The Visitors (56 page)

‘Ah. Tricky question, that,’ Mace replied. He and Lucas exchanged glances. ‘Some of it will be destined for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Frances… but there’s the question of Carnarvon’s share. That issue – well, it’s not resolved yet. Negotiations continue.’

‘I understand,’ Miss Mack said, seizing her chance, ‘I understand that under the terms of his permit, Lord Carnarvon is entitled to half of everything found. Strictly speaking, and aside from the
pièces capitales
, of course. Is that correct?’

‘Well – up to a point, Miss Mackenzie,’ Lucas replied. ‘But every object here is exceptionally fine. You could argue they
all
come into that category. You could also argue that a find such as this, unprecedented, of such beauty and historical importance, should not be broken up under any circumstances. I make no comment either way––’

‘And it’s not as simple as that anyway,’ Mace put in. ‘Had the tomb been completely intact, had there been no break-ins in antiquity, then
everything
would be destined for the Egyptian Museum. No argument. The permit stipulates that. But there
were
break-ins.’

‘
Minor
break-ins,’ Lucas interjected.

‘So it’s all bally well up in the air at the moment,’ Callender muttered.

‘And likely to stay there for some considerable time,’ Lucas added.

Miss Mack digested this information and the manner in which it was imparted. She gave all three men a barbed look. ‘I imagine Lord Carnarvon could
renounce
his claims? That might be a wise solution, perhaps, in the circumstances?’

None of the men seemed keen to express a view on that possibility. She pressed on. ‘What is Mr Carter’s view on the matter? Does
he
not feel these wonderful things should be kept together and should remain in Egypt? I myself feel very strongly that to split them up, to divide them like – like the spoils of war is nothing short of––’

Miss Mack never completed this crusading sentence. At that moment, deep in the tomb, hemmed in by those packing cases, we were interrupted. We heard a woman’s voice, calling from the Valley. ‘Howard, where
are
you?’ it called. ‘Where have you got to, dear?’ I recognised the voice as Eve’s a second before she entered the laboratory.

She came to an abrupt halt in its entrance, peering into its depths, catching the gleam of our flashlights, but unable to see us clearly in the shadows. As we came forward to greet her, I saw she was wearing a new and very pretty pink dress; she was clutching her hat and was bare-headed, her hair freshly washed and waved. She must have come straight from the Winter Palace and the skilled ministrations of her maid Marcelle, I thought – but I was wrong.

‘Oh where has Howard
gone
?’ she cried, on a shrill note of anxiousness, as we emerged into the daylight and she realised that Carter was not among us. ‘I’ve been searching for him high and low – I’ve been to the Castle
and
the American House. I’ve been up and down the Valley
twice
. There’s no sign of him anywhere.’

The three men looked at her awkwardly, and then at each other. They consulted. Where, indeed, was Carter? He’d been with them at lunch… Callender had spoken to him at around two o’clock. Mace might have glimpsed him after that, but wasn’t sure. Lucas said he had definitely been in the Valley at three – they’d had a brief word, Carter complaining at Weigall’s presence. No sightings since. There was a silence.

‘What time is your father arriving from Cairo, Lady Evelyn?’ Mace asked, in a neutral tone. ‘Might Carter have gone to Luxor to meet him?’

‘Pups won’t be here for hours yet. His train gets in late. I need to see Howard before he arrives. Why would he just disappear? He promised me that––’

‘I expect he’ll be in Luxor,’ Lucas said. ‘Some administration matter… some last-minute problem about the opening, Lady Evelyn? It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.’

‘That’s true.’ Eve’s face brightened, then instantly clouded. ‘But why didn’t he send word? I could have stayed at the hotel and met him there. I’m sure he can’t have gone to Luxor – he’d have told me.’

Colour came and went in her face, and for one moment I thought she was about to cry. She must be very agitated, I realised, for her habitual good manners had, for once, deserted her: she had not greeted Miss Mack, Frances or me and seemed blind to our presence. Frances, standing next to me, gave me a small nudge – though she had no need to remind me of her earlier remarks: Eve’s distress, and the embarrassment it was causing the three men, were only too evident.

The silence lengthened; Miss Mack was looking at Eve in consternation; the men shifted from foot to foot and avoided each other’s eyes. Eve twisted her hat in her hands, and said in a low voice: ‘You’re sure he didn’t leave a message for me? If I just knew where he was, I could… Howard isn’t well,’ she went on, addressing the air, ‘he’s under so much strain and – I know it’s silly but I worry about him.’

At this, Pecky Callender slowly raised his eyes from the floor, inspected Eve with sympathy and cleared his throat. ‘Crikey, it’s just come back to me,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Lady E. Memory like a sieve. Carter took off, about four o’clock it would have been, just before
you
arrived, Myrtle… Said he needed a walk. Yes, that was it. Needed to be alone, I think. Hasn’t been a good day, you see. Worrying about the opening, I expect. Needed time to – go over things. Gone off to the West Valley. Headed that way, certainly.’

‘The
West Valley
?’ Eve glanced down at her pale silk stockings, at her pretty shoes. It was painfully obvious to everyone that she was considering following Carter there, and was realising that, in these shoes, at this time of day, in that remote, little-visited and wild part of the Valley, such a journey was unthinkable. The blood rushed up her throat and suffused her cheeks. With a pitiable attempt to preserve her dignity and recover face, she said, ‘I see. Thank you. In that case I’ll have to abandon my search. If you’d tell Howard I was looking for him, Mr Callender, I’d be grateful. I’ll go back to the hotel now.’

She turned and walked out of the tomb. The three men looked at one another guiltily. ‘For God’s sake
,
Callender,’ Mace muttered, ‘do you have to be that clumsy?’

‘Well,
someone
had to say something,’ he replied, in injured tones. ‘Fat lot of help you and Lucas were. You could see how she was. And he
has
gone for a walk… I think. Stalked off about four. Beyond that – don’t ask me because I don’t bally well
know
.’

‘Someone needs to go after her,’ Lucas said, interrupting them both and taking a hesitant step forward. ‘We can’t let her go back on her own. She’s not in a fit state.’

‘Tea. Maybe we should offer her tea?’ Mace said. The men exchanged helpless glances.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Miss Mack, suddenly decisive, shouldered her way between them. ‘Girls, come with me.
I
will talk to Eve, and
I
will take care of it.’

Eve had driven over in her father’s car, we discovered; she had left it parked at a dangerous angle in full sun at the mouth of the Valley. We caught up with her as she reached it – we could hear the sound of her sobbing by then. Frances and I let Miss Mack take charge. We watched her approach, take Eve’s arm, and then, as Eve began on a storm of weeping, embrace her. Patting her shoulder, she spoke to her without preamble, in a way that astonished me. ‘My dear… my dear, you are very, very young,’ she said. ‘Believe me, this will pass. One day, perhaps sooner than you think, it will vanish away – you’ll even think you imagined it. I promise you that is true. I
know
it to be true. Meanwhile, Eve, have your cry. It will help you.’

‘I’m such a fool,’ Eve said in a choked voice. ‘I could see they were laughing at me. I must be mad – driving up here, running around the Valley. I don’t know what’s happened to me. Oh, I’m so ashamed, Myrtle. I feel so utterly stupid.’

‘You are wrong. Strong emotion is not stupid. You should not be ashamed of it. Now, come back with me to our houseboat, and we shall have tea. That will revive you. Then, when you feel better, you can decide what to do next. Mr Carter will return from his walk in his own good time. When he does, you can see him – or not. As you decide. Now, into the car – are you able to drive? You are? Good. Girls, hurry up. Eve is joining us for tea on the
Hatshepsut
.’

We climbed into the scalding-hot car, and, driving erratically, Eve took us back to our houseboat. She left the car half slewed across the track; a party of goats soon came to investigate it, nibbled at its fenders and, losing interest, moved on. Eve sleepwalked her way to the upper deck and sat in the shade of its awnings. Frances and I plied her with tea, which she drank without seeming to notice she held a cup in her hand. And it was there, sitting staring at the river, with the cool north breeze from the Nile on her face, having been silent a long while, that she suddenly, and without the least prompting, began to speak.

We had all been trying to keep a conversation going and to avoid awkward silences; we had all carefully ignored her obvious signs of distress, the nervous pleating of her dress, her deafness to everything we said, the curious blindness of her gaze, as if she watched something vivid that was to us invisible. We talked of somethings and nothings, and eventually of the visit to the Valley just made. Frances was speculating as to what the inner chamber would contain; of what glories might be found behind its concealing wall; whether there might be shrines, a sarcophagus–––

‘There
are
shrines,’ Eve said, gazing at the river. ‘I’ve seen them. The outermost one is gold and blue. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever – my heart stopped beating when I first saw it. I dropped my torch. That shrine has two doors and they were bolted, but their seal was broken. When we stood in front of them, Howard said,
Ah, dear God.
He took my hand. My father couldn’t speak, he could scarcely stand. He knelt down – we all knelt down. Was it wrong to be there? It didn’t
feel
wrong, not then.’

‘My dear, you don’t have to tell us this,’ Miss Mack said, reaching across and patting her hand. ‘Hush now. You must not say anything you’ll later regret.’

‘No, no, no,’ Eve replied. ‘You’re wrong, Myrtle. I hate these lies and these deceptions. They’re unbearable. They’re a horrible burden I’ve been carrying around for months. It seems so wrong to deceive people. I
want
to tell you… The thieves had broken through into the inner chamber as well as the Antechamber, you see. We could see where they’d got in, where that north wall had been resealed – and we couldn’t rest until we knew for certain whether Tutankhamun was there, or whether everything had been rifled.
I have to know
, my father said,
I have to know.
So – we went back to the Valley one night, I forget which night – and we re-opened the hole the thieves had made. We only made a tiny opening… ’ She turned pleadingly towards us. ‘I went through first, because I was the smallest. But I was afraid, and I – I sort of froze. So Howard widened the hole a little and came through to me. I was all right then, I always feel safe with him. Then my father joined us, and… Mr Callender was with us that night, but he stayed in the Antechamber; he was too large to wriggle through, and he – he didn’t seem to mind. He was very good about it. He said it was
our moment.
And so it was. Everything we saw, how it felt, it’s all branded
here
, in my mind.’

She hesitated, and then, sometimes meeting our eyes, sometimes looking to the hills, the sunset, the river, the rising moon, she described what they had found on their secret night-time expedition to the Valley. It was evening by the time she began on her confession, and the orchestra at the Winter Palace had struck up. So we listened to her story in silence and against the drift of dance music; under Eve’s words, and across the placid surface of the Nile: the blues, then a slow waltz; blues again.

It had been agreed Frances would spend that night on the houseboat with us; but it lacked a spare cabin, so Mohammed had produced hammocks for us, slung between the masts on the upper deck. Late that night, long after Eve had left us and returned to Luxor, Frances and I lay in these hammocks, swaying back and forth in the moonlight, listening to the Winter Palace music and the chatter that carried across the water from the other houseboats. It was a full moon, and a chill night; neither of us spoke for a long time; in the cabin below Miss Mack’s Oliver No. 9 was silent. I knew Frances was not asleep; her wakefulness transmitted itself to me. I knew she was thinking of Eve, and what she had told us, as I was.

I was thinking of the space in which she, Carter and her father had eventually found themselves. Beyond that north wall of the Antechamber lay wonders: a vast cedar shrine, entirely covered in blue faience and gold, so large it almost filled the Burial Chamber. So mesmerising was this, lit in the flickering beams of their torches, that it was some while before they had realised that this was the first of two rooms, and one more lay beyond it. Remembering her words, I watched Eve touch the heavy bolt on the shrine’s two doors, and her father sink his head in his hands as he realised the seal on the bolt had been broken. I watched Carter summon his nerve and, gently at first, then exerting force, slide the bolt back. And I heard Eve’s low cry, the men’s sigh as the doors swung open. Behind them a second shrine and a second pair of gold doors was revealed: they too were closed, but they were fastened shut with rope bindings, and the rope’s clay seal was unbroken. In silence they stared, then Carter said:
It’s intact. The inner shrines are intact. He must be in there
, and Carnarvon slumped to his knees and said:
Christ in heaven – I’ve got him.

From across the Nile came a burst of song, then laughter, then a door slamming, then silence. I turned in my hammock and lay looking at the moon. The sealed gold doors of the second shrine showed Tutankhamun greeting Osiris, god of the underworld. And between the two outer shrines, Eve said, were a multitude of offerings: alabaster lamps to light the king’s way to the afterlife; a cluster of oars to row him across the underworld’s dangerous rivers… The three of them had stayed there a long, long time, looking into the unknown; then they had turned and seen that the Burial Chamber contained one further space, a second shadowed room, one that they would call the Treasury. There in its entrance, they found their way barred by a statue of the jackal god Anubis, stretched full length on a bier, black as night, prick-eared, ever watchful, the god who supervised the Weighing of Hearts, Anubis the guardian of graveyards.