The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  ‘She isn’t. She isn’t. Don’t say that.’

  Frances, bright-eyed, flushed, was angry, defensive and close to tears. I forgot sometimes that she was younger than I was. Not that those years made any difference: I felt hot and choked and close to tears too. I knew we’d quarrel if I pursued this, so I bit back my words and said nothing more. We went into lunch, and all through the meal these well-intentioned deceptions swirled around in my mind. Frances and I were caught up in them, and no doubt they’d prove harmless, but they left me with a sense of guilt and creeping unease. Frances, as always, recovered more successfully. Her quick inventive mind was already jumping ahead; by the time the meal was over and we’d been allowed to leave the table, she was already planning what to do with the purloined pages of Burke’s. Our next task was vital, she said: we had to get rid of the evidence.

  On the way back to our room, I suggested umpteen, simple, practical methods of achieving just that, but Frances, in a lordly way, dismissed them all. I began to suspect that, liking ceremonies as she did, she already had some solemn ritual, some hocus-pocus, in mind.

  Before we left for the Valley, we just had time for the initial preparations. As soon as we were safe in our room, we tore up the stolen pages of Burke’s: Frances would not rest until we’d reduced ancient lineage to unreadable confetti. She produced a small leather doll’s purse, and all the confetti was stuffed inside. I could tell it hurt her to part with this, for Frances loved gaudy things – always plainly dressed by her mother, she could not resist anything brightly coloured. The purse, heart-shaped, rose-pink, fashioned from soft glove leather, was clearly much cherished; even I could see it was an appropriate container for Poppy’s secrets, so it was agreed the little purse would be hidden and ‘sacrificed’. I think Frances, with her queer imagination, felt that if sacrifice were involved, Poppy would quickly return and all would be well. She was, to her fingertips, her father’s child, an archaeologist’s daughter: she had reason to know how capricious the gods could be, and how essential it was to propitiate them.

  Frances secreted the purse, and took it to the Valley that afternoon, but if she had some specific ritual or hiding place in mind, she refused to divulge it. The site of Carter’s dig proved to be deep in a remote arm of the Valley; it was near the tomb of a pharaoh called Siptah, first discovered about seventeen years before. I’d seen Siptah’s broken body at the Egyptian Museum: he had a pitifully deformed, withered foot, perhaps the result of polio, Frances’s father had suggested. When we arrived at the site of this crippled king’s tomb, the scene was so bewildering that I soon forgot Frances’s secret plans. True to his scheme, Carter was removing the tons of spoil in front of Siptah’s burial place; until I actually witnessed it, I’d not realised how gargantuan a task that was. The floor of the Valley resembled the interior of a vast quarry – indeed, much of it was a quarry, a place where thousands upon thousands of tons of limestone and flint chippings had been dug out of the hills for centuries, to be discarded at random.

  Tall plumes of white dust billowed up from the site, gusting and swirling in the burning air; they were visible from afar and chokingly thick when close. Carter himself was white as a ghost, smeared in dust from head to foot, as were his Arab basket boys and workmen. There must have been forty men on the site, digging, hoeing, sifting and shovelling, and there were even more boys, perhaps a hundred of them, some of them my own age and many much younger, fleet of foot, nimble and acrobatic, dodging among the rocks, removing the spoil in rush baskets. It was being sieved, inspected, then loaded into open crates on a manually operated railway system – a Decauville track, Carter explained, jumping down from the heaps of spoil, and striding forward to greet us.

  ‘Cost Carnarvon a pretty packet,’ he announced with a wide grin. ‘Worth its weight in gold. Can’t think how we ever managed without it – cuts the labour time in half, means we can shift the spoil well away from the Valley floor, and dump it where it can’t do any harm. The men fill the crates, push them the length of the line, then lift the rails at the back, refix them at the front, and off we go again! Clicks together like a Meccano set – best toy I ever had! We can shift the stuff half a mile, more, in next to no time – Helen, Miss Mackenzie – you don’t mind the dust? Come and see the progress we’re making. Frances, introduce Lucy to Girigar, he’s looking forward to seeing you.’

  I’d never seen Carter in such ebullient spirits; he seemed immune to the dust, and unaffected by the cacophony of noise, the clamour of voices. Miss Mack and Helen lowered the veils they’d pinned to their hats, and began to pick their way gingerly through the treacherous spoil. Carter strode ahead of them, laughing and gesturing. No reference to the ugly scene after lunch the previous day, no trace of the man I’d glimpsed, alone in the Valley, hurling stones at the rock face.

  ‘This way, Lucy,’ Frances said, ‘follow me.’ She led me up a narrow path, skirting the area where the men were labouring. We mounted a small rise some distance away, where the dust was a little less choking. There we discovered a peculiar structure that resembled a cage; its roof was shaded with canvas, its sides constructed of finely pierced metal, like a fly screen in a pantry. It had muslin curtains and contained a single chair, well padded. The cage was unoccupied.

  ‘Lord Carnarvon’s,’ Frances said. ‘Protects him from the flies. And the dust. He’s stayed at the hotel today: some people are arriving from Cairo, officials, I think – bigwigs, anyway, and Eve said they had to see them. But when Carnarvon is at the dig, which is most days, that’s where he sits.’

  ‘In that?’ I stared at the cage. ‘But what does he do?’

  ‘Well, he can keep an eye on things, of course – it’s a good vantage point. And then he reads, I guess. Dozes off, I expect. Thinks about his ancestral acres and his stud and his racehorses. Dreams of discovering treasure, maybe.’ She grinned. ‘Who knows? You don’t expect an English lord to get his hands dirty, do you? If they find anything – which mostly they don’t – Mr Carter sends an emissary, and Lordy ventures out, and then they examine it together, and Carnarvon looks at some bit of old pottery, or an ostraca if they’re lucky, and he says, “Oh I say, well done, my dear fellow, jolly interesting.” And then he goes back to his cage again.’

  The imitation of Carnarvon’s drawling tones was exact: Frances was a pitiless mimic.

  ‘But doesn’t he get bored?’ I asked.

  ‘Bored to tears, I should think – wouldn’t you? Eve’s always here with him, and she tries to keep him entertained – she’s so saintly and sweet-tempered, she really works at it. I guess it was all right in the early days, before the war, when he and Mr Carter first excavated together. They weren’t in the Valley then, and they made lots of good finds. But since they came here – years of work, and almost nothing to show for it, think of it, Lucy! Lordy must be losing heart. He enjoys the Winter Palace, I think, the dinners and parties and his friends visiting – and he enjoys buying things, of course… ’

  She gave me a narrow look. ‘Thanks to Mr Carter, he’s built up a wonderful Egyptian collection, you know – Daddy says it’s one of the best private collections in the world. Lordy has a very good eye, and Mr Carter has an even better one, so there’s that consolation. But it must be dawning on him that it’s easier to buy beautiful things than it is to dig them up – I mean, look!’ She gestured to the army toiling below us. ‘All that labour, and they could still miss some glorious tomb by a foot, two feet.’

  ‘If it exists. If it hasn’t been rifled.’

  ‘That too. Come and meet Girigar.’ Pointing out a small tent, she drew me towards it. ‘He’s been Mr Carter’s reis for decades now – before that he worked for the Welshman, Harold Jones. Mr Carter says Girigar has the sharpest eyes in the Valley… Oh, it’s so hot. Aren’t the flies awful?’

  Reaching the tent, we retreated into its stuffy airless shade. There I was introduced to Girigar, Carter’s foreman, a thin, elderly man, who greeted us with great ceremony. He lit a primus stov
e, plied us with tea and opened a tin of Rich Tea biscuits. Taking me to the mouth of the tent, he courteously explained the system of excavation being used. I had the impression that he expected few discoveries at this particular site. Meanwhile, he took pride in the fact that this was, in part, a family endeavour: two of the overseers were his brothers, he said; the tall man supervising the Decauville track was his eldest son, and the very small boy – the one carrying the water flask – that was his grandson, six years old tomorrow, a bad boy, up to a thousand tricks.

  ‘What is his name?’ I asked.

  ‘Ahmed.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Years he’s been pestering me, “Grandfather, let me come to the Valley, let me work like the other boys, look how strong I am!” Finally, I talk to Mr Carter and I say, “Mr Carter, sir, this year, let us find work for my grandson, who bears my name, and is a good, industrial, hard-working boy, and will do you pride,” and Mr Carter says, “Ahmed Girigar, since it is you who ask, I agree,” and so the boy comes… and what does he do? He falls asleep. He plays. One ambition this boy has and one only: to ride on the railway, bouncing along, falling off and getting his skull bashed in. I have told him: do that once, I forgive. Do it twice, and I beat you so bad you fall down.’ Girigar smiled mournfully. ‘A lie, miss. I’m an old fool, who dotes on this naughty grandson too much. But he doesn’t know that: watch.’

  Issuing from the tent, Girigar shook his fist and bellowed a stream of vituperation. His little grandson, who had slunk off to a shady corner where he’d been engaged in a fine game, making stones skip, leapt to his feet and scurried off to refill his leather water flask. He nearly collided with Miss Mack and Helen, now covered in white dust, who were retreating to the refuge of the tent. Girigar at once busied himself boiling fresh water for tea. Frances, who had been silent and thoughtful all this while, scanning the rocks below, grabbed my hand. ‘Quick,’ she whispered. ‘Now’s our chance, Lucy.’

  Telling her mother we were going to inspect the Decauville in all its splendour, she drew me from the tent into the rolling clouds of white dust below. When she was sure that we were safely out of sight, she led me aside, into the confines of a narrow wadi on the opposite side of the Valley. We ran up it, until we were well away from the workmen and hidden from prying eyes. We came to a halt, flushed and sweating, in a space encircled by tall, fluted rocks. The heat was intense, the baking air sullen and unmoving. From her pocket Frances produced the small pink purse with its confetti of evidence. ‘Now we dig,’ she said. ‘By this stone here. It’s the perfect marker.’

  I looked uncertainly at the stone. Weathered, rounded, deeply fissured, rose-red, it was taller than a man, sculpted by sand and wind into a suggestion of a female shape. It had stony breasts, curves that might have been thighs and hips and, if you squinted, blind eyes in a beautiful, passionless face. I reached up to stroke the stone’s long tresses, which lay in limestone rivulets about its slender, vulnerable neck. Something moved in those tresses. I drew sharply back. ‘What about scorpions?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lucy! We’re only digging a little hole. Get on with it.’

  We both knelt down and dug into the sand and soil at the base of the stone. This proved difficult, for it was heavily compacted: the crumbling lime, soaked by floodwaters after rains, had formed a substance that was unyielding, like half-set cement. We removed a sandal each, and dug with them. Stoutly made, and of tough leather, these were a good tool: after fifteen minutes’ sweating labour, with torn hands and broken nails, we had achieved a hiding place about a foot deep. Frances hauled me to my feet, told me to bow my head and concentrate, and embarked on what she claimed was a sacred prayer to the powerful sisters Isis and Nephthys: it would ensure a swift return for Poppy, preserve her secrets eternally, and cause confusion to her enemies – Mrs Burton being top of the enemies’ list. I suspected this prayer was more of Frances’s made-up mumbo-jumbo, but she uttered it with such conviction, and on such a weird imploring keening note, that it took effect. I too began to believe. I closed my eyes and offered up a silent invocation: I felt it eddying out from me, into the hot still air, up, up, up into the blue empyrean where the kites circled and the gods awaited.

  ‘Beloved and revered goddesses,’ Frances chanted, switching to English. ‘O Isis, O Nephthys, may your wings enfold and protect the secrets of our friend, Poppy d’Erlanger, and may they carry her back to us and Rose and Peter without delay.’ Frances paused. Then she added: ‘Now, Lucy: give me your ankh.’

  ‘What?’ I took a step back. ‘You never mentioned that. I will not.’

  ‘I know you’ve got it on you. You always have. We both have to make a sacrifice, or it won’t work.’

  ‘That ankh was a present. It’s special.’

  ‘I know it’s special. That’s the whole point. It has to be something you really love. I’m sacrificing Poppy’s lipstick. Look.’ She produced the lipstick from her pocket, and examined it sadly. ‘Come on, Lucy – give me that ankh. Hand it over. No grumbling. When you make an offering, you have to do it with a glad heart, surely you know that?’

  I thought this was pushing it, but in the end I gave in. With great care, we placed the ankh and the lipstick in the hole; we each gave the pink purse a ceremonial kiss and gently lowered it on top of them. We knelt down again on the hot sand, joined hands, and refilled the burial place. As we did so, we felt a sudden change in the air: the faintest of breezes shivered across our skin – Frances said this meant the twin goddesses were responding. When we had finished stamping on the sand, all trace of our excavation had disappeared; the soil looked as it had before: mute, undisturbed for millennia.

  We turned back to the main Valley and, as we reached it, saw to our surprise that the workmen were already downing tools, although it was still only three in the afternoon; one of them greeted us with a warning gesture and a grimace; he shouted something in Arabic and gestured upwards. Tilting my head back, I saw the sky was changing colour with astonishing speed – air blue, darkening to a bruised mauve. Above the summit of el-Qurn in the distance there was now a spreading stain of dark purple, as if the sky had begun bleeding.

  ‘Storm coming,’ Carter shouted, striding towards us. ‘The wind’s getting up – can you feel it? Rain any minute… ’

  As he spoke, the hot dry air, so motionless for days, came alive: it tugged at my hat, and scraped a razor down my arms. The sand at my feet begin to crawl away from my shoes, as if shifting on a tide of thronging invisible insects.

  ‘I’ve sent for the donkeys – they’ll be here soon.’ Carter came to a halt, and shouted up at the tent: ‘Girigar, tell the ladies we need to leave at once. If we go now, we’ll make it back to my house before the rain starts.’ He shouted some last instruction in Arabic, then swung back to us: I’d never seen him look more exhilarated – almost exulting.

  ‘About time the Valley put on one of its shows, eh, Frances? Don’t be scared, Lucy – we’ll be back at Castle Carter before the worst of it hits.’ He turned and pointed to el-Qurn, where the swirling clouds were now black, torn into rags and tatters. ‘Feel it?’ He yelled the question. ‘Feel the electricity?’

  As he said that, I suddenly felt the charge: KV, KV – the hot air pulsed with energy, thousands of volts, fizzing, incendiary. Frances and I ran for the donkeys, but before we reached them, the first stinging squall of rain came in. We ducked our heads, clung on to our hats, and ran faster. I heard the wind come hissing along the Valley; as we reached the donkeys and clambered astride them, I looked back. Above the hills, over the high pyramid point that was the cobra-goddess Meretseger’s domain, the clouds coiled. The sky simmered and swirled, cracked wide, and spat out the first forked tongue of lightning.

  16

  By the time we reached the shelter of Castle Carter, the sky was black and afternoon had become night. At the house gates, there came a huge, deafening thunder clap and the sky released a deluge. Carter, who had escorted us out, had ridden ahead for the last hundred yards to a
lert Abd-el-Aal; we found the servants were waiting for us. They came running out into the yard, splashing through pools of water, holding lamps, grabbing at the reins of the nervous shying donkeys, and urging us inside. ‘Quick, miss, quick,’ the boy Hosein said, pulling me down from the saddle. ‘Fire lit, dry off, tea soon – good storm, English rain – run now, yes?’

  Frances and I ran: there was a car parked outside Carter’s entrance, and we had to dodge around that; it was less than ten feet to the shelter of the veranda and yet in that short distance we were soaked. We hurried inside, swiftly followed by Miss Mack, wringing out her old-fashioned voluminous skirt, and by Helen, who was laughing and excited. ‘Oh these Valley storms,’ she cried. ‘Wasn’t that spectacular? Did you see that lightning, Myrtle? Look at my poor hat – silly thing, it’s completely drowned. Lord knows how we’ll get home in this. Frances, Lucy – are you all right? Heavens, you’re both soaked to the skin. Abd-el-Aal, do you have some towels – some rugs, perhaps?’

  ‘Warming by fire, this way, please,’ Abd-el-Aal replied, ushering us ahead into a hall. From behind us came the sound of running footsteps, of shutters being slammed against the storm. Hosein, bringing up the rear, swung the entrance door closed and barred it – and I suddenly understood why Carter’s house had acquired the name ‘Castle’. It might not have battlements, a moat or a drawbridge, but it had its defences all the same. The storm was now shut out, the wail and the thump of the wind diminished to a whisper – and I could imagine how these defences would slam shut to protect Carter from anyone he regarded as an enemy. Given Carter’s character, there’d no doubt be numerous candidates. ‘This way, this way,’ Abd-el-Aal, was saying. ‘Hosein, more firewood, tea double quick – through here, honoured ladies.’