The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [116]
“I see,” said Bertie, who didn’t look as if he did.
The unfinished tomb was only a short distance away. The entrance had been cut through the hard-packed gravel at the foot of the cliff—a dark opening that led down into deeper darkness. Bertie was the only one of us who had had sense enough to bring a torch. (I would have done if Emerson had bothered to mention what he had in mind before we left the house.) Its light showed the topmost steps of a flight of stairs, though they were so littered with hardened mud and bits of gravel that they looked more like a steep ramp.
“Let me go first,” Bertie said, with an anxious look at me.
“No, no, my boy.” Emerson took the torch from him and began picking his way down. “Wouldn’t want you to fall. Just follow my steps.”
We got down without incident, though Bertie’s attempts to hold me by the arm were distracting. The dear boy meant well, so I did not object. At the bottom of the stairs a square-cut doorway, typical of tombs of the period, debouched into a narrow room half filled with rubble.
“This is all there is,” said Emerson, waving the torch. “It was meant to be a passageway, I believe, with a burial chamber beyond, but they never got that far along.”
Belzoni had said there were eight coffins, neatly arranged in two rows. The industrious modern thieves had been there since his time, looking for ornaments buried with the dead; only fragments of car-tonnage from the coffins and bits of mummy remained.
“Twenty-second Dynasty,” said Emerson, shining his torch on one of the fragments. It was only six inches long by three wide and most of the paint had flaked off, but neither of us questioned Emerson’s analysis.
“If you will permit me to say so,” I said, “this little expedition was a waste of time. Clearing the tomb out will take days, and for what purpose? It is the most unlikely place to find something like…hmmm.”
“Hmmm what?” Emerson inquired.
“Nothing.” I had remembered Abdullah’s cryptic statement: “The last place you would think of,” he had said.
But Emerson had thought of it, and my assessment stood. Several other archaeologists had inspected this tomb. It had undoubtedly been ransacked by modern looters, but an Amarna work of art would not have been owned by a commoner who lived several centuries after that period.
We made our way back to the entrance. “I’m afraid, sir,” Bertie said diffidently, “that I can’t do a proper plan until the place is cleared out. Unless you would like me to—”
“No, no.” Emerson winked at him. “I wanted to give you an excuse to get away from the cursed fill. Boring job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Emerson strode off with the cocksure pose of a man who has just done a good deed. I took the arm Bertie offered. “How are you and Jumana getting on?” I asked.
“The same. I’ve asked her to marry me six times.”
“Then stop asking her.”
“Ramses said essentially the same thing,” Bertie admitted with a sheepish smile. “He suggested I find another girl. As if all I had to do was spin round and point at the first one I saw.”
“Spin round and look, at any rate. Keep an open mind. And leave off pressing Jumana. That often has a negative effect, especially with a strong-minded young person like her.”
“Was that how the Professor wooed you?”
He gave me a sidelong look, as if he feared he had gone too far. I laughed and squeezed his arm. “My dear, the Professor will tell you I did the wooing. One of his little jokes, of course, but until the moment when he asked me to be his he had done nothing but criticize me and shout at me.”
“I could try that, I suppose.”
I studied his friendly, ingenuous face and tried to picture him shouting at Jumana. “I doubt you could be convincing. Just ignore her. Let her sift her own rubble.”
Bertie followed my advice, and I went to help Jumana. She was bored with the job and told me so. “I have had no chance to practice excavation,” she complained. “Or even look for other tombs in the West Valley. Why didn’t the Professor let me go with him instead of Bertie?”
I assured her she hadn’t missed much, but agreed that her abilities