Roma rolled over and reached for Ardeth, only to find his side of the bed empty. She looked at the alarm clock she kept on a table next to her cot and realized it was seven o'clock.
She sat bolt upright, wondering why he had let her sleep for so long? The workman had begun their shift at four a.m., they'd been at work for almost three hours now and she needed to know how their work on clearing the shaft was progressing.
"Ah, you're awake, I've been checking on you. Did you sleep well?" Ardeth flashed his white teeth in a smile and she wondered what he was up to.
"Why did you let me sleep so long? I need to know what the workmen have found! You know I make sure I am up when they are, I've even missed breakfast."
He sat on the bed and put his hand on her leg. "Are you not aware you were up and down all night. I have never known you to sleep walk but I had to take you back to your bed three times."
She grabbed her khakis and shook them, a habit that a desert dweller knows, insects hide in the folds of clothes and inside shoes, any dark, hidden place. She reached for the rest which lay bunched at the foot of the bed and pulled them on angrily. "You should not have let me sleep so long," she said again and stormed out of the tent.
The sight that met her eyes revealed why he had kept her in the tent so long—the workers' bus was missing. She turned and gave him an angry stare. "Where is the bus?" she demanded.
"Rick is taking the workers back to their villages. They would die before they reached home, so I gave them their wages, and O'Connell is driving them back to their villages. You have the right to fire them but not to send them to their deaths."
"Who says I wanted to kill them? I wanted them to know they'd accepted a job and I expected them to fulfill their obligations. Now we're short of workers with a shaft to clear and a tomb to excavate. Do we have enough workers to divide them into two teams?"
"You're asking for my opinion? I'm not the archaeologist, my love, isn't the shaft your priority for now?" He rubbed her shoulders, attempting to soothe her ill temper.
"You should have asked me," she said, her feathers still ruffled but the mention of the shaft reminded her she wanted to see how the work had progressed. "Let's go to the tomb, I have a feeling we're going to find something today," she said, not looking to see if he followed her.
The men were talking excitedly in the tomb. They had cleared most of the shaft, down to a dept of almost thirty feet and had found something they did not expect. A bricked-up opening, almost the height of a man, certainly large enough to admit an Egyptians in pharaonic times. Best of all, the bricks look like they had not been disturbed, and though there was no sign of a seal.
A rope ladder had been attached to the ladder to make up the difference. Roma could not wait and climbed down to see for herself. The men held a lantern, allowing her to see the crude mud bricks that blocked the opening. She ran a slender hand over the rough surface of the crude wall. "Clear as much sand as you can from the floor, but you don't need to get all of it. We need a pry bar and maybe a hammer if the mortar is stubborn. We'll bring up the bricks as we remove them, I want this opening clear."
She climbed up the ladders and found Evelyn and Ardeth waiting for her. "Yes!" she said, allowing herself to express her excitement and took Evelyn's hands. "We did it," her voice was full of jubilation.
"I told you," said Evelyn, "I knew we'd find something, all we had to do was be willing to look. And nothing has happened to us, there is nothing to fear, Roma. What we find down there might make us rich, or famous."
"If it hasn't been looted, though I must admit those bricks look like they haven't been disturbed in centuries. We'll give the men a break and something to eat. I haven't eaten yet today and I'm famished. Evelyn, when will Rick be back? We might need his help breaking down the wall."
"He won't be back until late afternoon, or maybe this evening, but I don't want to wait that long to open the entrance."
"Me either, Evie, so we won't. We have the workmen if we need help. There will only be room for two of us at a time, so you and I can take turns." Roma paused, "How do we determine who goes down the shaft first?"
"It's your tomb, you found it, you have first turn," Evie said with a generosity she did not feel, "You'll have first look but when the door is cleared, I'll be there. I'll send the workman up the ladder and you can come down and we'll enter it together."
"If there's something to enter, that is," mused Roma, "That's what I love about excavating, you never know what you'll find. Even a disappointment can have its surprises. I'm hoping we'll find a chamber and a sarcophagus and maybe even a coffin."
Neither woman had much appetite for lunch, but forced themselves to eat. Finally, Roma pushed herself away from the table, "Ready?" she asked.
"Ready," Evie replied.
Ardeth got up from the table, saying, "You are not doing this alone. If you are determined to disturb the dead, I want to be there in case something happens. We have already had one unpleasant surprise from this tomb, I don't know if I can protect you from another but I will try. I think this is folly, Roma, you have discovered something, why not leave it at that?"
"What would be the fun in that?" said Evie. Though she counted Ardeth a friend, she was indignant at his response. "Of course, we must see what we have found, anything we find must be removed from the tomb so looters don't get it. We are restoring Egypt's treasures to her, nothing more, nothing less."
Ardeth shook his head as he followed them out of the tent. His feet seemed to drag as he made his reluctant way to the tomb.
The workmen had been clearing as much sand as they could out of the shaft. A prybar lay waiting on the floor to loosen and remove the bricks. Above, a winch with a long rope with a basket at the end was being lowered down to the shaft floor.
A workman poked his head out of the shaft. "Be careful, miss," he told Roma, "The ladder is secure but it is very tricksy. The shaft is shorter than it seems but it is a long climb down. May Allah protect you."
Roma nodded and secured a miner's lamp around her forehead. The workman's warning had been unnecessary, but in spite of the spot of light at the bottom the shaft seemed dark and intimidating. She put on a pair of leather gloves to protect her hands and began the precarious descent down the ladder.
When she reached the rope its stability seemed doubtful, but it surprised her and held secure. She made her way down, one foot at a time until she reached safe and solid footing at the bottom.
"Welcome, miss," said Omar and held out a hand to assist her. "Look," he said and swept the beam of the lantern around the floor, "I can start removing the bricks for you." She nodded, hardly able to hold in her excitement.
She watched as Omar picked up the prybar then jabbed at the mud mortar holding a brick and watched with satisfaction as the bar pushed through. They looked at each other and smiled, then Omar began gently chipping away at the mortar, loosening one brick at a time, then handing it to Roma. She put each brick in the basket, waiting eagerly for him to remove enough for her to be able to look into the opening.
The basket full, she tugged on the rope and watched as it made its way up to the surface. "Let's remove more, we can set them in the corner and bring them up later."
"Yes, miss," Omar could feel her excitement and his anticipation matched her own. He'd been a trusted digger for her father and for him the work never grew old. They removed enough bricks to leave an opening wide enough for her to get a good view.
She adjusted the lamp on her forward and shone its beam in to hole. She grabbed hold of Omar's arm, "A passage! I can't see where it leads or how big it is. I must let Evie have her turn now—I'll send down the basket for the bricks. I'll be back when we can get into the passage and see where it goes."
The climb up the ladder to the surface seemed to take forever, when she left the rope and started ascending the wooden ladder, she made better progress but had to be careful. Once she got to the top, she grabbed Evie by the arms.
"It looks like a passage, and a passage must lead to somewhere. When there is enough room for us to climb in, I'll join you. We've discovered something important; it may even be an undisturbed burial. A great deal of work was put into this tomb, I wonder what secrets it holds?"
Roma watched as Evie descended into the shaft. She wanted to be there, but she must not be selfish and deprive Evie of the excitement she had just experienced, so she sat on the ground and tried to be patient. She drank the warm mint tea Ali brought her, but kept looking down into the hole as if she could see what was going on thirty feet below.
The sun grew higher in the sky but she would not seek the shelter of the pavilion and put a hat to shelter her from the rays of the sun. She peered again into the shaft, then heard a faint voice calling her name.
Omar's head appeared over the shaft at last, "Go down there miss," he said, "Miss Evie is waiting for you, we have cleared the door."
She hurried down the ladder, disregarding safety. She could hear Evie's voice now, calling her and she jumped down the last few feet in her impatience.
Evie held up a lantern, "Look, Roma, look what we have found, it's a passage! Come on," she said and hurried down the rough-hewn passage.
Roma did not hesitate. Omar had left a lantern and she held it up, looking at the walls. Exactly like the tomb, she thought, carved but not finished but there's no sign the walls were ever finished. Evie's lantern disappeared and she heard her voice, eerily distorted by the walls, "I've found it! I've found it!"
Evie stood in the entrance and took her hand, "Look," she said, "Look what we've found!" she could not keep the excitement out of her voice.
Roma knelt on the ground, there was a large coffin, or perhaps a sarcophagus, of wood carved in the mummiform shape. The decoration was not elaborate but a woman's face had been painted on the outside, along with two long arms with hands clutching ankhs, the symbol of lie. But no name.
"We have to bring it to the surface but I don't know how fragile it is. I'll go up and get Omar, we can slide a sheet of wood underneath and wrap it in muslin."
"Let's open it now, just to see if there is anything inside."
"Evie! You know how fragile it must be, we must wait until we get it to the museum laboratory in Cairo so we can open it in a controlled climate. Remember what happened it Tiy's tomb? They opened the coffin they found lying there and both the coffin and the mummy disintegrated. I don't want all this work to be in vain, we've worked so hard."
"You're right, of course, we don't want anything to happen, this is far too precious. We've come too far. This find is spectacular. We'll get the coffin out and then explore the chamber. I can't believe how lucky we are, there are archaeologists who dig for years and never find anything like it."
She sent Evie up to the surface, then Omar and another digger came down. She led them to the chamber and Omar let out a slow whistle.
"Yes," she grinned, "This is truly amazing. I am dying to know if there is a coffin inside this one, and who it is. We need to put a sheet of wood beneath it and wrap it in muslin. It's amazingly dry in here, it may have preserved the coffin."
Omar peered closely, "Acacia wood, it was local. If it has not been destroyed by insects, and I see no trace, we may be able to move it.
A sheet of plywood and a bundle of muslin was lowered to them, and they placed both coffin and plywood on the muslin, then wrapped it carefully and fastened it with ropes so it could be hauled to the surface. They decided they would follow the bundle on its way up to make sure it was handled gently.
The three lifted their precious bundle and the weightiness let them know there might be a coffin inside, In her excitement Roma took a careless step backward, hearing a loud crunch. She looked down and to her horror found that she had stepped on a human skeleton!