Pharaoh's Wife Read online

  Rutland gave Marcelle a warning dig in the ribs.

  “Pardon, Sire—I don’t know the protocol.”

  “I prefer it, Mademoiselle. Besides which, I’m traveling incognito. Call me Ismael—Ismael Pasha.”

  “Chic! I like that better. Well, Mr. Ismael Pasha, to our health!”

  “Thank you, Mademoiselle...”

  “Marcelle Peticha, of the theaters of Paris.”

  “Mademoiselle Peticha, I have applauded you in a charming operetta by François Berlu, Cupidon.”25

  And the conversation took a semi-artistic, semi-gallant turn, continued between Fuad I and the pretty singer. Very much in the swing of things, the modern successor of the Pharaohs was not at all avid to assume the rank of crowned head. As gallant as Henri IV and François I, having studied in Paris, he had retained happy memories of his youth, and the charming king was doing his best to prolong it—which did not prevent him envisaging means to make the soil of his country yield mineral treasures forgotten to date. In the company of two engineers, he was traveling his domain, having already discovered some significant deposits, and the search promised to be very rewarding. The intelligent monarch did not consider himself to be following the path imposed by Providence with regard to his people, and reckoned that Egypt would be neither better nor worse off without him.

  “What a good idea, my dear Duke,” said the king to Rutland, “to come and visit my ancestors with these young ladies. It will permit me to prove to them that not all Egyptians are mummified.”

  “And yet I, personally, have come here to see a mummy: my wife’s.”

  “But I met the Duchess a little while ago, and there was nothing of the mummy about her.”

  “It’s a strange story. Can you imagine, Sire, that for some years the Duchess has devoted herself ardently to the mysteries of the afterlife?”

  “Lady Rutland seems to me to be too young and too beautiful to cloud her brain with such abstract ideas. I thought occultism was reserved for somewhat mature ladies on the decline, like, for example, the late Duchesse de Pomar.26 She believed that she had been Mary Queen of Scots in one of her previous incarnations.”

  “Well, for my wife, it’s the wife of Tut-Ankh-Amun that she imagines herself to have been: a Pharaoh’s wife.”

  Fuad I burst out laughing. “Oh, what a joke…!”

  “That’s also my opinion, Sire. But I must say, in my wife’s defense, that she’s been aided to find a whole series of avatars by two adventurers of premier quality.”

  The King of Egypt, in his high-waisted suit, baggy in front, light brown shoes and motoring helmet, smiled in a fashion that said a lot. “And, as a good husband incapable of contradicting a lovely woman, you’ve abandoned her to her mania. Completely liberated, you can lead a joyous life, and bring the fine feminine flower of Parisian life to us here, in the desert.”

  Marcelle strove to blush with modesty, and bowed. “Oh, Majesty! Your Majesty is too indulgent.”

  “Not Majesty, my beautiful child, Ismael—simply Ismael.” Don’t you like that name? You see, Mademoiselle, it’s agreeable to me that the Europeans bring us, who are blasé with regard antique beauty, a pretty Parisian face. The defunct Pharaohs are vindictive; they punish the indiscreet persons who come to disturb their sleep. The ancient Egyptians, in building these hypogea, took infinite care to hide their final retreat, but they only succeeded in attracting thieves.” The king stood up. “I’m subject to the influence of these illustrious mummies, and I feel a trifle stiff. If you wish, Mademoiselle, it would give me pleasure to take stroll in your company.”

  Marcelle got up swiftly, ready to follow him.

  “With your permission, my dear Duke...” the King said to Rutland, for form’s sake.

  The Duke had an equivocal smile, but what could he do except bow to the King’s desire? So he bowed, respectfully, while the sovereign linked arms with the young actress and led her away.

  The time to visit the hypogea had arrived. The Agency guide came to make the announcement.

  Slightly excited by the champagne, everyone got up, with varying degrees of difficulty, tottering slightly, and then set out in quest of their binoculars, Kodaks and other items with which a self-respecting excursionist takes care to equip himself. The servants picked up candles and electric torches, and the troop set off, in good enough order, toward he tombs of the Pharaohs.

  Rutland, slightly vexed at seeing his conquest stolen, and not feeling any desire to visit the mummies without his pretty actress, had sat down again, and lit a cigar. As Shakespeare has little desire to zigzag through sand and rubble, he also took advantage of the opportunity to rest. He confided Rana to the inoffensive old misogynist and, collecting the few bottles that remained on the table, sat down facing his friend.

  XVIII. The Lucky Find

  On emerging from the tent His Egyptian Majesty, who had no interest in visiting the hypogea, drew his companion through the high hills along the cliff where the tombs were hollowed out. While flirting with the young woman, and taking a few preliminary liberties, the monarch scrutinized the mountain with his gaze in search of a suitable niche. The sand offered a sufficiently soft bed, but it was terribly enameled with stones fallen from the millenarian funereal ruins.

  Marcelle Peticha, meanwhile, found the adventure as amusing as possible and even more flattering.

  The King, for his part was frankly happy; he was about to possess an alluring and pretty hyperblonde, sparkling with pert Parisian spirit, with the chic that the word “Parisian” comprises for foreigners. Then again, it amused him to put one over on an Englishman. It is always a trifle vexing to be a protégé, not to be one’s own master, and the unfortunate Duke of Rutland could take a joke.

  While idling and chatting the lovers had covered a good deal of ground. A rocky mass protruded vertically from the sand, seemingly promising the couple the shelter they sought; they went around the hillock and were surprised to discover a superb automobile, momentarily abandoned.

  “I’ll requisition it,” said Ismael Pasha.

  How had the Duchess of Rutland’s motor-caravan, entrusted to the care of Ahmed and the driver, come to be abandoned?

  Life is beautiful, even for kings!

  XIX. Drunken Speech

  Left alone at the deserted table, Rutland and Shakespeare pursued their own trains of thought, semi-drunk, pouring out the excess of their confused ideas, a trifle overexcited by too-oft-repeated libations.

  “To the Devil with all women!” hiccupped the Duke. “It only takes some fellow with any sort of notoriety to pass by for them to fling their arms around his neck. I couldn’t care less about that chit of an actress, but to leave me—who maintains her in a chic enough fashion—for a petty king, a fellow who, but for England, wouldn’t be able to stand up! That sickens me, Will; that positively sickens me, old man.”

  “Have a drink. Nothing better to quell the bile. All that, you see, is a question of feminine vanity. One doesn’t sleep with a king every day—and then, put yourself in her place. Suppose a queen tipped you the wink... It’s necessary, you see, to take life for what it’s worth, and, with a little imagination, take the birds for musicians, the sand you’re treading on for a drawing-room carpet, flowers for lovely ladies, and your staggering steps for the latest dance-craze. Chagrin has less purchase on the individual when he snaps his fingers at it and treats it lightly.”

  “You can talk, William, you can talk! I can feel myself becoming neurasthenic, splenetic, anything you like. I’m annoyed; I see everything in black.”

  “Because you’re not drunk enough! Look at me—I’m fifty years old and I’m younger than you. Why? Because I’ve never believed that it would happen. Don’t imagine for that that I love life. One can’t love the incomprehensible, but death frightens me even more. The most difficult, most repulsive life—destitution, illness, old age, even prison—is a paradise compared with what we dread of death!”

  “Yes,” Rutland rehiccuped. “To di
e! And to go we don’t know where. To be lying between two cold partitions and thinking! This sensitive body, full of warmth and movement, must become a noxious mud, while the mind, launched into the immensity of the Universe, will wander like a vagabond…more wretched than the most wretched…if it wanders alone...”

  “My God! That’s the theory of the Mage Ormus coming back to your mind. Then again, what does it matter to you to be cuckolded today by a true descendant of the Pharaohs, when your wife’s doing likewise with a fake Pharaoh, an adventurer, a sorcerer—not that proper, in sum. But he has an allure, the swine, and you don’t look like much beside him, William!”

  “Why are you calling me William? I’m a cuckold but not a William. Pour me a drink!”

  “I thought I’d do you the honor, because, for my part, I’m damned if I’d want to be Rutland.”

  “Master Shakespeare,” said the Duke, in a dignified manner, “I believe you’re lacking in respect for the man who feeds you.”

  “Is that a reproach, Milord? So be it! One humiliates a friend of twenty years; one reproaches him for a morsel of bread. Pride, there is thy sting! That’s all right—I’m going; I’m leaving you and going back to the desert.” He broke into song: “In search of li-ber-tee!” He tried to get up, but fell back on to his chair, heavily. “That’s chagrin,” he muttered. “It’s dolor that’s overwhelming me.”

  The Duke dissolved in tears. “Then you’re leaving me too? Everyone’s abandoning me. Poor me!”

  “Come on, don’t cry,” said Shakespeare, compassionately. “Don’t cry—you’ll dry yourself out, and it’s already dry enough here. By Jove, I’m thirsty! What possessed you to bring us to this accursed place?”

  Rutland was momentarily nonplussed. “Here? To begin with, where are we?”

  “You’ve totally lost it, then? But look, we’re in Egypt—the land of the mummies.”

  “Mummies? Pour me a drink, Will—mummies? Yes, of course—we’re here to see my wife’s mummy.”

  “What? That poor Duchess has been mummified? Not surprising, after all, in dry America.”

  “William, this can’t go on any longer. I need to get my wife back.”

  “I approve. It’s your husbandly duty. But if she’s a mummy…?

  “Exactly—nothing to be done. Are you coming?”

  “Where?”

  “To see my wife’s mummy.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Come on, I tell you. My heart will guide me.”

  “Marchons! Marchons!—as in that French hymn, the Marseillaise. But aren’t you thirsty?”

  “Of course—only, there aren’t any more bottles.”

  “Old chap, one can’t embark like that in machines…tombs…without taking a few bottles. Let’s search.”

  Supporting one another, they made a tour of the table.

  “Saved!” said Rutland. “Look over there.”

  On the ground, next to the canvas, there was one more basket, half-full.

  “Hurrah! Let’s put two bottles in our pockets, and forward ho!”

  Arm in arm, lurching, they went out. Behind the supply-truck they could hear the Agency staff making merry with the remains of the feast. Everything around the tent was calm and silent. A few hundred meters away, along the almost-sheer rock-face in which the hypogea were hollowed out, a dark group was agitating: the excursionists and their guide.

  Rutland made a disdainful gesture. “There are no mummies in there that Lord Carnarvon didn’t find. Let’s search further on.”

  “Let’s search!” babbled Shakespeare, walking drowsily and singing, thickly: “Let’s search…let’s…search…!”

  XX. Fogs and Zigzags

  They had gone into the maze of the valley, and were bumping into debris, but with a champagnesque obstinacy, Rutland dragged his companion along. Far from dissipating their drunkenness, the cool night air augmented it—or at least, if their step was slightly more assured, there was nothing but fumes in their brains.

  “Hey!” said the Duke, suddenly. “What’s that?”

  A few meters away there was a hole in the ground, from which light was emerging. Hazard had brought the two companions to the shaft of the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amun. The two friends drew nearer, on tiptoe. The gleam was coming from a tunnel whose entrance was perceptible at the bottom of the shaft.

  “There’s a ladder,” said the Duke. “I’ll go first.”

  Adroitly enough, he introduced himself into the hole and took hold of the ladder he had glimpsed.

  “Brrrr!” he said. “It’s spinning.” Nevertheless, clinging on, he let himself slide down.

  “Dirty business!” Shakespeare muttered. “I’ll never get down there myself.”

  He looked into the depths of the shaft and saw George, who was beckoning to his friend with an air of mystery.

  Curiosity got the better of prudence, and Shakespeare introduced himself into the orifice in his turn, almost filling it, and searched for the ladder with his foot. He did not encounter anything, and remained suspended by his hands from the rim of the shaft. He was too heavy, though, and was forced to let go and fall into the void. Fortunately, his extended arms encountered the rope-ladder and he clung on, with an energy multiplied tenfold by fear. He spun momentarily, and then regained his aplomb, one of his feet having found a rung, and he descended—or, more precisely, lowered himself down—to the bottom.

  “Shh, Will!” said Lord Rutland. “Keep quiet, and come this way.”

  He dragged Shakespeare along, and they both advanced into the tunnel. On the ground there was an automobile headlamp, which was emitting a dazzling light. A little further on, at a bend in the tunnel, sheltered from the overly bright light, was a dark mass surmounted by a head of white hair. A long beard descended in a cascade over the sleeper’s breast—for Adsum had fallen asleep while waiting for Ormus and Diana.

  “Saint Peter at the entrance to Paradise,” said William.

  “Let’s not wake him. He might be the Devil in disguise.”

  With ridiculously excessive precautions, the two innocents went past the old man, without recognizing him, sticking their tongues out at him and pulling faces. Adsum was far from their thoughts at present.

  Rutland, who had picked up the headlamp, went on ahead. With difficulty, they went down the steep corridor, whose narrowness permitted them to support themselves on its side walls.

  XXI. Shakespearean Vaudeville

  The lovers had forgotten the time and the place. Dozing in one another’s arms, they were lying on the fine sand that covered the floor of the mortuary cavern. The headlamp, set down on the floor beside the sarcophagus, illuminated one side of the room vividly, and on the wall at that exact spot, was a double-banded fresco representing the marriage of Tut-Ankh-Amun, in which, sitting on a double throne wearing tall tiaras, the sovereigns were watching a procession of functionaries and priests, bringing their good wishes and offerings to the two royal divinities.

  Opening his eyes, Ormus cocked an ear toward the door. Strange noises were coming from the corridor.

  Gently disengaging himself from the Duchess’s arm, which was around his neck, he got up and headed toward the stir. In the distance, at the far end of the long tunnel, two men were advancing awkwardly, holding on to the walls. One of them was projecting the light of an automobile headlamp that he was holding.

  Have we been in the cave that long? Ormus wondered. Adsum’s doubtless become impatient. I have to wake Diana, to go back.

  He heard the sound of a heavy fall, accompanied by an oath: “My God! Help me, George, I slipped!”

  The man carrying the headlamp turned back to help the other to his feet. As he set his lantern down, his face appeared in the light.

  The Duke of Rutland and Shakespeare! Ormus said to himself. That’s extraordinary! How did they get here?

  Swiftly, he went back, awoke the Duchess with a kiss, and told her about her husband’s approach—which made the young woman burst out laughing
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  “As good ideas go, this isn’t one of his best!”

  Slowly and painfully, the two friends finally reached the door of the tomb.

  “I told you that my heart would guide me. My wife is here, I swear.”

  “Yes, but hang on a minute. I’m dying of thirst. That diabolical corridor had a terrible slope—no means of stopping to drink a drop.”

  “It’s very warm here. We haven’t been very clever. We should have brought Saint Peter. He lives down here—he must have a good cellar. I’ll go look for him.”

  “Stay, George. You’ll break your neck going back down. And first, you’d have to climb back up.”

  That reasoning convinced Rutland. They went into the vestibule and looked around in astonishment. After a moment spent trying to bring a little order into their ides, they renounced the attempt and, sitting down on the pedestals of the statues in the doorway, they broke the neck of a bottle and took long draughts. This time, their thirst was justified, for the staggering walk through the corridors, whose millennial dust they had awkwardly kicked up, had dried out their throats.

  “Ah, that’s better!” said William, finally, throwing away the empty bottle. “Now take me to present my respects to Lady Rutland.”

  “It must be that way,” said the Duke, pointing to the mortuary chamber. “This, my dear chap, is only the antechamber.”

  “Tortuous, these old boys,” said Shakespeare. “A chap really shouldn’t go to so much trouble to wrap up his old carcass.”

  They went into the chamber. Their last libation had finished them off; nothing could any longer astonish them. They headed for the sarcophagi and raised the lantern over the Pharaoh’s tomb.”

  “It’s really him!” exclaimed Rutland. “Do you recognize the mage Ormus? Look. Look, he’s laughing—he doesn’t give a damn about me, of course. Dirty swine!”