“After you, my lady,” said Burleigh, offering his hand.
“I hope we can get this over with before noon,” Evelyn confided. “It gets so beastly hot out here. I positively liquefy.”
“Until today,” Burleigh confessed, “I was seriously doubting my sanity for even setting foot in Egypt in the summer.” He paused. “Mind you, winter isn’t much better. Fewer flies, I suppose.”
“I daresay you’d never make much of an archaeologist, my dear earl. You’ve got to have a hide thick as a rhino’s and a love of dirt in all its glorious forms. Mr. Carter, on the other hand, is desert born-with sand in his veins and the constitution of a camel. I myself think Egypt’s past is best explored from eight to midnight on the terrace of a grand hotel.”
“Spoken like a true daughter of the desert,” quipped Burleigh.
Lady Evelyn laughed, her voice deep and full. “Archaeology is Daddy’s passion, not mine. Although, I do enjoy the unveiling-like today. There is something terribly exciting about uncovering something that has been hidden from the world for untold centuries-when one beholds the glory of a distant age so long submerged in darkness brought back to the light.” Suddenly self-conscious, she glanced at the tall man beside her. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Wholeheartedly,” Burleigh replied. “Otherwise, I sincerely doubt I would brave the heat, flies, and scorpions to be here.”
They continued the rest of the way in silence, picking their way over a rough terrain of broken rock and piles of rubble, stepping over the stakes and guy lines of various awnings covering the works they passed. Up ahead, Lord Carnarvon had reached his destination: yet another low awning of dirty canvas stretched over a gaping hole in the rocky desert landscape.
“Here!” he called, waving to them. “Over here!”
He was standing at the rim of the excavation and calling down into it as they joined him. “Are you down there, Carter?” he shouted. “Carter?”
A faint and muffled voice came wafting up from the hole. “Here!” It grew louder as it continued. “… a moment… let me get you a lamp. All is ready.”
A thin light wafted up from the dark heart of the excavation before them, casting a pale illumination over the top step of a narrow staircase; a rope had been attached to one side of the hole to act as a handrail. Lord Carnarvon gripped the rope and quickly disappeared into the breach. “After you, my lady,” said Burleigh, offering his hand to help steady the young woman as she prepared to descend.
Burleigh followed, entering the steep-stepped passage into a fair-sized underground chamber lit by kerosene lamps in the hands of half a dozen workmen directing lanterns toward a stone doorway whose posts and lintel were carved with hieroglyphs. The door itself was stone bricks that had been plastered over with whitewashed mud, and from which all the plaster had been chipped off.
“We’ve just completed the removal,” Howard Carter was saying to Carnarvon. “In anticipation of your arrival-” He broke off abruptly. “Oh, hello-who’s this?”
“Ah, yes, forgive me,” Lord Carnarvon said, turning to his guest. “Allow me to introduce my friend, Lord Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland.” He quickly made the introductions, proclaiming his new acquaintance an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist.
Lord Burleigh extended his hand to the renowned Egyptologist -a man of middling height and ordinary appearance who gave the impression of a chap who might be more at home behind a desk in the head office of an actuarial firm than raking up the desert in search of buried treasure.
“Delighted to meet you at long last, Mr. Carter. I’ve heard so much about you. Your contributions to the increase in our understanding of ancient culture are incalculable.”
“I am glad you think so,” replied Carter in a thin, nasal voice. “However, the popular press does tend to sensationalise things overmuch, I find.”
“Nonsense,” chimed Lady Evelyn. “You are a most erudite and canny explorer, Mr. Carter. You are far too modest for your own good.”
Carter smiled diffidently. “I have been lucky,” he said.
“Never luckier than at this very moment!” declared Carnarvon. “Shall we get on with it? We’ve waited years for this-the first glimpse of a royal tomb. Lay on, man! Let’s see what we’ve found!”
Turning to the sealed doorway, Carter signalled two workmen standing by, armed with mallet and chisel. The fellows began chipping away at the mortar between the blocks, and soon the dead, still air of the chamber was filled with a fine gritty dust. As the mortar fell, the sense of anticipation in the chamber rose; the workmen murmured in Arabic; Carnarvon and his daughter whispered back and forth; Carter remained rigid, staring at the brick wall before him as if tearing it down by sheer willpower alone.
Soon one of the central blocks had been freed. Carter raised his hand. “Kata!” He said. The workmen ceased their hammering, and he stepped forward. Carter ran his hands along seams of the block, working his fingers into the gap. He pulled, but the brick did not give. “Takkadam,” he said, stepping away again as the workers resumed hammering at the block. “We’ll have to break it to get it out,” he explained; his bookish face, betraying a sheen of eager perspiration, glistened in the lamplight.
“Won’t take long,” Lord Carnarvon assured them. He rubbed his hands. “Any moment now.”
With each blow of the hammers, the atmosphere grew more charged, the sense of anticipation more intense. The chink of steel on steel, and steel on stone, filled the chamber with a dull clamour; the dust grew thicker. The block fractured under the assault, and the crack was rapidly exploited.
“Kata! ” cried Carter again.
The hammering ceased.
Moving to the sealed door, Howard Carter dug at the newly created crevice and pulled on the broken brick, slowly drawing the first half away. He tossed it behind him, and the second half soon followed.
He peered in through the hole.
“What do you see?” asked Carnarvon.
“I see…,” began Carter.
Earl Burleigh felt Evelyn lean close in her excitement. She pressed the knuckles of her right hand to her lips. “Oh, please!” she gasped softly.
“Nothing.” Carter stepped away from the hole in the door. “I can’t see anything until we can get a light in.” He gestured to the workmen. “Takkadam,” he said, and the hammering began again.
The second stone fell more quickly than the first, and the third followed and the fourth and fifth in rapid succession. The dust in the anteroom chamber rose in clouds, filling the still air. All looking on covered noses and mouths with their scarves.
“Kata!” shouted Carter. Taking a lamp from one of the men, he stepped to the void in the door and shoved the lantern through. Trembling visibly, he leaned forward, pressing his eager face to the stonework.
“Well?” demanded Carnarvon, almost hopping with excitement. “What? Tell us! What do you see?”
“Gold!” announced Carter. “I see gold.”
The word sent a visceral quiver through Burleigh; he felt it in his belly.
Carter, still at the door, motioned for Lord Carnarvon to join him at the breach. The aristocrat muscled in beside him and pressed his face into the gap. “Glorious!” he proclaimed. “Open it! Open it at once!”
“Oh, Daddy!” cried Lady Evelyn. “Let me see!”
“A moment more, my dear,” said her father, “and we shall all be able to see.” To the workmen he commanded, “Pull it down.”
“Selfish beast,” muttered Evelyn.
Burleigh patted her arm in mild commiseration, although he himself felt no such disappointment. He was supremely happy to, for once, be in at the sharp end of the discovery, to be present when the grave was opened and the objects that made his livelihood were brought back to the world of men and commerce. In fact, his cunning mind was already awash with schemes for insinuating himself into the profitable disposal of the artefacts soon to be revealed.
Brick followed brick as whole sections of the sealed doorway tumbled. Within moments, the breach was large enough to allow entrance. “Here,” said Carter, handing around lanterns. When each member of the party had a light, he said, “May I remind each one of us not to touch anything, please, until we’ve had a chance to photograph everything in situ?” After receiving assurances all around, he smiled. “This way, please. Watch your step.”
Turning sideways, he shrugged through the gap and disappeared into the dark interior of the tomb. Lord
