The Sleeper in the Sands

by Tom Holland

  ‘No, no,’ said Lady Evelyn breezily, ‘you are forgetting the Tale. It is not Pharaoh buried in the coffin, but a substitute, for Queen Tyi wished to be able to remove the true corpse without any bother.’ She smiled at Ahmed. ‘Is that not correct? The ghool might still be in there, at perfect liberty and waiting to pounce?’

  She bared her teeth to display imaginary fangs, but Carter interrupted before Ahmed could reply. ‘Let us forget this talk of demons!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘There are wonders enough concealed beyond this door. Why, it is the very Holy of Holies of archaeological science!’ He glanced round at his companions. ‘Who will be the first to enter such a shrine?’

  No one replied, until at length Lord Carnarvon shuffled and cleared his throat. ‘You, Carter. This is your find.’

  But Carter shook his head. ‘I have already told you, we would not be here had it not been for you.’ He paused, then handed across the electric torch. ‘You must be the first.’

  Lord Carnarvon crouched down by the opening and peered through it, his emotions very visible as he gazed at the wall of gold. He glanced back once, then seemed visibly to brace himself before wriggling, head-first, through the gap in the wall. The light of his torch bounced and played upon the gold and then, when he had passed through and stood up, seemed to vanish. ‘Hello?’ Carter called out. What can you see?’

  ‘You are right!’ came the answer, sounding muffled. ‘It is indeed the very Holy of Holies!’

  Carter gestured to Lady Evelyn that she should follow her father through the opening; and then, having ordered Ahmed likewise through the hole, he finally passed into the inner room himself. The moment he climbed back to his feet, he realised that his initial supposition had been perfectly correct, for he was indeed confronted by a funerary shrine so enormous that it almost filled the entire area of the chamber, with only a space of some two feet between itself and the walls. He could see, turning to his left, that Ahmed and Lady Evelyn were inching along the gap, and so he turned to his right to see what might lie there. Once again, as he stepped into the stillness of more than thirty centuries, he felt a sense of profoundest wonder and awe, distilled from the secrets and shadows of the past, so that the very tread of his foot, the slightest noise, seemed a desecration.

  When he glanced behind him, both Lady Evelyn and Ahmed appeared to have rounded the corner of the shrine. ‘Hello?’ he whispered. Nobody answered him. He flashed his torch the other way, at the corner of the shrine towards which he had been advancing. ‘Hello?’ he called out again, but there was still no reply. Very slowly, he began to slide forward once again. Suddenly, though, as he approached the corner of the chamber, he heard from ahead of him a soft, gasping moan, and then the muffled crashing of something upon the floor. At the same moment, the torch in Carter’s hand failed and the entire chamber was cast into darkness.

  He heard a squeal of mingled panic and excitement from Lady Evelyn.

  ‘It is all right,’ he called out, ‘please, all is well!’ He wondered, though, whether it truly was. All had fallen silent again. He strained with his ears; the tomb now seemed as silent as it had been for millennia. Nervously, Carter took a further step forward and, feeling with his hands, turned the corner of the wall. Still inching onwards with the utmost care, he felt the wall suddenly vanish from his touch, and at the very same moment all the torch beams blazed back into life.

  Carter could see now that he was standing by a doorway, not sealed as the others had been but opening on to a further chamber, smaller than the others and with a much lower roof. A single glance sufficed to tell him that he had before him the most beautiful treasures of all, for the chamber was filled with emblems of the underworld, a figure of a jackal, statues of the gods, so lovely that they made him gasp with wonder and admiration. There still seemed no trace of papyri, though, nor any inscriptions on the walls of the room, and he flashed round the beam of his torch in a sudden surge of desperation. He gasped a second time -- but now with consternation for he saw, rising dazedly from the floor, the figure of Lord Carnarvon, his face as white as dust.

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Carter, stepping forward to take him by the arm. ‘Did you have a fall?’

  ‘Went out like a light,’ said Lord Carnarvon, wincing as he dabbed at a cut on his cheek. ‘Terribly sorry. Bit of a shock.’

  ‘What happened, do you think?’

  Lord Carnarvon frowned, and shook his head. ‘Really not sure.’ He glanced around him at the piled treasures. ‘All got a bit much, I suppose. Sense of the tremendous past and all that. You know what I mean. Black cloud, sudden mist of darkness. Strange, really’ He gazed about him again. ‘Very strange.’

  ‘Pups!’ Lady Evelyn emerged in the open doorway. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No worry’ he smiled, ‘no need for concern.’

  ‘You have cut yourself.’

  ‘Just a little scratch.’

  ‘We should leave.’ She reached for her father’s hand but then suddenly froze, conscious for the first time of the splendours of the chamber. ‘I say,’ she whispered at last, turning to Carter, ‘I have never known anything as exciting as tonight. I think it will prove the Great Moment of my life.’ She gazed once more at the figure of the jackal; then tugged upon her father’s arm. ‘Come on, Pups,’ she whispered, ‘you are still looking groggy. Your glands have gone up like cricket balls. Time to get out.’

  She turned to Carter again and kissed him, so quickly that he did not have any time to step back; then she slipped out between the shrine and the wall, past Ahmed who stood waiting as Lord Carnarvon likewise stepped past. ‘What happened, sir?’ he asked urgently, once he was alone in the chamber with Carter.

  ‘He was . . .’ - Carter paused, then shrugged -- ‘overwhelmed.’

  ‘He saw nothing? Heard nothing?’

  Carter shook his head. ‘Why would he, Ahmed? There is nothing here.’

  But Ahmed swallowed, and gazed into the shadows. ‘How do we know? We have not yet fully looked.’

  Carter grunted, and swung the beam of his torch about the room. The shadows danced, but in the pools of darkness all else remained still.

  ‘We should search, sir,’ said Ahmed. We should make doubly sure.’

  ‘No.’ Carter spoke with sudden firmness. ‘We have done more than enough even as it is.’ ‘Please, sir . . .’

  ‘No.’ Carter took Ahmed’s arm. ‘We must leave here at once.’ He gestured to Ahmed that he should continue towards the exit from the chamber. Reluctantly Ahmed did as he was ordered and Carter, following him, ensured he could not turn back. ‘The temptation to disturb or even to remove certain objects,’ Carter said as he followed Ahmed through the opening, ‘would have proved far too great, had we stayed within that chamber.’ And even as he said so he glanced behind him once again, longing to return to the tiny room, to see if some papyri might not be there after all -- but he tensed and clenched his fists, and forced himself on. ‘No, no,’ he muttered, ‘let the hole be sealed at once. Safer that way, safer by far.’

  ‘Safer, sir?’ Ahmed glanced at Lord Carnarvon who sat, still pale, against the furthest wall; but once he realised that Carter would not reply, he began the work of plastering up the tell-tale gap.

  When all had been completed, Carter carefully arranged a basket to conceal the work, before leading his party back up the steps. Feeling the cool night air against his face, Lord Carnarvon breathed it in deeply, and Carter saw the colour begin at once to return to his patron’s face. ‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked.

  Lord Carnarvon nodded. ‘So sorry’ he muttered. ‘Embarrassing, really. Very poor display’ Then he paused and absent-mindedly rubbed at his cheek, smearing blood upon his finger which he delicately sucked. ‘But I say!’ he exclaimed suddenly, a contented smile upon his face. ‘The Holy of Holies! Wasn’t it just the most marvellous thing?’

  The next morning Carter arrived very early at the site, for he had been finding it hard to sleep. Early though he was, however,
he was not the first; for as he approached the tomb he found Ahmed waiting for him, uneasy-eyed, his face bled of colour. ‘Please, sir,’ he whispered, ‘come and see.’ He led Carter down the steps, through the doorway and into the tomb; and once they had slipped through the second doorway into the antechamber, he pointed towards the third -- that same one through which they had passed the night before. Carter gazed at it in surprise, for the basket he had placed across the hole had been tossed aside, and the mortaring lay scattered in a pile across the floor.

  ‘Someone else has broken in!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who would dare do such a thing?’

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Ahmed, as he pointed to the rubble. ‘Someone -- something -- has broken out.’

  Carter gazed at the debris in silence a moment; then he shook his head violently. ‘Your work last night -- it was clearly too hurried. It must have caved in.’

  ‘But, sir . . .’

  ‘No buts. Finish it again, and this time do it properly. And for the love of God’ -- he glanced towards the steps - ‘do it fast! There will be others coming soon, and no one must know. No one must find out!’

  With a secret smile Carter removed the last stones of Ahmed’s brickwork, thereby effacing the proof of their clandestine entry several weeks before. It was all he could do not to turn to Lord Carnarvon, who had been sitting, he knew, amidst the other guests with a smile like that of a naughty schoolboy upon his face, clearly nervous at the thought that their stunt might be suspected. However, as he passed back the final brick, Carter did not catch his friend and patron’s eye but turned instead to face all the rows of gathered guests, seated upon their chairs in the antechamber. These men, Carter thought suddenly, who had come here for the official opening of the doorway, formed the very cream of Egypt’s archaeological community; yet upon all their faces were expressions of the utmost stupefaction, such as any untutored layman would betray. The same expression, Carter suspected, could be glimpsed upon his own face, even though he knew what lay beyond the doorway, even though he had passed inside it before.

  He was the first to enter the newly opened room and then, once he had completed his own inspection and returned into the antechamber, he was followed by Lord Carnarvon. Neither man uttered a word as they passed each other; yet Carter, gazing upon his friend, saw that his brow was beaded with white drops of sweat and his lips half-parted in a foolish smile. He seemed in the grip of some profound emotion and Carter, who had never seen him in such a state before, felt a sudden surge of worry, almost of fear. As Lord Carnarvon finally emerged through the doorway from the funerary chamber, Carter studied him closely. He had a dazed, bewildered look in his eyes, and as he met Carter’s stare he threw up his hands before him, an unconscious gesture of impotence to describe what he felt. Nevertheless, crossing to the wall where Carter stood, he seemed eager to speak, to try to put his emotions into words after all. ‘The damnedest thing,’ he whispered, ‘the damnedest thing. The strangest feeling of desecration. Not of the rest of the Pharaoh, don’t you know, but of the flow of time itself, if that makes any sense at all. Do you know what I mean, Carter? The feeling that we have somehow knocked the boundaries away?’

  ‘Boundaries?’ Carter frowned. ‘Boundaries of what?’

  ‘Oh, how can I put it?’ Lord Carnarvon threw his hands up once again. ‘Those that should exist, I suppose, between the deep past and ourselves.’

  Carter’s frown deepened, but he did not reply.

  ‘Not making much sense, I suppose,’ shrugged Lord Carnarvon apologetically. ‘But I do feel -- yes, I truly do feel it -- that we have mixed the currents of the past with the present, with the now. And so -- I cannot help but wonder . . .’

  Carter raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well -- don’t you know -- whether it was wise.’

  ‘Why would it not be? We are archaeologists, after all. Introducing the past into the present is what we aim to do.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Lord Carnarvon shrugged once again. ‘You must think me foolish. But even so, I cannot help but wonder . . . Carter - my dear Carter,’ he suddenly hissed, ‘was it wise?’

  A bright shaft of sunlight fell across the room, illuminating motes of slow-dancing dust, and causing Lord Carnarvon’s mirror to sparkle. He paused in his shaving, blinded for a moment by the gleam, then carefully angled his mirror round a fraction, to keep the glass from the early morning sun. As he gazed at his own reflection, however, he found that he barely knew himself. The face that met his own was lost in shadows, so that it seemed to him that it might be anyone’s at all. The shadows, he imagined, were billowing upwards, rising from the depths of he knew not what.

  Suddenly he winced, roused from his reverie by a sharp pain. He raised a finger, and angled the mirror again to inspect a cut to his face. It was the same, he realised, that he had suffered several weeks before, when he had fallen unconscious in the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. The scar had never properly healed - and now, once again, he had opened it up.

  A drop of blood splashed on to the porcelain of the basin. Lord Carnarvon turned on the tap and the water, as he swirled it, was stained a pinkish red, before it emptied and drained away.

  He was brought back in a cab, muttering strangely and making no sense. Lady Evelyn, who had already been warned of his relapse, was waiting for him on the hotel steps. ‘Oh, Pups,’ she whispered as he was helped out from the cab. She took his arm and guided him up the steps. ‘What were you thinking of, you silly man?’

  Lord Carnarvon gazed at his daughter as though startled to observe her. ‘The mosque,’ he whispered. ‘Went to see the mosque.’

  ‘Mosque?’

  ‘To see if it was true.’

  Lady Evelyn paused, as she looked at the swollen glands on his neck. ‘I should never have allowed you to come to Cairo,’ she said at last, ‘not while I knew that you were feeling so seedy.’

  ‘Eve.’ He clutched at her suddenly, as though to stop himself from tumbling back down the steps.

  ‘Yes, Pups?’

  ‘There was no one there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the mosque. In the summit of the minaret.’ Lady Evelyn shrugged. ‘I do not see why there would have been.’

  ‘But do you not see?’ he whispered. ‘How can I know now if any of it were true?’

  ‘Please, Pups . . .’

  ‘No . . .’ He reached up with his hand to touch his swollen glands. ‘How can I be certain . . . what this is . . . what it means?’

  ‘Pups.’ Lady Evelyn reached up to kiss her father on his cheek. Feeling how his skin was burning hot, she took care not to display her concern or her shock. ‘There is no cause for worry’ she whispered, ‘but only so long as you do what your doctors say. You know, if you do not, that you will grow ever more rotten -- and where, dearest Pups, is the mystery in that?’

  She squeezed his arm, then continued to lead him up the steps towards the lobby. He swallowed and attempted to add something more, but his words, as he babbled them, no longer made sense.

  Carter tore open the telegram as soon as it was delivered. He read it greedily, then cursed, and his face grew blank.

  ‘Bad news?’ asked his colleague as casually as he could. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  Carter stood in silence a moment more, then unfolded the sheet of paper again. ‘It is from Lady Evelyn,’ he muttered, handing it across. ‘Lord Carnarvon is sick, and she is very alarmed. I must leave for Cairo at once.’

  ‘Dear, oh dear. Bit of a nuisance, you having to go just when we were really getting ahead with our work. Let’s hope the old man gets well soon.’

  ‘Yes.’ Carter nodded slowly. He gazed about him at the empty antechamber, then through the gap in the wall to the golden shrine beyond. ‘I had been hoping to be able to take him some good news.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Carter stroked his moustache. ‘Been hoping to find some papyri, don’t you know? Records, personal writings, stuff of that kind. But it seems certain now th
ere’s nothing. Not a single scrap.’

  His colleague laughed. ‘Dammit, Carter, but you’re greedy. Isn’t what you have found enough to keep you going?’

  ‘To keep me going, yes. But it is still not enough.’

  ‘What did you want, then?’

  ‘Oh, to know what really happened. To find the truth -- to understand.’

  Carter’s colleague paused a moment, then shrugged. ‘It all happened so horribly long ago.’

  ‘Yes. And there is the problem. I had thought, if I made this discovery, if I brought the artefacts to light, then the . . . I don’t know . . . the . . . the inner life of the Ancients might be brought to life as well. That sounds foolish, I suppose. But then, after all, what has always been my inspiration? Why, the idea that they lived and thought and felt like us. But we don’t know that. In fact, we can’t be sure at all. Standing here, even in this tomb - what do we know? So little. So little. We are utterly removed.’

  His colleague clapped him on the back. ‘Come on, old man, don’t you realise this find has made you more famous than any archaeologist who’s lived? It won’t do at all for you to show yourself so glum.’

  ‘No,’ Carter sighed. ‘And yet I cannot help it.’ He glanced round again at the shrine of the King, sweeping his torch across the gap in the wall. ‘The mystery still eludes us. The shadows move, but the dark is never quite dispersed.’

  He lapsed into silence and bowed his head, then glanced down at the telegram crumpled in his hand. He smoothed it out and read it through again. ‘I had better be heading off for Cairo immediately’