Khalid. “Take it down.”
The bricks came thick and fast now, and soon the last of the sealing blocks was removed; Thomas ordered more lamps to be lit. He passed one to Kit, and one each to Khefri and Khalid.
“After you, Dr. Young,” said Kit, indicating the darkened doorway with his lamp.
The archaeologist hesitated.
“Seeing as you’re the leader of this excavation and its benefactor, I insist.”
The doctor gave a nod and stepped to the threshold and, holding his lamp high, peered into the darkened room. He stood motionless-as if frozen in an attitude of searching expectation.
“Doctor?” said Kit. “What do you see?” He glanced at Khefri, who held his hands clasped beneath his chin, his dark eyes aglint in the flickering lamplight.
“Indescribable,” breathed the doctor, edging farther into the doorway. Turning slowly, he beckoned Kit and Khefri to join him. “You had better come and see for yourselves.”
The two stepped through the darkened doorway. In the faint illumination of the single lamp, he saw a confused and jumbled wall of objects and furniture crammed floor to ceiling and jammed into every available space: boxes large and small; chests of cedar, lime wood, and acacia; latticework room screens; collapsed bed frames; stools and footrests and headrests; chairs both simple and ornately carved; bronze-rimmed chariot wheels and disassembled harness trees; innumerable jars of all shapes and sizes; weapons-spears, swords, daggers, throwing sticks-both functional and ceremonial; a collection of painted rods and flails of office; and a host of small clay models of everything from cows and hippos to women making beer and men planting barley, bald-headed scribes, half-naked slaves, kohl-eyed goddesses in form-fitting gowns, and enough servants to populate a village, and more. It was as if the entire contents of an antique dealer’s showroom had been stuffed higgledy-piggledy into a receptacle no larger than the living room in Kit’s old flat, and then locked away for several hundred eons. Moreover, everything was shrouded with a heavy layer of powdery ochre dust.
He did not know what he expected, but the sight left him speechless all the same. Somewhere in the midst of a small museum’s worth of antiquities, awaiting discovery, lay the Skin Map-perhaps in one piece. It was all he could do to keep from tearing into the heap.
Sensing something of the frustrated expectation, Thomas offered, “We will find your treasure, my friend. Never fear. If it is in there, we will soon have it in hand.”
Over the next two days, the contents of the main chamber were cleared piece by piece, and each item was numbered by Thomas and recorded in a book along with a brief description of the item and its condition. In order to speed the process along, Kit set up a relay system and convinced the fastidious doctor to go along with it. He had a canopy erected in front of the elaborately carved doorway across the wadi from the tomb; there, in the great empty chamber Kit called the temple, he established Dr. Young at a table beneath the canopy. Then, with Kit directing the excavation work inside the tomb, each object was carefully pulled from the tomb and either carried or relayed hand to hand by workmen to the table where Thomas first inscribed a small number on it in sepia ink, then recorded the find in his ledger; the artefacts were then conveyed to the empty chamber where Khefri supervised their storage. There they would remain under guard until Thomas could arrange for their transportation to London and, ultimately, the British Museum.
Each box, chest, and jar was personally examined by Kit as it came from the burial chamber. Hands, clothes, hair, and every inch of exposed flesh became pale with dust; he looked like a powdered ghost. With a damp handkerchief tied around the lower half of his face, he doggedly kept at his work, always expecting that the next ancient container he put his hand to must contain the map. In this he trusted to Thomas’ simple dictum that by process of elimination they must, sooner or later, find his treasure. While all this cataloguing and recording might have been a logical and reasonable and properly scientific way to proceed, it did nothing to assuage Kit’s continual urge to just rush in and start prying open the various containers until he found it. And although there was no end of interesting objects issuing from the tomb, they found neither gold-in the form of rings, bracelets, belts, or other items of jewellery-nor the prized roll of human parchment they sought.
This exacting activity continued each of the four days it took to unpack the burial chamber. On the morning of the fifth day, the workmen finally removed the folding room screens of carved acacia wood that had stood along the back wall of the tomb-the wall of painted panels depicting various events in High Priest Anen’s life, all impressively rendered, vivid and lifelike.
“More lamps!” called Kit, and sent Khalid to invite Thomas and Khefri to come and see the masterpieces. “These are the paintings I was telling you about,” said Kit. The three stood together holding their lamps high to admire the exquisite rendering.
“I must bring an artist as soon as it can possibly be arranged,” Thomas said. “Though I doubt any mere copy could do justice to the original.” His expression, alive with pleasure in the glow of the lamp, was that of a boy at Christmas. “They are wonderful.”
“That one looks like my father,” observed Khefri quietly. He pointed to one of Anen’s priestly attendants. “And there-that is the very image of my cousin Hosni.”
“Over here, gentlemen,” said Kit, directing their attention to the panel where a shaven-headed priest stood next to a Caucasian man in a colourful striped robe, open at the chest to reveal a cluster of tiny blue symbols on his skin. “I give you the man himself.”
“Upon my word!” gasped Thomas. “Here he is.” He searched among the hieroglyphs beneath the painting, found the one he was looking for, and traced it lightly with a fingertip. “The Man Who Is Map.”
“Arthur Flinders-Petrie,” said Kit.
“He was here,” said Khefri. “High Priest Anen knew him.”
“Yes, he did.” Kit stepped to the last panel. “And now,” he said, with a gallery owner’s flair, “the piece de resistance.” He directed their attention to the figure of the shaven-headed priest, a little older and heavier, standing with what looked like a scrap of leather in his hand. “That,” declared Kit, “is the Skin Map as it once existed. And see, Anen is pointing with his other hand to that big star behind him. What is that?”
“Hmmm.” Thomas held his lamp closer. “It appears to be the constellation Canus Major. I take it to be Sirius-a star especially revered by the ancients, no doubt due to its prominence and seasonal qualities.”
“That is more or less what Cosimo and Sir Henry thought,” confirmed Kit. “And the object Anen is holding,” he continued, “that is the Flinders-Petrie map-you can tell from all the little blue symbols on it. And, based on Cosimo’s assessment, it appears to be all in one piece.”
“Extraordinary,” breathed Thomas. “It is very much as you described.” He turned a grinning face to Kit. “As it has not been discovered in any of the boxes or chests yet examined, it must be in one of the few left.”
Kit cast a glance around the room at the several dozen or so remaining containers. “We live in hope.”
The work resumed. Kit returned to removing and, with Thomas, opening the last boxes and chests, his hopes soaring and crashing with each one until Khalid appeared at the table beneath the canopy to say, “This is the last.” He placed a small black lacquered box on the table. Inlaid with ivory and lapis in a geometric design, it did seem the kind of box to hold a treasure.
“Open it,” instructed Thomas. With a trembling hand, Kit lifted the lid upon an elaborate beaded necklace of lapis, carnelian, and amber… a priceless object in anyone’s estimation. There were also a matching ring and brooch.
But no map.
“Well, that’s it,” muttered Kit. “All this for nothing.”
“Not for nothing!” tutted Thomas. “We have excavated a very important tomb and have made considerable archaeological finds. The hieroglyphics alone will prove invaluable to our understanding. This is a major discovery. It will advance the science of archaeology by leaps and bounds. You should be proud.”
“Sure,” allowed Kit, “but you know what I mean. We came here to find the map.” He gestured forlornly in the direction of the storage chamber cut in the sandstone of the wadi wall behind them. “We’ve got a whole truckload of treasures-everything except the one we came to get.”
“And yet,” suggested Thomas, his steel-rimmed glasses glinting in the sun, “there is one container we have not searched.”
“I looked in every blessed box and jar myself,” blurted Kit, disappointment making him raw. “It wasn’t there.”
“Oh, ye of little wit,” admonished the doctor. “Use that brain of yours, sir. Think!”
“I am thinking,” Kit muttered. “I am thinking we’ve been on a wild goose chase.”
