“What do we know of this guy, Ankhtifi?”
“Not a lot.” Alex started to take off his rucksack.
“Forget getting the guidebook out. What did Thoth say?”
Alex pulled his rucksack back onto his shoulders. “Just that Ankhtifi originated the article.”
“Didn’t he think that was a little strange with this Ankhtifi guy being this far away from Luxor?”
“Apparently, this ‘guy’ as you put it, is … was … some sort of warlord. I got the distinct feeling that Thoth would rather say no to Ramses than to him.”
“Not the sort to be messed with then,” Kate said as she gave a knowing look.
“Yes, exactly, but we are going to have to mess with him.”
“You sound confident.”
“Not really, but what harm can asking a question do?” Alex added in his thoughts, “Just as long as I’m the one doing the asking.”
“How can you say that after the way our day has gone so far?”
“Good point!”
There was a short period of silence before Kate asked, “Why are we doing this, Alex?”
“Because somebody has to.”
“Why us?”
“Because two young German girls are relying on us.”
Kate had been so calm, it had been a really nice walk. They could now see what appeared to be a gaffirs just ahead. Some distance beyond that, up a long slope, was the black rectangle of an open doorway in the middle of a pyramidal hill, so they were in the right place. They were where they had to be, but Kate just had to be Kate. “Why are you even bothering to drag yourself away from The ADD, when this is so unimportant to you that you cannot even remember their names?”
Initially taken aback by the change in her attitude, he hesitated before replying. “That’s not fair, and you know it! We are both here for the same reason: to rescue Celina and Leonie.”
As was so often the case these days, Kate struggled to understand why she reacted as she did.
Alex understood that she had no idea what to do, now that they were here, and whenever she did not feel in charge she lashed out. Understanding her was one thing, coping with her outbursts was quite another. For some crazy reason, he felt as though he wanted to hug her, though getting close when she was in this frame of mind usually ended up with him on the ground … in pain. Without realising it he had moved out of arms reach.
A gaffir appeared from the hut, quickly followed by a second. After all the usual welcomes, it turned out that Kate and Alex were the first two visitors they had seen all week, and today was Friday. At the gaffirs’ prompting, first Kate, then Alex, took an outdoor shower, washing their clothes as they wore them. The large water tank on the roof of the hut was naturally heated by the sun. A simple pull on an old rope allowed water to flow out of a pipe fitted into the side of it. Hitting the leaves of the bushes on its way down this created the perfect shower, there were even miniature rainbows embedded within the flow.
Drinking, rather than enjoying, strong black tea loaded with sugar from small chipped glasses, they were grateful to the gaffirs for the loan of galabeyas, whilst their own clothes lay outside drying in full sun.
Alex, pleased that their contents had stayed dry after his shower, struggled to read what had been written on two self-seal plastic bags.
“I wondered why you were not worried about being at ancient ground level. Gadeem gave you those?”
“Yes, but they are not both the same spell and now I can’t work out which is which.” Seeing the gaffirs come back towards the hut, after checking on the drying clothes, Alex quickly placed the bags into the pocket of his galabeya.
“Does it matter?”
“Only if we want to live!”
Chapter 4
-
The Burial Chamber
“Blast,” Alex said under his breath, though with annoyance, as he slipped his hand in his pocket. “Blast,” he repeated as he pushed his fingers into the corners. He frantically checked all his pockets. “Blast, blast, blast!”
“Would you like to let me into your little ritual?” Kate whispered. “Is it something we must both do upon entering a warlord’s tomb, or is it peculiarly a male thing?”
Completely ignoring her, Alex repeated ‘blast’ several more times as he continued to check his pockets, the same ones, over and over.
“Alex?” Kate said with force.
It did the trick; she gained his full attention, if only for the millisecond before he scanned the tomb with fear writ large across his face. “Quiet! I haven’t got the spells. I don’t know where they are. We have to go back.”
“You must have left them in the pocket of the galabeya when you changed,” Kate said with obvious annoyance.
“No, I remember taking them out of the pocket and …” Alex gave the biggest sigh as the sequence of events came back to him in a flash. He was now mentally kicking himself. They had been so important, yet, having changed back into his washed and dried clothes, he had dithered over which pockets they should each go into. Unable to make out anything he had written on either bag, and with their ground contents looking virtually identical, he had been incapable of arriving at a logical decision. He had still been struggling to work out which spell to put where, when Kate and the returning gaffirs had jolted him from of his thoughts. Hastily he had shoved the little plastic bags between the folds of the galabeya he had still been holding onto. If the gaffirs had seen him acting furtively, they made no comment. He had then been distracted by their request, some would say demand, for baksheesh. Alex had not minded, as they earned very little. That was when he had put the galabeya down, so that he could search his trouser pockets for two Egyptian notes of the same value. He had not given the spells another thought until now, as his vastly generous tip had resulted in overenthusiastic hugs. Whilst the gaffirs were so elated, he had easily negotiated the freedom they needed to visit Ankhtifi’s tomb without them in tow.
“Are you sure we really need those spells?”
“Yes, Kate, it’s not safe to go on without them. Gadeem … Oh, never mind. I’ll tell you as soon as I’m back.” Alex slid his backpack off, letting it fall to the ground. It was neither large nor heavy, not without the bottled water attached to it, however, it bounced around in an irritating way whenever he ran; it also tended to make his back rather wet.
“I’m quicker than you. Wait here!” Kate turned to run down to the gaffirs hut, though her eyes remained fixed on Alex.
“NO,” he shouted. This was not because he wanted to be all macho and run down and get the spells himself, that was not his way, it was because the entrance they had come in by was no longer an entrance, it was now a solid wall.
Kate hit this with force, before bouncing back into the tomb, just as she had in their library. Though back then she had not hit an upright pillar, spun around it as though she were a demented ballerina, lost her balance, slipped under a less than useful safety rope into a sarcophagus sized hole in the floor, then descended into a burial chamber headfirst. In their library, there had been a period of shocked silence whilst Alex, Emmy and Cairo had looked down upon the prone Kate. Alex was far more shocked this time, though there was no Kate to look down upon. His initially stunned expression quickly turned into a shocked expression as he listened to Kate slide. She did not scream, there was no final crash, no sound of collision with a sarcophagus or wall, only silence.
Alex knew that he had to go after her, though he also knew that it would be extremely dangerous to proceed without thinking things through. His year of training with Dr Margretti, at the British Museum, was kicking in. Though naturally cautious, previously he would have raced to save Kate; now he knew better. Racing in so that they were both in the same trap was not a recipe for success. Looking at the solid wall, where there was once an entrance, he wondered whether walking into a trap counted! He also wondered why he could see anything at all, because there was no electric lighting here. Natural daylight, which usually flooded in
through the now sealed entrance, was strong enough to illuminate the area of the tomb open to visitors. Turning around, so that his back was pressed against the wall, he saw flaming torches around the walls. They had appeared from nowhere. These, along with the sealed exit, confirmed to Alex that they had been expected. Whoever was expecting them had to be an ancient, and, no quantum leap of logic needed here, that ancient had to be Ankhtifi.
At lightning speed, he assessed the situation. Neither he nor Kate had realised that they could not leave, because the exit had only turned into a solid wall as Kate had attempted to leave. They had not stepped back into a time when the entrance would have been sealed, because he was looking at the tomb as a ruin. He checked his phone, of course there was no signal, though it confirmed the date as Friday 7th July 2017. The blocking of the exit and the flaming torches confirmed to him that Ankhtifi knew they were in his tomb, yet he had made no attempt to either speak with them, harm them in any way, or kill them! Kate’s unconscious slide down into his burial chamber had been entirely of her own making.
It was an unusual tomb, not because it had been hewn out of solid rock, as, with only a few exceptions, they all were. It was the number and variety of its columns: round, square, octagonal. These stood in many rows, to both sides of the entrance, as this rectangular shoebox of a tomb had plenty of width. Even though it did not extend deep into the hill, the builders had managed to cram in three rows of columns. Each lacked the precise alignment that was an Egyptian hallmark, they were also far too close to each other. In the case of the octagonal columns, the width of each side varied wildly. Whilst some columns were left plain, those closer to the centre of the tomb, directly opposite the entrance and either side of the sarcophagus sized hole from where Kate had made her rapid descent into the burial chamber, were heavily decorated. Many were painted with various small scenes, others were carved with hieroglyphs, some even had recessed figures carved in bas-relief. To say that the tomb was over four thousand years old, much colour remained.
It was the detailed paintings which threw Alex into confusion, though he could not immediately work out why. There was no other option, he would have to follow Kate down into the burial chamber. Worried that he had heard nothing from her, he also worried about being too close when she recovered from her dazed state. Back in their library, Kate’s reaction had left him feeling as though he had been stuck in a cage with a large wild cat. Then, there had been a door she could have left by, which she had used, though not before he had been left on the floor injured and in pain!
He stepped forward to the safety rope. Looking down onto a bed of coarse sand a metre or so below, his eyes were drawn forward to the unlit square that was the start of the tunnel down to Ankhtifi’s burial chamber. Lifting his eyes to focus on a bas-relief on the back wall, finely detailed and with some red colour remaining, he saw Ankhtifi depicted with his favourite wife: depicting whoever was in the tomb with their favourite wife was standard Egyptian tomb decoration. The wife was carved with a gentle smile, whilst Ankhtifi looked far more serious. No sign of a smile, in fact quite the opposite, though it still gave all the appearance of being a loving, caring scene … or did it? Alex thought again. Yes, they were shown together on a stone bench, though at opposite ends, yes, she did have one hand on his shoulder with her other on his upper arm, yes, she was smiling, though there was definite distance between them.
He spun around at the realisation that he had been far too focussed on the bas-relief. There was nobody, no sound, apart from the crackle of the burning torches, yet he was tense, ready to defend himself. It was then that an image of his late mother sprang to mind. He looked back at the bas-relief. He now knew that it was not a loving gesture that Ankhtifi’s wife was making, it was a calming gesture. The position of the hands, the slight smile, the gesture of kindness without being affectionately close, that was his mother. In his head, he heard her say: “Forget those nasty kids outside, stay in and I will bake you a nice apple cake.” Those, or similar words, were used by her when he was small and troubled. They were definitely not the words of a wife of a warlord, though he sensed that whatever words Ankhtifi’s wife would have used, the meaning behind them would have been the same.
Then, in the periphery of his vision, he noticed movement. The gently flickering torches caused everything to appear to constantly move, only slightly, though in unison. The fleeting movement he saw not only created a far more solid shadow but also moved independently. Somebody, or something, was to his right. He had reacted, so, if whoever it was could see him, that person would know that he had been spotted. Alex was listening, straining to hear anything. There was no sound where he was, though he was sure he could hear his name being called, quietly, nervously, from the chamber below.
Alex’s arrival into the pitch-black burial chamber was not as quiet as that of Kate, having bounced off the walls several times, spun around, then spun around again, hitting his head both times.
“Quickly, your torch,” Kate demanded as she tugged at his shirt, well she thought it was his shirt, she could not be sure.
“Blast, blast, ouch,” Alex said as he realised that he had forgotten to pick up his backpack whilst rubbing his head.
“Don’t tell me that you didn’t bring your flipping torch with you.”
Alex was still rubbing his head and was more than a little annoyed as he pointed out that she should use her torch.
“How? It’s in my rucksack which is on the floor next to yours.”
“Right!” He took out his mobile phone. “Great!” he said as he looked at the spider’s web cracked screen.
“Be grateful that it’s still working.”
Alex was taken aback by Kate’s most reasonable comment. Of course, it was said with attitude, though it was still far too reasonable for her. He scrolled down, had to press on the screen two or three times before, much to his relief, the flashlight app opened. It turned on the single LED that the phone used as a flash for its camera, this gave out an extremely bright white light. In the absolute darkness it was as good as a floodlight. Only Ankhtifi’s large, plain, granite sarcophagus blocked them from being able to see the entire burial chamber.
“No way out, nothing written on the walls,” Alex turned to shine the light up the slope they had arrived by, “and no way that we are going to be able to climb up there.”
“Why hasn’t anybody attacked us?”
Alex gave Kate a look of astonishment.
“Well, Ankhtifi obviously knows we are here, so the simple fact that we have not been attacked must tell us that he doesn’t wish to harm us.”
Alex wondered if Kate had ever seen a cat playing with a mouse, though he was pleased with her deduction. “There was somebody up there,” he pointed up at the ceiling, “I didn’t get a clear view, just a glance really, though I doubt it was Ankhtifi.”
“Who then?”
“Don’t know, but I can’t see a warlord being furtive.” Alex continued to shine his phone around the room. “When we meet Ankhtifi I expect him to be a direct, up front, in-your-face sort of person. He will show himself when he is ready.”
“And not before,” Kate added.
They were both far more relaxed than they would have been just a year or so before. Knowing so much more about how ancients think, as well as the protocols they adhere to, they had discussed the piece in The ADD, about the abducted girls, at length. Their conclusion was that Ankhtifi needed their help. He was a warlord, not a pharaoh, so he had to find some way of getting them here: the article. Whenever he deemed to appear they would speak with him courteously, he would then release his hostages because he needed their help, and life would return to normal, hence their lack of worry. The delay in approaching them was nothing more than a power play. They had even discussed this as a possible course of action. In life he might have been this big, nasty, murderous even, warlord, but in the afterlife he had very little power, so a grand entrance at a time of his choosing was the obvious play.
&nb
sp; “I know you told me to be calm.” Alex had, and Kate, much to his amazement, had accepted it, “but if he tries to hold my hand I will smack him one, warlord or no warlord!” Pictures of the British Prime Minister’s visit to the USA were still firmly in her mind.
“I’m sure it will not come to that,” Alex said as he inspected the walls for any sign of hieroglyphs; there were none. “He will have too much respect for you.” He now focussed on the sarcophagus. “And anyway, he needs our help, we are not having to grovel to him.”
Kate chuckled, “He could be an ancient relative of–”
“Don’t even go there!”
“Where?” Kate said in an innocent tone.
Chapter 5
-
A Benevolent Warlord!
“This is quite strange,” Alex said as he worked his way around the sarcophagus. Kate moved over to him to see where he was pointing.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Look closer.” As their heads came together to focus on the lit area Alex whispered, “Don’t react; we are being watched.”
“Where?”
“The other side of me, to my right, a head keeps popping out.”
“I’ve got this,” Kate said as she moved away from Alex, away from whoever was hiding behind the sarcophagus. “There is another one here,” she said as she pointed to absolutely nothing whilst continuing to move away. “And another here.”
Ankhtifi's Papyrus Page 4