Tutankhamun Uncovered (58 page)

Carter’s view was restricted by the thickness of the mud brick doorway. Nevertheless, what filled Carter’s limited field of vision dumbfounded him: ‘A jumble of objects. Most indistinguishable. But a lot, that much is certain. And a glint here and there. The glint of gold. Boxes. Piled high. On tables. No. Animals. Couches. Beds in the shape of animals. So much stuff. So much stuff!’

It was clear to all who were standing behind him that Carter was able to see something that lay the other side of the doorway.

Carnarvon couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you see, man? Tell us what you can see!”

Carter didn’t turn his head from the hole. Still peering intently into the dimness, he softly murmured, “It’s wonderful. Wonderful things...”

For a moment, Carter relaxed his tension against the door and drew back, breathing heavily. This was enough for Carnarvon to grab his shoulder and pull him from the aperture. He pushed him to one side against the wall, and took the candle from Carter’s hand so quickly that the flame extinguished.

“Quick, Callender, quick man. Light it for me.” The earl’s words were full of impatience.

Carter didn’t move. He rested back against the wall of the corridor, gathering his thoughts.

Carnarvon turned to his colleague. “Callender! Callender! Help me, man!”

Callender pulled out a matchbox from his coat pocket, opened it and fumbled for a match.

“Come on! Come on, man! Strike the damn thing!”

After three attempts, Callender managed to relight the candle and he passed it carefully back to Carnarvon. The earl took it from him in a slow, more controlled manner this time. In his excitement, he neglected to thank the man.

Carter hadn’t moved. He remained slumped against the wall with his head back, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling.

Carnarvon put the candle to one side of the aperture in the doorway and stared intently inward. There was a lengthy, expectant silence as his eyes grew accustomed to the frail illumination. Then, after spending some moments absorbing the scene before him, “Oh, my God! Evelyn! Evelyn! Come look at this. Such wonders!”

The earl graciously pulled himself away from the door and pressed the candle into his daughter’s hand. She had to stretch on tiptoe to see through the hole.

Carter, meanwhile, had returned to his senses and had gone outside. Evelyn was still peering through the hole when he ran back.

“Where’s Burton? Where’s Abdel? Where’s Burton, dammit. We must get this door photographed at once!”

Carter had committed himself to his next move. He had to know what he was dealing with here. He had to know. A distinguished discovery or a find of a size beyond his wildest expectations a fabulous treasure trove! What he had seen through the small hole in the doorway certainly suggested it. How much work lay ahead of him? A quick, superficial investigation before the authorities arrived. No more ‘Tomb of the Horse’ fiascos. He had to know sufficient about the contents and their layout to be confident of no embarrassment at the official opening and, more than this, enable himself to plan and prepare for the excavation effectively.

Notwithstanding the rules of protocol, to be honest with himself he was an explorer at the threshold and the explorer in him had to know now. There would be no way he could leave the place tonight without penetrating it, if only briefly, to its most remote and secret cavity.

Eventually Burton arrived. It was five thirty. He set about his business rearranging the lighting, his tripod and reflecting sheets. Carter all the while impatiently paced about outside. The results of Burton’s work were always exemplary, but for this Carter knew he had to pay the penalty of time. Right now, at this moment, he felt particularly anxious and, as he waited, wore his own path in the sand, stepping the same crisscross course repeatedly. The remainder of the group had retired to the relative cool of Ramses XI to talk about what they had seen through that tiny hole.

At last a welcome bellow from the depths of the entrance corridor, “All done, Howard. All done.”

Carter ran down the steps to help Burton dismantle and remove his equipment. This time, in a show of great discipline and willpower, Carter waited until Burton had confirmed that the plates had developed as intended. Then he called for the others.

There for a moment, in a pregnant silence, they stood still and quiet before the brick and plaster door. Carter drew a deep breath and started gently chiselling, removing the mud bricks one at a time and placing them carefully along the left edge of the corridor. It didn’t take him long to excavate a hole large enough for even the portly Callender to clamber through.

“Before we go in,” said Carter, “a few precautionary instructions. There will be little room to move without touching something. Keep extremely close to me in case we inadvertently break something. Follow my footing precisely.”

They each stepped down through the opening and stood together on the lower threshold. The four of them huddled close, their shoulders touching, the one with the other, enabling each to obtain a somewhat separate view. Surrounded by the gloriously extravagant bric-a-brac they had recently glimpsed through the original small aperture in the plastered door, all four of them were now struck dumb with the abundance of exquisitely strange objects arranged all about them. There was absolute silence. Communication was unnecessary. For each of them it was an intensely personal moment. Individually they drank in the panorama.

Carter leaned forward and placed his candle on the floor, then turned and drew an electric light from the other side of the door. The room was immediately transformed from gloom to an eerie, pinkish brilliance. As he brought the lamp around himself to bear upon the wall to the left of them, it first flashed against what was clearly a jumble of golden chariot frames and their disassembled wheels, piled carelessly, it seemed, against the wall in the near corner. Then, as he continued his movement, great, black, oblong and spiked shadows swept across the wall in front of them like manifold hideous forces of the night riding urgently to their evil business.

Carter drew the bowl of light thrown by his electric lamp to the right illuminating the objects directly ahead of them. Three high beds, apparently gilded and each in the form of animals, were stacked head to tail along the wall. Beneath the one furthest to the left, a hole was clearly visible an entrance to another chamber.

“Since this lamp will go no further, I will take the candle and have a quick gander through that hole glimpse what might be in there.”

Carter handed the lamp to Callender, picked up the candle gently and got down on his knees to inspect under the bed. His buttocks protruded from underneath as he pushed between its legs. His arms ahead of him, he thrust his head expectantly into the room beyond. He could see in the gloom that the room was small and filled to the brim with a jumble of objects chaotically piled one upon the other. Superficially at least, none was individually as impressive as those he was now crouching beneath, but nevertheless there was a mass of articles. He looked towards each side up down. There was no visible additional exit.

Carter backed out from under the bed and rejoined his expectant friends.

“A storeroom. It lies below the level of this one. Lots in there. Nothing apparently as breathtaking as what we have seen here. It appears mostly utilitarian, and in such a mess. Looks like someone threw it all in there an absolute jumble of objects, and no apparent exit... Come, look for yourselves.”

Three hands groped for the candle. Carter passed it to Evelyn. “Please, take care not to drop the candle under any circumstances!”

Evelyn nodded and scrambled into the small opening. The others did so in turn, each taking some considerable time to examine the faintly lit scene before them.

While Callender finished his inspection of the small room beneath the golden bed, Carter and the others examined the remainder of the first room. Below the second bed, which stood directly in front of him, this one a cow-like creature with a leopard’s body, were boxes and oblate wooden cases. More boxes lay beneath the one to its right, this one more like two cats and, standing above and behind their heads in the far corner, a black sentinel holding a stave and scantily clothed in gold. There was another identical statue facing it in the last corner. Both were draped in faded cloth that had rotted so much it resembled thick cobwebs.

Carter directed the lamp at the area of the wall between the two sentries. There was a large, discoloured, oblong panel, the height of an average man, covered with seal impressions. The tomb so far had shown nothing of the lengthy corridors that normally preceded the burial place of a king but this clearly was another sealed door to another corridor, to another room, or maybe to the burial chamber itself.

Carter noticed another discoloration at the base and near the centre of the blocked doorway. “Another breach. See? Resealed in antiquity!”

While the others remained silent, overawed by what they saw around them, Lady Evelyn said, “We... we are the first to intrude into this place for... for how long, Mr Carter?”

“Three thousand years...” Carter whispered respectfully in the stillness of the chamber.

“That is, of course, providing the plundering was accomplished and reparations completed almost immediately after the burial. From the looks of the place, I am pretty sure that was the case.”

Intruders themselves? They felt nothing of the kind. Explorers? Adventurers? Entrepreneurs? Discoverers? Lucky? They were all these things.

Carnarvon grinned at Carter and then looked down at the resealed robbers’ hole...

Chapter Nineteen

So it was on that one remarkably sunny day in Bavaria, on his way to meet his wife at the little town of Schwabach, that George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the Lord Porchester, erstwhile autophobe and speed hound, purposefully aimed his open car down the long Roman road which, vacant of traffic, stretched straight as a die ahead of him. He pushed the accelerator firmly to the floor. As the roadster speeded up, Trotman, his chauffeur for over a quarter century, sat rigidly upright in the passenger seat alongside his lordship, the expression on his face a picture of virtual apoplexy.

Before them, the sun was fairly low on the horizon, crisply highlighting the countryside ahead. The brightness of the illumination erased any sense of contrast in the contours and, before they realised it, they were on a rise that just as quickly fell away beneath. As the car crested the small hill, it briefly parted company with the ground. Carnarvon felt a momentary rush of excitement, then the wheels took hold of the road again. The driver flashed a broad grin at his terrified passenger.

An instant later, the thrill was erased. Two stationary ox carts completely blocked the roadway barely a hundred yards ahead. The earl reacted quickly and skilfully. Realising he would be unable to bring the car to a safe stop in time, he drove it deliberately onto the relatively flat grass verge, taking a line that would have negotiated around the obstruction. But Carnarvon was concentrating on the objects on the road before him and not on the verge itself. As he strained to manoeuvre the roadster, the left front wheel bounced over a large cobble on the side of the road. The brief impact was enough to pitch the speeding vehicle into the air in a sweeping arc, flipping it over to the right.

Trotman involuntarily parted company with the car as it began its roll, and landed on his shoulder in the grass. The heavy turf helped break his fall. Carnarvon was not so lucky. He held on tightly to the steering column until the car hit the ground, upended above him.

The chauffeur, dazed only a little by the shock of the event, found himself relatively unscathed and was on his feet within seconds. He scrambled to the overturned car and looked urgently for the earl. The vehicle straddled a ditch. Peering under the driver’s door, Trotman could see the earl’s contorted body, his head buried face down in the mud of the ditch.

‘My God, he’ll be drowning!’ thought Trotman.

He got down on his hands and knees, reached under the car and grabbed Carnarvon by the shoulders of his leather coat. Summoning all the strength he had, he managed to drag his master from the wreckage and place him on his back in the grass. He quickly wiped the mud from the earl’s face, clearing his nostrils first, and desperately looked for any signs of life.

Trotman looked all around for help. The men with the carts had gone. They were now so far away he could barely make them out in the distant field. It was almost as if they had never existed.

There were some farm workers not far away in the same field. They were seated incongruously in a group having their packed lunch and dispassionately observing the traumatic events at the roadside. Trotman called to them in English but got no response.

He got up and ran over to them, asking whether they had any water. They looked at him without comprehension. He noticed one of them had some water in a can and, in one swift movement, he grabbed it and ran back to his master.

He splashed all of the water over Carnarvon’s face. Immediately the earl drew breath and coughed, and within seconds he was breathing regularly. Trotman sat back on his haunches in relief. The farm labourers dashed up behind him and began gesturing for the return of their can. Trotman chose not to understand the sign language.

As they observed the broken man lying immobile in the grass, one of them shouted, “Doktor!” Immediately he turned and dashed down the road, recovered his bicycle and quickly peddled off into the distance.

The earl breathed easier with every passing second. Help would shortly be on the way. Trotman settled himself to embarrassed smiles of acknowledgement as he and the remainder of the group conversed in expressions.

Carnarvon’s recovery was slow. In fact, from the ordeal of this road accident he would never become fully restored to his former self. He had been permanently damaged, his way of life changed forever a disfigured palate that would hamper his elocution; a permanent limp and an unsteadiness of foot that would require the use of a cane; his resistance to infection a tenth of any normal man. Nevertheless, this incapacity was not sufficient to keep him from pursuit of his fondness for discovery. Ironically, through medical instructions to direct himself towards habitats with cleaner air and more clement winters, the accident had put him directly on a course for Egypt.

Rather than divert him, progress towards the inevitable encounter had become irreversible. Their early conspiracy had turned out to be considerably worse than total failure.

Together the royal couple had watched the relationship grow. Together they had witnessed the bond develop. Together their anxiety had steadily increased. And then, as if that were yesterday, the two explorers had reached beyond the threshold.

The queen whispered in the king’s ear, “We must be more direct.”

“Why?” asked Tutankhamun. “He who leads is to die by the curse. That will be warning enough.”

“But more than a single event will have a better chance of getting their attention make them think,” Ankhesenamun continued. “The accident we contrived all those years ago did no more than strengthen that man’s intent to come to Egypt. It seems to me that these people do not share our knowledge and perception of the unnatural world and, since they do not believe it exists, they do not fear its power. To bring them to comprehend this energy, we must act more often develop situations that cannot so easily be dismissed as mere coincidence.”

“But what, my Queen?”

“Summon Dashir. He will know what to do.”

Dashir, and all those who had been loyal in life, had joined the boy king in his heaven. All now enjoyed the fruits of their labours. All attended the royal couple in much the same ways that they had done all those millennia ago but this time absent of any preoccupation with survival.

Dashir, the king and the queen looked down on the scene below. They watched and listened to every facet of the daily operation in the tomb, Burton, Gardiner and Callender and the two draughtsmen; in the laboratory, Mace and Lucas; Carter busily moving between them; Carnarvon’s visits; the official showings; transport of the king’s possessions to the riverside by way of the tiny, laboriously regenerated railway; and their discussions; and their evenings; and their nights; and their dreams. There was no aspect of their consciousness that the royal entourage did not share.

After a week of watching, the artisan turned to his king and queen.

“Your Majesties, the noble one is to die and soon. That is written. Queen Ankhesenamun is right. The event should be seen as just one of many catastrophes. It will not be easy to contrive these in their world but they are, as I understand, susceptible to suggestion by the unexplainable. I have a few ideas... I have noticed there is little affection or respect between those from the foreign land and those now in power in Egypt. There is, perhaps, room for some manipulation here. We can aggravate as easily as we can heal the rift: disturbances in the tomb itself as they work there; the death of someone close, even a pet; fanciful writings in their press; of curses and omens and dreadful consequences; nightmares to haunt them in their sleep. Should all this fail, we may have to contrive to kill. My good friend Meneg and I shall see to it presently. We shall do our best.”

They began with the poltergeist.

Breasted, alone in the tomb, became the victim. The place was entirely silent as the proverbial grave so much so that every time he hesitated in his work he could feel the stifling claustrophobia of dark, noiseless, restricted confinement. But the third time he stopped to straighten his aching back he thought he heard it a creaking. He sat motionless, waiting for the sound to repeat itself so he might locate its position nothing. He began once more to address the object before him again an audible creak. It appeared to come from inside the annex. It sounded as if someone or something was making its cautious way across the jumble of objects that littered the little room.

Cockroaches, he thought. Perhaps a scorpion. He returned to his work.

But the next sound caused him to stop. A distinct and, in the confines of the stony chamber, loud crack. For a moment it resonated about him. Again the echoes didn’t permit him to locate the origin of the sound.

He waited for another, sitting silent and inert for minutes. There was nothing. He shook his head in frustration and returned to his labours. Almost immediately he did so, another resounding crack filled the room.

He sat bolt upright. The room fell into total silence once again. He decided he would listen for longer this time. He must have waited fifteen minutes without hearing anything of significance. He sat so rigidly motionless he could hear his heartbeat. He could make out the sounds of the voices of the crowds and labourers outside the tomb, but heard nothing more from within. Cursing under his breath, once more he turned back to his work.

Hardly had he touched the piece he was working on than the silence was broken by a noise which sounded like something wooden had become dislodged and fallen to the floor. Once again he could not locate the direction.

This was really frustrating. He got up and walked out of the tomb and into the sunshine. Stretching, he spied Carter who, with his usual purposeful step, was on his way back from the laboratory.

“Howard!” he called. “You won’t believe this, but I have been hearing noises within the antechamber. Noises like there is something alive in there with me.”

Carter smiled wryly. “Touch of the sun, old chap?”

“Don’t be daft. Come and listen for yourself.”

Carter was returning to the tomb in any case, so the only irritation was a few moments of silence to placate his colleague’s anxiety. They stepped down onto the antechamber floor and Breasted signalled to Carter to be still.

They stood silent for a time. To Carter it seemed like an eternity.

‘Nothing. Not a damn thing,’ thought Breasted. ‘Bloody typical.’

Then Carter spoke. “What’s that?... Hear that?... There.” Breasted couldn’t hear a thing. “A thumping. Rhythmical. Bumpa, bumpa, bumpa. Can’t you hear it? It’s seems to be coming from over...” Carter moved towards his colleague, “...here.” He rested an ear against Breasted’s chest. “Yes. Definitely a case of the heebie-jeebies! ’Fraid I’ll have to pronounce you unfit to work in confined spaces, Mr Breasted. A catacomb’s definitely not your cup of tea!”

Breasted was not amused. “Dammit, Howard, I did hear it. Just don’t know quite where it came from. Will y’not stay with me a while longer to see if it happens again?”

“Sorry, old man. No time to hold y’ hand. Got to get back to the lab. Enjoy your hallucinations.”

He carefully picked up a piece that Breasted had finished earlier and darted off.

The sounds of Carter’s scuffling up the stone steps subsided and the dust settled. Then something in that room snapped. Breasted held his breath. He looked about him. Again he could not pinpoint the location of the sound. This was all becoming most disturbing. He sat back on his haunches and listened nothing. He turned to the piece at hand as if to begin work once more nothing. He picked up some heated paraffin and pretended to apply it nothing. He applied it Crack!

‘Where did that come from?’ he asked himself. He went over to the tiny entrance to the annex and looked in. There were no signs of movement, only silence.

He sat back in the centre of the antechamber and set himself to listening once more. He sat motionless for more than half an hour, long enough for Carter to have returned once more to retrieve the piece that his colleague had been working on earlier.

“Not finished. Sorry, old boy. Give me another hour.”

Carter was not happy.

“James,” he began, “y’ know damn well we have a tight time schedule. Can’t afford any slowdowns. If it wasn’t for the damn visitors and press we’d have some flexibility. But as it is we have no margin for error not if we are to break into the next room before we leave for the summer. And we will have to do that early in any case with all the damn royalty and officialdom that are already booked in February; all of them descending on us in expectation of that occasion. They won’t delay. They will not tolerate the warmth of spring. Dammit, man, can’t you hurry up?”

Carter’s impatience was bluntly self-evident.

“Jeez, Howard, give me a break,” pleaded Breasted, clearly irritated by his colleague’s insensitivity.

Carter knew very well that preservation took time. But, at the same time, it appeared to him that Breasted was becoming preoccupied with fantasy, the occult or some such. He could not afford to be patient with the idiosyncrasies of his staff.

Breasted’s face was a picture of frustration. “Howard, old chap. There really are sounds in here. But one has to be patient and wait for them. Will y’ not sit with me a while in the silence?”

“James, I do not wish to unsteady our professional and personal relationship, but this much I have to say. We are falling behind. The antechamber must be emptied before the VIPs arrive in Luxor. The artefacts require our diligent attention. This takes time. This leaves no time to indulge our fantasies. Like as not, the noises you may indeed be experiencing for I do not doubt your story, old chap, remember that are generated by the artefacts themselves as they adjust to the modern atmosphere that now pervades this place and must infect them. Plus, there must by now be an abundance of life down here. This can only serve to underline the urgency of our work. Please get to it.”

He left before Breasted could respond.

Breasted accepted Carter’s logic, but his recent experiences within the tomb filled him with so much anxiety that, notwithstanding his colleague’s commonsense analysis, he could not bring himself to continue the work at hand until he had taken some time to sit once more, unmoving and in silence, alone in the centre of the antechamber.