The Eye of the Serpent (2 page)

The young man seemed to have aged ten years. His naturally pale skin was now as white and dry as a roll of parchment and his eyes, usually keen and intense, had a flat, blank expression in them. He seemed to react slowly, as though drugged. As Sir William watched, thick beads of sweat on the young man's forehead popped and went rolling down his face.

‘Tom, are you quite all right?' he asked.

Tom turned to look at him as though he barely remembered Sir William. When he spoke, his voice was thin and reedy.

‘I . . . I feel strange,' he said. He shivered, and more sweat began to trickle down his face.

‘I believe you have a fever,' said Sir William, mystified. Only a few moments earlier, Tom had seemed in perfect health. ‘Here, let's get you to
your tent.' He slipped an arm beneath Tom's shoulder and helped him towards the steps, signalling to the two native diggers as he did so.

‘Stand guard here,' he told them. ‘Close up those doors and let nobody into the tomb except myself or Mr Hinton.'

They bowed their heads and hurried to obey his orders.

Sir William managed to get Tom to the top of the steps and half dragged him across the ground beyond to the campsite. Once in the safety of the big canvas tent, he laid Tom on his bed and covered him with a blanket. Tom was shivering violently now and the sweat had already soaked through his khaki shirt.

‘I'm going to get Doc Hopper,' Sir William told him; then remembered that the expedition's resident doctor had gone into Luxor for provisions that morning. ‘Perhaps I can send one of the boys for him,' he added.

‘Don't worry,' Tom said. ‘It's . . . just a fever. I'll see him when he gets back. I'll be fine once I've had some rest.'

‘But . . . to come on so suddenly . . . I'd feel happier if he had a look at you.'

Tom shook his head and sweat rained from his
hair onto his pillow. ‘Don't be ridiculous,' he said. ‘That will take ages to sort out . . . and . . .' His voice trailed away for a moment and he seemed to grow stronger, his eyes staring up at Sir William with a powerful intent. ‘This is your moment, William. It's what you've worked for all these years. Go back to the tomb and . . . get things organized.' The momentary strength seemed to fail him and he flopped back against his pillow. ‘I . . . just need to sleep for a while.'

Sir William frowned. ‘You're sure you're all right?'

‘I'm fine . . . really . . . I only need to . . .'

Tom closed his eyes and seemed to sink immediately into a deep sleep. His chest rose and fell steadily. Sir William stood by his bed for a moment, unsure of what to do. Part of him wanted to get straight back to the tomb and revel in his moment of triumph. Another part felt that something was terribly wrong. Lord knew, they'd all had doses of the fever on this expedition, but this one had struck so suddenly, so completely . . . and Sir William remembered how Tom's body had jolted as he'd peered through that gap in the door, almost as though he'd been shot . . .

A tumult of shouts from outside made his
decision for him. Somehow, news of the discovery had got back to the others in the camp and workers were running around shouting about it. People were spilling out of their tents, eager to get to the excavation. There was no time to waste. The tomb site had to be secured before the news travelled any further.

Sir William stepped quickly out of the tent, letting down the canvas flap behind him and buttoning it closed to keep out the sunlight. Then he hurried back towards the tomb, shouting orders as he went.

It was night before he had a chance to return. By then, he had a whole team of people at work in the antechamber, photographing its contents in position, before separating them for illustration and cataloguing. An area had been set aside where the items could be packed, ready for despatch to the Cairo Museum. It was only as he trudged back through the night towards Tom's tent that it occurred to him that he hadn't seen the odd-looking Wadjet eye since Tom had removed it from its position. Presumably it had been dropped near the door of the adjoining chamber.

He came to the tent and stooped to unbutton the flap. As he straightened up, he was startled to hear a rustling sound coming from within. He threw back the flap and stared in. It was too dark to see very much, so he reached for his torch before remembering that the zinc carbide batteries were exhausted from their earlier use. Instead he located a hurricane lamp and knelt to light it.

The rustling sound went on – a continuous susurration that seemed to grate on Sir William's nerves. It sounded to his heightened senses like a million dry leaves being stirred by the wind – but not the kind of leaves you would ever find in a land like Egypt. He was thinking of the autumn leaves of his native Kent, and for the first time it dawned on him how he missed the place. Perhaps he had spent too many years in this dry, unforgiving heat. It was time he headed home to visit friends and family. He thrust the thought aside and managed to get the lamp alight. Lifting it, he stepped into the tent and looked towards Tom's bed.

He felt a momentary stab of surprise. He remembered throwing a blanket over Tom before he left, but not the dark-brown shiny one that now covered him from head to foot. Sir William
stepped closer and then gasped in involuntary horror as he saw that the blanket was moving, swaying back and forth like the tide of some unspeakable ocean. And then he realized that this was a tide made up, not of liquid, but of myriad large, shiny, fat insects that were swarming over what was left of Tom's corpse. Scarab beetles. Millions of them.

Sir William shouted something. He didn't know at the time nor could he ever recall exactly what he'd said; but as he shouted, he thrust his arm forward, directing the pool of light onto the bed, and the great tide of glistening creatures began to scatter before the glow as if it was poison to them. They spilled off the edges of the cot, raining down onto the ground in frantic, wriggling heaps, until Sir William was ankle-deep in them. He stared down in revulsion at the thing they were gradually revealing: a hideous, wasted manikin clad in tattered clothing, the flesh beneath the clothes almost completely consumed, leaving nothing more than bone and a few shrivelled tatters of dried skin.

The eyelids were still there though . . . and as Sir William watched, they slid open to reveal two piercing blue eyes that, most hideous of all, were
still very much alive. Tom's ravaged lips curved at the edges to reveal his white, even teeth, set in a hideous grin. He began to laugh, a deep, throaty sound that froze Sir William's blood within him; and then suddenly the scarabs were swarming back, as though Tom had somehow summoned them.

They skittered frantically up the legs of the camp bed and began to stream in beneath his clothing, the fabric rising as if the bones were growing new flesh. Scores of scarabs crawled up from beneath the collar of his shirt and began to flatten themselves against Tom's skull. Instantly their dark covering faded and they turned the colour of pale skin. It was as though Tom had new flesh – flesh that wriggled and squirmed with unspeakable evil.

Sir William began to scream, and as he screamed, loud and shrill like a child, the small part of his brain that remained methodical noticed one last puzzling detail.

The breast pocket of Tom's shirt had been torn open and there, lying against his ruined chest, was the serpent's eye, gazing steadfastly up at Sir William as he lost consciousness.

ALEC DEVLIN STOOD
on the deck of the steamship
Sudan
and gazed thoughtfully across the calm waters of the Nile to the far shore. He and his valet, Coates, had embarked at Cairo three days ago, and though life aboard the
Sudan
was comfortable enough, progress was maddeningly slow. Every inch of Alec's fifteen-year-old frame longed to be at his destination – the archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings, where he was due to spend his school holidays.

Alec's father, Hugh, was a diplomat, working at the British embassy in Cairo. His busy schedule
left little free time to spend with his son; and Alec's mother, Hannah, had been dead more than six months now. During term time Alec attended an English boarding school in Cairo, but holidays had always been a problem; at least until Uncle Will had started inviting him down to help out on his archaeological digs.

It had started when Alec was thirteen. A letter had arrived from Uncle Will (Alec could somehow never bring himself to call him ‘Sir William') inviting Alec to go and make himself useful. Alec's father had thought it a capital idea, but his mother had been less impressed.

‘He's too young,' she'd argued. ‘That's a lawless part of the world. He could get into all kinds of trouble.'

‘Nonsense!' his father had answered. ‘It'll make a man of him . . . and it's better than having him mooching around the house, bored out of his mind. Look, if you're so worried, we'll send Coates with him – he'll make sure he doesn't get into any scrapes.'

Coates was the family valet. He had been around for as long as Alec could remember, a big, shambling fellow with brilliantined black hair and a face like a slab of granite. Though he
seemed tough, Alec knew from experience that he could bend Coates around his little finger if he needed to: taking him along shouldn't be a problem.

So for the past two years Alec had made this trip down to Luxor to work alongside his favourite uncle, and in the process had become totally absorbed in the study of Egyptology. Uncle Will was a brilliant teacher, and consequently Alec knew more about the subject than any other child his age. Everything about it fascinated him: the tombs, the relics, the incredible history of a race of people who had built fabulous temples and monuments when the rest of the human race was still scuttling around in rags. And nothing – absolutely nothing in the world – could ever rival the thrill of finding something that had lain hidden from human eyes for thousands of years.

The previous winter, two things had happened that had changed Alec's life for ever. The first was the death of his mother. He'd been back at school in Cairo, working through some history revision, when he'd been summoned to the headmaster's office. He was initially delighted to find his father waiting for him. But the look on
his face had told him very quickly that this wasn't to be good news.

Alec's mother was dead.

She had been bitten by a mosquito, his father said, as Alec listened incredulously. Mosquito bites were nothing – people suffered them on an almost daily basis in this part of the world – but something must have been different about this particular bite, because it had turned septic. She had fallen into a raging fever and within a few hours she was gone. Alec couldn't believe it. A mosquito bite! How could such a silly, innocuous thing be the death of the person he had thought would live for ever?

‘It's all right if you want to cry,' Father had told him, but Alec couldn't. He felt like screaming; he felt like smashing the headmaster's office to bits, but try as he might, he could not shed a tear for the mother he had loved all his life.

He had travelled back to the house on Kasr al-Dubara with his father and had gone through the ritual of the burial – the prayers, the hymns, the readings – and he had just felt numb, as though this was happening to somebody else and he was watching it from a distance.

Back at school, he threw himself into his
lessons, thinking that at least he had the summer holidays to look forward to, a chance to immerse himself in the subject he enjoyed so much.

But then a letter had arrived from his father, telling him that something bad had happened over at the dig. Nobody was sure exactly what had transpired, but it appeared that Uncle Will had suffered a complete nervous breakdown and had been taken to a sanatorium. It looked as though archaeology was off the agenda.

And then Alec
did
find some tears. This was the last straw. It seemed to him that everything was lost and he resigned himself to waiting until his schooling was finished before he could devote his life to the subject that so fascinated him.

But then, only a few weeks before the end of term, a revelation! Another letter from his father had arrived, telling him that the dig seemed to be back on the cards. Uncle Will's most trusted American friend, a man called Ethan Wade, had stepped in to take over directorship of the site; and he had extended a personal invitation to Alec to come out and resume his former duties.

So now here he stood at the rail of the
Sudan
,
gazing out at a small herd of camels on the far bank, dipping their heads to drink from the blue waters of the Nile. Alec was asking himself how much longer it would be before he could step off this great floating tub and get his hands into some good Egyptian sand. Coates, a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, who had always seemed able to read Alec's mind, gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.