The aspect of the place changed with Ramadan. A quietness settled on the narrow streets. There were three days' holiday although the fast went on for twenty-eight and those three days were dedicated to prayer. Five times a day twenty shots were fired. This was the call to prayer. I was always filled with awe to see men and women stop whatever they were doing, bow their heads, clasp their hands and pay homage to Allah.
Ramadan meant that I saw more of Tybalt.
"One must never offend them on a religious issue," he told me. "But it's galling. I need these workers desperately at the moment." He went through some papers with me and then he put an arm about me and said: "You've been so patient, Judith, and I know it isn't quite what you expected, is it?"
"I had such absurdly romantic ideas. I imagined myself discovering the entry to a tomb, unearthing wonderful gems, discovering sarcophagi."
"Poor Judith. I'm afraid it doesn't work out like that. Is it any compensation if I tell you that you have been of enormous help to me?"
"It's the greatest consolation."
"Listen, Judith, I'm going to take you to the site, tonight. I'm going to show you something rather special."
"Then you have made a discovery! It is what you came for!"
"It's not as easy as that. What I do think is that we may be on the trail of something important. Maybe not. We could work for months following what appears to be a clue and find it leads to nothing. But that's the luck of the game. Few know of this, but I'm going to take you into the secret. We'll go down after sunset. Ramadan moon is nearly full, so there'll be enough light; and the place will be deserted."
"Tybalt, it's so exciting!"
He kissed me lightly. "I love your enthusiasm. I wish that your father had had you thoroughly trained so that I could have had you with me at critical moments."
"Perhaps I can learn."
"You're going to get a grounding tonight. You'll see."
"I can't wait."
"Not a word to anyone. They would think I was being indiscreet or such an uxorious husband that I was carried away by my wish to please my wife."
I felt dizzy with happiness. When I was with him I wondered how I could ever have doubted his sincerity.
He pressed me to him and said: "We'll slip away this evening."
The moon was high in the sky when we left the palace. What a beautiful night it was! The stars looked solid in the indigo velvet and no slight breeze stirred the air; it was not exactly hot but delightfully warm—a relief after the torrid heat of the days. Up in the sky instead of blazing white light which was the sun was the glory of Ramadan moon.
I felt like a conspirator, and that my companion in stealth should be Tybalt was a great joy to me.
We took one of the boats down the river and then an arabiya took us to the site.
Tybalt led me past the mounds of earth over the brown hard soil to an opening in the side of the hill. He slipped his arm through mine and said, "Tread warily."
I said excitedly, "You discovered this then, Tybalt?"
"No," he answered, "this tunnel was discovered by the previous expedition. My father opened this up." He took a lantern which was hanging on the wall and lighted it. Then I could see the tunnel which was some eight feet in height. I followed him and at the end of the tunnel were a few steps.
"Imagine! These steps were cut centuries ago!" I said.
"Two thousand years before the birth of Christ to be exact. Imagine how my father felt when he discovered this tunnel and the steps. But come on and you will see."
"How thrilled he must have been! This must have been a miraculous discovery."
"It led, as so many miraculous discoveries have led be-fore, to a tomb which was rifled probably three thousand years ago."
"So your father was the first to come here after three thousand years."
"That may well be. But he found little that was new. Give me your hand, Judith. He came through here into this chamber. Look at the walls," said Tybalt holding the lantern high. "See those symbols? That is the sacred beetle—the scarab—and the man with a ram's head is Amen Ra, the great Sun God."
"I recognized him and I am wearing my beetle at the moment. The one you gave me. It will preserve me, won't it, in my hour of danger?"
He stopped still and looked at me. In the light from the lantern he seemed almost a stranger.
"I doubt it, Judith," he said. Then his expression lightened and he went on: "Perhaps I can do that. I daresay I would manage as well as a beetle."
I shivered.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
"Not exactly . . . but it is cool in here." I think I felt then as they say at home as though someone was walking over my grave.
Tybalt sensed this for he said: "It's so awe inspiring. We all feel that. The man who was buried here belonged to a world whose civilization had reached its zenith when in Britain men lived in caves and hunted for their food in the primeval forests."
"I feel as though I'm entering the underworld. Who was the man who was buried here ... or was it a woman?"
"We couldn't discover. There was so little left. The mummy itself had been rifled. The robbers must have known that often valuable jewels were concealed beneath the wrappings. All that my father found here when he reached the burial chamber was the sarcophagus, the mummy, which had been disturbed, and the soul house, which the thieves thought was of no value."
"I haven't seen a soul house," I said.
"I hope I will be able to show you one one day. It's a small model of a house usually with colonnades in white stone. It is meant to be the dwelling house of the soul after death and it is left in the tomb, so that when the Ka returns to its home after its journeyings it has a comfortable place in which to live."
"It's fascinating," I said. "I seem to gather fresh information every day."
We had come to another flight of steps.
"We must be deep in the mountainside," I said.
"Look at this," said Tybalt. "It is the most elaborate chamber as yet and it is a sort of anteroom to the one in which the sarcophagus was found."
"How grand it all is!"
"Yet the person buried here was no Pharaoh. A man of some wealth possibly, but the entrance to this tomb shows us that he was not of the highest rank."
"And this is the tomb which was excavated by your father."
"Months of hard work, expectation, and excitement, and this is what he found. That someone had been here before. We had opened up the mountainside, found the exact spot which led to the underground tunnel and when we found it ... Well, you can imagine our excitement, Judith. And then, just another empty tomb!"
"Then your father died."
"But he discovered something, Judith. I'm certain of it. That was why I came back. He wanted me to come back. I knew it. That was what he was trying to tell me. It could only mean one thing. He must have discovered that there was another tomb—the entrance to which is here somewhere."
"If it were, wouldn't you see it?"
"It could be cunningly concealed. We could find nothing here that led beyond this. But somewhere in this tomb, I felt sure, there was a vital clue. I may have found it. Look!
You see this slight unevenness in the ground. There could be something behind this wall. We are going to work on it ... keeping it as secret as we can. We may be wasting our time, but I don't think so."
"Do you think that because your father discovered this he was murdered?"
Tybalt shook his head. "That was a coincidence. It may have been the excitement which killed him. In any case, he died and because he had decided not to tell anyone, not even me, death caught up with him and there was no time."
"It seems strange that he should die at such a moment."