down the shaft, the men became more and more reluctant. Owen was afraid they might bolt back up the tunnel, so shepherded them ahead of him.

  As he turned to chivvy one of them on he glanced back up the tunnel behind him. A few yards beyond the light cast by his own torches the darkness closed in again.

  Except that there was—surely?—a faint touch of light.

  He walked back towards it. It was coming from the gallery which led off to the right, towards Miss Skinner’s chamber. It must be them! He quickened his pace.

  And then the light went out!

  He stopped, bewildered and unable to see. Everything was as pitchblack as, well, yes, the grave. He put his hand out to the wall to reassure himself.

  Still there was no light. What had happened?

  And then he became aware that someone was moving. He could hear steps in what must be the other gallery. They were careful, deliberate steps and were approaching the place where the gallery joined the main tunnel. But why no light?

  Someone stepped out into the tunnel. There was a surprised exclamation. Owen realized suddenly that although he couldn’t see, he himself could be seen by the light of the torches behind him.

  ‘Christ, Owen!’ said a startled voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  It was Parker.

  ‘I might ask you that!’

  ‘Checking the workings. We don’t want any more accidents, do we?’

  ‘What, at night?’

  ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ asked Parker, disregarding him.

  ‘Trying to find Skinner and Trevelyan.’

  ‘That damned woman?’ Parker’s anger was genuine. ‘Always prowling around. Why doesn’t Trevelyan keep her away?’

  ‘Perhaps he has. I don’t know that they are down here. It was just that I thought there might be a chance. They went out and they’re not back yet. I was beginning to think—’

  ‘That bloody woman? What business has she got to be prowling around? This is a private site, you know.’

  ‘You can tell her. Why did you put out the light?’

  ‘I thought I saw a light, your light, and I wanted to be sure. As a matter of fact, you may be right. I thought there was someone in here. That’s why I came down.’

  There was a shout from Owen’s workmen. Owen ran down the tunnel towards them. They screened their torches with their bodies and pointed down the tunnel. A light was coming towards them.

  ‘Hallo-o!’ called a voice.

  It was Paul’s.

  ‘Why!’ said Miss Skinner. ‘The tunnel is becoming quite populated!’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ said Parker, losing his temper.

  ‘Well, what the bloody hell were you doing there?’ asked Owen.

  ‘She wanted to go there,’ said Paul. ‘She said she wanted to look at the sanctuary.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘Oh yes. She went over it with a fine-tooth comb. And explained it all to me. In detail. In very considerable detail. I think,’ said Paul, ‘that she was paying me back.’

  ‘Paying you back?’

  ‘I don’t think she was altogether grateful for my company.’

  ‘You’d have thought she’d have learned,’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes. It’s curious.’

  Owen reflected.

  ‘Was she looking for something, do you think? Something particular?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered.’

  Paul hesitated.

  ‘If she was,’ he said, ‘I don’t think she was looking for it down in the sanctuary.’

  ‘Then where—?’

  ‘As we were going down,’ said Paul, ‘we came to that other gallery—you know, the one going off to the left. Where she’d been the night she fell. She seemed to hesitate and said: “I suppose if I said I wanted to go down there again, you’d tell me I was foolish?” “I certainly would,” I said. She laughed and said: “Sensible Mr Trevelyan! Let us go on, then, to the sanctuary.” But I got the feeling that after that she was just, well, playing a game. Paying me back.’

  ‘Why don’t we go down the other gallery?’ said Owen.

  ***

  As they went into the courtyard they met Mahmoud and Parker. Parker was looking triumphant, Mahmoud impassive.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Parker.

  ‘I wanted to take another look at that gallery,’ said Owen, ‘the one Miss Skinner was in when she fell.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the gallery,’ said Parker. ‘It’s just that damned stupid woman not taking precautions.’

  ‘Like the workmen?’ said Mahmoud.

  Parker gave him a measured look.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘like the workmen. They shouldn’t have been there. They’re
not diggers.’

  ‘Then why were they digging?’ asked Owen.

  He wasn’t going to let Parker ride roughshod over Mahmoud.

  ‘Only one of them was,’ said Mahmoud softly.

  ‘And he oughtn’t to have been,’ said Parker. ‘Thought he could earn a few extra piastres, I suppose.’

  ‘Someone must have agreed to it.’

  ‘It was that fool J’affar. I’ve spoken to him.’

  He looked at Mahmoud. ‘There have been mistakes,’ he said. ‘I’ll acknowledge that. But not negligence. Not on my part. And no cutting corners on the safety. You ask the men. The real men, I mean, the ones who are actually doing the digging.’

  Again there was the look of barely concealed triumph.

  Mahmoud said nothing.

  ‘We’ll need torches,’ said Owen.

  Parker nodded.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and shouted to a passing workman. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  When they came to the place where Miss Skinner had fallen, Parker lifted his torch and shone it through the hole.

  ‘Want to have a look? It’s just the same as it was. Mummies, mummies, mummies.’

  ‘They’re of no interest? Archæologically?’

  ‘Not really. Not unless they’re different. There are thousands of them in Egypt. Not even worth listing.’

  He brought the torch back.

  ‘All right? Seen enough?’

  ‘Let’s go on to the end of the gallery,’ said Owen.

  Parker shrugged. ‘OK. If you want.’

  The gallery ended after another fifty yards or so in a small, square room which was completely bare.

  ‘This is all there is?’

  ‘This is all there is. Disappointing.’

  ‘It’s a long way to cut a special tunnel. What’s the point of it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Parker, ‘you never know. One of the things they used to do was build extra chambers, concealed ones, in which they used to put the really valuable things. If there was something really valuable in that sanctuary, for instance, some relic, like the Cow, say, they might not have actually left it in the sanctuary but put it somewhere near. They got wised up, you see. They knew if they left something, people would be back.’

  ‘The ones who built it?’

  ‘Probably. From the village, anyway. Continuous tradition of robbery for three thousand years,’ said Parker admiringly. ‘And the buggers are still at it!’

  He shone the torch around.

  ‘Seen all you want to see?’

  As they came out into the bright sunlight of the court, Owen said: ‘Do you think Miss Skinner knows about the concealed chambers bit?’

  Parker stopped. His face tightened.

  ‘She was snooping,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What was she looking for?’

  ‘How would I know?’ said Parker, and walked away.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Like a picture,’ said Paul, looking back at the great sweep of cliff with the temple nestling at its foot and the incredible clear blue sky above.

  The rock had the lustre of burnished gold or copper—neither red nor brown, but a subtle blend of both, varying continuously as the sunlight moved over it. The temple was like mellowed ivory, yellow with age where the sun had fallen on it over the centuries, still dazzlingly white in places of shade.

  ‘At least,’ said Paul, ‘they can’t sell that.’

  Owen looked at him.

  ‘Is that how you feel?’

  ‘A bit.’

  They carried on across the sand to the second, lesser temple, where the day’s work was already in progress. They could see figures working in the courtyard and a huge-wheeled wooden cart drawn up outside.

  ‘I used to know a bit about archæology,’ said Paul. ‘I read Greats.’

  ‘Greats?’

  ‘Classics. That’s what they call Latin and Greek at Oxford.’

  Owen had studied Latin himself at a small Welsh grammar school and had at one time even entertained hopes of going to university; but then his father had died and there had been no money and instead he had gone straight from school into the army. On the whole he did not regret it, but sometimes he vaguely felt that he had missed something.

  There was another thing, too, which he had become more conscious of when he moved from India to Egypt and joined the civil administration. The senior civil posts were all filled by people who had been to Oxford or Cambridge. It was like a club from which you had been excluded.

  ‘Not the same, of course,’ Paul was saying. ‘Egyptology is a bit out on its own. But in our Ancient History course we used a lot of archæological evidence and I suppose I picked up something about scholarship, attitudes, that sort of thing. Well…’

  ‘Yes?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘This isn’t it.’

  In the courtyard there was the flash of something white, a woman’s dress.

  ‘Old Peripoulin—’ began Owen.

  ‘He’s all right: so are the people in Antiquities. It’s, well…’

  ‘Parker?’

  ‘And people like him.’

  ‘Miss Skinner spoke of his methodology.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that. It’s just that he’s, well, stripping the place, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s got a licence.’

  ‘A licence to pillage,’ said Paul. ‘Something for you to look into, boyo, when you get back.’

  The white figure was definitely Miss Skinner. She was talking to the workmen. Owen wondered how she was getting on. As far as he knew she spoke no Arabic.

  Not very well, probably, for when Tomas came into the courtyard she at once attached herself to him.

  ‘But where are they?’ Owen heard her saying.

  ‘They were on the second load,’ said Tomas in his slow, courteous English.

  ‘How many loads have there been?’

  ‘This is the fourth.’

  Miss Skinner looked around the courtyard suspiciously.

  ‘There was a cartouche,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’

  Tomas pointed to the cart on the other side of the wall.

  Miss Skinner walked across and examined the contents. There was, indeed, even Owen could see, a cartouche among them. A cartouche was an oval cut in stone with a number of hieroglyphics inside it, usually the name of a royal personage. Cartouches were extremely common on walls of temples.

  Miss Skinner came back.

  ‘It’s not on the list,’ she said.

  ‘It’s on another list,’ said Tomas patiently.

  Miss Skinner pounced.

  ‘I thought you told me the other day that the list went with the load?’

  ‘So it does. The goods arrive at the Museum as a single load and the list is presented with them. They are, however, despatched separately and the individual sheets of the list do not always coincide exactly with the consignments.’

  ‘The goods are despatched as separate loads?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘It is cheaper,’ said Tomas, still patiently though with a certain weariness. ‘They go on a boat when there is space.’

  ‘Where are they brought together?’

  ‘At Heraq.’

  ‘Heraq?’

  ‘It is a port this side of Cairo. I prefer to use it because it is a small port. Bulak—the main port of Cairo—is too big and things can easily go astray.’

  ‘And up to that point,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘the separate sheets of the list do not correspond to particular consignments?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Miss Skinner sniffed.

  ‘I find it very unsatisfactory. How do you know, when something is mis
sing, which load it belonged to?’

  ‘I keep my own records,’ said Tomas faintly.

  ‘Ah! Can I see them?’

  Tomas gave her some handwritten sheets.

  ‘But these are in Arabic!’ said Miss Skinner, disappointed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tomas.

  Miss Skinner was for the moment nonplussed. Tomas turned back to his workmen. They began to carry another piece out to the cart.

  Miss Skinner looked up and saw Owen and Paul. She seemed disconcerted, but then advanced boldly upon them.

  ‘I have been checking on the transport arrangements,’ she announced. ‘I find them less than satisfactory.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The recording leaves much to be desired.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It would be very easy for something to go missing.’

  ‘Would it not be even easier,’ said Owen, ‘if the thing were not recorded at all?’

  Miss Skinner looked at him sharply.

  ‘Everything has to be recorded,’ she said. ‘That is the first principle of archæology.’

  ‘And of the licensing system, too. But suppose it isn’t?’

  Again Miss Skinner seemed disconcerted.

  ‘But that would be dishonest,’ she said. ‘Surely one has to trust the integrity of the archæologist. Doesn’t one?’

  ***

  It was noon and sizzlingly hot. To touch the metal of one of the spades left lying in the courtyard was to give yourself something very like a burn. Even the woodwork was unpleasantly warm.

  The men in the courtyard had abandoned loading the cart and retreated into the shade. Tomas was nowhere to be seen.

  The Der el Bahari men were deep inside the temple where it was cool. A smell of burned beans came wafting out. Most workmen made a midday meal of just bread, but the Der el Bahari men had their own standards.

  So, up to a point, had the cook, and Miss Skinner had made a pleasant lunch of tomato salad. She was sitting now in a canvas chair borrowed from Parker, reading a book.

  Paul, too, was reading a book, reclining comfortably nearby on the sand.

  ‘Really, Mr Trevelyan,’ said Miss Skinner irritably, ‘I am hardly likely to come to harm during my siesta!’

  ‘I certainly hope that is the case,’ said Paul, unperturbed. ‘I was banking on an uninterrupted read.’