Carter emerged onto dry land in a state of anxiety. He hadn’t been able to pick her out in the waiting crowd, but with so many people why should he expect to? It would have been easier for her to find him. Perhaps she was making her way through the throngs towards the exit from Customs this minute.
During the hectic period of his lecture tour, he had had little time to reflect on the encouragement he had received from his conversations with the priest. And, on the boat back, his mind had been filled with the list of things he had to do to prepare for the new season in Egypt. The realism of his preoccupation was abundantly clear to him. Practically speaking, had she been there to meet him, what would he, what could he, have done next?
Perhaps their moment had passed after all.
After spending a restful early autumn in England, Carter returned to Cairo fully recharged.
An eminently professional lecture tour had been completed. Columns of newsprint testified to his public recognition. And, to boot, he had returned freshly equipped with his diploma ‘Doctor of Science’. Potentially permanent disaster had been averted and converted once more to prospects for success in part helpfully engineered through the unpredictable and volatile politics of Egypt.
On the ship over, he had planned the protocol of meetings and purchase of supplies and had developed a timescale of activities for the season’s clearing. Tying in with this he had telegraphed his colleagues to ensure their presence at the site by specific dates.
Once back in Cairo, he administered the necessary courtesy visits with characteristic poor diplomacy and commensurate lacklustre enthusiasm, collected a sufficiency of provisions with his usual efficiency, thrift and attention to every detail, and re-established himself in the Continental Hotel.
In a considerate gesture of welcome, the hotel manager had assigned him the room that Lord Carnarvon had always had. Carter was touched by the manager’s thoughtfulness and would always remember the honour.
Anxious to return to The Valley as soon as possible, he applied himself with energy to the three short weeks of preparations in Cairo.
In no time at all, it seemed, that was all behind him and he was driving up the mouth of The Valley in the early dawn light. It was almost as if he were discovering the place afresh.
Lucas greeted him warmly as he alighted from his car. “Jeez it’s good to have you back, Howard. Beginning to wonder if we’d be the first to see the king after all.”
“You were not alone with that concern,” Carter returned. “And I’m damn glad to see you, too.”
Ali and his men ran forward to show their relief at the return of their master. Carter greeted them all in turn and by name and then looked around.
“Where’s the rest of ’em, Alfred?”
“Winter Palace, Howard. But I don’t think Harry’s in the area yet. You didn’t see him when you came through, did you?”
“Didn’t stay there last night. Came straight to the ‘Castle’. Couldn’t wait to get a night’s sleep in me own bed. Nothing quite like a scratchy horsehair mattress to ease the long travelled bones. Amazing therapy!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them hard together. “Well, let’s not wait for those who breakfast late. Let’s see if the young lad has missed us.”
Carter disguised his inner fears with his enthusiasm to get on with the job, but he had been truly troubled with thoughts of what sights awaited him as he entered the tomb for the first time since he had been so ignominiously prevented from doing so.
The steps had been dug out for him and all that remained was to unbolt the succession of doors. Standing in the corridor at the threshold to the antechamber he leant in and peered all about anxiously. The stale atmosphere made him catch his breath. In the silence, the almost reverent stillness once again took possession of him.
His eyes didn’t miss a detail. It was very different from the first time. It was bare but for a few insects scattering for cover in the bright electric light. Carefully, he eased himself down onto the floor of the antechamber and down again into the burial chamber. He walked over to the open stone sarcophagus and removed the dust sheet which covered the plate-glass panel now protecting it.
He looked down once more upon the gilded outer coffin of the boy king. At the head, the large black eyes stared fixedly skyward. The tiny, dried out floral wreath still encircled the uraeus at the forehead. Nothing appeared to have been touched. All was as it had been for three thousand, two hundred and fifty-five years. All soon would be revealed to him.
There was an uneasy stirring within.
Chapter Twenty Five
The Sickness
Horemheb lay back on his couch and regarded his balloon like belly, rising as it did above the horizon of his chest like a great polished planet. He stroked it with his plump, stubby hands. He grinned. He had been witness to a great many pleasures in his time, but there were few so personally gratifying as the events of the past few weeks. He had watched with satisfaction as the plunderers had made their way ever closer to the king’s body, finally reaching the corpse itself, denuding it of its wrappings and its finery, systematically dismembering it in their avarice to obtain every piece of jewellery that surrounded each limb, taking samples of the charred flesh for analysis, posing about the blackened corpse for the photographer, and placing it, reassembled, tiny, naked and without dignity into a sand tray so that it could be photographed as if it were complete and unharmed.
Perhaps his greatest comfort came from seeing the body itself for the first time. That pathetic, dried and shrunken, charred skeleton, almost fleshless the noseless face, the purplish cheeks. And there was more. When backs had been turned, the reis had plucked off the shrivelled penis.
He regarded his navel once again a most satisfactory final gesture of insulting disrespect such complacent comfort for Horemheb. ‘And what additional mischief shall I design to alleviate the boredom of my eternal existence? What more can I do to confirm his painful return to mortality?’
He remembered the pathetic fragments remaining from the destruction of his own tomb, the dismembered and faceless skeletons of the guardian statues that had protected the doorway to his burial chamber, stripped of their gold and gilding to the bare wood. Though now preserved in their parlous state and currently on display in the Cairo museum they would shortly be removed to a darkened storeroom to make space for the far grander, perfect specimens from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Total destruction of the grave goods was required, he decided, more so than his, if that were possible.
He thought long and hard on how he might engineer some untimely accident. ‘No matter that I shall be denied the pleasure of seeing him in his agony. Agony he will surely have. Agony in the extreme’.
He patted the globe of his belly contentedly and gazed upwards into the limitless blackness of space.
Tutankhamun and his queen sat on cushions on their royal balcony and looked down on Tomb Fifteen and the scene unfolding within it. They held hands. Obscene though it was, the couple couldn’t stop themselves watching every movement. Tutankhamun felt the queen’s grip tighten.
In a bed of cotton wool, the photographer gently positioned the mummy’s dismembered head. He made first one adjustment, then another. Each time he took a picture, the photographer would climb up one side of a wooden trestle specially constructed for the purpose. The camera was positioned at the top, facing downwards. He would spend some time with his head under a black cloth before reappearing. He would slide a small panel from the back of the camera and stack it with some others in a box. He would then take another from a second box and replace it in the camera.
This was a most curious procedure. The queen watched fascinated as he repeated it over and over again. She knew that when he was inside this instrument he recorded like an artist, but far more realistically, and apparently without the help of his hands. She had wondered what he could be doing with his face underneath that black cloth. Whatever it was, he was surely most skilled with his tongue.
The king, however,
was preoccupied with the mutilation of his corpse. He turned to his queen, his eyes aflame. “Enough! All our efforts to prevent this from happening have been in vain. They tear my body apart like robbers. They dismember me, as in the murder of Osiris. They expose and penetrate every part of me. It is systematic desecration. They discover everything. They remove everything. I am no longer whole. They shall pay for this they shall die, all of them; die without prospect of an afterlife eternal damnation!”
He looked behind him. “Ugele! You have served us well, great Nubian. You have toiled long and hard to avoid our having to watch these awful events. Nevertheless, you and our other friends have failed not through incompetence, not through negligence. There are powers at work here that defy our control, powers that have grown through the ages since we ruled Egypt, powers that we have not been able to grow along with, much less learn their ways, powers we are unable to influence.”
He stood up and addressed all those gathered around him. “I want them all dead everyone remotely associated with this desecration. A massacre so large and so quick that those who observe it will know, not speculate, KNOW that there is a power out there that they do not, cannot, and will not understand until they themselves, those of them, that is, who retain some measure of goodness, touch Osiris.”
He glared at his group of loyal followers. Meneg gestured nervously that he wished to speak.
“Speak, Meneg. We wait upon your words. Address us all of us here.”
“Great Regent. Great Queen. Friends. What we have experienced over the past years what we are experiencing today none of these things can go unpunished. It is our solemn duty to wreak revenge amongst the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. But one thing is clear.” He paused.
“We need help.”
“And who or what do you suggest?” asked Ugele.
“Lord.” Meneg turned back to his king, “I have a suggestion the centurion; he who searches eternally for his life’s love; he who searches for Pharaoh Cleopatra.”
Egypt is an unusual place to the non-Egyptian, that is. The Egyptian himself has survived within this incredible environment all his life and sees nothing untoward, nothing out of place. There is no yardstick for comparison. Boundless barrenness hugely boundless, reaching as far as the eye can see nothing but desert sand and bare rocks, dry as a bone and hot as hell. Within it, running right through it, a solitary artery of sustaining water. Throughout its entire course, the Nile carves a corridor of abundance, greenness and thriving life. Like a benevolent knife it divides the country.
Alongside this fruitful fountain grew a civilisation, a great power, second to none but eventually, as all powers, second to one. Tutankhamun had watched from above as they had come in their multitudes powerful, ruthless armies; fearlessly disciplined; well supplied; sustained by well trained support; tactically experienced; war born; strategic in their warmongering; arrogant in their victories; bent upon broadening and enriching their empire with the wealth and culture of new frontiers. Yet, through practicality, they were merciful. They came fully prepared to dominate through integration and absorption a policy of limited but nevertheless generous acceptance and redistribution of wealth to those of the conquered who showed talent beneficial to the empire, and above all those who demonstrated loyalty and a clear ability and willingness to conform.
So it was that the boy king had laid his eyes on Antony, observed him through his tumultuous youth, his burgeoning career, his personal agony and the agony of his death. Like the king himself, his life had ended prematurely, but in Antony’s case by his own hand.
He had been mummified and entombed, in Egyptian fashion, in the Faiyum. His likeness had been painted on the head end of a single, wooden coffin. Unlike Pharaoh, these Romans were not gods. Their burials were poor by comparison, but appropriate to their position in the order of things. After all, following the passing of pharaonic culture, there were no gods, at least none the like of Pharaoh himself.
The king knew Antony for a goodly man and a talented tactician. In the centurion’s continuing search of the heavens, he had visited their plane on several occasions and come to know them equally well. He would be an appropriate addition to their subversive team.
“See that man there?” Tutankhamun pointed out Harry Burton. The photographer was steadying himself on the top of his ladder and preparing
to take a picture of the naked mummy’s legs.
Marc Antony nodded.
“I want him dead. And I want him dead before their day is out.”
Without a second thought Antony said, “With respect, no, my lord. Murder is a human sin and will not achieve your ends. If you wish to engender a realisation, at the very least a suspicion, of the power of the paranormal, you cannot use any method that could be attributed to human hand. They will seek and find a human solution, right or wrong believe me. What we must cause to come to pass are processes that are impossible to interpret within their natural law that is, events that are compellingly supernatural. That way we can conjure some mischief and plant the virus of anxiety amongst these mortals. Why not many viruses? Let them prosper and multiply. They will worry themselves to death!” Marc Antony smiled.
The king nodded in agreement. There was eminent sense in what the centurion said.
“However, my lord,” he continued. “We must be honest with ourselves in our appraisal of this situation. One thing we cannot influence is the strength of their individual capacity for rational thought. If, in the event, they choose to dismiss any evidence of the occult, there will be little we can do to redirect their attention. We will fail.”
Tutankhamun raised his right fist at the Roman. “There will be no failures. NO failures! You will see to it.”
“Well. What will be, my lord, will be. I can do this with the help of your Majesty’s occult powers. Bestow these upon me and I can do this.”
“You are thus enlightened, centurion. Fail me not.”
Antony shrugged his shoulders, mumbled something, and turned to leave.
Tutankhamun called after him.
“What was that? What did you say just then, Roman?”
“Nothing, my lord. Merely acknowledging your wishes. That is all. I will go about my business forthwith.”
“See that you do. Succeed and you will always find comfortable harbour here. We understand your odyssey and wish you success. But, should you not succeed, you may seek no welcome back here. No welcome.”
The king would never have spoken such words to Meneg or Ugele or any of the others in his court. Much as he had endeared himself to the royal couple and their entourage, the Roman was not one of them. He had his part to play, nothing more. The benefits of success would be his. The penalties of failure also would be his.
The centurion disappeared.
He had been feeling out of sorts for some time now. Having to travel on a steamer during a particularly stormy crossing of the Mediterranean only made him feel worse. With his wife as his travelling companion, he was at least well cared for and this additionally provided him with some feeling of security. Her support took his mind off what had been preoccupying him these last few weeks. By nature a hypochondriac, he had a profound fear that his heart was about to give out.
But today he had a more immediate concern. The seasickness made him feel absolutely dreadful and, as the boat smashed into another great wave and yawed alarmingly to starboard, he was once again compelled to empty what was already a very vacant stomach. The sweat ran freely from his scalp. His face glistened in the dim light of the cabin. Involuntarily straining to evacuate what was not there took every ounce of strength in his aching body.
His wife dabbed his forehead with a damp cloth. “Hold on, my darling, this won’t last forever. We will be in Alexandria by morning.” She turned the light down lower. “You try and get some sleep. I’m going up on deck for a breath of air.”
He rested back, appearing to relax a little, and closed his eyes. She pressed the flannel, warm from his own perspiratio
n, into his hand, got up from the bed and left.
The howling wind was cool on her face, but she felt chilled by the sea spray that spattered her with every roll of the ship. She had to hold on to the guide rail tightly to ensure she did not lose her footing. The dark clouds rolled and the white, foaming wave tops pitched around her. For a moment she forgot her ailing husband and drew the fresh air deep into her lungs. Frightening as the storm’s fury appeared, it nevertheless invigorated her, and she rubbed her hands hard over her wet face, tasting the salt in the water.
A brilliant flash of light wiped out the view for a moment and a physically shaking clap of thunder immediately followed. She decided to return to the safety of her cabin. Temporarily blinded, she stumbled along the deck towards the stairs, guiding herself by the handrail. With partial vision, she made out the number on the cabin door, turned the brass knob and, as the ship rolled once again, stumbled in. The wind slammed the door shut behind her.
“Sorry, darling. Didn’t mean to wake you but I was frightened by the lightning and had to get back quickly. I am afraid. If anything the storm appears to be worsening. How do you feel?”
There was no answer.
“God, it’s good to see you again, Howard! Fair raises the spirits.” Arthur Mace was ecstatic at seeing his colleague back from the 1925/26 season. “You have seen much this season. I know it. You must tell me everything. Leave nothing out. Please sit.”
Carter was uplifted himself. Mace, his principal colleague after all this time and all this history, the man who had written most of his first volume on the discovery for him, had in many ways replaced the guardianship that Carter had felt with Carnarvon. He had missed the man enormously this past season.
“Arthur! If you only knew what this means to me. And what it has meant not to have you by my side. If you only knew.”
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