relaxed and happy to see us. Sailor made the money exchange with Rais and he bowed slightly in return. He said he would take us to Rais Ahmed Gurgar, the foreman for Howard Carter at the site. Since we were small, we could be used to carry the last bits of debris and rubbish from the narrow steps leading directly down to the tomb. Gurgar would arrange it. Sailor thanked Rais, saying that would, indeed, be close enough.
With Rais and his brother in the lead, we snaked our way into the Valley of the Kings. We passed by dozens of workman and boys, some standing in small groups, but most were one behind the other in long lines with baskets of rock and debris on their heads. A few men were animated and shouting. All of them let Rais and Gad through without a question, usually greeting them with a smile or a phrase in Arabic. Sailor, Ray, and I stayed close on their heels and kept silent. Signs of earlier digs and excavations littered the valley on all sides. The tomb Howard Carter had discovered was small compared to some of the other sites. It lay directly underneath the rubble that had accumulated during the construction of the later and much larger tomb of Rameses VI. This was one of the reasons it had not been found by tomb robbers or anyone else for over three thousand years.
Rais informed us that a day earlier they had cleared the stairs, broken the seals, and opened the doorway, only to come upon another blocked descending passage filled with local stone, fragments of jars, vases, and other broken objects all of a type dating to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Today, they had already cleared nine meters of the passage.
As we approached the activity surrounding the entrance, Gurgar, the foreman, and a man Rais called Callender came forward to confront Rais and Gad.
“Are these the boys?” he asked.
“Yes,” Rais replied. “These are the boys. Are they the proper size?”
The man gave us a quick glance. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Keep them near, Rais. We are about to open the second doorway. We are only waiting for Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn. Once they arrive, send me the boys.”
Callender turned abruptly and walked over to confer with another man, an Englishman dressed in a suit. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and wore a wide-brimmed hat that kept his face in shadow. Rais was proud to tell us the man was his boss, the archaeologist Howard Carter.
Though every face of every man close to the entrance looked tense and anxious, there was little being said. The anticipation was palpable. Rais led us to a low stone wall where a few carpenters sat watching the proceedings. They had been summoned the night before by Carter and asked to build a temporary wooden grille over the first doorway to protect the tomb. Sailor, Ray, and I crouched down in the shade of the wall and waited. We said nothing.
Several minutes passed, then I heard a group of voices speaking English in the distance. They were coming toward us. Howard Carter broke away from the men around him and walked to greet them. He was smiling broadly. It was Lord Carnarvon and his party, which included several Englishmen, three men from the Egyptian Antiquities Department, and two women, one of whom was Lady Evelyn. The women wore wide hats and long full skirts. To make sure they were cool and comfortable, a boy about our age followed behind, carrying two unopened umbrellas in the event either or both of the women required shade. Lady Evelyn smiled back at Howard Carter as he approached.
And then my skin began to crawl. I lost my breath and felt a chill run down my entire body. My eyes opened wide and froze. Next to me, I thought I heard Ray growl under his breath. Sailor leaped to his feet and started forward. I grabbed his wrist and stopped him. We could not believe what was in front of us, what was walking by and smiling along with everyone else. The green eyes, the brilliant white of his teeth. The small bitter laugh behind the smile. Evil pure as light. The boy walking by, the boy holding the umbrellas, was the Fleur-du-Mal.
“Hello,
I could feel my jaw tighten, but I made no response. Their small party passed quickly and joined Howard Carter. He led them all toward the entrance of the tomb. The Fleur-du-Mal turned once and winked at Sailor, who stood still as stone and then spit on the ground. Callender walked up to Rais, saying he would only need one of “his boys.” He turned and pointed to me. “You there,” he said. “Come along, come with me! Come now, boy!” I glanced at Sailor and Ray. There was no hesitation. I nodded and followed him step for step.
The workmen crowding near the entrance made way for Callender. In moments we were facing the descending stairs of the tomb. Howard Carter stood waiting at the top step. Behind him Lord Carnarvon was speaking in hushed tones to another man, followed by Lady Evelyn and another woman. And since candles are always required to check for foul gases when opening ancient subterranean tombs, the Fleur-du-Mal stood waiting behind the women, holding candles.
“Hand the boy the candles, Callender,” Carter said. “Tell him to stay near the other boy. Then come along. We are about to enter.”
“Done,” Callender answered.
There was no time to think. I watched Howard Carter and the others begin to descend the stairs. Callender had Gurgar hand me the candles and in seconds the Fleur-du-Mal and I were shoulder to shoulder, unable to speak to each other, descending the stairs and entering the tomb. We walked past the remnants of the first doorway and down the long passage that led to the second doorway. Broken things, potsherds, and scraps of rubbish still littered the floor. Carter cleared the last of it away. Callender helped him. No one spoke. Then he and Carter began to make a hole in the top left corner of the doorway. Carter asked for the candles. All eyes in the tomb turned to us.
I glanced at the Fleur-du-Mal for the first time. He winked, then led us around the others until we flanked the ancient doorway on both sides. Carter lit the candles. He and Callender widened the breach they had started. We held the candles high in front of it. No one breathed. A moment later the candles began to flicker from the hot gases escaping.
“Hold them closer,” Carter said, peering inside. No one moved. Seconds ticked and the candles danced in the light. He said nothing. I stared in the eyes of the Fleur-du-Mal. I saw something I never expected. Unconsciously, something much more common than psychopathic obsession appeared in his eyes. Something as common to the Giza as it is to the Meq, and as old. Hope. And that is the real secret of the Octopus. The power of the Octopus is and always has been that it represents the seed of Hope. In his eyes, in his face, I saw what my grandfather had seen, and I knew instantly why the Fleur-du-Mal had killed him.
Lord Carnarvon spoke first. “Well, can you see anything?”
Carter turned his head slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Things…wonderful things.”
To tell a story with words is admirable and usually adequate, but to tell a story with things, real things, is to make it come alive. The discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamen opened a real and tactile conduit to a unique world and time that had passed three thousand two hundred years earlier. Intact, Howard Carter brought that world directly into the light of the twentieth century. The best story ever. Within forty-eight hours, the twentieth century had descended on the story and the Valley of the Kings. The site was made completely inaccessible to almost everyone. Howard Carter, Callender, Gurgar, and emissaries of the Egyptian government saw to that.
The Fleur-du-Mal had disappeared without a trace immediately after we emerged from the tomb. The general chaos and excitement had created a crowd scene, which he slipped through easily. I was reminded of a real octopus using his own black cloud for confusion and escape.
We were forced to wait another four months before we found a method for viewing the artifacts being removed, one by one, from inside the tomb. Each piece, each object being taken out, was priceless. Couches, caskets, alabaster vases, gold stools and chairs, chests of inlaid ivory ornamented with scenes of hunting and battle, golden bows, staves, and eventually exquisite jewelry and personal effects of the boy king. On and on, the list seemed endless. If the Octopus happened to be in the tomb, it would be brought out. One evening, Ray stated the obvious. He said, “I wonder what they’re doing with all the loot.” Sailor and I wondered the same thing.
We learned from Rais that Carter had been keeping everything in one place for cleaning and treatment before being packed and transported to Cairo. All objects were stored in the tomb of Seti II. Rais told Sailor there was a man he knew who might be able to smuggle us into the site as donkey boys, for a fee, of course. Another man in security might agree to let us have an hour or so inside the tomb of Seti II, for an added fee, of course. Rais claimed this was personally distasteful and also unavoidable. Sailor paid him well and I gave him an extra American double eagle twenty-dollar gold piece, which Rais held and coveted more than anything being removed from the tomb.
