Chapter 4
We reached Luxor on the third day of our journey. A fascinating town in the middle of the desert, barely inhabited but by a few natives, a squadron of antiquarians and a couple of tourists who were adventurous enough to venture here. Though admittedly, the accommodations here seemed to be surprisingly good.
Behind the ancient settlement the terrain rose to a plateau and wedged between the slopes of it was the famed valley, dry, grey and foreboding, as if it was to protect the dead from the living by reminding them that they should not enter alone with its sheer hostility alone. Other as one might expect from its name, there was no grandeur there, only rocks and sand and gravel, tedious to walk on and difficult for any kind of orientation. It was hard to judge the distances, even in this fairly enclosed space and though one would not get completely lost within the confines of the Valley of the Kings itself, it could easily lead to the one or other accidental detour.
My father, however, seemed to know his way around as very early the next morning we set off on horseback, using sturdy creatures that trotted along slowly but untiring, defying the heat of the rising and yet already burning desert sun above us. When we reached the valley it was still drenched in the shadows of the high cliffs surrounding it. To my surprise, however, we were not the first ones to arrive, as, with an outcry of delight, a man rushed towards us. It was easy to recognise him as the shrewd professor we were here to watch and keep in check.
Professor Norris wore, other than ourselves who have had the sense to adjust our attire to the hot and dry climate, he looked ready to go into the city on business, with his formal dark grey suit, his white gaiters and his top hat. I had to school my features into a neutral position at seeing him, as my mouth was about to drop open in incredulous astonishment at so little common sense.
"Ah, Holmes, here you are!" he cried out, hastening towards us and pulling his handkerchief to wipe his brow as he did so.
"Professor Norris!" Aldwin greeted, casting an amused glance in my direction, "I heard you are on a new project once again."
"Yes, yes, and this time I am absolutely sure I will find what I am looking for – an untouched grave. No-one has seen inside for millennia, let alone entered it. I have heard rumours about a secret chamber filled with numerous artefacts all made of gold and jewels. The man who gave me the information said that he knew someone who had seen it for himself."
"Does that not defy his claim, that no-one had seen what was in the grave for thousands of years?" I could not help asking, earning a chuckle from Harris and MacKenna, while my father's expression showed that he had been thinking pretty much along the same lines as one of his eyebrows was raised in a sceptical manner.
Professor Norris seemed unable to reply and seeing him so utterly confused by such a simple question, a question that either of my companions surely would have asked straight away, I suddenly knew exactly why he could not run a dig on his own, with only hired workmen. He had no practical bone in him whatsoever and very little common sense – if any at all. But both defects he compensated with an exuberance of enthusiasm and I soon found that this was the very problem.
"Come here, I think that this must be the spot my informant has described," Norris suddenly cried out, choosing not to answer my question.
We followed him to a slightly raised spot and he pointed at a dip in the surface where currently a few local workmen dug aside the gravel, carrying the debris away in battered looking papyrus baskets they were carrying on their heads, like many ancient cultures do. My father looked at the indicated spot, scratched his head and then turned towards his charge.
"Professor, I am sorry to say, that, while it is indeed a grave, it was excavated four years ago without finding anything and consequently was closed up again."
Professor Norris' face fell and he looked positively crestfallen. Wiping his brow again, he took out a tiny and battered looking notebook and searched through it till he seemed to have found the entry he had been looking for.
"Here it is, that is the information that was given to me and I am sure it is the right spot," he cried out, unwanting to believe he had been taken in.
And as it was, he had been not, he had simply managed to get lost and was in the wrong place. Aldwin, sighing deeply, took the book from his hands and glanced over the given coordinates, shook his head once again, and then strolled over to another location which bore the signs of having been worked fairly recently and from there on a good hundred yards further to the west to a spot that seemed completely untouched. How he could find his way around so easily was beyond me, as by now I myself, had lost all sense of orientation.
"Hereabouts should be the grave you are looking for – if it really exists, that is."
"Here?"
"Yes, it says a hundred steps to the west from Anthep's grave and that is the one over there," he pointed at the other excavation that currently lay abandoned.
"Oh, I thought Anthep's grave was the big one over there."
"No, that is Senthep's tomb and west would still be opposite of the rising sun," my father replied dryly.
I decidedly felt like a fish out of water, as hardly any of what was being said made any sense to me, something MacKenna seemed to sense as he turned stepped up to me, whispering: "Eventually you will get the hang of it, Mr Sigerson. At least to a point where you will be able to half-way understand what we are talking about."
"That is a great consolation indeed."
As the sun rose higher and higher and it got increasingly warmer, the valley which initially had been nice and shadowy began more and more to be an oven, where the heat got trapped till eventually, the sand was hot enough to fry an egg in. And fry eggs in it was exactly what we did when we sat down for a light meal after having moved all the workmen over from one spot to the other, all of them stoic enough not to even question why they now had to dig somewhere else. Or it might just as well be, that they had worked with Norris before, who knew?
