Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [65]
‘There you are.’
I shook the sleep from my eyes and looked up. The figure standing over me wasn’t wearing a white kilt and beaded collar but dust-coloured pants and shirt. Larry gave me a tentative smile. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’
‘It’s a good thing you did. I was about to fall over.’
‘Some of us are going to have a look at the Old Kingdom tombs,’ Larry explained. ‘Anton thought you might want to come along.’
‘The First Dynasty royal tombs? I thought nothing remained of them.’
‘Nothing worth visiting, no. But there are tombs of all periods here; this was one of the holiest places in Egypt, the legendary site of the tomb of Osiris. Last year an expedition from Boston located a new cemetery of Fourth Dynasty burials. Normally tourists aren’t allowed, but I happen to know the chap in charge and . . . He broke off, eyeing me doubtfully. ‘But perhaps only an enthusiast like myself would be interested.’
He looked like a little boy whose mum has rejected his offering of a toad or a garter snake. Close your eyes and think of the National Museum, I told myself. The tombs must be mastabas, like the ones at Sakkara. The superstructures were all above ground. If anybody invited me to visit the sunken burial chamber I would politely decline.
‘I’d love to,’ I said.
We were a select group, as it turned out. Ed Whitbread was present, of course; he trailed Larry and me at a discreet distance. Sweet and Bright had also joined us.
‘Where’s Schmidt?’ I asked, turning to look back as we started off across the sandy wasteland.
‘Feeding cats, I expect,’ Larry said. ‘Shall we go back for him? He may have changed his mind.’
‘He’s easily distracted,’ I admitted. ‘Wait a minute, here comes . . . No, it’s Feisal.’
The sun was in my eyes or I wouldn’t have made that mistake. Feisal soon caught up with us. He was frowning.
‘Sir, the bus will be leaving in an hour. Where . . .’
Larry explained. ‘I’d have asked you to join us, Feisal, but I thought you had to stay with the group.’
Feisal’s scowl changed to a look of bright-eyed interest. It wasn’t directed at me. I kept forgetting he was a trained Egyptologist. ‘They are now buying souvenirs and cold drinks. I haven’t had a chance to see the excavations, so I will join you if you don’t mind.’
He fell tactfully behind, leaving me to Larry, who proceeded to tell me all about the Old Kingdom tombs. I must say it made a pleasant change to have a man flex his mind instead of his muscles to impress me.
It was also a pleasant change to leave the crowds behind. An ambitious ‘guide’ trotted along with us until Larry dismissed him with a curt Arabic phrase. We had been walking for ten minutes when he gestured. ‘There it is.’
I looked around for walls and cut stone. All I could see was a low mound up ahead. A sinking feeling came over me as I realized I had made a slight error. Anything that had been above ground in two thousand-plus B.C. would be under it now, buried by encroaching sand. I followed Larry up the slope of the mound, and cheered up when I saw below me, not a dark sinister hole in the ground, but a large pit open to the sky. It was paved with stone and there were a few stretches of wall, none of them over a metre high. In front of one such stretch squatted a tan bundle, which unfolded into a man.
‘Sorry, folks, nobody is allowed . . .’ he began. Then his narrow face relaxed. ‘Mr Blenkiron! I heard you were in Egypt, but I didn’t expect you’d honour us with a visit.’
‘Hope we’re not interrupting anything.’ Larry offered me his hand and we scrambled down into the excavation.
Having lots of money makes one welcome in all social circles. The excavator would have kicked Cleopatra out of his bed to welcome the rich patron of archaeological excavations. He