The Spoils of Egypt Read online

  ‘If Mr el Zaki has finished with you,’ said Owen coldly. He did not like the way Parker addressed all his remarks to him.

  ‘For the moment,’ said Mahmoud.

  Parker walked off without giving him a look. After a little hesitation, Miss Skinner followed him, saying that she was going to see how work in the sanctuary was progressing. Paul, taking no chances now, went with her.

  ***

  Work was also going on in the North-East Court. There was a colonnade on one side and under it some workmen were prising the façade off an inner wall. The façade, carved and painted like the walls of the chapel they had just seen, sagged forward and was held up by props.

  Sand from the desert had drifted into the open colonnade over the centuries and raised its floor level by three or four feet. To free the base of the façade, the men had had to dig down. There were two of them in the trench now, clearing away the last bit of hard sand from the pediment.

  Mahmoud said something to them and one of the work-men looked up, wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm and climbed out.

  He took hold of two of the props supporting the façade and shook them vigorously. They did not budge. The work-man nodded his head to Mahmoud as if to say ‘There you are!’ smiled and climbed back.

  ‘All the same,’ Mahmoud said to Owen, ‘that’s what happened.’

  He took Owen further along the colonnade to a part where the façade had already been stripped off.

  ‘It happened here. They got four-fifths of the way through and then the next morning, early, two men went back to finish the job. One of them was in the trench when the prop gave way.’

  ‘Anyone check the props?’

  ‘The foreman should. But these men are experts. They come from the local village, Der el Bahari, and are used to working on archæological sites. They say they’ve been doing the kind of thing since they were born and don’t need a foreman.’

  ‘What about the one who was killed? Hadn’t he been doing it ever since he was born, too?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he hadn’t. They said he wasn’t one of them. He came from a different village.’

  ‘What does Parker say?’

  ‘The men are right. They know what they’re doing and don’t make mistakes of this sort. The two workmen must have done something themselves. Disturbed the props, perhaps.’

  ‘What about the other workman, the one who wasn’t killed? Was he from another village, too?’

  ‘No. I’ve talked to him. He swears he didn’t touch the props. But the other man might have. While he himself was going off to fetch the tools. He says he hadn’t worked with the other man much and didn’t know him very well. He had the name of being a careless workman.’

  Owen looked out from the colonnade, across the courtyard gashed with trenches and heaped with little piles of rubble, and out across the plain with its heat spirals coming and going.

  ‘Half the accidents in this country are caused by carelessness,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but is it the carelessness of the workers or of those who employ them?’

  Chapter Five

  When Owen went back later in the day the façade had been completely detached. It was lying in a corner of the courtyard with a number of other objects: the decapitated torso of a colossus, broken capitals exquisitely sculpted with designs of lotus stems and buds, fragments of wall fitted together jigsaw-like to yield a vivid mural of a field in harvest time, reapers bent to the sheaves.

  The façade itself, however, was perhaps most striking of all. It was part of extended sculpting which ran the whole length of the colonnade. Cut in bas-relief, never more than a third of an inch deep, were delicate representations of ships with all their intricate cordage, their crews and merchandise, and in the waters below all the fishes of the Nile and the Red Sea.

  There, too, was the port, and beyond that the villages of the interior with their thatched huts and people going about their daily business, all carved with intimate knowledge and consummate skill.

  ‘Come to see the loot?’ asked a crisp voice beside him.

  It was Miss Skinner, armed with parasol and lorgnette, which she poked in the general direction of the exhibits.

  ‘Would you like a guided tour?’

  She tucked an arm beneath his and led him along the fragments of façade.

  ‘This depicts an exhibition to the Land of Punt. Here are the spices—that’s what they went for—and here is a leopard, a cub, I trust, being brought on board.’

  A man dressed in European clothes came into the courtyard, followed by two workmen in galabeahs. He was, however, not a European but an Egyptian, from his face a Copt.

  He glanced at a sheet of paper he was holding in his hand and then tapped one of the capitals with his foot. The two workmen bent, lifted it on to their shoulders and staggered off.

  ‘Is that a list? May I see it, please?’ said Miss Skinner, holding out her hand.

  The man hesitated.

  ‘I’m sure Mr Parker would be glad to let you have a copy,’ he said.

  ‘That won’t be necessary. It is merely a matter of an item or two which I would like to check.’

  The man was still reluctant.

  Miss Skinner took the paper from him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  She perused the list for a moment.

  ‘The sarcophagus,’ she said: ‘where is that?’

  ‘Gone already.’

  ‘And were there not some smaller pieces?’

  ‘They were in the first load.’

  ‘They are not on the list.’

  ‘This is just the second page of the list.’

  ‘Have you got the first page?’

  ‘It went with the consignment.’

  ‘What list is this?’ asked Owen.

  ‘All finds have to be listed,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘The list is then sent to the Museum.’

  ‘I was sending the things anyway,’ said the man, ‘so I sent the list with them. It makes it easier for the Museum.’

  ‘You work for the Museum?’

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘I work for Mr Parker.’

  ‘This is Tomas,’ said Miss Skinner, with a vague introductory wave of her hand, continuing to examine the list.

  ‘I look after the transport,’ said the Copt.

  ‘It all goes up to the Museum? All this stuff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s all going to be exported?’

  ‘No, no. There are two different things. These are only going up for inspection.’

  ‘All finds have to be recorded,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘Then, if they’re movable, they have to be sent up to the Museum. That’s a requirement of the licence. A means of control.’

  ‘I see. And after that, they’re the property of the Museum?’

  ‘Would they were,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘Would they were.’

  ‘What happens to them, then?’

  ‘If it’s an excavation conducted by the Department of Antiquities, the items pass into the custody of the Museum. If it’s a private excavation, a disposition has to be agreed. In practice, if it’s financed from abroad, most of the finds go abroad.’

  ‘So they are exported, then?’

  ‘The Museum keeps some.’

  ‘And some are returned to the Pasha,’ said the Copt softly.

  ‘The Pasha?’

  ‘The Pasha Marbrouk.’

  ‘Why him?’

  The Copt looked surprised.

  ‘It is his land,’ he said, almost reprovingly.

  ‘The site, or part of it, is on the Pasha’s estates,’ said Miss Skinner.

  ‘I see. So he has a claim to whatever is found?’

  ‘He thinks,’ said Miss Skinner.

  ***r />
  It was getting dark and work had finished for the day. A last flash of sun was turning the tops of the cliffs coppery but, just below, the shadow was creeping rapidly towards them and down on the plain it was already dark.

  Some workmen had lit a fire and were gathered round it drinking tea. One of them was singing softly.

  Miss Skinner came out of her tent and sauntered off in the direction of the main temple. Paul, reading a book a little way away by the light of an oil lamp, snapped it shut and went after her.

  ‘Really, Mr Trevelyan,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘you needn’t.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Miss Skinner,’ replied Paul blandly. ‘I hope to benefit again from your erudition.’

  ‘If that’s all it is,’ said Miss Skinner tartly, ‘the lessons can stop right now.’

  She swung on her heel and walked away. Her irritation was obvious.

  Paul, not apparently in the least put out, followed after her. Owen had the feeling that Paul had expected him to play the role of bodyguard. He wanted, however, to talk to Mahmoud.

  The Egyptian was standing by himself at the edge of the camp. He had spent most of the day talking to Parker, who was now, though, nowhere to be seen. Owen had the feeling, again, that Mahmoud was being deliberately made to feel unwelcome.

  He went across and stood beside him.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘What’s the problem!’

  ‘The men won’t talk.’

  Around the fire, by themselves, the men seemed voluble enough. They were chattering contentedly. Someone started a song and there was a burst of laughter.

  ‘Frightened?’

  Mahmoud indicated the group.

  ‘Doesn’t sound it,’ he said.

  ‘Too well paid.’

  ‘It goes together,’ said Mahmoud. ‘They’ve got a good job and they don’t want to lose it. All the same…’

  Somebody lit a lamp over by the temple. Owen thought for a moment it might be Paul but then saw there was another little group of workmen camped beneath the wall. In the light he suddenly caught the face of Tomas.

  Back at the fire the song had succeeded in getting itself established. It was a question-and-answer song, probably ribald. A young boy sang the questions, the others joined in the answers. There was considerable merriment.

  ‘That,’ said Mahmoud, ‘is what I find puzzling.’

  ‘The singing? It’s traditional, this far south—’

  ‘I’ve been on sites,’ said Mahmoud, ‘where workmen have been killed. There’s an atmosphere. It just isn’t there.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve just accepted it. An accident, you know. These things happen.’

  ‘Two accidents? In a short space of time? They don’t accept that. Not at any site that I’ve been on.’

  ‘If they genuinely thought it was an accident—’

  ‘They blame the boss,’ said Mahmoud with conviction. ‘They always blame the boss.’

  Owen shrugged.

  ‘Maybe it’s the money this time.’

  He could see the problem from Mahmoud’s point of view, but thought perhaps he was making too much of it. He knew what Mahmoud wanted; he wanted a conviction. But maybe it genuinely was something that could not be helped and the men knew it and that’s why they weren’t resentful. And maybe they’d told Mahmoud everything and it was just that he couldn’t accept it.

  ‘One accident I could believe in,’ said Mahmoud, almost echoing Owen’s thoughts. ‘But two!’

  ‘There are always a lot of accidents in any digging work,’ Owen said.

  Mahmoud was silent. Then he turned his face to Owen.

  ‘Kismet? Is that it?’ He laughed, a short, sharp bark of a laugh. ‘You’re the fatalist,’ he said, ‘not me.’

  Mahmoud was definitely not a fatalist. It was that, perhaps, which made him a Nationalist. Like many young educated Egyptians, he looked around him and saw a country sunk in torpor. Idealistic, he wanted to do something about it. Blaming the system, he wanted to change it; and that led him, as it did so many others in the Law, the Police, the Army, towards the Nationalist Party.

  The Nationalist Party was something new in Egyptian politics. But then, political parties were themselves something new in Egypt. The Khedive was a hereditary ruler and he chose his Ministers, his Government, from among his hereditary allies: the great Pashas, the equivalent of the landed aristocracy in England. And just as in England the rule of the Aristocrats had come to an end, so now in Egypt the rule of the Pashas was being challenged.

  Mahmoud believed, Owen knew, that they should be swept away and replaced by a parliamentary democracy. But in Egypt there was an added complication; it wasn’t the Pashas now who actually ran the country, but the British. Mahmoud believed they should be swept away, too.

  Meanwhile, however, Owen and Mahmoud got on very amicably.

  Owen thought, though, that Mahmoud’s Nationalist sympathies might very well be tingeing his approach to this investigation. Parker was, in Mahmoud’s view, a foreign exploiter and one, moreover, whose carelessness had resulted in the deaths of two unfortunate Egyptians working under him.

  He shrugged. It wasn’t really his concern.

  What was his concern, he asked himself? Looking after that batty woman, he supposed, and seeing she didn’t come to harm. This evening, though, in the blessed coolness of the dusk and with the men singing peacefully round the fire, there seemed little prospect of that.

  Perhaps Owen was being unnecessarily alarmist.

  The singing came to an end and the men at the first fire stood up. They seemed to have picks and spades with them, which they shouldered preparatory to setting off.

  One of them was about to scatter the embers when another man put out his hand to restrain him, motioning towards the other group of workmen huddled against the wall. The first man laughed and then scattered the ashes deliberately and thoroughly.

  The group set off.

  As they passed the group beside the wall one of the recumbent men lifted his head and said something.

  The men stopped and turned. Both groups fell silent.

  Then one of the men took his spade off his shoulder and said something. Someone replied, and then the group at the wall was standing up and the other group unshipping their spades and picks.

  Mahmoud was suddenly no longer beside Owen.

  A man stepped into the space between the two groups and seemed to be pleading with them, or ordering them. He was definitely ordering the group at the wall. Then he turned to the others and seemed to be arguing with them. As he turned, his face caught the light and Owen saw that it was Tomas.

  His intervention didn’t seem to be working. The group with the spades edged forward. A man stepped out from the group at the wall, said something hotly and raised a stick.

  Tomas started to make one last effort, then looked up and saw Mahmoud advancing towards them. He said something to the men. They looked up and hesitated.

  ‘Want some help?’ said Owen. His shoes crunched heavily on the sand.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mahmoud, stepping between the groups.

  Tomas pushed the man with the stick back into the group by the wall. The others, with some show of reluctance, shouldered their spades. Two of the older ones started urging them away.

  ‘Get off!’ said Owen, coming up behind them.

  He and Mahmoud stood there until the group was well on its way. Tomas came up to them, mopping his brow despite the coolness of the evening.

  ‘Stupid!’ he said. ‘Stupid!’

  ‘What’s it all about?’ asked Mahmoud.

  Tomas shrugged. ‘They are from the village,’ he said. ‘That is all.’

  ‘And these are not?’ He indicated the group by the wall.

  ‘They came wi
th me,’ said Tomas.

  ‘They’re your workmen?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tomas wiped his brow again. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘In a day to two we’ll be gone.’

  Two of his men walked over to the scattered remnants of the fire and kicked them together again. Someone produced a kettle and stuck it on. Gradually the whole group wandered across. Except for one man who went on sitting angrily against the wall.

  ***

  The moonlight now was making the sand silvery. Up above the line of the cliffs the sky was clear, almost frosty. It felt strange to Owen, used to the city, to see the stars in such profusion. The moon lit up the white front of the temple making it almost as light as day on the terraces.

  Miss Skinner and Paul had still not returned.

  Owen went over to the fire with its ring of squatting workmen. Tomas’s face looked up at him.

  ‘Can I borrow a couple of your men? I think I’m going to have to go looking for Miss Skinner and Trevelyan Effendi and I don’t know the temple.’

  ‘They don’t know it, either,’ said Tomas, getting to his feet. ‘They’re just porters. They carry the loads to the river. They’ve not been inside.’

  ‘It would be handy to have someone with a torch.’

  Tomas spoke to the men. Usually if you asked Egyptian workmen to help in a thing like this they responded with alacrity. These men didn’t.

  Tomas sharped his words and two of the men got up suddenly.

  ‘They don’t like going into the temple,’ said Tomas apologetically. ‘Not after what happened.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The accidents.’

  Light suddenly dawned.

  ‘The man who was killed—he was one of your men? Not one of the diggers?’

  ‘Both men,’ said Tomas shortly, and turned away. ‘I’ll get torches,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll see you on the lower terrace.’

  The two workmen followed him unenthusiastically.

  Over by the wall Owen saw Mahmoud talking to one of the workmen, the angry one, still evidently refusing to join his fellows around the fire.

  Owen walked up the ramp leading to the lower terrace. At the top he hesitated. He had no idea which way to go. Miss Skinner and Paul might have gone anywhere.