The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [114]
We had all shared it, except for Evelyn, who claimed our descriptions were quite enough for her. Emerson, who is attracted to mummies, would have crawled over burning coals to reach this one. With the help of Abdullah he managed to widen the space enough for him to squeeze through, and he was there so long, I regretted not having attached a rope to him. Not until I crawled partway into the tunnel and threatened to remove him bodily did he consent to return. Emerson is not especially sensitive to atmosphere, and it was that as much as the hideous aspect of the mummy that had affected me– the dim light and shifting shadows, the foul stench – and the fact that the plain white coffin with its dreadful inhabitant had guarded the burial chamber of a queen. Hasty as had been my retreat, I had observed the doorway behind the coffin – a doorway blocked with massive stones.
Contemplating contemptuously the glass of warm milk I had caused to be served to him, Ramses remarked, ‘The reason for the refusal of the cats to enter the tomb is now explained. Their sense of smell, so much keener than ours, must have caught a whiff of that vile odour.’
‘You are being unduly fanciful, Ramses,’ I said. ‘A cat’s notion of what constitutes a vile odour is certainly not the same as ours. But we have the mummy to thank, I suspect, for the fact that the thieves did not enter the burial chamber.’
‘I wonder,’ Walter exclaimed. ‘Radcliffe, do you remember the story we heard some years ago in Gurneh? About the lost tomb into which three men had vanished and never come out?’
‘Folktales,’ Emerson said impatiently.
‘This had occurred within recent memory,’ Walter insisted. ‘The fellow who told us of it claimed to be the brother of one of the men who had disappeared.’
‘A typical folktale, no doubt,’ Ramses said thoughtfully. ‘But it would be interesting, would it not, if some of the bones crushed underfoot in the antechamber turned out to be of modern date?’
‘Balderdash,’ Emerson said. ‘The first sight of the atrocious thing might have sent them into screaming retreat, but tomb robbers are accustomed to grisly sights.’
‘I have never seen one as grisly as that,’ I murmured.
Emerson considerately splashed more whiskey into my glass. ‘I have, though. It came from the royal cache at Deir el Bahri.’
‘Emerson, this poor fellow was buried alive!’
‘For once, Peabody, your melodramatic interpretation is probably correct. This mummy shows the same characteristics as the other, which I was allowed to examine some years ago. In fact, the visible parallels are so exact that I can guess what we will find when I finish the examination I was not allowed to make this evening.’
I ignored this provocative remark, and the glance that accompanied it. He was only teasing.
‘Yes, I remember the Deir el Bahri specimen,’ Walter exclaimed. ‘Its hands and feet had also been bound.’
‘Instead of being wrapped with bandages, it had been sewn into a sheepskin,’ Emerson said. ‘The internal organs were still in place and there was no evidence that the process of mummification had occurred. The same seems to be true of our mummy. I found the sheepskin, pushed back from the exposed body, and I could see no signs of the incision through which the viscera were usually removed. The expression of intense agony is like that of the other example, and it certainly suggests that both individuals died . . . unpleasantly.’
‘His crime must have been heinous, to warrant such a fate,’ Nefret said.
I wondered if I would ever become accustomed to it – the contrast between her delicate English fairness and the placidity on that fair face when she spoke of matters the mere thought of which would have made an English maiden shudder or swoon.
‘A good point,’ said Emerson. ‘Not only was the method of execution – for such it must have been – particularly cruel, but the man was stripped of his name and identity and wrapped in the skin of an animal which was considered ritually impure. Yet the body was not destroyed; it was entombed with the royal dead – as, apparently, was this individual. I confess