The Visitors

  I hesitated, and made to rise from my chair. ‘Meanwhile, it’s late – and it’s getting cold. I’m very tired. No more questions, Dr Fong. You must leave me now.’

  To my relief, he did not argue. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘No – please don’t get up, Miss Payne. I can see myself out. I know the way now.’

  28

  Our meeting with Lord Carnarvon, Eve and Howard Carter took place later that week, some days after the official, ceremonial ‘opening’ of the tomb. Eve finally ‘ferreted us out’, as she put it. Radiant with happiness, excited and nervy, she called at our houseboat, reproached us for not letting her know we were there, and invited us to tea at Castle Carter. She and her father would shortly be returning to England, she said: they’d be there for Christmas, and would return to Egypt some time in January – there was so much to arrange regarding the tomb and the way its excavation should be handled, but her father was anxious to see us before they left.

  ‘Prepare for a surprise,’ she said, her eyes sparkling, ‘you won’t recognise him, Miss Mack – nor you, Lucy! Pups is like a new man – so much stronger than he was in the summer at Highclere. Discovering the tomb has revived him – he says it acts on him like a magnum of champagne. I shan’t say a word now, because I know he’ll want to describe it all to you – and Howard will too, of course.’

  I was sure that amiable Miss Mack would be a welcome guest at Castle Carter; I was less sure of my own welcome, given what Carter had said to me at our last meeting at Nuthanger. When we reached his house that day, I hung back shyly, half afraid that Carter would order me to leave. But he gave no sign of animosity, or even of remembering that incident. Instead, he bustled us onto his terrace, where a tea table had been set up and where Lord Carnarvon, Eve and another man were waiting for us. In the burst of excited greetings that broke out, he drew me aside and to my great surprise said, in his brusque way: ‘You’re looking well. In at the kill, I see. Been here long? Heard from Lady Rose yet? How’s that little dog of hers?’

  The little dog was happy and fit, or so Rose and Peter had informed me in their last letter. I told Carter this, and then, summoning my nerve, offered my congratulations. ‘Blessed by the gods,’ he replied, ‘three days into the dig – and there it was. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Lord Carnarvon will tell you all about it. Let me get you some tea. And before you leave, you must admire my canary. Not the first one that brought us such luck, but the one Eve brought me from Cairo – the golden bird who’ll ensure our luck continues.’

  He placed me in a chair next to Eve, who smiled up at him, and told me this canary was called Fidelio: it was a sweet little bird that sang from dawn till dusk. ‘The first one did that too,’ said the other man present, a tall, heavily built stranger, to whom I’d not been introduced, but whom I recognised at once as the fourth member of that secret night-time expedition to the Valley. He was standing just behind Eve’s chair, puffing on a cigarette, his expression sorrowful; he seemed uncertain whether to go or stay.

  ‘Oh yes indeedy,’ he went on, in a reflective tone, ‘that first canary carolled away. Morning, noon and night. Relentless it was. Until the cobra got it.’ He thrust a large hand in my direction. ‘Haven’t done the honours. I’m Arthur Callender. Call me Pecky: everyone does.’

  ‘Mr Callender is a very old friend of Howard’s,’ Eve put in sweetly, and with a dimpling smile, as she introduced us. Mr Callender trapped my small hand in his large one, gripped it hard and shook it manfully. ‘He’s the most – brilliant engineer, with many years of experience on the Egyptian railways. It’s he who contrived to light the tomb for us and – and a thousand other things.’

  ‘Semi-retired,’ Callender put in. ‘Have a farm now. In Armant. Not far from here. On the river. Sugar cane… and suchlike. Old Egyptian hand. Out here too long for my own good. Hail from Lancashire originally. Know Lancashire, do you? No? Neither do I, not any more. Left when I was three. Been to Australia, by any chance, Miss Payne?’ He cocked a nervous, bloodshot eye in my direction. ‘No? Pity. Great place. Marvellous country. Yes, indeedy. Opportunities aplenty. I spent time there. Years ago now, of course.’ He took a gulp of breath, stroked his pencil moustache, smoothed back his gingery hair and, having given this lurch of biography, lapsed into musing silence.

  He had not been handed any tea, I realised – and no cup seemed to have been provided for him. Eve, who noticed this in the same second as I did, leaned towards Carter and said something inaudible.

  ‘Oh, Callender won’t be wanting tea,’ Carter said, breaking off the conversation he’d been having with Miss Mack, tantalising phrases of which had drifted across to me. ‘He’s off on a walk – he told me. Going for a stroll by the river, aren’t you, Callender?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say no to a cuppa first, old boy, actually. If there’s one going,’ Callender said mildly, eyeing the teapot and a cake that was now circulating. He caught Carter’s gaze and seemed to reconsider. ‘Except – well, maybe not,’ he went on, his tone resigned. ‘Time calls. The river beckons. Better shift myself. Nice to meet you, Miss Payne, Mrs – er – Macpherson. Jolly exciting times, eh?’

  He ambled away and was shortly to be seen ambling out of the gates to Castle Carter.

  ‘Lancashire,’ said Eve thoughtfully, with another dimpling smile. ‘Does that explain it? I’d felt sure it was South Africa. But then I’m simply hopeless at accents.’

  ‘Heart of gold,’ Carter said in a forceful tone.

  ‘Lord, yes. Absolutely,’ Carnarvon confirmed, with a tiny satirical glance at Eve.

  ‘Callender’d give his right hand for me,’ Carter said, even more firmly. ‘Bit of a rough diamond, but a damn good engineer, nothing he can’t contrive. If we’d needed to shore up the roof in the tomb, Miss Mackenzie, he’d have been our man. And when we start bringing out the things we’ve found – we’ll need his expertise then. It’s going to be a difficult business: the entrance and the stairs are narrow, you see, and… ’

  That was Mr Callender: disposed of. Carter, Eve and her father then began to tell us about the tomb, how they had felt, what they had discovered. All three kept speaking at once and, once they began, couldn’t stop. Miss Mackenzie was listening closely, as I was; she could not, of course, produce her notebook, but had resolved to remember everything we were told for transcribing later that day. I could see she was trying hard; but very soon we were both lost, dazzled and confused in a bewilderment of riches. There were several magnificent gilded couches, one with lion heads; there was a throne, the most beautiful object Lord Carnarvon had ever seen in Egypt, its workmanship exceptionally fine: it showed Tutankhamun as a young man, with his wife tenderly bent towards him; there were caskets, golden chariots; strange white oviform boxes whose contents had not yet been examined – all of it stacked, higgledy-piggledy, under, behind and above; treasures undreamed of, all infinitely precious, their position frighteningly precarious.

  ‘It was like looking into the property shop of some ancient opera company,’ Carter said. ‘And in this first room, which we’re calling the Antechamber, there was an opening into another small space – we’re calling that the Annexe––’

  ‘And inside that,’ Carnarvon interrupted, ‘the confusion and disorder were even greater. It’s another storeroom – everything Tutankhamun could have needed in the afterlife. We just peered into it, Miss Mackenzie. You couldn’t have risked entering it. There are thousands of objects there, heaped on top of one another, tossed onto the floor. One step inside and you’d risk breaking the most astonishing, exquisite things. We’re facing a gargantuan task. We’ll need expert help – we hope the Metropolitan may assist us.’

  ‘We think the tomb was broken into twice in antiquity,’ Carter put in. ‘That accounts for the disorder. We may have to revise that view, but that’s what we think at present. One party of thieves seems to have been after the perfumes and the anointing oils, the cosmetic creams and unguents – they were priceless then. We found the containers they’d left behin
d. Glorious things, finely carved, made of calcite, alabaster, but they left them – all they wanted was the face creams. We even found their fingerprints in the residue.’

  ‘And the other party of thieves was after gold,’ Carnarvon interjected. ‘We could see the places where they’d snapped statues off their bases, and tried to prise the beaten gold from the chariots and the throne.’

  ‘Howard found this ancient piece of cloth, Lucy,’ Eve said, ‘the kind of linen the natives still wind around their heads to this day. It was just tossed down – and bundled up inside it were some of the king’s beautiful, beautiful gold rings––’

  ‘So we think the thieves may have been disturbed,’ Carter interrupted. ‘Caught in the act. Then, when the necropolis officials returned to the tomb, to restore some semblance of order, they simply left the rings in the thief’s turban, just as they’d found them.’

  ‘Oh heavens,’ Miss Mack cried, ‘you think the thieves were caught in the act, Mr Carter? Imagine it, Lucy!’

  ‘I do. That is my belief at present. And if they were, Miss Mackenzie, we know precisely what fate awaited them. Torture. Impalement. A slow and a hideously painful death.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t talk about thieves, Howard,’ Eve said quickly, and I saw she had paled. ‘Please don’t let’s think of that, or of them. We can’t be sure that happened – they may have escaped.’ She hesitated, with an odd pleading look at her father. ‘The important thing, Myrtle, is that the robbers seem to have taken very little, hardly anything at all really, almost nothing – and – and they’ve left us so much. So many, many lovely things. When we first went inside the – oh, it was the day of days, wasn’t it, Pups?’

  ‘The greatest day of my life, my darling,’ Carnarvon said quietly. He reached across and took Eve’s hand in his. There was a silence. ‘Though there may yet be an even greater one, Miss Mackenzie,’ he continued, in a careful, measured way, as if rehearsing his words. ‘We may have penetrated only part of Tutankhamun’s tomb, you see. Beyond the north wall of the Antechamber, which is sealed, as the first two walls were, there may be another chamber. We believe we may find the king’s burial place. The Holy of Holies.’

  ‘A third wall? The king’s actual sarcophagus? Mercy!’ Miss Mack coloured.

  ‘That wall is guarded,’ Eve said, her voice unsteady. ‘Standing either side of it there are twin statues, of the king and his ka, and they’re like – sentinels. They’re life-size, deathly black like Osiris, with eyes made of obsidian. Their eyes glitter. They’ve been keeping watch for over three thousand years, and I felt they were watching us. I wanted to explain to them – we hadn’t come to rob or disturb. We came – reverently.’ Her voice caught and tears sprang to her eyes. Carter immediately interrupted.

  ‘All that’s in the future,’ he said briskly. ‘We shan’t know what’s behind that north wall for weeks yet. We can’t think of investigating it, let alone dismantling it, until after the Antechamber is cleared. That space is extremely cramped; we can’t risk damaging the objects there. They have to be recorded, conserved, removed to safety. We have weeks of the most delicate, painstaking work ahead of us. When that’s complete, and not before, we’ll investigate what’s behind that wall. Its wonders – if such they prove – must wait. Meanwhile, we’ll hope.’ He glanced at Carnarvon, who, meeting his gaze evenly, inclined his head. ‘Eve, why don’t you take Lucy to see our little canary?’ Carter added.

  Eve gave him a grateful look. Taking my hand, she led me indoors; the canary’s song could be heard at once. Its cage had been placed on the windowsill of Carter’s sitting room in full sunshine; the little bird fluttered from perch to perch, fluffed up its bright yellow feathers, opened its tiny beak and sang with an astonishing, sweet musicality.

  ‘Ah, Lucy… ’ Eve wiped her eyes. ‘I’m so happy, but… Everything Pups and Howard dreamed of and prayed for and more – their wildest hopes: and now they’ve been granted. Somehow that frightens me. I’m sorry to be foolish. It’s just that sometimes – it’s lack of sleep, I think. Howard has been so marvellous and – oh, doesn’t he sing sweetly? Poor little prisoner. I wish I could let him fly free – but I daren’t, of course.’

  I waited quietly, saying nothing, remembering that secret night-time expedition, of which no mention had been made. I listened to the canary’s singing and, after a while, I asked Eve who had named him. I could see she was tense with some hidden distress, and I thought such an innocuous question might help to calm her.

  ‘I did,’ she replied, in a distracted way. ‘My father loves opera, you see, Lucy – and Fidelio is his favourite, so I named him for Pups. My father can be superstitious – he was desperately upset when he heard what happened to Howard’s first canary. He saw it as a bad omen. So I hoped – Fidelio is a joyous opera, you see. And this is a joyous moment – I do know that… And you’re joyous too, aren’t you, my sweet?’ Breaking off, she stroked the bars of the cage.

  We listened to the little bird’s outpourings; its songs seemed to help Eve recover her equanimity. Apologising for her tears, she then led me back to the terrace. There her father and Carter were in the midst of describing the Antechamber’s opening ceremony, explaining that Lord Allenby, detained in Cairo by demonstrations and the worsening political situation, had been unable to attend, but Lady Allenby had represented him; describing the reactions of the Maamor, Wise Bey – and Monsieur Lacau.

  ‘Couldn’t bring himself to attend the same day as everyone else,’ Carter was saying. ‘Had to have his own private view the next day. Typical Lacau! But when he entered the Antechamber, that took the wind out of his sails – it silenced him. That has to be a first.’

  ‘Come on now, Carter,’ Carnarvon said mildly, as Eve and I reappeared, ‘we’re going to have to work with the man, you know. Lacau was perfectly civil to me. I think he was genuinely moved – overwhelmed by what he saw. Give him some credit.’

  Carter did not reply to that but rose to his feet and turned his back. Eve, in her capacity as peacemaker, was swift to intervene: ‘And Howard’s friend from Cairo, Mr Merton from The Times, was at the official opening too, Myrtle,’ she said quickly. ‘We’d decided that he was the best person to break the story and The Times published it yesterday – it was headed “By runner from the Valley of the Kings” – so exciting! Now the whole world knows our secrets! We haven’t seen the paper yet, of course, but Mr Merton says it’s caused a sensation: Reuters picked it up at once, all the papers have cabled Cairo and they’re sending their stringers to Luxor post-haste. Mr Merton’s given us a copy of his article. It’s marvellous, Myrtle, frightfully atmospheric and really quite erudite.’

  ‘It damn well should be. I wrote most of it,’ Carter put in.

  ‘And a tremendously good job you made of it too,’ Carnarvon said in his urbane way. ‘Missed your vocation there, my dear fellow. But your chance will come, Carter… I’m planning a book, Miss Mackenzie,’ he continued, rising to his feet. ‘There will have to be a full scholarly publication in due course, naturally, but that’s a long, long way off. Meanwhile, I think a more popular, less highbrow account of my find might be the thing. Why let these journalist fellows make all the running? Carter could write it, we’d need to get it out quickly, capitalise on the news while it’s still fresh, obviously. Yes, a book. A blow-by-blow report – there’d be a pretty good market for that, don’t you agree?’

  ‘A blow-by-blow report?’ Miss Mack echoed faintly. She swallowed hard and blushed crimson. ‘My goodness! What an excellent idea, Lord Carnarvon. A book. Indeed. Yes… Gracious, is that the time? It has flown by – all so fascinating. So moving… privileged to have heard it… Our deepest thanks, mustn’t detain… Now Lucy and I really must go.’

  She rose, caught me by the hand and began propelling me towards the garden at guilty speed. Carter, who’d been staring towards the river, said, in his brooding, abrupt way, ‘Before you go, take a look at something. Then perhaps you’ll understand what this means to me. I brought it
here for safe keeping. It was lying on the floor, on the threshold of the Antechamber. When we entered, it was the first thing I saw. I nearly trod on it.’

  And it was then he showed us an object soon to become famous: one that can be seen in the Egyptian Museum now, one that has been replicated and constantly photographed over the years: Carter had given it the name that is still used for it, Tutankhamun’s Wishing Cup. He fetched it from the house, carefully removed its linen wrapping and held it up to our gaze. A translucent chalice, cut from a single block of the palest alabaster, shaped like an opened lotus flower, that Egyptian symbol of rebirth; it was an object of serene, delicate beauty. Its surface was incised with hieroglyphs – and what I remember of that afternoon is not just the evasions that were contrived, or any lies we were told, but Carter’s voice, steady at first, then hoarse with sudden emotion, as he translated those hieroglyphs: Tutankhamun, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of Heaven.

  ‘I think he was a child when he came to the throne,’ Carter said. ‘Until now, you see, we knew virtually nothing about him: almost all traces of his reign were destroyed by his successors. He disappeared from history. But all the images we’ve found so far show him as a child or as a very young man. A boy when he inherited and still little more than a boy, perhaps, when he died.’ And then he translated the words etched around the mouth of this boy’s wishing cup: May your spirit live… O, you who love Thebes, may you spend countless millions of years, seated with your face to the cool north breeze, with your eyes beholding happiness.

  A version of that wish would, years later, be inscribed on Carter’s own grave in a London cemetery. That day, I could see how profoundly it moved him. Since Carter hated to betray his emotions, he disguised this at once. Breaking off, turning aside, he said that was an approximate translation; inscriptions were not his field, and more expert deciphering than his would be required. ‘A young boy praying to rest his eyes on his homeland. An eternity with a sweet cool breeze on his face. That was his concept of heaven… I prefer it to ours,’ he said in a gruff tone. Keeping his back to us, he rewrapped the chalice and walked away.