The Hippopotamus Pool (47 page)

Musing thus, I allowed Sir Edward to lead me to where the horses were waiting. He tossed the urchin who had been holding them a coin, and helped me to mount. "Are you going to tell your husband about this little adventure?" he inquired.

"I see no other choice." Tenderly I touched my bruised throat. "Unless you would like to confess to throttling me."

He returned my quip with a jest of his own. "And you to stabbing me."

"He is going to roar," I said regretfully. "Ah well, venting his emotions will be good for him. Er—I will tell him the exact truth, of course: that I came to pay my respects to Abd el Hamed's widow and was astonished to discover she was harboring the mystery woman. She will claim, of course, that she was ignorant of her late husband's criminal activities, and that she had no idea the poor Inglizi lady was involved in them. The lady came to her because ... hmmm, let me think. Because she had wearied of the social life of the hotel and wanted solitude and peace, far from the madding crowd? Out of the kindness of her heart Layla took the lady in ... Yes, something along those lines."

"Oh, well done!" Sir Edward exclaimed. "Have you ever thought of writing a novel, Mrs. Emerson? You have quite a gift for fiction."

"That is what
she
will say," I replied somewhat severely. "I never lie to my husband, Sir Edward. I will tell him the exact truth—that to my utter astonishment I was attacked by a female whose existence we had postulated, but of whose identity we were . .. Er, I presume, Sir Edward, that you arrived at the house only moments before you burst into the room? I am curious to discover how you knew I was in need of rescue, since I do not recall crying out."

"I do not suppose you could have cried out; you were being throttled very efficiently. No; what I heard was a woman's voice raised in anger, and employing language ordinarily considered very unwomanly. I took the liberty of investigating."

So he had not overheard any of the preceding discussion. That was a relief; I felt certain I could rely on his discretion but I was glad I did not have to. My—and Emerson's—previous acquaintance with the mystery woman was best kept secret.

I again assured him of my appreciation. "None of us can be blamed for failing to realize that our unknown adversary was female," I explained.

"Women, Sir Edward, are sadly discriminated against in this man's world, but their subordinate status does give them one advantage. They are always the last to be suspected!"

"I have learned my lesson," was the rueful reply. "Never again will I underestimate a lady's capabilities, for good or evil."

"You too must be entirely candid," I said. "You followed me because you feared Hamed's henchmen might still be in Gurneh. Emerson will be very grateful."

"Not so grateful that he will regret my departure," said the young man smoothly. "Yes; I must leave Luxor almost immediately. Urgent family matters have arisen that require my attention."

"I am sorry to hear it. Have you informed Emerson?"

"I intended to do so today. He will have no difficulty replacing me; every archaeologist in Egypt has offered the services of his staff."

"We will be sorry to lose you."

"It is kind of you to say so." He turned amused blue eyes in my direction. "You haven't seen the last of me, Mrs. Emerson."

"Give up all hope of Nefret, Sir Edward. Emerson would never stand for it."

"One never knows, Mrs. Emerson. I am reckoned a persuasive fellow." We were riding slowly side by side; smiling, as if to himself, he said musingly, "Miss Nefret is a beautiful girl and will be a wealthy heiress; but her greatest attraction to a man like myself is the possibility that she may one day become a woman of character—the sort of woman you are now. I hope you will take it in the spirit in which it is meant, Mrs. Emerson, when I say that were it not for the fact that you are esteemed by one whom I hold in the highest regard, I would venture to ... But I believe you understand me."

It is difficult to be angry with a gentleman who pays you compliments, even impertinent compliments. Especially impertinent compliments.

On April 5, 1900, we opened the sarcophagus.

It had taken us almost two months, working day and night, to clear the way to that massive structure. Fortunately for Emerson's blood pressure, we were able to accomplish this without sacrificing his (our, I should say) professional principles. Starting from the doorway, we cleared a meter-wide path directly toward the sarcophagus, recording the contents of each section before proceeding to the next. Our labors were made easier by the fact that this passageway was relatively free of objects, as if someone had removed or pushed them aside. The tangle of jewelry was one of the prizes we preserved, but the tantalizing wheels had to wait; they were not in the direct path to the sarcophagus. Emerson calculated it would require at least two more seasons to clear the rest of the chamber, but it was imperative, in his opinion and mine, that the mummy be removed before we left Egypt. Though the tomb would be locked and guarded, we did not underestimate the industrious robbers of Luxor.

Curiosity and public interest had risen to fever pitch after Kevin published his first "scoop"—the fact that Walter's painstaking study of the scraps of plaster found in the debris of the entrance corridor revealed the name of Queen Hatshepsut. He and Emerson agreed that the fragmentary cartouche could only be hers. It appeared nowhere else; Emerson insisted that the remaining reliefs and the inscriptions on the sarcophagus made it certain that the tomb was that of Tetisheri, but that did not prevent the imagination of press and public from running wild. Tetisheri was virtually unknown, except to Egyptologists, but the great queen Hatshepsut was familiar to every tourist who had visited her temple. It was Kevin, I believe, who suggested the ladies might have shared the sarcophagus! This was nonsense, of course, but it delighted the readers of his newspaper—two queens for the price of one! I did not doubt that the fantasy would appeal as strongly to the Gurnawis. There is not a great deal of difference after all between so-called primitive and self-proclaimed civilized people.

Though we had tried to keep secret the precise day on which we would open the sarcophagus, a crowd of onlookers had assembled, and our men had their hands full restraining importunate journalists and curiosity-seekers.

As it was, the party admitted into the tomb was larger than Emerson would have liked. He had erected temporary walls along the pathway in the burial chamber, but he kept up a muttered undercurrent of expletives as our distinguished visitors—M. Maspero, the British Consul General (our old friend Lord Cromer, formerly Sir Evelyn Baring), Howard Carter in his capacity of Inspector, and a representative of (the Khedive proceeded along the narrow passage. Cyrus was there, and—to the visible surprise of Maspero and the indignation of the Pasha—so were Abdullah and his grandson. I had agreed with Emerson that they had a right to be present.

The previous day Emerson and Abdullah had set up the necessary block-and-tackle arrangement, with heavy wooden tripods at either end of the sarcophagus, and had used levers and wedges to raise the top just far enough to allow the ropes to pass under it. As the great quartzite lid slowly rose, every eye was fixed upon it and every breath came quick and shallow. At last the gap was wide enough, and Emerson looked inside.

He stepped down from the stone on which he had stood. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I regret to say that Queen Tetisheri is not receiving today."

The sarcophagus was empty. Not a scrap of wood, not a broken bone remained.

Because of the crowds we had to retreat to the
Amelia
in order to entertain our visitors. Toasts were proposed and drunk, but Maspero's congratulations were mingled with polite commiseration. Emerson only shrugged. "A minor disappointment, monsieur," he said equably. "The paintings are masterpieces, the contents of the tomb remarkable. One could not reasonably hope for as much."

After the distinguished visitors had taken their departure I turned to Emerson. "You knew she wasn't there! You would not have taken it so coolly if you had not anticipated this."

"I was prepared for her absence, yes," Emerson said calmly. "You see, my dear, I have always believed that the bald little old lady from the Deir el Bahri cache is Tetisheri. She bears a striking resemblance to other members of the family who were also in the cache—those protruding front teeth are quite distinctive. Don't ask me to account for how she got there, though, or why her empty sarcophagus was so carefully closed. It is and will probably always remain a mystery."

"Oh, come," Walter exclaimed. "You must have a theory or two."

Emerson had already removed his coat and cravat. Leaning back in his chair, he took out his pipe. "What about a whiskey all round?" he inquired genially. "We have a great deal to celebrate, my dears. A mummy more or less does not detract.

"In fact, my brilliant deductions as to the location of the tomb were wide of the mark. This was not Tetisheri's original tomb; it was a reburial, made by Hatshepsut for her revered ancestress after the original tomb had been robbed or threatened—the latter, I think, since much of the funerary equipment survived.

"By that time the kings of the new Theban Empire had realized that conspicuous monuments like pyramids invited the attention of tomb robbers. Hatshepsut's father was the first to build his tomb in the Valley of the Kings—no one knowing, no one seeing, as the king's architect boasted. Hatshepsut concealed her own tomb so successfully that it has not been found. The location she selected for Tetisheri was equally obscure. She had the tomb decorated in the conventional style, and, with a modesty unusual in an Egyptian ruler, she had herself depicted only in the entrance corridor. Those reliefs and inscriptions probably described her pious restoration of her ancestress's burial.

"After her death her nephew, whom she had kept under her thumb for years, began attacking her monuments. As I reconstruct the case, it was his men who entered Tetisheri's tomb. Thutmose, whose mother was of humble birth, was probably collecting ancestors; he removed Tetisheri and some of her grave goods. And don't ask me to speculate about why some things were taken away and others were left! Unlike some of my colleagues, I am an excavator, not a writer of historical romances. The last act of Thutmose's servants was to destroy the decoration of the entrance corridor, which mentioned Hatshepsut.

"The tomb was entered again in the Twenty-First Dynasty and used for burials of a priestly family—those whose coffins we found trampled and broken by the modern thieves. It may have been they who deposited the Nameless Mummy, but I am inclined to believe he was already there, and that it was his presence that deterred the priests from entering the burial chamber."

"Well done, Emerson," I said. "I agree in general with your reconstruction; but you have not offered a theory as to the identity of the Nameless Mummy."

"Come now," Walter exclaimed. "Not even you, Amelia, would have the ... That is, would dare . . . What I mean to say—"

"What he means," said Emerson, "is that only you possess the imaginative force to invent—pardon me—deduce the solution to this ancient mystery. Proceed, my dear Peabody. I await your remarks with interest."

"It is only a theory, of course," I said modestly. "But as you said, we can be fairly certain that the tomb was entered by agents of Thutmose III. The king destroyed the reliefs that showed his powerful, autocratic aunt Hatshepsut, but he had no reason to resent Tetisheri. It must have been he who left the Nameless Mummy. So who was this unfortunate, horribly murdered, ritually destroyed? Obviously—What did you say, Emerson?"

"Obviously," Emerson muttered. "I said 'Obviously,' repeating your own word. Do go on, my dear."

"Obviously he was an individual of some importance, a priest or prince or noble. The body of a common criminal would not have been preserved at all. Obviously he had committed some act that won him the hatred of the pharaoh, for this was an official murder—an execution, in short. Now I ask you—what high official would have been hated by Thutmose? What low-born upstart had dared to—er—"