Valley of the Kings Read Online Free Page A

the eyes of the native workmen and the tourists, I turned and went to my donkey and rode away down the valley.

3
    In the Delta, Carnarvon and I spent every fall and winter season at the digs, and I began to know him a little better. He was surprisingly companionable at times. When some topic took his fancy we could talk for hours. His wife usually accompanied him to Egypt, and in the evenings she would sit by the lamp reading, while we argued and talked over the details of the day’s digging, or some wider subject. As the years went on, Carnarvon’s daughter, Evelyn, joined us as well, a gawky, ugly girl in the starched pinafores and long white stockings in which the English upper class saw fit to swaddle their children. She collected rocks.
    In spite of all, though, Carnarvon never really became broadly knowledgeable about Egypt. He knew—often very keenly—the areas that interested him; but if a subject failed to strike a spark with him, he could not be troubled to involve himself in it.
    Periodically the Countess and little Evelyn dragged me off to the bazaar in Saïs.
    The bazaar covered several acres of ground; the stalls under their torn and dirty awnings were set up without any particular order, so that the crooked lanes between them were like a warren. The Countess walked along with her skirts hiked up in one hand, holding Evelyn in the other, and the governess trailing after, all the ladies circling and swerving around the garbage and dung that littered the ground. The vendors screamed at them, and sent their boys to run after them screaming, which the ladies ignored. The air was rich with changing odors, of people and beasts, leather, dust, the beans cooking in open pots on every corner; and the racket was constant and deafening. The ladies might have been taking their tour through the park at Highclere.
    While they looked at woven cloth I went over to a stall I knew. On the ground, on graying canvas, was spread a mass of artifacts. In the back of the stall, in the shade, an old man sat eating figs. I picked through the masses of bits of old pottery and scraps of what purported to be papyrus. Some of the Egyptian forgers of antiquities were marvelous and could fake anything well. There were some old brass beads in a pot in the middle of the canvas. The old man in the back was watching me with gleaming eyes.
    I looked over everything on the canvas. When I looked up, the old man came over to me.
    â€œCarter,” he said. “What are you looking for? What do you think I have?”
    His voice was supposed to be plaintive, but he grinned at me. Evelyn was watching us from a few feet away.
    â€œOh,” I said, “I never worry about you, sheikh. I know you never have anything really old.”
    The grin widened. He said, “I will show you something old.”
    â€œDon’t do that. I don’t like to put you to any trouble, since I know you have nothing but fakes here.”
    The old man dashed into the back of the stall. I glanced at Evelyn, watching raptly. She spoke rather good Arabic and understood everything she heard. The old man returned with a necklace.
    â€œYou see?”
    He held out the necklace on his palms. It was made of innumerable small plates and chains linked together intricately, so that it jingled when he showed it to me. The tarnished metal seemed to be silver. Some of the plates bore an odd design. I reached for it, but the old man snatched it back.
    â€œNo, no. No touch.”
    â€œBah,” I said, disgusted, and started off. I put my hands in my pockets. If it had been genuine he would have had no qualms about letting me handle it.
    â€œCarter! Thirty shilling!”
    I kept on, strolling through the passing crowd. Suddenly the old man appeared before me, dangling his object in my face.
    â€œTwenty-five shilling!”
    â€œWhat do you take me for, sheikh? I don’t spend my money on fakes.”
    â€œIt is not a fake! Carter—do you