The Sleeper In The Sands

by Tom Holland

Genres: Literary Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Egypt, 1922: the Valley of the Kings. After years of fruitless labour, the archaeologist Howard Carter discovers a mysterious tomb, sealed and marked with a terrible curse. But what is the nature of the tomb's deadly secret? And what is the web of strange connections spreading back through millennia, to the very heart of Egypt's fabulous past? In a glorious Arabian Nightmare of lost cities, treacherous priests and daring archaeologists, an ancient civilisation shimmers into life; colourful, magical, and unutterably strange.

'True adventure stories are all too scarce nowadays. And adventure stories that have the capacity to make the reader think and wonder are an even rarer commodity. Tom Holland's latest novel manages both with tremendous verve ... a galloping page-turner' DAILY TELEGRAPH

Release date: May 19, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 448

Sample

 

All night he dreamed he was searching. He imagined himself lost in a labyrinth of stone, where there was nothing to be found
save for shreds of mummy wrapping, and papyri from which the writing had long since been erased. Yet always, even as he stumbled
through the darkness and the dust, he knew that ahead of him, buried somewhere in the rock, there was a chamber waiting, a
wondrous, hidden tomb; and it was this certainty alone which kept him from despair. Still he stumbled on; and he imagined,
as he did so, that he was drawing near the tomb. He reached out with his arms, as though to part the rock. For a moment he
imagined that he caught a glint of gold, and at once he felt a joy that seemed to justify his life. When he looked again,
though, the glint had disappeared, and he knew that the mysteries of both his life and a far more distant past remained in
darkness. He reached out a second time. He thrashed with his arms. But still no sign of gold – only rock and sand and dust
…


All at once, Howard Carter jerked awake. He sat up, breathing very hard – and yet realising, as he did so, that he felt almost
refreshed. He blinked. The early morning sun, still warm despite the lateness of the year, was already casting a bright rectangle
across the far side of the room – and yet it was not the sun which had woken him. Carter blinked again, and rubbed his eyes. As he did so, he heard it: the singing of
a bird.


He gazed across the room. He had brought the canary with him from Cairo just a week before, a golden bird inside a gilded
cage. He rose from his bed, and crossed to it. He remembered what the workmen had cried when he had first arrived back to
start the season’s digging, his servant carrying the gilded cage behind him. ‘A bird of gold,’ they had proclaimed, ‘it will
surely bring us luck! This year we will find, inshallah, a tomb of gold!’


Howard Carter certainly trusted so. Yet even as he bent down to feed the canary, his smile was grim. For he did not need reminding
that he was in desperate need of luck – more luck, certainly, than he had been granted in the past six years. So much effort
– and for so little return. His patron, he knew, was already losing faith; it was only with difficulty that Lord Carnarvon
had been persuaded to fund one further, final season. If they were to locate the tomb, the sealed tomb of gold, the tomb which
might win them an undying renown, then it would have to be within the next few months. The next few months … or not at all.


And yet, no matter that an unplundered tomb had never been found in the Valley before, he knew that it was out there. Not
once had he doubted it. Howard Carter paused a moment, gazing at the bird; then he rose suddenly and crossed to a desk, where
he reached for a key and unlocked the bottom-most drawer. From its depths he drew out a sheaf of faded papers. His grip on
them tightened as he pressed them hard against his chest.


Suddenly, the bird began to sing again, and the music that it made, in the clear light of the Theban dawn, did indeed seem
golden.


Howard Carter returned the papers to their place and locked up the drawer. He had work to do. An excavation was awaiting him
in the Valley of the Kings.


The water-boy grimaced and settled down his load. The day’s work on the site had only just begun, and the great earthen jar
was still full up to the brim. The boy rubbed his shoulders, then gazed enviously about him. He wanted the chance to dig,
the chance to find the hidden tomb of gold. Carrying water about all day, running and fetching for the older men, what hope
did he have of finding anything at all?


He scuffed the dirt before him idly with his toes. Scratching at it, he felt flat rock just beneath. He crouched down and
began to sweep more energetically, using his hands. As he exposed it, the rock seemed to fall suddenly away.


One of the workmen called out to the boy, demanding water, but the boy ignored him. The workman crossed to him, angry, his
hand upraised. Then all at once his arm dropped back by his side as he gazed in silence at what the boy had exposed.


There was a step. It had been hewn from the rock. It seemed to lead downwards, down into the earth.

The silence still lay thick in the air, like the haze of white dust, when Howard Carter arrived at the site. The labourers
were all staring at him, and he knew at once that something had been found. Ahmed Girigar, his foreman, stepped out from the
crowd. He bowed, his face set, and pointed with his arm.


For a moment, Carter imagined that his heart had stopped: that all the Valley, the very sky, were melting and plunging into that single moment.


Then he nodded brusquely. Still silent, he passed through the line of workmen. As he did so he heard it muttered amongst them,
rising fast into cries of excitement and awe, that what had been found was ‘the tomb of the bird’.


He had ordered the canary brought to the site, to encourage the workmen as they cleared away the rubble. It was also – Carter
could not deny this to himself – a feeble attempt to calm his own raging nerves, for since his boyhood he had always been
a lover of birds, and found in their singing a source of great comfort. But although his expression, that first long day and
the next, appeared perfectly composed, his thoughts remained a tumult of terrors and wild hopes, and he barely heard the canary’s
song. Nothing filled his ears but the chink of spade upon rock, as slowly, step by step, a stairway was revealed.


It was almost sunset when the first part of a doorway was at last exposed. Howard Carter stood at the top of the steps, barely
able to move, every nerve numbed by his sudden doubts. To be so close to a miraculous success … and then to be disappointed
– the horrible possibility shadowed all his imaginings. Yet his step remained measured as he slowly descended towards the
door, and his face as granite-calm as it had been throughout the day.


His hands, though, were unsteady as he reached out to brush the dirt from the doorway. There was a seal upon it, he realised
suddenly; and he began to shake so much that he had to rest his palms upon the ground. As he did so, he inspected the seal.
He recognised it at once: a jackal triumphant above nine bound captives – the motif of the necropolis of the Valley of the
Kings.


Carter breathed in deeply. He had seen the symbol often enough before, stamped upon the other tombs of the Valley – but they
had all been plundered. He reached out to touch the block of stone before him now, to trace with his fingertip the pattern
of the seal. Elsewhere, the guardianship of the jackal had been in vain; what reason to believe that it might not have been
so here? Again, Carter began to sweep at the dirt upon the doorway, and as he did so he observed a heavy wooden lintel at
the top of the block. At once he called for a pick and, using its point, very delicately began to carve out a peephole. When
it was completed, he pulled a flashlight from his pocket, then narrowed his eyes and peered through the gap.


He could make out rubble. It was blocking a passageway. Stones had been tightly packed from the floor to the ceiling. There
appeared no evidence of the rubble having ever been disturbed. Whatever lay beyond it was surely still in place.


Slowly, Carter lowered his flashlight. He rested his forehead against the dusty block of stone.

Something, clearly, was waiting to be found. Something which had been immured with the utmost care.

But what?

What?

Carter rocked back with sudden impatience on to his haunches. He had to know; he had to make certain. He began to sweep at
the doorway again, examining it carefully for a different seal, one which would identify the owner of the tomb. It seemed
impossible that it could not be there, for it had been the remembrance of a name, he knew, in the Ancients’ philosophy, which
had served to keep the soul of the departed alive. And who was to say, Carter thought with a sudden lurch of wonder, that
such an assumption had not been correct – that fame was indeed the truest immortality?


Still, though, he could find nothing exposed to his view, and even as he continued to sweep, he grew suddenly frantic with uncertainty. He began to scrabble at the dirt with his fingers, seeking to lay bare a further portion of the door – and
then, as he did so, he suddenly froze. He had felt his fingers brush something and as he began work again, clearing the dirt
now with all the care he could muster, he saw that he was exposing a tablet of baked clay. It appeared to be intact, stamped
along one side with a line of hieroglyphics. Carter eased the tablet free. He rose to his feet, studying it carefully, his
lips mouthing the words as he sought to make sense of the script.


It seemed to the workmen, studying their employer, that the colour had suddenly drained from his face.

‘Please,’ Ahmed Girigar, the foreman, asked, ‘what is it, sir, what does it say?’

Carter appeared to start, and then his expression grew as frozen as it had been all that day. He made no reply but, climbing
the steps, reached for a cloth and carefully swaddled the tablet in its folds. Then he turned to the foreman as he gestured
at the stairway. ‘Fill it in,’ he ordered. ‘We can proceed no further until Lord Carnarvon has arrived. Fill it to the surface,
then conceal the site with rocks. I want it to seem as though the tomb was never here.’


Not until late had Howard Carter ridden home. The cliffs had loomed steepling against the brightness of the stars, and upon
the winding road which led from the Valley, lonely and abandoned, the shadows had seemed black with the silence of the dead.
There had been no one to observe him, no one to glimpse the expression on his face. Yet only as he drew near to his house
did Carter permit himself to relax the muscles in his jaw, to betray with a sudden smile his sense of triumph and joy. He
remembered the guards he had left up on the site, the most trustworthy of his workmen, how excited they had seemed – almost, he thought, as excited as himself. He smiled once again. Almost – but not quite.


As he swung down from his saddle, he glanced about him as though to make certain that he was not somehow still lost within
a dream. All, though, was just as he had left it that morning: his house a fragile oasis of green amidst the jagged rocks
and dust, as near to the ancient realm of death as it was possible for any man to live. All still seemed silent, but Carter
knew that here, away from the Valley, amidst his lovingly tended trees and straggling flowers, the night would be filled with
the motions of life. He glanced up. He had heard the sudden beating of wings and saw a bird swooping at great speed, then
turning intricately, in pursuit of insects. It was well disguised, but Carter could recognise the mottling of the nightjar
all the same, for there was not a bird in all Egypt which he did not know. ‘Teyr-el-mat,’ he murmured to himself, employing the phrase which the local Arabs used. ‘Corpse-fowl’, it meant – a bird of ill-omen.


And at once he remembered what he had in his bag. He tried to look for the nightjar again, but it was gone, and so he turned
instead into the house, carrying the bag. Feeling the weight of what lay wrapped up in its folds, he flushed with sudden uneasiness.
He had always been proud to follow the highest standards of his profession, he thought, to work to illumine, not purloin,
the hidden past – for what other justification could there be for the excavation of tombs, save that of the cause of enlightenment
and science? Certainly, he reflected, he had never before removed an object from a dig, unlike many of his colleagues, richer,
more amateur, less scrupulous than he. Yet on this one occasion, surely, he had been justified in his action? He knew how
superstitious the natives could be. He could not afford to lose them now, not when his goal was so tantalisingly near – not
on account of foolish rumours and fears.


His servant appeared and at once Carter found himself gripping his bag more tightly, almost clutching it to his chest; then,
muttering a brief salutation to the man, he hurried past. He continued briskly on his way through the house into the study;
once arrived there, he closed the door and lit a lamp. All was silent. The canary, brought back earlier that evening, appeared
asleep, and nothing stirred save the flickering shadows. Carter stood motionless a moment more in the wash of the lamp, then
carried it to his desk and pulled up a chair. He laid his bag down before him and unfastened it; he reached inside. Very gently,
he drew the tablet out.


He parted back the folds to expose it. As he did so, he realised that his heart was beating fast and that he had begun to
twist the end of his moustache. Furious with himself, he sought to steady his nerves. Such folly! He was a professional, a
man of science! Had he fought so hard to gain that status for himself only to betray those efforts now, at the very climax
of their success? Carter shook his head impatiently. He began to study the line of hieroglyphics again, tracing the pattern
of each one with his finger. When he had finished, he sat back in his chair.


‘“Death”,’ he whispered, ‘“on swift wings will come, to whosoever toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh”.’

The words still seemed to linger in the silence which followed.

He repeated the translation aloud once again – and then, despite himself, he glanced suddenly round. He was certain he had
heard something. A blind was stirring very gently in the breeze, but the room was empty and there was no one there. Carter
rose briskly and crossed to the window. Outside everything was still, save for the twinkling of the stars in the warm velvet
sky.


Carter returned to his chair. As he sat down again, his attention was caught by a statue on the desk, silhouetted by the flickering of the lamp. He reached for it. The statue was only small, carved from a block of the blackest granite, but
the detail was exquisite – as fresh, so Carter imagined, as when it had first been fashioned, almost three and a half millennia
before. He gazed at the figure. Its face was a young man’s, no more than twenty at the very most; yet for all its youth there
was an implacability to the statue’s stare, and a timelessness to its features, which made it seem a thing of death, barely
human at all. In his hands the young man grasped the symbols of immortality, and upon his head he wore the regalia of a Pharaoh
of Egypt. Carter gazed at the cobra still preserved upon the head-dress: the sacred uraeus, hooded and raised, poised to spit poison at the enemies of the King. Wadjyt – the guardian of the royal tombs.


And suddenly, even as he thought this, Carter felt his dread start to evaporate and his mood of triumph and excitement to
return. He laid the statue aside, and turned to inspect the tablet again. What could its imprecations mean, after all, save
that what he had discovered was indeed a Pharaoh’s tomb – nor just any Pharaoh’s, but the very one he had long sworn to find?
He glanced at the statue again, then felt in his pocket and drew out his keys. When he unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk,
he saw to his relief that the faded papers were lying folded as he had left them. He drew them out and placed them gently
on the tablet, then laid them back with the tablet at the rear of the drawer. He secured the lock. There they would stay until
such time as Lord Carnarvon could arrive in Egypt. For now that the tomb had been located at last, there was much, Carter
knew, he had sworn he would explain – to his patron at least, if to no one else. The secret had always been a burden to shoulder,
and Carter realised – almost with surprise, for it was his custom to think of himself as a self-sufficient man – that he would
welcome the chance to share its weight at last.


He reached for a scrap of paper, then unscrewed the lid from the top of his pen. ‘NOVEMBER 4TH,’ he wrote down. ‘1922. TO LORD CARNARVON, HIGHCLERE CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND.’ He paused a moment, then continued to write. ‘AT LAST HAVE MADE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IN THE VALLEY. A MAGNIFICENT TOMB WITH SEALS INTACT. RECOVERED SAME FOR YOUR ARRIVAL.
CONGRATULATIONS. CARTER.’ He blotted the message. He would have the cable sent the following morning – as early as possible. Carter smiled grimly.
He could endure to wait, but he had no wish needlessly to extend the torture of delay.


Before he retired to bed, he reached once again for the statue of the king and placed it upon the message to serve as a paperweight.
He was gazing into its face, holding the lantern aloft, when all of a sudden the eyes appeared to blink. A trick of the light,
though – for even as Carter inspected the face more closely, he saw how its stare grew blank once again, the blackness deeper
and more pitted by shadow.


There was much to keep him busy in the following days. Lord Carnarvon had wired back promptly: he would be arriving in Alexandria
within the following fortnight, accompanied by his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. He had lately been ill, he confessed, and
was still somewhat under the weather; yet news of the tomb had been just the tonic he had needed. Both he and Lady Evelyn
were filled with the utmost excitement.


That they might not be disappointed in their anticipation, Carter filled the two weeks with meticulous planning. There was
equipment to be gathered and experts to be recruited, problems to be foreseen and opportunities second-guessed. Planning was
all. Carter had not come so far, nor endured so long, to rush and stumble at the final fence. The steps to the doorway were buried under rubble; the tablet and his papers were locked within his drawer. In his mind too, he sought to keep
them hidden, where they could not be disturbed nor even beheld.


In his sleep, though, in his nightmares, the bonds of self-restraint were easier to slip. Again and again, Carter would dream
that the steps had been unearthed. He would imagine himself standing before the doorway, now wholly exposed. In his hands
would be the tablet, and its curse would seem written in symbols of blood. He would know that the seals had to stay unbroken
– but he would order the doorway opened all the same. As he did so, the tablet would shatter in his hands, and Carter would
think himself suddenly awake. But the dust of the tablet would linger in the darkness, and seem to form the shadows of strange
figures in his room.


Such nightmares, when he truly awoke from them, angered Carter. Drawn so near at last to the object of his quest, he discovered
that he could not endure to be reminded of that mystery which had led him to the very doorway of the tomb, and which he had
chosen to keep locked within the drawer of his desk. He began to blame his sense of guilt that he had ever removed the tablet
from the sands; yet he knew he could not return it there, nor announce its discovery, for he was still unwilling to provoke
the workmen’s fears. Nor could he keep it upon his person, for he did not care to feel that he was somehow grown a thief.
A vexing problem, exceedingly vexing – and yet Carter knew that a solution had to be found.


For all the while, as the date of Lord Carnarvon’s arrival drew nearer, so his dreams were growing steadily worse.

He had regretted bringing it almost at once. As it had done before, when he had brought it from the site of the discovery, the tablet weighed heavily in his bag. Carter shifted it from one hand to the other. A boy approached him, offering
to take the portmanteau; but the very prospect of surrendering his precious burden made Carter grip it all the more tightly.
He ordered the boy away.


He watched as the rest of his luggage was loaded upon the felucca. Only when all was readied did he prepare to board the vessel
himself. He clambered along the gang-plank and for a brief moment, just the briefest, he thought of turning round, taking
the bag and its load back to his house. But he knew there could be no delay: he could not afford to miss the train, for Lord
Carnarvon was expecting him in Cairo, and he only had three days to spare in the capital – there was no time to lose. So Carter
continued up the gang-plank, greeting the captain and then taking his seat. He nestled the portmanteau by his side, and watched
as the boat began to drift out from its moorings to join the widening flow of the Nile.


Carter shifted and looked about. He could see a night heron above him, soaring gracefully through the early-morning light,
still abroad in the last half-hour before sunrise. Nervously, even as he watched the bird, Carter began to fiddle with his
bag and, despite not meaning to, pressed on the catch. He opened it; peered inside; felt with his hand to support the evidence
of his eyes, that the sheaf of papers were still where he had placed them, sealed within an envelope at the bottom of the
bag.


Then, almost by accident, he brushed against the tablet with his fingertips. At the same moment he glanced round guiltily,
to make certain that no one had been observing him. As stealthily as he could, he drew out the tablet and rested it upon his
lap, then stared over the side of the boat. The Nile was flowing deeply, its waters very dark.


Carter sat hunched a long while, frozen by his feelings of doubt and self-reproach. He knew that what he was planning was an act of cowardice, and worse – a dereliction of all he had
ever sought to be, a betrayal of every standard he held dear. He glanced back inside his bag, at the thick, sealed envelope,
and shook his head. For almost twenty years the contents of that envelope had served to draw him on, strengthening his resolve,
granting him self-belief, even when direct corroboration had been lacking. Now at last, so it seemed, proof of the manuscript’s
value lay upon his lap – for what, after all, had its argument been, if not that the Pharaoh’s tomb was indeed beneath a curse?
Carter smiled to himself ruefully, and stroked his moustache. He knew, of course, that there was no need to take such nonsense
literally. Indeed, it had been the very presence within the manuscript of fantastical wonders, and secrets born of long-abandoned
superstitions, which had first persuaded him that it might hint at something more, for he had long since learned how the myths
of an age can be as distinctive as their tombs, and just as important for the archaeologist to date.


Why then, knowing all that as he did, had he found himself so unsettled by the warning on the tablet? He glanced down at it
once again. Had he simply lived too long with the manuscript, he wondered, with its worlds of mystery, and impossible powers?
Had it touched him more than he had ever dared to think?


Carter sighed. It was the dread that his reason might indeed have been affected, the dread that it might even come to inhibit
his work, which had decided him in the end. He had been presumptuous in his fears of the workmen’s superstitions; for his
own, it appeared, were far more insidious a threat. Carter smiled faintly. If it took a single sacrifice to put them to rest,
to appease them, well … the Ancients at least might have understood.


He glanced round again, to make certain that he was still not being watched. Satisfied, he raised the tablet from his lap. He rested it on the boat’s edge … then let it drop. There
was a soft splash. Carter stared behind him at where the tablet had sunk, as the boat glided on. The waters of the Nile flowed
as silently as before. Only the night heron, disturbed by the noise, wheeled and cried in a startled manner as it flew away
before the coming of the dawn.


At the same moment, in Carter’s house, his servant was sitting on the front porch, listening to the notes of the canary in
its cage, when suddenly there rose a faint, almost human cry. It was followed by a silence and the servant, straining to hear
more, realised that even the canary’s song had been stilled. He rose to his feet, then hurried to the room from where the
scream had seemed to come. It was Mr Carter’s study and upon entering it, almost instinctively, the servant turned to gaze
at the cage.


It seemed filled by a monstrous form. As the servant drew nearer, he recognised the hood of a cobra, and saw that the canary
was already limp within its jaws. A flicker passed through the cobra’s coils, and it began to sway its head as though to strike
once again. But then it reduced its hood and, dropping the bird, slipped out between the bars. As it glided towards him the
servant backed against the desk, then watched in horror as the cobra drew nearer still. Fumbling desperately behind him, he
found a small figurine; turning again, he raised it in his hand, but the cobra was already slipping past him, coiling up around
the leg of the desk, then out through the window until, with a final, dismissive flicker of its tail, it was gone.


The servant pushed the desk aside, and hurried to the window to mark the cobra’s progress across the empty yard outside. But
he could see no trace of it, not even a trail left upon the dust. He shuddered suddenly, and muttered a prayer – for it was as though the cobra had vanished into air.


He turned back and crossed to the cage. Reaching inside it, very gently, he scooped out the corpse of the bird. It was only
as he did so that he realised he was still clutching the tiny figurine in his other hand, and as he inspected it, so his knuckles
whitened even more. For he could recognise the statue now: it was a figure of the King whose tomb had been found, and was
soon to be disturbed; whose head-dress bore the figure of a cobra upraised – the King whose name, he had learned, had been
Tut-ankh-Amen.


 

Letter from Howard Carter to Lord Carnarvon

 

The Turf Club,

Cairo,

20 November 1922

My dear Lord Carnarvon,

You will know how I have ever enjoyed my time spent with you, and yet on this occasion above all others, how pleasant, how
gloriously pleasant, has been the cause of our meeting with each other once again! Even so the best, I may venture to hope,
is still to come and I shall duly await, with the keenest sense of anticipation, your following me onwards within the next
two days. By then, I trust, all should be readied for yourself and Lady Evelyn, for my preparations here in Cairo have gone
exceedingly well, and everything is now purchased which we shall require to complete our excavation. I am therefore confident
that between your arrival in Thebes and the commencement of our work within the Valley of the Kings, there will be no cause
for delay.


You asked me last night what I thought we might discover beyond the doorway of our – as yet – unidentified tomb. I hesitated
then, in the company of others, to reply with due confidence; but now, putting pen to paper, I dare to proclaim that we are indeed on the threshold of a magnificent discovery,
one which may grant us immortality in the annals of archaeological science. Anything – literally anything – may lie beyond
the passageway. I do not speak only of artefacts or gold but of treasures, it may be a hundred times more valuable. For unless
I am much mistaken, the tomb we have uncovered is that of King Tut-ankh-Amen; and if such should indeed prove to be the case,
then we shall discover within it, I prophesy, the proofs of a great and ancient mystery. Once the tomb has been opened and
its contents examined, our understanding of the past may be remarkably and forever changed.


You will doubtless wonder what inspires me to make such a boast, and all the more so when you recall the six years of failure
we have had to endure – barren, it must have seemed to you, of even the faintest promise. Yet you will recall as well my assurances,
made with