The Sycamore Song

by Elizabeth Hunter

  On an impulse, Victoria decided to join them. The sand blew up all around her, stinging her face and legs, but she hardly felt it as she ran to where the group of tourists were milling round the camels, donkeys and carriages, trying to make their choice between them. She climbed into the nearest chariot and sat down, hoping that no one would challenge her presence, but no one paid any attention to her. Another woman, older than anyone else there, was helped into the chariot beside her and they exchanged cautious smiles of greeting.

  “Did you see that nasty gentleman lying on his back at Memphis?” the old lady asked her. “They must have been a strange lot, with their wigs and false beards! I wouldn’t have trusted him with much!”

  Victoria smiled. “I thought him quite good-looking,” she confided.

  “Those are the kind you can trust least of all,” the old lady said with decision. “My father was a very handsome man, and my mother soon learned better than to trust him further than she could see him!”

  Victoria wondered where Tariq would fit in such a creed. But perhaps the old lady had never trusted any man, handsome or not, her mother’s experience having soured her where all men were concerned.

  “I suppose Pharaoh could do as he pleased,” she said, and thinking of Tariq in the same moment.

  “Very likely!” the old lady snorted. “Most men do!” She rummaged in her handbag and produced a boiled sweet which she popped into her mouth with the first sign of pleasure she had shown. “Strange the care with which they had themselves buried. They did as they liked about that too! The young lady was telling us they didn’t hesitate to pull down somebody else’s tomb if it got in the way of their own! No respect, that was the trouble with them!”

  “Some of the tombs were burned down by opposing dynasties,” Victoria volunteered, glad to be able to offer a piece of information of her own.

  “So she told us. She said they’re digging one out at this moment. Imagine that!”

  “But it hasn’t suffered from fire,” Victoria murmured.

  “It sounded as though it had suffered from everything else!” said the old lady, crunching her sweet between her false teeth. “The young lady said that all the above part had been pulled down long ago, and that there was a whole corner missing down below. I suppose another one of them decided to build his tomb alongside and didn’t bother himself that there was one there already!”

  Victoria made a mental note to ask Juliette if that was what had happened. If Juliette was still speaking to her, that was.

  The wheels of the carriage dragged in a pocket of loose sand and the thin horse shuddered with the strain of pulling it free. The driver clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Ydlla!” he urged the beast forward. “Ydlla bina!”

  At the bottom of the hill the animals came to a halt without being told. The camels protested as they were brought to their knees to allow their passengers to dismount and one or two of the donkeys looked as if they might give their riders a vicious nip with their teeth to help them dismount more quickly, a difficult operation as they modestly tried to pull their skirts back round their knees.

  Victoria jumped out of the chariot and began to help the old lady down to the ground. As she did so, she felt a hand on her arm and turned quickly to come face to face with Tariq.

  “I’ve come to parley with you,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  She raised her eyebrows. “What about?”

  “I put the cart before the horse.” He flicked her nose with his fingers. “Three months isn’t very long to wait after all!”

  She looked up at him in swift inquiry, but the old lady was before her, digging Tariq in the ribs with her handbag.

  “I don’t remember you being in our party, young man!” she attacked him, her eyes frosty with disapproval.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I came to fetch my wife before she was discovered to be an intruder and realised she hadn’t any money with her.”

  “Your wife, eh?” The old lady unbent a little. “Lucky girl, or I expect you think so!”

  “I hope she is,” Tariq bowed. “I’m not sure she’d agree with you at the moment.”

  “Huh! Had a quarrel, have you?” She rummaged in her bag for another sweet, sucking it easily into her mouth. “I was just telling her that no woman should trust a handsome man. But seeing you’re both here, why don’t you come and see where they buried these bulls of theirs? You can have your quarrel afterwards!”

  Victoria looked uncertainly at Tariq. “May we?” she asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “If you want to. I’ll wait here until you get back.”

  She was disappointed, but she didn’t try to persuade him. She took the old lady’s arm and helped her down the few steps that led into the underground corridor where the tombs of the sacred bulls had been laid out. At the far end the guide began to speak, explaining the characteristics that had been required in any bull before the priests had declared it to be the living symbol of Ptah. The Apis bull had to have a triangular spot on his forehead, on his back an eagle, a lump in the form of a beetle under his tongue, and the hair of his tail was double.

  The old lady muttered something under her breath. “I suppose they were bred for the purpose,” she opined, seating herself on the edge of one of the tombs. “They sound like family characteristics to me!”

  Like sacking older tombs that got in the way of one’s own! Could that be what it was all about? Victoria muttered an apology to the old lady and ran back to the entrance, ignoring the proffered assistance up the steps of half a dozen eager Egyptian hands. She tore up the ramp and out into the windy sunshine above ground.

  “Tariq, I can’t think why I didn’t think of it before! What does Jim Kerr do in the mastaba by himself when he says he’s doing his housework?” Her voice shook with sudden excitement. “I think he’s found that way into another tomb! I think he’s robbing it too!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tariq, caught her up fast against him.

  “Steady on, what are you trying to do? Prove that you’re the fastest woman in the west?”

  Victoria wriggled impatiently against him. “No, Juliette is that!”

  He frowned, unamused. “I thought you were getting along with Juliette quite well?”

  “Yes, we do. Please forget I ever said it.” She twisted away from him. The last thing she wanted was for him to know that she was jealous of the French girl, but she was. She had seen the way Juliette looked at Tariq and she knew that while the affair might be over for Tariq, it was a long way from being that as far as Juliette was concerned. Oh yes, she might have preferred George Lyle when he had been alive, but George was no longer available to her, and Tariq was!

  “If I thought you were worrying over her—”

  “I’m not! If anything, I feel a little sorry for her. That’s all!”

  He was still frowning. “Juliette can never take anything from you. You don’t want the same things,” he told her shortly.

  She sighed in despair. “Oh, do shut up!” she begged him. “I was trying to be witty. It’s always disastrous when I try to make a joke at someone else’s expense. You’d think it would have taught me to keep a charitable tongue in my head. Don’t pay me any heed!”

  “I’ll try and remember,” he promised. “I suppose it was funny - in its way!”

  “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all what I meant to say.” She looked frankly up at him. “Only I’ve had an idea, Tariq. It’s important. That’s why I came back. I’m sure Jim Kerr is using my father’s tomb to get through into another one and that he’s systematically sacking it for everything he can get!”

  His eyebrows rose. “What makes you think that? No, don’t tell me now. Open spaces are apt to have more ears in the desert than cities have walls. Tell me when we get back to camp!”

  “Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought!”

  “That’s why you married me,” he told her. “To do your thinking for you! Do you want to walk back, or sh
all we commandeer the chariot you came in and ride back in style?”

  “Can we?” she said. “What will the old lady do?”

  “We’ll send it back for her.” He swung her easily up into the chariot and followed, smiling at her flushed, breathless face. “It isn’t too high for you up here, is it?”

  “No,” she said rather doubtfully. “But I shouldn’t like to be on one of those camels. I know I should be terrified up there!”

  He said something to the driver and they started slowly up the hill. “You have too much imagination,” he accused her. “One day I’ll put you up on a nice, docile camel and you’ll love every minute of it!”

  “Never!” she said with certainty.

  His smile made her wonder if she was quite so sure. “Not even if I took you up before me?”

  She digested that in silence. She wondered what else he knew about her, and whether he was right that she wouldn’t blink an eye if she knew herself to be safely in his hands. She thought he probably was, but it gave her an uncomfortable, naked feeling that he should know it too.

  She felt his eyes on her face and made a play of looking back towards the Serapeum, lacing her fingers together in a defensive movement that she felt sure must have betrayed her. But if it did, he said nothing, but looked away again and busied himself with his own thoughts.

  “How did you know where I’d gone?” she asked.

  “Abdul saw you go.”

  She remembered that he had told her she was always to leave word with Abdul where she was going and presented a guilty face.

  “I would have told someone,” she assured him hastily, “but it was an impulse. If I’d missed the group, there wouldn’t have been anyone there to tell me about it.”

  “It doesn’t matter as much as it did,” he answered. “Everyone knows that you don’t have any further say in the excavation. There isn’t the same urgency to get rid of you before you poke your nose into something that would send you running to the authorities.”

  “I see,” she said. “By marrying you, I’ve dropped you right in it, haven’t I?”

  “That’s the idea,” Tariq said with an easy smile. “They won’t find it easy to keep me from stirring things up. I mean to make it as hot as I can for them.”

  “But they might try to get rid of you too!” she said in a small voice.

  “They can try. The odds will be against them if they try. I’m not a green young girl suffering from vertigo, my dear.”

  “But, Tariq—”

  He put a finger over her lips. “I know what I’m doing. All you have to do is to stay out of trouble while I settle their hash once and for all. Judging by your past record, it’ll take you all your time to concentrate on that!”

  Victoria would have said something rude and pungent in answer to that, but at that moment they arrived at the top of the hill and she had no choice but to allow herself to be swung down on to her feet and to stand there, raging inwardly at being treated like a crass idiot, while he paid off the driver, exchanging endless compliments with one another, as the Arabs do.

  “Now,” he said, as the chariot moved off down the hill again, “tell me about this idea of yours. I gather you think another tomb cuts across the corner of the mastaba, where it’s supposed to have fallen in?”

  “Yes,” she said in unfriendly tones. “I do.”

  “Something the matter?”

  “Yes. Anyone would think that I did nothing but rush from one scrape to another. None of the things that happened to me were my fault!”

  “No, they were mine,” he said. “I should have looked after you better.”

  “Oh, Tariq, be reasonable! You can’t be with me every hour of every day!”

  “That’s what you think,” he retorted. “My dear Victoria, by the time our marriage is over, you’re going to be sick of the sight of me!”

  “I may get used to your being around,” she said, carefully casual. “I’ve never had a bodyguard before. It makes me feel quite important!”

  “Well? Are you going to tell me?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “It was something the old lady said to me that put it into my head,” she began, warming to her theme. “She said a lot of the earlier tombs had been demolished by later generations to make room for theirs on the same ground.” Her dark blue eyes lit with remembered amusement. “She thought them a ruthless lot, typical of the male sex, I’m afraid! Anyway, when Jim took me into the mastaba, he told me one of the far corners had fallen in some time in the past. But, Tariq, couldn’t that be why? Couldn’t there be another tomb sited across that corner, which Jim has found the way into?” Her voice shook with excitement. “I think it’s one of the reasons he keeps himself in such a dirty state, so that no one will suspect what he’s doing!”

  Tariq stood looking into space, his arms crossed in front of him. His eyes were hidden from her, but she could imagine the sleepy, thoughtful look they would have as he thought over what she had said.

  “It’s possible, but I don’t think it likely. Either your father or Juliette must have come to the same conclusion if there’s another tomb alongside.”

  “I don’t see why,” Victoria objected, getting fonder of her theory by the minute. “It’s an awful mess down there. They’ve hardly begun digging out the tomb itself, let alone the further passages.” She chewed thoughtfully on her lip. “If there are any further passages?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Victoria, don’t you know?”

  “No. I don’t know the first thing about it, I know that, but I’m sure I’m right all the same! Jim only took me into the first courtyard. He said they hadn’t got any further than that.”

  “They must have done!” Tariq scoffed. “That courtyard was cleared before your father threw me off the site!”

  “Then they can’t have done a thing since! It looked blocked from where I was standing, full of sand and muck. You know the sort of thing!” A new thought struck her and she cast him an apologetic look. “How long ago is it since my father asked you to leave?”

  His eyes gleamed with mockery at her delicacy. “Three months.”

  Three months! Was that all? Three months was no time at all, if he had thought himself in love with Juliette only three months ago!

  “Perhaps, if my father was already ill then, they stopped work almost at once. He died only two months later.” She sucked in her breath, a little on the defensive. “We were told that he died suddenly from a heart attack, but he could have been ill before that, couldn’t he?”

  “I think Juliette would have told me if he had been.” He looked her at disappointed face and made up his mind to humour her. “It’s an interesting idea. It wouldn’t do any harm if we took a look for ourselves. Do you want to come?”

  “Of course I want to!” Victoria exclaimed in triumph.

  “Come on, then. I’ll get Abdul to light a couple of lamps for us so that we can see what we’re doing. We can find out from him where Jim is too, as he seems to be suspect number one.”

  “Does he ever leave Sakkara?” Victoria asked.

  “Not since we got here,” Tariq said dryly.

  “But he wasn’t around earlier this morning.”

  When they approached the communal tent, Abdul leaped to his feet, hiding the picture comic he had been reading behind his back.

  “Men fadlak, ya fandi, ya sitt!”

  It was the first time he had accorded Victoria the status of a married woman and she started at the greeting. Tariq told him that they were going into the mastaba and would need lights.

  “Have you seen the Sidi Kerr, or the Sett Mercer?” he asked, as though their absence had only just occurred to him.

  “They are gone to Cairo,” Abdul responded. “The lady was very angry that you are married, ya fandi. The Sidi Lyle was her friend and she said his daughter had betrayed him. She has gone to see the Department of Antiquities to see if they will transfer the licence to her. The other one went with her.” He looked at V
ictoria from beneath his eyelashes, suddenly sly. “They will be away for lunch - all day,” he added.

  “Thank you,” said Tariq. He took one of the lamps, pumped it until the light shone white and even, and handed it to Victoria. “Okay, let’s get going!”

  Victoria hardly recognised the entrance to the mastaba. It had been swept clean since she had last seen it, and the pile of sand by the entrance to the courtyard had gone.

  “Do you suppose Jim Kerr meant what he said when he said he had some housekeeping to do? It must have been quite a labour to move all that by himself!” Victoria remarked, unable to keep her distaste for the man out of her voice.

  “I wouldn’t have thought he’d ever cleaned anything in his life,” Tariq agreed. He took a first look round and moved across the courtyard, examining every inch of the walls as he went. “Look at this!” he commanded her. “Have you noticed the colours? I’d remembered them as being brighter than they are, but they’re still fantastic!”

  Victoria came and stood beside him, adding the light of her lamp to his. “But this isn’t brick or plaster, is it?” she exclaimed. “It looks more like matting to me!”

  “It is,” he answered. “It’s more usual to find it inside the burial chamber than in an ante-room like this. Just look at those colours there! Here, you can see how it was done if you look here. They welded these coloured mats on to the walls, rather like wallpaper. They’re not unlike the heavy hessian papers that are popular nowadays.”

  They were certainly remarkable. It gave Victoria a funny feeling to think that they had been hidden away there for perhaps five thousand years, waiting to be rediscovered by them.

  “I thought all tombs here were like the one in the Pyramid of Unas, covered with hieroglyphs and magic spells?”

  Tariq smiled at the image she conjured up of witchcraft and black magic. “More religious formulae than magic spells! They’re later than this tomb, which is Second Dynasty at the latest. That puts it into the Archaic Period, when they could read and write after a fashion, but the symbols they used were few and couldn’t convey abstract meanings. What you saw on the walls of Unas’ Pyramid is a particularly good example of what are called Pyramid Texts. They antedated the famous Book of the Dead by about a thousand years.”