Tutankhamun Uncovered (75 page)

“Scriptures?” responded the Egyptologist, quizzically. “Include scriptures?”

“Scriptures, m’ boy. Indeed. ’Ave y’ not t’ought how dey could add a spiritual element what would otherwise be a wholly factual accountin’ of what y’ve been doin’ in dat valley?”

“To what purpose? And, assuming you can define a purpose, in what way?” Carter was relieved at the change of subject.

“Glad y’ asked dat question, m’ boy. Glad y’ asked.” The priest put his knife and fork down for a moment, sat forward in his chair and regarded his host at close quarters. “Was not King David of d’ Good Book a contemporary of y’ boy king? Why don’t y’ pick an example from dat chapter? Oi’m sure dere’s one dat’s appropriate. Don’t y’ t’ink dat could add a little flavour to y’ story? Oi can look it up for you if y’ want...”

“No thanks,” Carter cut in. He was not impressed at the priest’s apparent inability to recall scriptures at will. “Am I to believe that you do not know the Bible from cover to cover?”

“Well... not exactly cover to cover, Howard. Dere are a few passages dat come easily to moind. ‘Specially dem about all dat ’begattin’ dat was bein’ done during King David’s toime. Oi knows several of dose learned ’em at school ’specially dose Oi ’ad t’ write out foive ’undred toimes after bein’ caught wroitin’ naughty rhoimes in d’ girls’ toilet!”

Carter laughed.

“Well, dere was no toilet roll in d’ boys’. Would y’ believe Oi ’ad no choice? ’Twas a revelation ’twas.” He leaned forward in confidence. “D’ rhoimes in d’ girls’ loos, now dem was sometin’ to behold. Dey was far dirtier an’ more ’maginative dan dose in d’ boys’. Oi tell y’, men can’t hold a candle to d’ creative filth dat breeds widin dat female head. T’ say not’in’ of what may beat between dem female breasts!” The priest looked up at the ceiling. “Lord forgive me!”

He crossed himself, pulled on another forkful of mustard coated steak, swallowed, belched, and clenched his teeth.

Carter felt obliged to come back into the conversation. “Seamus, I do believe you have got worse in your old age. I had never placed vulgarity as an attribute of a priest.”

“Vulgarity? Vulgarity is it? Well Oi begs t’ differ. One of d’ attributes of d’ English language, moi friend, is dat it is so resplendent in vocabulary dat a man such as Oi, skilful wid words, so t’ speak, can craft expression a t’ousand ways. You ’ave just been fortunate enough t’ hear one of d’ ways. If Oi say so meself, spoken loike a true linguist.”

Carter’s mind began to wander. Every mouthful of food and each additional glass of champagne allowed him to hear less and less of his partner’s rhetoric. Thoughts of Dorothy blanked out everything else. He looked into the middle distance.

A moment or two passed.

The priest swallowed another mouthful of meat and mustard, gasped and waited for the pain in his nostrils to subside.

Carter noticed his discomfort and pulled the bottle of Lanson from the ice bucket.

“My apologies. A refill, perhaps?”

“Oi t’ought y’d never ask,” said the priest, clearing his throat and pushing his glass forward.

By the time the two were into their second brandies and coffees Carter’s head was far too muddled to pull any coherent thoughts together. Neither did he want to. All he desired now was a good night’s sleep. And he would pray that he would not rise with any legacy from the evening’s indulgence.

But Seamus, whose metabolism permitted him to be well able to hold his liquor, was now at the peak of his performance at the nadir of his sensibilities the very condition in which, he recalled with a complacent smile, he had produced the very best of his sermons. And he felt one growing within him now.

Carter got it both barrels and, being defenceless, received it without a whimper. All the time the priest was talking, Carter’s elbows remained firmly planted on the table, his head in his hands. Carter had fallen suddenly and solidly into a deep sleep.

Father Seamus finished his monologue and awaited Carter’s reaction.

“Howard?... Howard... Howard!” Still nothing. “HOWARD!”

The dreaming Egyptologist raised his head a little and opened one eye. “Mmm?”

“Dammit, Howard forgive me dear Lord Oi do believe y’ve not heard a word of what Oi’ve been sayin’.”

“Mmm.”

That was statement enough.

“Well, so be it. Your loss. Better words of advoice y’ wouldn’t get from anyone. Just t’ rown away upon ignorant, stony ground. Your loss.”

Carter’s head subsided back onto his palms. When the waiter placed the bill face down on the table, the priest pushed it closer to Carter, got up and quietly left.

By the time their journey was over, Carter had had quite enough of his ecclesiastical friend. When they finally arrived at their destination, the parting ceremonies were brief and perfunctory. Carter’s mind was now firmly refocused on his lecture schedule.

As the tugs nudged the ship slowly alongside Southampton dock, Carter’s eyes searched the crowds below for some sign that Dorothy was there.

The gangplank was down and the passengers were beginning to disembark. He looked at his watch. The boat wasn’t that late, maybe an hour or so, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. He took one last long look along the rows of waiting people, sighed, turned and went back to his cabin to pick up his things.

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

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.”