The Murder of King Tut - James William Patterson [7]
Lady Amherst was there, as was her youngest, twenty-five-year-old Alicia. They greeted Carter warmly and introduced him to an affable stranger who clearly had a flirtatious relationship with Alicia. Carter didn’t much like that, but what Alicia did wasn’t his concern.
The stranger was a bony young man in his early twenties named Percy Newberry. His face and hands were deeply tanned from hours outdoors, and his face was half covered with a prominent mustache.
Carter soon learned that Newberry was an Egyptologist who was pursuing Alicia’s heart and Lady Amherst’s pocketbook. He was fresh from a November–April stint along the Nile, surveying ruins at a place called Beni Hasan.
Lady Amherst, who had always loved Carter, was obviously keen on having the two of them meet. He wasn’t sure why.
But Carter sat and listened eagerly as Newberry told incredible stories about life on the Nile. He spoke of working in the tombs from first light all the way through to the evening meal, then devoting the greater part of the night to study and discussion. Newberry’s tone was intense, and he had a deep passion for his work. Carter liked him instantly.
It also turned out that Percy was something of a botanist, which seemed a rather unusual sideline for a man laboring in such a barren location. But Carter remembered that Alicia also enjoyed botany, and then their connection made sense.
On behalf of the British Museum, Newberry’s expedition had undertaken to create a visual record of the drawings and colorful hieroglyphics inside the pharaohs’ tombs before they completely faded away—something that often happened when ancient drawings were exposed to air and the presence of human beings. The task was enormous. There were some twelve thousand square feet of wall drawings to sketch.
And while the job had gone well at first, the relationship between Newberry and his sketch artist had soured. Now, as he was raising money to fund another season in Egypt, Newberry was also searching for a new sketch artist. The job required someone with significant knowledge of Egypt and a talent for drawing and painting.
That person, it soon became obvious, was Howard Carter.
Chapter 7
Alexandria
1891
ONLY THE HUGELY IRRITATING FACT that he was seasick prevented Carter from bursting with excitement. My God, he was in Alexandria, Egypt. He steadied himself against the roll of the steamship as he scanned the docks for Percy Newberry.
Carter had just reached the ancient port founded by Alexander the Great, the man responsible for ending the great Egyptian empires. Some said the city was the gateway to Africa; others called it the crossroads of the world. For the seventeen-year-old Carter, Alexandria was simply the place where his life would begin, the life he believed he had been born for.
But first he had to find Percy Newberry.
It was Newberry who had rescued Carter from the tedium of drawing family pets and had sent him to train at the British Museum so he would be prepared for his role as a sketch artist.
Percy had gone ahead of Carter to Egypt and now should have been waiting for him onshore.
Somewhere. But where?
Carter was slender, with a lantern jaw and a whisper of the bushy mustache he would wear for the next four decades. The air was hot like the mouth of a blast furnace, and he could feel the searing heat of the deck burning through the soles of his shoes.
He was dressed for October in England, not October in Egypt. He would have eagerly traded his suit and tie for the dockworkers’ simple white robes. None of them seemed bothered by the heat.
Carter squinted into the pale sunshine, scanning the distant dock for a sign of Newberry. But there was no Englishman among the mélange of half-dressed Moors, Turks, Nubians, and Egyptians. No sign of Newberry’s straw hat.
Where in hell are you, Percy?
Carter studied the skyline and spotted Pompey’s priapic pillar jutting above Alexandria like some ancient Roman practical joke.
He double-checked that he had everything he needed to go ashore. His list was short: sketchbook, notebook, valise.