The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [204]
“It will be a tight fit,” Bertie warned. “There’s a roughish platform, about five feet square, with the passage going off into the cliff at a right angle. It’s partially filled with—”
“Plenty of room,” said Emerson, tossing one end of the rope to Selim and trying to knot the other end round his waist.
I said, “Oh, curse it,” and tied the knot myself. Then I lay flat on the ground peering down into the crevice as Emerson was lowered.
With the rope anchored and held by both Selim and Ramses, I was not afraid Emerson would fall. I was afraid he would try to crawl into the narrow passage and get stuck like a cork in a bottle. It was quite dark down there except for the limited light of Emerson’s torch. I could see very little, and the auditory sense was not of much help either, thanks to the echoes that distorted every sound. The rope went loose and Emerson yelled something, and I let out a small exclamation.
“It’s all right, Mother,” Ramses said. “He’s reached the platform.”
“He won’t be able to get through the passage,” I muttered. “He’s twice the size of Jamil.”
“He’ll get through,” Ramses said, passing his sleeve over his perspiring face. “If he has to dig the fill out with his bare hands. One bare hand.”
I could hear him doing it. Loose rock began falling from the bottom of the cleft, rattling down the hillside. It slowed and stopped. After that there was nothing but silence, until a call from Cyrus brought us all to our feet. Daoud seized the rope and pulled with all his might. As soon as Cyrus’s head appeared we fell on him and dragged him out.
“Well?” I cried.
Cyrus shook his head. His lips moved, but no words emerged. Tears ran down his face. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“Dust,” said my practical son. He handed Cyrus the water bottle, and then leaped for the other rope as it tightened. With Daoud’s help they soon had Emerson up; he hadn’t even bothered tying the rope round his body, but was holding on with one hand. We hauled him over the edge and he staggered to his feet, blinking bloodshot eyes.
“There are four coffins,” he gasped. “Four. Four of everything, packed into that room from floor to ceiling and side to side. Four sets of canopic jars, four gold-inlaid boxes, four funerary papyri, four hundred ushebtis, four thousand—”
Cyrus began jumping up and down and waving his arms. “The God’s Wives,” he bellowed. “Four! I never thought I’d live to see this day! If I were struck dead tonight, I’d be the happiest man alive.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said, catching hold of him. “You would be dead. And you will be, if you fall off the cliff.”
I wanted to take Emerson home; he had ruined another shirt squeezing through those tight spaces, and banged his head, and scraped most of the skin off both hands and cracked the cast. Cyrus was in little better case, but neither of them heard a word I said; they kept shouting enthusiastically at each other and shaking hands. I consigned them both to the devil (they didn’t hear that either) and concluded I was entitled to satisfy my own curiosity.
We went down in turn, two at a time for safety’s sake: Jumana and Bertie, Ramses and I, Selim and Daoud. Emerson offered to take Nefret, but she said she believed she would wait. The procedure was somewhat uncomfortable—crawling on hands and knees over rough fragments of stone, with dust choking one’s mouth and an occasional bat squeaking past overhead, but the sight was so incredible I would not have wanted to miss it.
The opening of the chamber had been closed with mortared blocks. Jamil had removed the upper layers, stacking the stones along the passage, which made the last few feet something of a squeeze. Looking in, I saw at first only a dazzle of gold. It was the end of an anthropoid coffin, inlaid with glass and semiprecious stones. Packed all around it were smaller objects: woven baskets, caskets of ebony and cedar, tattered fragments of papyrus and linen. Jamil had rummaged through the smaller boxes, dragging out anything he could reach.
Cyrus’s long patient wait had been rewarded