Tutankhamun Uncovered (63 page)

“The cursed thing itches, madam. Don’t spoil my only comfort. It’s the only way for me to turn pain into pleasure.”

Carter mumbled something under his breath.

“What... what was that you said, Howard?”

“Mmm? Nothing, sir. Thinking out loud. Bad habit of mine.”

“Something troubling you, Howard?”

Yes, there was something troubling him. There was a great deal troubling him. His early excitement had taken second place to the reality of the situation. He had become so troubled with the enormity of the work that lay ahead and the huge responsibility that went with his stewardship that sometimes, in the privacy of his own room, he would literally shake in panic.

“I, er... I confess, your lordship. I sometimes wonder whether I am equal to the task that lies ahead of me.”

“Something you’re forgetting, Howard, m’ boy. It’s not ‘me’, it’s ‘us’. You have a lot of the most authoritative, willing and able help a veritable army of expertise at your beck and call. An archaeological force the like of which the world has not before beheld and is never likely to again, I’ll be bound. Not all in one place.”

The earl’s remarks notwithstanding, this evening Carter was convinced that the entire burden was his, and felt too sorry for himself to be receptive.

“Sir. I could do with an early night.”

Carter got up to return to the west bank and get some sleep. He took his leave of Evelyn and smiled a condescending grin at the earl. His patron gave an affectionate but rather limp wave and Carter turned and left the room. Wrapped up in the multitude of worries that weighed heavily on his mind, Carter could have been forgiven for not noticing the outward signs.

Weigall’s frustration was written all over his face. At breakfast that morning, spooning sugar into his coffee, he regarded the ceiling thoughtfully. At the tenth spoonful he looked down at the cup. The coffee had overflowed a little into the saucer. Cursing under his breath he stirred it slowly, wiped the bottom of the cup against the rim of the saucer and raised the cup to his lips. He grimaced in distaste and slapped the cup down noisily into the swimming saucer, splashing coffee onto the tablecloth. He called for the waiter to bring a clean cup and saucer.

The journalist fell back to thinking: ‘What the hell am I going to do about this?’ He had to find a way around Carnarvon’s and Carter’s stranglehold on current information, otherwise his presence at the site was almost a total waste of his time and the Daily Mail’s money.

The photos he had attempted during the infamous over flight with Stanley had turned out to be unusable. The speed and vibration of the biplane had together conspired to return only blurred images. Just about nothing was going right.

As he continued to indulge his personal feelings of melancholy, his nemesis walked into the restaurant and took a table in the far corner. It was enough to put him off the remainder of his breakfast. He pushed his plate to one side, gulped down his coffee, and rose to leave.

As he picked up his hat Carnarvon spotted him and beckoned him over. Angry though he was, it would have been most impolite to ignore the invitation.

“Mr Weigall! Good morning. And how are you today?”

“Good morning to you, your lordship. I am well, thank you.” The reporter’s reply was without emotion. “And yourself?”

“To tell you the truth, sir, a little out of sorts today. Not at all tiptop.”

“I am sorry to hear that, your lordship.” The response was quite genuine. Weigall had already observed that the earl looked somewhat sallow.

“Oh, I am sure it will pass. Something I ate. The water, probably. Should follow me own creed and stick to the wine, don’t y’ know!” he smiled.

Weigall softened and returned the smile. “How are things going at the clearance, your lordship?”

“Rather slowly, sir. Rather slowly. So much stuff. Much in a parlous state of preservation. Carter and his merry men are spending more time in the lab than in the tomb. Still, mustn’t complain. All necessary work. Carter says he should be ready to open the burial chamber in a week or so.” The earl quickly corrected himself. “At least, that’s what he thinks the next sealed door might lead to.”

“Indeed? Well, we all look forward to that.”

The earl’s eyes suddenly lit up as his daughter entered the restaurant and came over to join them.

“Lady Evelyn!” greeted Weigall. “Good morning. I trust you slept well.”

“Mr Weigall,” Evelyn acknowledged.

Weigall drew back the seat opposite Carnarvon and assisted Evelyn in taking her place at the table. “Lovely to see you both, but I must be off. The work of a journalist is ever current.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Carnarvon. “Hard and sometimes frustrating work it must be at times,” he added knowingly.

Weigall didn’t need to be reminded, least of all by the source of his frustration.

“By the way, sir,” the earl continued, “Mace and Carter told me last night that they soon expect to have enough material to compile a volume on the progress this season. They plan to publish sometime later this year. It’ll be crammed full of Burton’s plates. You’ll probably want to obtain an early copy. Thought you’d like to know.”

“Of course, your lordship.” Weigall, a little startled at this news, was at a loss for words.

“I’ll ask him to send you one.”

“Thank you, your lordship. Most kind.” And the reporter quickly took his leave of father and daughter and walked briskly from the room.

As he got into the carriage to begin his journey to the west bank, it dawned on him. Why not publish his own popular work and take advantage of current public excitement? He had published before and was well known as a writer. Carter was not. Carter and Mace’s book should nevertheless be an instant success. Why not publish a parallel commentary on the back of their success? No doubt theirs would be expensive. He could make his competitively priced.

A capital idea! He congratulated himself. And, when he arrived at the site, the prospect of another long day’s wait outside in the heat for once did not seem quite so unbearable. (Weigall published his work in November, 1923 the same month that Carter and Mace’s first volume went on sale. It appears intentionally crafted to much the same size and thickness as the other, with about the same number of pages. Even the dust cover, at first glance, has a similar layout to the CarterMace volume. Although Weigall credited the tomb’s find to Carter, reference to his adversary is decidedly understated in the text. The book was published competitively at fifteen shillings. The CarterMace volume went to the book stores priced at thirty-one shillings and six pence: see Weigall, 1923).

Carter was busy and focused on his work as usual as he supervised the labourers carrying trays of objects from the depths of the tomb. He passed Weigall several times that day, but not once did he notice the reporter’s uncharacteristic grin.

By February, the antechamber had been largely cleared and they were ready to confront the mud brick and plaster doorway that stood between them and the burial chamber. Carter and Mace had together constructed wooden shields to protect the black gesso and gilt statues, which to that point still remained in the antechamber, and a wooden platform at the threshold of the doorway itself. The step was just high enough to obscure evidence of the breech which the surreptitious four had made less than three months earlier. Once Carter had dismantled the doorway, the evidence would be destroyed forever.

But that was the easy bit. The hard part was keeping knowledge of the big event from all the press. That voracious rabble thronged about the entrance to the tomb most of the day, and it was only after lunch, when the heat became unbearable and metabolisms slowed, that the crowds began to thin out.

It was such a time that Carter chose for the official opening. Those fortunate through their office to be selected arrived to the total surprise of the few remaining diehard reporters still at their posts on the wall above. Before a camera shutter had clicked, the party of invitees had assembled themselves in the specially arranged seating in the cleared antechamber beneath. Those left above could only wonder.

“Your Majesty, your Lordship, your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. Please excuse my informality but I am sure you will understand why I must strip for action.”

Carter asked Carnarvon, who was sitting in front with the Queen of the Belgians, to hold his hat, then his jacket, then his waistcoat, then his tie, then his shirt. He pulled the tail of his long-sleeved vest out of his trousers and let it fall comfortably loose about his waist. Thus prepared, he mounted the step, took a crowbar from Mace and began to chisel away at the bricks in the upper left corner of the door. The plaster fell to the platform in many differently sized pieces. Mace would do his best to catch every one, but now and then pieces would crash to the wooden step and thence in smaller fragments to the floor. As each brick loosened, Mace quickly took hold of it to prevent it from falling inward and possibly damaging the shrine. He lifted each brick carefully from the wall and stacked them on the floor of the antechamber.

After most of the bricks had been removed but before the entrance was clear, Burton called to Carter to stop for a moment so that he might record the event in progress. Carter, now only too willing to act the showman and at the same time glad of a breather, complied. He stood motionless on the left side of the doorway, Arthur Mace to his right, until Burton signalled that he had finished the exposure.

The two turned back to their tasks. Within the next twenty minutes they had the door completely cleared. They stood back so that the illumination from Burton’s floodlights shone into the burial chamber. The seated audience was silent; speechless at the sight that blazed back at them. Within a metre of the doorway and completely filling it stood a wall of engraved gold and inlaid blue glass. Everyone was awestruck, including Carter, who himself had squeezed by this wall just three months earlier.

Two large, golden utchat eyes stared back at the onlookers. The brilliance and the sternness of the stare held the audience’s attention. No one spoke a word.

Carter broke the silence. “Your Majesty, your Lordship, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen the burial chamber!” he announced, and swung his arm wide with ceremony. “Please retain your seats while I investigate. I will return to escort each one of you once I have ascertained the lie of the land, so to speak.”

Carter stepped carefully down inside the chamber and disappeared to the right between the wall of the room and the enormous golden shrine. There was an expectant hush upon the crowd within the antechamber as each strained to hear Carter’s scuffling footsteps disturbing the dust of ages. He wasn’t long away and, reappearing at the doorway, he beckoned to Carnarvon and Lacau to advance.

“I am afraid it will have to be just two at a time. There is barely enough room to turn around in here and we don’t want to damage anything with a careless step.”

Carter kicked the remaining rubble from the wooden platform and helped the two over the step.

Lacau turned the corner and spotted the prone jackal on its bier, the decomposed shawl still about its neck. He tugged thoughtfully at his great, grey beard. He turned back towards the earl who was close behind, hoping to catch his reaction. For himself, having seen these sights some weeks earlier, Carnarvon was likewise intent on catching the reaction of the French inspector ahead of him. As their eyes met, the shy grandee looked away and nervously scratched at the scab on his chin.

Carter’s canary died that night. Callender, who had been sleeping there alone, was saddened at his own stupidity in leaving it caged in what had clearly been an accessible place. But Carter, when he was told, dismissed the event as trivial. There was far too much else on his mind.

Callender, nevertheless, deeply regretted his carelessness and retained a sense of personal guilt which he could only extinguish by applying himself selflessly to hard work in the tomb.

Carter had committed himself to catalogue, preserve and clear the objects in the tomb with all the thoroughness that the technology of the day permitted. There were a myriad of things to do and keep track of. He didn’t have to worry about Burton, other than the seemingly unending time the photographer took to get his pictorial record to the level of perfection he demanded. However, coordinating the activities of the others was an exacting and very necessary task. But far worse and totally wasteful of his time and talents was the energy he had to devote to scheduling visits by various VIPs, few of whom knew or really cared the foggiest for the research he was engaged in. This became an all too frequent and time-consuming occupation.

The nights in Luxor were so frenzied with visitors and reporters wishing to talk with him that after only a few days he kept himself closeted away on the west bank, unless it became necessary to take the train to Cairo for procurement of additional supplies.

More or less everyone intimately involved in the project was becoming an irritation to him, even his patron, and he no less to them. Carter, in his focused concentration, continued to be insensitive to the reactions of those around him. In particular, he was quite oblivious to the effect he was having on the earl. It was not about to get any better while they stayed in such close proximity to each other, day in and day out.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you were a bit unnecessarily vocal with the press yesterday.” Carnarvon was compelled to correct his intolerant colleague whom he felt, quite justifiably from his point of view, lacked the social basis and skills to be accomplished in the generally accepted rules of etiquette, diplomacy and tact. Alien as it was to Carter, this code was at the same time a way of life to most of the VIPs with whom he was now forced to associate.

It was an unfortunate time for the earl to bring this to his colleague’s attention. And on this occasion his lordship had chosen the wrong place, the wrong time and the wrong pitch. It was approaching the end of the working day. Carter was in the laboratory tomb. He had been delayed all morning by unexpected and unwanted additional visitors authorised, if not by the authorities themselves, by their individual station in society in Carter’s eyes a circumstantial and insignificant qualification. To add to his distress, the heat of the afternoon had reached a level that was almost unbearable. Due to the interruptions and the conditions he was having to endure, he was, therefore, hot, dirty, tired, frustrated and irritable.