Nor was there, not really. What bothered me was not claustrophobia in the classic sense: abnormal fear of narrow, confined spaces. As long as there was light and there were other people around, I was okay.
At least that’s what I told myself.
It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. There were lights at frequent intervals and modern stairs or ramps over the rougher parts of the ancient passageways. And people. Schmidt stuck close, bless his thoughtful little heart.
Egyptian tomb architecture has never been one of my passions in life. Sweet set out to prove it was one of his; he latched on to Perry, despite the latter’s attempts to get away so he could come and tell me all about everything, and began babbling about changes in axis and angles of descent and comparisons with earlier and later types. He’d certainly done his homework. Alice and Schmidt were arguing about Minoan influences on Amarna art. Feisal’s voice echoed weirdly as he mentioned points of interest.
There weren’t many. The walls of the sloping passage were rough and unadorned. It had an eerie impressiveness, though, and by the time we reached the burial chamber everyone except Feisal had fallen silent.
There wasn’t much to see there either, only a few scratches on the rough walls; but when Feisal pointed them out and described the scenes of which they were the scanty remainder, he managed to suggest something of the beauty that had once been there: depictions of the king and queen offering to the sole god they had worshipped, the sun disk with rays ending in small, caressing human hands; mourners, their garments rent and their hands raised in ceremonial grieving. Even with his eloquence I couldn’t make out the details of the figure on the funeral bier. Feisal claimed these details proved it was a female figure.
‘But I thought this was the king’s tomb,’ the Frau from Hamburg said.
‘We don’t know the identity of the woman on the bier,’ Feisal answered. ‘It has been suggested she was – ’
‘Nefertiti!’ Louisa swooped down on him, waving her arms. Her veils billowed like bat wings. ‘Yes, I feel it. I feel her presence.’
She flopped down onto the floor and sat cross-legged, crooning to herself.
The others studied her in mingled disgust and embarrassment. Sweet muttered something derogatory about New Age mystics and Blenkiron’s face was rigid with distaste.
‘Odd how so many people go soggy over Nefertiti,’ murmured a satirical voice. Hands in his pockets, hair shining in the light of the bulb overhead, John glanced at me and smiled.
Feisal was the only other member of the party who was more amused than embarrassed. He had probably run into this sort of thing before. ‘It is not Nefertiti. She appears elsewhere in the same scene. One authority has suggested that this was her tomb, not that of her husband, but that viewpoint is not generally accepted. The unfinished suite of rooms leading off the downward passage may have been intended for her burial. We will visit them later, but first you will want to see the best preserved portion of the tomb, which was designed for one of the royal princesses.’
Ignoring Louisa, he led us out the way we had come.
The others crowded after him. They weren’t any more comfortable in that room than I had been, and I’m not just talking about the temperature and the close air. It was good sized – about thirty feet square, according to Feisal, and the ceiling didn’t brush the top of my head. But somehow I felt as if it did, and the battered stone pillars looked as if they might collapse at any moment.
Whistling softly and irreverently, John stood studying the wall and Mary sidled up to me. ‘Are you as anxious to leave this place as I am?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know. How anxious are you?’ I wiped the perspiration off my forehead.
‘I suppose it’s partly psychological,’ Mary murmured. ‘The reminders of death and decay and darkness . . .’
That was one of the words I didn’t need to hear right then. Without replying I headed for the door.
I was determined to stick it out, though. The chambers we had visited in the mastaba tombs at Sakkara were above ground; the nobles’ tombs at Amarna were cut into the cliff, but we hadn’t gone down under, into the burial chambers, and I had always been able to see daylight in the distance. This was the most difficult place I’d encountered yet, and I felt I was going about conquering my phobia in a very sensible way. The hell with jumping back onto the horse; I’d rather start with a very small pony or a Saint Bernard, and work my way up.
One of Akhenaton’s daughters had died young and had been buried in her father’s tomb, in a suite of rooms located off the main descending corridor. The scene I had found particularly moving, that of the little body lying stiff on the funeral bed, with the grieving parents bending over it, could hardly be made out. Some vandal had tried to hack out a portion of the relief; the deep jagged incision had destroyed the upper part of the princess’s body and other details.
‘That’s an example of why I dread increased accessibility,’ said Larry, who was standing next to me. ‘These reliefs were virtually intact until the thirties.’
‘But you cannot blame the poor devils of villagers,’ said Schmidt, the unreconstructed socialist, on my other side. ‘It is the European and American collectors who pay large prices for illegal antiquities who are responsible. I do not mean you, of course,’ he added quickly.
Larry laughed. ‘That’s why my collection isn’t very impressive. The best objects were acquired by museums and less scrupulous collectors before I got interested. Anyhow, I’m more concerned about preservation than collecting.’
When we left the princess’s rooms I noticed that John again hung back while Mary followed me. Had there been a lovers’ tiff? I waited for her and gave her a friendly smile. I had, of course, no ulterior motive.
‘Almost through,’ I said encouragingly.
‘Oh, I don’t mind.’ Her voice wavered a little, though. ‘It’s been very interesting.’
We started up the ramp. It seemed a lot steeper than it had when we descended. The last suite of rooms, the ones Feisal had said might have been meant for the queen’s burial, was located about halfway up the incline. Indicating the entrance where the others were waiting, I asked, ‘Are you going to skip the final treat, or shall we participate?’
Mary glanced behind her. John was some distance away, taking his time. Couldn’t the poor little wimp come to any decision without consulting him? What had he been doing down there alone? Perhaps there
‘I meant to ask you before,’ I said casually. ‘About Jen. How is she?’
‘Much better. In fact – ’
She stopped with a gulp. All of a sudden there he was, behind her, looming. ‘You startled me, darling!’ she exclaimed.
‘In fact,’ John said, ‘she’s recovered enough to return home.’
‘You mean she’s left Egypt?’ I stared at him.
‘This morning. She doesn’t trust Egyptian doctors or hospitals.’
‘Then she won’t be rejoining the tour?’
‘No, she won’t.’
I looked from his self-satisfied smile to Mary’s downcast face. Was that what the quarrel had been about?
‘You sound pleased,’ I said.
‘Oh, I am. She was a bloody nuisance,’ John said callously. ‘Now hurry along, girls. One would suppose, from the way you’re dawdling, that you are enjoying this.’
By the time we had finished examining a few more rough unfinished rock-cut rooms and listened to Feisal describe their possible function, everyone, even Louisa, was ready to call it a day. ‘I do not feel her presence,’ she intoned. ‘The beautiful one was never interred here.’
‘She’s probably right about that,’ muttered Larry. ‘But for the wrong reasons. Since when did she become an expert on Nefertiti?’
‘I think she’s making her the heroine of her new book,’ I said.
‘Then why was she carrying on about missing Meydum?’ Larry demanded. ‘That pyramid predates Nefertiti by over a thousand years.’
‘Historical novelists don’t worry about little details like that,’ I explained, with certain guilty memories of my
