Chapter Nineteen

Valley of the Kings, November 24, 1922

Dawn was only the faintest streak on the horizon when Eve and her father walked down to the shore of the Nile and woke a man who was sleeping in his felucca, motioning that they wanted to cross. He leaped to raise the sail and whisked them over the shadowy water in no time. A solitary donkey cart driver beckoned and seemed to know without being told that they were heading for the Valley. A heavy mist hung in the air, making it feel ghostly, and Eve shivered in the chill.

Howard was standing at the Valley entrance with Pecky Callender, a young English assistant he had hired. They walked to the concession and Eve saw a huddle of Egyptian boys, eyes huge and dark in the pinky-gold light of approaching dawn. Howard introduced her to Hussein, the water boy responsible for the find. Like the other workers, he was dressed in the long white tunic they called a thawb, over some loose white trousers. She shook his hand warmly, congratulating him effusively, although it was clear he didn’t understand a word she was saying.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“Eight,” Howard told her, and Eve raised her eyebrows. It seemed terribly young to be working.

After they found the staircase, Howard had ordered his workers to pack it with rubble in order to protect it from looters, so their first job was to unpack it again. Eve helped, passing smaller rocks back to the boys behind her. The sun rose above the horizon and suddenly the temperature leaped from cool to sweltering. A long sand-colored lizard arranged itself on a flat stone nearby to absorb the heat, so still and well camouflaged that Eve could only tell it was there when it blinked.

A plastered doorway emerged at the foot of the stairs and Howard beckoned for Eve and Pups to come and look.

“Do you see this seal?” He pointed. “The bird is the ‘u’ sound, and that’s the symbol of an ankh.” He pointed to each syllable as he spoke. “Tut. Ankh. Amun.”

“Howard! You rogue!” Eve punched his arm. “You’re so secretive! Why didn’t you tell me last night?” She peered at the other seals. “What does this one say?”

“That’s a jackal guarding nine captives. It’s a common protective seal in official tombs.”

“So this looks genuine?” Pups asked, his voice hoarse. Eve had a pang of worry about him. He seemed very tired from the journey.

“It does. But look.” Howard pointed. “The seal in the top left corner has been broken and replastered, on what looks to me like two separate occasions.” He traced it with his finger. “The materials used indicate robbers entered in antiquity, but I can’t see any sign of a modern robbery.”

“Are you sure?” Pups replied. “That’s rather good news, isn’t it?” The men exchanged glances.

“Let’s take some photographs,” Howard said, and there was a delay while Pecky Callender set up the camera on a tripod and took the shots.

“What now?” Eve asked, when he had finished.

“Now we break through,” Howard told her, with a grin. He stopped to swig from a stone water bottle, then signaled to the Egyptians to use their picks on the plaster surface.

Eve held her breath, hoping a treasure-filled tomb would appear right there in front of their eyes, but instead they came upon a long downward-sloping corridor packed full of limestone chips. After examining a few, Howard told them the chips dated from antiquity. The corridor would have to be excavated very slowly and carefully in case anything was preserved within.

“How long will it take?” Eve asked, hopping from foot to foot.

“A few days,” he replied, and she tutted her impatience.

Pups chuckled. “When you were younger, I tried to teach you that anticipation of a treat could heighten the pleasure, but I see that lesson didn’t sink in.”

On the contrary, Eve remembered arguing to be allowed to open her birthday presents the day before so she could spend her entire birthday playing with them. It was an argument she never won.

* * *

At four in the afternoon on November twenty-sixth, the excavators finished clearing the corridor and came upon a second plastered-over doorway, this one engraved with more oval seals. Eve recognized the Tutankhamun ones from the bird and the ankh shapes.

Howard used a small pick to chip a hole in the doorway. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he warned as he worked. “We might find yet another long corridor beyond. The Egyptians designed these tombs specifically to confuse intruders.”

Once the hole was big enough to admit a man’s hand, Pecky Callender lit a candle and passed it to Howard. Pups and Eve huddled close as he inserted it through the hole and waited a moment before pulling it out. The flame was flickering and sputtering but still burning.

“We always have to test for foul gases,” Howard said in response to Eve’s questioning look. “But this seems safe. It didn’t extinguish the flame.”

Pecky handed him a small battery-powered torch and he pointed it through the aperture, then leaned his face against the rock, his eye to the hole. Eve stood on tiptoe, straining for a glimpse, scarcely breathing in her longing to know what lay within.

“Can you see anything?” Pups asked.

There was a long pause. Why was he taking so long? Was it empty?

When he spoke, Howard sounded utterly awestruck: “Yes. Wonderful things.”

Eve’s skin prickled from the top of her skull right down her spine, and she gave a little skip.

Howard widened the hole, then stepped back so they could each take a turn to peer through. Pups went first, and he exclaimed, “Good god!” After a minute or so he turned and handed the torch to Eve, an expression of incredulity on his face.

She poked the torch through the hole, leaned her face against the stone, and looked inside. At first it was fuzzy but when her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, she saw a jumble of golden objects, some strange animal heads, and lots of shadowy shapes that she couldn’t identify, all heaped up together. It looked like a picture of Aladdin’s cave in a child’s storybook. She shivered.

“Can we go inside?” she asked, turning to Howard.

Pups and Howard glanced at each other and Howard shook his head. “The Egyptian authorities have to be here before we go any farther,” Howard said, looking around at the workmen who were clustered behind. “It’s a legal requirement. I’ll ask the men to fit a gate across the doorway, to keep it secure, then I’ll telegram Pierre Lacau, the director of antiquities in Cairo.”

“How long will it take for them to get here?” Eve asked, feeling as if she might burst if it were more than an hour or so.

He shrugged. “A few days, I imagine.”

“Days!” she squeaked, her voice rising to a high pitch. “How can we possibly wait for days?”

Her father laughed. “We’ll manage somehow.”

Eve sat on a rock to watch as they used a clay-type mud to seal the hole Howard had made, then fitted an iron gate across the doorway, drilling into the bedrock so it was held securely. It was early evening when Pecky Callender headed off to his hotel, while the Egyptians went to their homes for the night. Howard, Pups, and Eve got a donkey-cart driver to take them to Castle Carter, feeling a mixture of frenzied excitement and crushing anticlimax.

* * *

“We still had no idea what we had found,” Eve told Ana Mansour. “As I’m sure you know, it was three days later, the twenty-ninth of November, when the official opening took place. Do you want me to describe that as well?”

“No, not yet,” Ana replied. “Let’s retrace your steps. First of all, I want to ask how closely you examined the doorway into the antechamber? Can you vouch for the fact that the seals were intact? I ask, because some of my colleagues suspect that Howard Carter might have entered before the official opening.”

“Pecky took photographs of the seals,” Eve insisted. “I was there. That was just three days before the official opening.”

Ana nodded. “I’ve seen those photographs. It’s useful that you can confirm the date they were taken, but I still think Howard broke into the antechamber before the twenty-ninth, and that he entered the burial chamber too. That means it must have happened on the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, presumably by night.”

Eve stared at her, wondering what to say. She had never been good at lying. She usually blushed and gave the game away. But she couldn’t tell Ana the whole truth. The three of them had agreed that night that they would keep it to themselves forever. She glanced around at Brograve and he cleared his throat. He knew. She hadn’t been able to resist telling him, in the absolute confidence that he would never breathe a word.

“As I told you, there was evidence of two break-ins in antiquity,” Eve said. “And it’s clear from the disarray in the antechamber that there had been robberies. The Ancient Egyptians would never have left it like that. Perhaps that has led to c-confusion.”

“All that is mentioned in Mr. Carter’s records, of course. But were the rest of the seals intact on the twenty-ninth? Do you remember that?”

“I . . . I’m sure . . . they m-must have been,” Eve stammered.

“Perhaps this might be a good moment to pause for refreshments,” Brograve interrupted. “Eve needs a break. Can I offer you a sandwich, Dr. Mansour? Some cake perhaps?”

Ana was watching Eve with a puzzled smile, as if wondering why she had hesitated to answer. Eve bent to pick up her tripod stick from the floor as a way of avoiding her gaze.

“I’ll come to the kitchen to help you,” she said, straining to push herself up from the sofa. Her heart was beating faster than usual and she was sure her cheeks were scarlet.