Chapter Twenty-Two

Valley of the Kings, November 26, 1922

Howard’s pick soon reached the other side of the wall. He enlarged the hole, then patted his pockets, muttering, “Damnit, I forgot to bring a candle. I suppose a match will have to do.” He struck a match and held it through the hole into the next chamber, waiting to see if the flame would be extinguished by gases inside. As he did so, a strange smell reached Eve: something oily and musky with a harshness that caught the back of her throat. She couldn’t think of anything to compare it to: perhaps a mixture of Lysol, incense, and a sick horse’s urine.

“Can you smell that?” she asked.

“It’s extraordinary how the ancient oils retain their scent,” Howard said. “The air seems safe in there. Do you want to be the first to go in again, little Eve?”

Goose bumps pricked her arms. She had strong misgivings, but she’d done it once and that had worked out alright. Steeling herself, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled through. The scent grew stronger, making her cough and choke, and causing her eyes to water.

Immediately when she reached the other side, even before she stood up, her torch beam illuminated a wall of brilliant gold carvings straight in front of her. It was as tall as the chamber itself and there was a narrow corridor running around either side.

She shuffled to the left as her father came through, then Howard. “By Jove, we’ve found it,” he said. “This is a shrine. The coffin will be inside.” He shone his torch at the seals on the side of the shrine facing them. “And look. The ankh. The bird. I’ve got Tutankhamun . . . and it is intact.” His voice cracked, as if he were about to weep.

Eve squeezed his arm in congratulations. “You found it, Howard. This will make your name. You’ll be famous!” She was glad the coffin was sealed inside the shrine and she didn’t have to look at it. It felt creepy to think that a long-dead king’s mummy lay in there.

Howard gave a low laugh. “Theodore Davis came within six feet of this very spot. He would have been devastated to hear of our discovery! Just as well he passed away.”

Eve shone her torch to the left and it lit an elaborate wall painting. “Look.” She gestured and both men turned but it was impossible to make out the subject because the torch beam illuminated only a small area at a time.

“Careful where you put your feet,” Howard said, and Eve realized there were several small items on the ground. She slid her feet as she moved rather than lifting them so she didn’t risk breaking anything.

Over on the other side of the shrine there was a stack of golden oars. The perfume was still catching her throat and, combined with the stale air, the heat, and the stuffiness, it made her dizzy. She rested a hand against the shrine to catch her balance. Pups was coughing.

Behind the shrine she could see a doorway into another chamber. A figure she recognized as Anubis, the jackal-headed god who watched over the dead, was reclining on a plinth.

Howard picked something up from the ground and examined it. “I can’t see any harm in taking a few mementos so long as we are discreet. What do you reckon, Lord C?”

Pups agreed. “Only small pieces. We’ll have to keep them for ourselves and not try to sell them on the open market, mind.”

Eve was worried. It wasn’t cheating the Egyptian government that bothered her, because they need never know. The thought in her head was that they shouldn’t steal from Tutankhamun. Egyptians designed their tombs to contain everything the occupant would need in the afterlife, and it seemed wrong to take anything, like stealing flowers from a grave.

Howard slipped a couple of items into the pockets of the jacket she was wearing, and she saw Pups bending to retrieve more. Eve ran her fingers over the delicate gold filigree of the shrine. It felt like a holy place, with the incense smell and the absolute quiet.

“We’d better go soon,” Howard said, consulting his pocket watch. “We need to get back well before first light.”

He crawled out of the burial chamber first, followed by her father. Eve had a moment of panic when she was alone inside once more. What if there was a rock fall that trapped her there with Tutankhamun’s mummy? She would die of terror long before she succumbed to suffocation.

As she knelt to crawl out, her fingers closed around an item on the floor. It looked glittery by torchlight. Should she take just one memento? Overcoming her reservations, she picked it up and stuffed it in her skirt pocket, then clambered through and stood up on the other side.

Eve and Pups watched as Howard rearranged chunks of plaster across the hole in the doorway to the burial chamber, then propped a basket and a bunch of reeds in front. “That will have to do,” he said, checking his handiwork.

“If it looks like a recent break-in, all the better for our case to keep some of the finds,” Pups said.

On the way through the antechamber Eve tripped over an object and it tumbled sideways with a deafening clatter, but she couldn’t see clearly enough to set it right. She was in a hurry to get back out into the night air.

Howard took some time patching the hole in the outer doorway with dampened clay, and smoothing it down. He couldn’t restore the broken seal but he made the surface around it look as authentic as he could, then locked the metal gate.

Eve took deep breaths, trying to clear her lungs of the stuffy, perfumed air from inside the tomb. Jackals were still howling in the hills behind and Eve thought it sounded as if they were in pain. It reminded her of the noise her father’s dog Susie once made when a housemaid stood on her paw.

When they got back to Howard’s house, he fetched a bottle of brandy and three glasses, pouring them each a generous measure. Eve felt the warmth seep into her bones, its fruity scent cutting through the stale muskiness of the tomb that still lingered in her nostrils.

After a long swig, Pups started chuckling, then Howard joined him. It was infectious. Eve felt light-headed and almost hysterical as she laughed out loud. They had shared the most magnificent secret.

“Let’s see what you’ve got then,” Howard said, and Eve emptied the jacket pockets onto his table.

“That’s a shabti,” he said, looking at a small, human-shaped statue. “Do you know about them? They represent the workers that the king would need to perform tasks for him in the afterlife.”

“I saw dozens of these, so he will be very well served,” Eve remarked.

Howard picked up a long cylindrical object. “This was for holding reed pens,” he said. “And my goodness, that’s a wishing cup. A very fine example.”

The item Eve had picked up at the last moment was a heavy gold box with a lotus-flower cartouche carved on the lid, and it smelled strongly of the unpleasant musky scent of the tomb. Howard pried off the lid with a metal ruler and showed her there was a sticky substance inside. The scent was overpowering now, making her eyes water.

“It’s an unguent container,” he said. “And the contents are still viscid. The tomb robbers would have taken this if they’d seen it. Unguents were more valuable than gold to the Ancient Egyptians.”

“It looks rather valuable,” Eve said. “It’s heavy, so I’m guessing it’s solid gold. Typical me! I always veer toward the most expensive items when I’m shopping, and now I’ve done the same thing in the tomb. Perhaps I should return it.”

“Nonsense,” Howard said, pushing it toward her. “It’s yours now. Are you sure that’s all you want?”

Her father had a wooden goose, an intricate collar made of beaten gold, and an elegant wine jar. Howard had a range of objects because he’d pocketed several from the antechamber too. The table was covered in them.

“Just this is fine,” Eve said, closing the box and putting it back in her skirt pocket.

She couldn’t believe how well preserved and intricately decorated everything was. Tutankhamun had clearly been a king with infinite wealth at his disposal.

“I hope you understand that we can’t breathe a word about our adventure,” Howard told them. “Not to anyone. It would undermine our legitimate claim and make it difficult to get another concession in Egypt.”

They both agreed that they wouldn’t tell a soul.

“I’m glad Theodore Davis didn’t find the tomb,” he said. “We will treat it with more care and respect than he would have done. I plan to keep the most meticulous records in the history of archaeology.”

Eve noticed the sky was lightening outside. “Pups, we should go back to the hotel and get some rest.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight so I’ll come across with you,” Howard said. “I need to send telegrams informing the authorities that we’ve made a find that looks significant, and requesting their presence so we can proceed.”

Eve took off his jacket and hung it on a coat stand in the hall, and Howard opened the front door.

“Bulldog is rather quiet this morning,” Eve said, peering through the misty dawn toward the canary’s cage. “Perhaps he decided to sleep late.”

Howard followed her out and looked into the cage. “Oh no! Poor Bulldog!” he cried. “A cobra’s got him.”

The tail of a gray-brown snake was hanging through the bars, and the rest of it was coiled in the cage, with a canary-sized bump under its skin, about a third of the way down. Bulldog was slowly being digested.