He was separated from her by the table, decorated with flowers, yet they spoke to each other without words and for a moment their spirits met and there was an understanding which seem to have existed between them all through eternity.
Then the Marquis answered:
“Very well, if that is what you want I will take you.”
He saw the light come into Shikara’s eyes. Then she looked away from him as if she was shy and said quietly:
“Thank you ... very much!”
She went below to get a shawl to put over her shoulders in case it should grow cooler later on and she picked up a chiffon scarf for her hair.
She thought that the dust moving all the time in the darkness of the burial chamber would settle on her head and she disliked the thought of it.
When she came up on deck it was to find that the Marquis was waiting for her and on the shore there was an open carriage like they had used once already that day.
It was still daylight but Shikara knew it would not be long before the sun would sink with its usual swiftness and the stars and moon would shine over the Pyramids.
She had longed to see them at night with the Marquis at her side, but now she was uncertain of what he was thinking and she was depressingly sure that he would not, this evening, be moved romantically by the beauty of the scenery or by her.
It seemed to her that he sat deliberately a little further away from her in the carriage than necessary.
They travelled at a quick pace and Shikara felt she had nothing to say except what lay hidden secretly in her heart.
Soon they were free of the houses of Cairo and out in the desert, and now there was the strange exquisite beauty of the Pyramids, golden in the setting sun, their pointed tops silhouetted against the translucence of the sky.
“Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,” the Marquis remarked, “the Pyramids alone still survive the ravages of time and the destructive hand of man.”
He spoke coldly and impersonally, but Shikara longed to put her hand into his and to ask if the Pyramids were to him as mysterious and exciting as they were to her.
Always she had thought in the past that when one saw anything very beautiful or very exciting it was something that must be shared.
She had understood what her father felt when at every new development in his explorations he would want to find another Archaeologist with whom he could share his discovery, or failing such a man would often be prepared to display his finds to her mother or herself.
It was as if any soul-disturbing experience one could not be selfish enough to keep to oneself, and Shikara felt now as if the sheer enchantment of the Pyramids was something she wanted to give to the Marquis, as if it was a present.
She could not however express what she was feeling and they drove on. As darkness fell they came to the Great Step Pyramid of Zoser and their driver drew his horses to a standstill.
They were not at the place where they had stopped earlier in the day, but in the half-light with the stars just beginning to twinkle in the sky it was easy to see that by walking a little way they would come to the Avenue of the Sphinxes.
It was easier to walk than to try to explain to the driver that he must turn his horses round, and Shikara and the Marquis stepped out of the carriage.
The Marquis told the man to wait by some palm trees and putting his hand under Shikara’s elbow he helped her over the sand and stones towards the Avenue of Sphinxes.
Shikara felt as they walked side by side between the rows of statues, half-man and half-beast, as if she and the Marquis were a Priest and Priestess moving towards the Temple.
The Marquis had brought with him a candle-lantern, which Hignet had put into the carriage for them together with a box of matches before they left.
“This is the very best lantern we have on board, M’Lord,” he had said to the Marquis, “and it’s a better type than anything those Gypsies use.”
“Thank you,” the Marquis had said. “I am sure it will prove adequate.”
Shikara thought now that she might have forgotten a candle if she had come alone, and she knew too that he carried in his coat a small pistol.
She had seen him slip it out of sight as she came on deck, and while she had not commented on it, she knew it was a wise precaution.
It had made her aware that the Marquis thought the project she was undertaking might prove to be a dangerous one.
She could not believe it possible that there would be any danger in visiting the Tombs of the Apis Bulls, but she supposed there might be a chance of visitors either to the Pyramids or to any other part of the desert being set upon by thieves.
It made her realise that it was in fact a foolish idea that she should ever go to such places alone.
She had seen the beggars swarming in Cairo and in Alexandria, and she had realised that without the protection of a man her hand-bag and any jewellery she wore would have soon disappeared.
They reached the entrance of what looked like a kind of Temple comparable with those built in honour of the Egyptian nobility.
The Marquis stopped to light the candle in the lantern and now it was easy to see the steep shaft which led down to the long burial chamber.
He went ahead and Shikara took his hand as he assisted her down the shaft into the warm dusty darkness.
Now, as she had expected, there was the strange deep silence of the dead and the smell of the past, which seemed, she thought, always to exist in burial grounds.
She moved ahead of the Marquis as the flickering candle made the separate chambers where the Bulls had been buried seem like dark caverns.
The plunderers had pushed the heavy covers off the sarcophagi.
Some had been smashed so that they lay broken on the ground, and some, after being despoiled, had already been buried again by the eternally shifting sand.
Shikara moved on down the passage-way, aware that the airlessness made it hard to breathe, and yet determined to reach the end where the unrifled tombs were still being excavated.
The lantern threw a circle of light round her and to the Marquis she was a waif moving silently ahead of him, the scarf with which she had covered her hair gleaming white in the darkness.
Shikara stopped.
She had almost reached the end of the passage and she wanted to think, to concentrate like a medium in a trance, so that she could immerse herself in the past.
Then unexpectedly and sharply there was the sound of voices!
She turned and found that the Marquis was just behind her and that he too had turned his head to listen.
Men were speaking to one another in Arabic and Shikara realised the newcomers were descending the shaft behind them into the burial chamber.
The Marquis lifted the candle-lantern and blew it out. Then as Shikara waited in surprise he put out his hand and pulled her from the passage-way into one of the burial places at the side of it.
She felt the surface of a granite sarcophagus and there was just room between it and the wall for them to stand, Shikara on the inside and the Marquis nearest to the passage.
The sound of men talking came nearer, their voices deliberately lowered, so that Shikara could not hear what they were saying.
Then there was the faint light of a candle and Shikara realised that quite a number of men had entered the burial chamber.
She moved a little further round the sarcophagus and now she saw that the wall on the other side, which divided it from the tomb of another Bull, had been demolished.
She could see across the broken sarcophagus beside them into the passage-way.
The light came nearer and suddenly she could see the turbanned heads of a number of men.
She counted—there were six of them.
They were advancing, but suddenly they stopped and she heard a clanking sound as if they threw some tools down to the sandy floor.
“Better light more candles,” one of them said in Arabic.
"We shall need them,” another man
replied in a deeper voice. “The unopened tomb is at the far end.” With a start Shikara realised who they were.
They were plunderers who had come to open the tomb which Monsieur Mariette had told them about, the Tomb of the Bull that had been buried in the reign of Ramses II.
One he had already excavated, but the other was so far intact.
Shikara felt a surge of anger that these plunderers should steal the contents of the tomb so that they would be lost forever.
She thought of confronting them and telling them what she thought of their thieving ways. Then, even as the idea came into her mind, she heard one of the men say:
“Someone had better be on guard.”
“I’ll guard you,” another man replied. “Did I not guard you when the Englishman interfered? Roaring like a lion, he would have carried you all to prison if I had not silenced him!”
Other candles must have been lit; for now Shikara could see the men more clearly and the man who was talking was young, with a white turban on his head.
Another man, who was older and whose face was lined, said:
“Hush, Ali, do not boast. If anyone should hear, you’d be executed for murder!”
“I’m not afraid,” Ali retorted boastfully. “Trust me as you have trusted me before. My knife has served you well, and it will serve you again if we are interrupted.”
“Very well, then,” the older man said almost grudgingly, “you be on guard. The rest of us had better get to work.”
Shikara was suddenly conscious that the Marquis was very close to her. She knew that he had drawn his pistol from his pocket and that he was tense.
The meaning of what the men had been saying swept over her with a feeling of unutterable horror. These were the men who had killed her father! What was more, these robbers and murderers would undoubtedly kill the Marquis and her if they were discovered.
She felt herself begin to tremble as she realised that there were six of them—five to do the excavating, and the one called Ali to keep guard.
She thought frantically that with a pistol which held only two bullets it would be impossible for the Marquis to protect them both from men who would kill without hesitation rather than be discovered.
She heard another man, who had not previously spoken, say:
“Would not it be best to look and see if there is anyone about before we start working? Remember, the Englishman took us by surprise.”
“If there was anyone here we should have seen a light,” replied the older man who had spoken before.
“I’ll look for you,” Ali said. “You start digging. It’ll take time and the night does not last forever.”
“Who’s giving orders?” another asked.
“Ali’s talking sense,” someone else said. “There are lots of hiding places here and we don’t want to be taken by surprise.”
“No, indeed,” someone agreed. “You remember what happened last week at Abydos.”
“That was a near squeak,” a man groaned.
Shikara felt the Marquis’s left arm go round her to hold her against him. She realised that he held his pistol in his right hand and that he was holding her close because he sensed that she was afraid.
She was trembling because the whole scene was so strange and terrifying—the flickering lights of the candles, the men’s heads she could just see above the broken wall, and their revealing conversation, which only she could understand because the Marquis did not speak Arabic.
At the same time, she thought, he must be aware that they were in a dangerous position and he would know she was frightened because he could feel her trembling against him.
The Marquis was in fact very much aware of their danger and although he could not speak Arabic he knew well how ruthless the plunderers of the tombs could be if they were discovered.
All through the ages there had been fights and murders committed by one gang of thieves when they encountered another.
Every Archaeologist told stories of how he had been obliged to fight off robbers who sometimes attacked a site even in broad daylight.
He was surprised that Mariette had not placed a guard at his excavation site and he supposed that it was because the sarcophagus of a Bull was not so valuable from the thieves’ point of view as the Tomb of a Pharaoh.
When they visited the place in the morning, he had understood that on certain days of the year or on the occasion of the death or funeral rites of an Apis, the inhabitants of Memphis came to pay a visit to the god in his burial place.
In memory of this act of piety they left a stele, or square-shaped upright stone, rounded at the top, which was let into the walls of the tomb.
It had previously been inscribed with words of homage to the god and the name of the visitor and his family.
Those, the Marquis knew, were of the greatest historical importance, although of no cash value to any thief.
If these were broken or defaced by vandals or roughly handled by excavators, the history of Egypt would be very much the poorer.
It was therefore remiss of Mariette not to have taken more care—but how, the Marquis wondered, could he have anticipated that the thieves would come to the very last tomb and in such numbers?
He was wondering if a shot fired suddenly into the ceiling would scare them, or whether it would be better to kill one of their number and just pray that the rest would run away.
He knew, without understanding a word of what was being said, that they would not hesitate if it suited them to kill both himself and Shikara and bury their bodies in the sand where they were unlikely ever to be found.
That, he had already surmised, was what had happened to Professor Bartlett, and he cursed himself for a fool for letting Shikara persuade him into coming here tonight without bringing with him several of the crew to protect them.
If only they had stopped at the proper entrance, where they had gone in this morning, the thieves would have seen their carriage and doubtless postponed their robbery to another night.
But as it was, their horses waiting near the palm trees must have gone unobserved.
The Marquis’s fingers tightened on his pistol.
Already he could see that the men were picking up their tools from the floor, and one of their number was shining a light on the first sarcophagus at the entrance to the burial chamber.
Soon they would reach where he and Shikara were standing. It would be impossible for them to hide from the candlelight and they would be revealed.
Now the Marquis realised that the sarcophagus behind which they were hiding had been one of those brutally plundered in the past.
The top had been dragged off and smashed and the sides had been smashed too, so that in the light it would not give even the same protection that some of the others might have done.
It was just a question of time before they were seen, and the Marquis decided that it would be best for him to kill one of the men and keep his second bullet for a last stand if they should try to rush him.
Then he was aware of a strange, unexpected sound.
For a moment he thought he could not really have heard anything and that it was part of his imagination.
Then he was aware that the robbers were suddenly still and were and were standing listening to what he himself heard.
It was a very low, deep note, almost like the buzz of a bee. Then it became louder and it seemed so resonant and so insistent that it began to be taken up by the walls and the ceiling themselves.
It grew in intensity. It grew and grew until in absolute astonishment the Marquis, who had his arm round her, realised it came from Shikara!
It seemed to vibrate from the very depths of her body and all the time it was becoming intensified.
Now the sound seemed to be thrown back at them from the darkness and almost to hurt the ears of those who listened.
It was strange, compelling, and at the same time frightening.
It seemed as if the robbers were completely spellbound, as indeed was the Marqu
is.
Then suddenly with a cry of: “The gods! The gods!” Ali first began to run down the passage-way and the others followed him.
Still the haunting, vibrating sound came from Shikara until finally the candles which had gone with the plunderers or had become extinguished in the sand took away the last vestige of light.
Then there was only the darkness and the sound she had made quivering in the silence.
For a moment both Shikara and the Marquis were very still, until instinctively she turned towards him and his mouth came down on hers.
She knew that this was what she had been longing and aching for and once again she felt that her whole being merged into his.
She was still trembling, but it was no longer from fear.
Everything else vanished and it was impossible to think of anything but the closeness of the Marquis’s body, his lips, and him.
It was a kiss all the more intense, all the more poignant, because of the fear through which they had passed, and when finally he raised his head, she whispered, because she could no longer help saying the words:
“I love ... you! I love ... you!”
He pulled her against him. Then he said in a voice that was hoarse and a little unsteady:
“Let us try to get out of here, my darling, while we still can do so.”
She felt a surge of happiness because of what he had called her.
But already he was moving from behind the sarcophagus into the passage-way, and blindly, holding on to him with one hand, she followed.
He bent down, struck a match, and lit the candle-lantern.
“We must be careful,” he said, “very careful in case those plunderers are lurking outside.”
“They ... would have ... killed ... us!” Shikara said in a low voice.
“I was sure of that.”
“They killed ... Papa! The man called Ali ... boasted of it.”
“We must go very carefully,” the Marquis said as he straightened himself, holding the lantern in his left hand. “All that matters now is that I should get you to safety.”
The Marquis Who Hated Women (Bantam Series No. 62) Page 13
