To read the prequel to this chapter, Chapter 4, click here
“There! There! See it?” Ellen yelled to her pilot, pointing at the flats beyond a bleak rocky mound on the edge of the Sahara, just south of Al Badari on the east bank of the Nile. Stabbing at the air repeatedly with her gloved hand, the enraged wind tossed back every syllable. She leaned out of the open seat behind the cockpit as far as she could stretch her belt, straining to see through her sand plastered goggles, midst the roar of the biplane’s single engine, repurposed British army surplus.
“See what??” her pilot snapped back, in sharp irritation. “All I see is rock, sand, and a camel train, setting up camp.” Ferguson, a Scotsman, had flown Sopwith Camels with the RAF in the Great War, staying on in Egypt for the “waters”. He was also, “misinformed”. By 1922 he was working the Cairo-Baghdad-Karachi service for Imperial Airlines, flying the new Armstrong Whitworth Argosy, over the Pyramids and the Nile. By 1924, he was back hiring himself out as an independent, putting rebuilt Sopwith Camel 1 1/2 Strutter, a two seater, at the disposal of any tourist, merchant, army or Ministry man, willing to pay. He was having second thoughts about working with an ‘arKEE-ologist’ ever again, let alone a female one.
“No, there! No question about it.” Ahead, the plains of Al Badari, in Upper Egypt, the sands stretching off to the horizon, racing towards the rapidly the setting sun.
“Whatever you see down there, we have to head back to Luxor. And, I mean now. We have barely enough petrol for the return flight. Our range is about 350 km, and we’ve passed 180 clicks already, ma’am.”
“No, certainly, not. Set it down here. That’s what I am paying you for. You aren’t afraid of a few camels are you? I want to mark the area and take some measurements of the cemetery.” Ferguson leaned back, and adjusted his goggles, peering off to the left: “Cemetery? There’s a cemetery? You’ve heard of camel slaves no doubt, and dust storms?” he yelled. “There is one coming this way, I told you already…” pausing, wasting no time to spy a solid flat area near the rocky outcrop. “Well… I suppose… with the Sopwith, we look like government. Even if they aren’t just another team of wandering ‘arKEE-ologists’ or tourists, whoever they are, they won’t bother with government or military. Why not? I can top up the fuel.”
“Ellen was relieved to learn there was no competing team of archeologists on site, just locals, escorting a Frenchman, whose purpose they would not disclose. Sparks from the fire shot out like fireworks, the little demon-flames dancing along blazing wood. A dome of blackness encased the pair, the plane off some distance, only a shadow, two single tents nearby. “So tell me, Mrs. James, aren’t there more interesting spots you could be exploring? There is nothing here anymore but rock and sand, if there ever was anything here. A cemetery you say? You can tell that from the air?” Ferguson noted his passenger was in fact stunningly beautiful in the light of the fire, an observation that stimulated his otherwise minimal interest in conversation, especially with a woman, let alone a paying one.
“Yes, the Valley of the King’s is lovely, but well trodden and Mr. Carter has beat me to the great prize, perhaps the last great one, the Tomb of the boy Tutankhamun — as you well know, in ‘22. I am not inclined to dig through the leavings and entrails of others and all that needless destruction of history, rakes and dynamite and what not.”
“But … you do prefer to stay clear of the Madding Crowd, am I right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here alone with scorpions as bedfellows and camels and bandits, and God knows what over that dune, not intending to be critical at all.”
“Perhaps,” she reflected politely, disagreeing with the proposition in its entirely, as a pure superficiality, although confirming Mr. Ferguson was an educated man. She continued on in classroom monotone to end the familiarity: “I’ve always had an interest in prehistoric and predynastic Egypt, which spans the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the early dynastic period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer. You’ve seen the Palette of Narmer, it’s quite well known, the one with the Pharaoh about to beat the brains out of a Namibian?” Ferguson’s eyes glazed over but managed to maintain a sort of half-grin. “Vaguely. Nasty temper that Narmer.”
“He was no different than any other leader of his age, that is, what you did with prisoners back then, you killed them. Slavery was actually invented most likely at the dawn of history as an act of mercy. Hey there, we won’t beat your brains in, but you’ll pay me back with your labour, for life.”
“Oh really? …. Sounds REA… sonable. Care for a drink?” his turn to change the topic, holding out his flask.
“No thank you. I’ve been conducting a dig at Hemamieh. My team has also excavated a 1,000 tombs from Qau el-Kebir in the south to Matmar in the north, across an area of about 36 km. At Hemamieh, there were some smaller cemeteries, but important burials of the Badari culture. There are definite indications from my air survey, as I expected, of some promising sites to dig here,” smiling. “Thank you for letting me charter your plane … on such short notice, I am truly grateful. Something came up and I had to go.”
“Fifteen minutes, is certainly short notice. Think nothing of it, though we could have been better provisioned. I don’t usually get so many course corrections from my usual class of passengers. All’s well that ends well. We can’t delay in Luxor, by the way. I have to quickly refuel and off to Aswan to meet my next Charter, a Messieur Degrelle and ‘friend’.”
“Oh really? Degrelle? A Belgian?” interjected Ellen. “Not Eduard (using the French pronunciation, in which she was fluent) by any chance?” Ferguson shrugged. “I can’t recall … perhaps. Foreign certainly. You know this Edooarrr?”
“I am acquainted with that Walloon, yes. We have crossed paths many times, in Egypt and in Mexico, most recently. A ‘charmer’. Be warned, the gentleman is a Viper at heart with fangs to prove it — and if he is your charter, ensure you are paid in advance.”
“Now that you mention it, he suggested paying me in some special cigars, of all things. Of course I declined, but that was a curious thing, don’t you think. Your man deal in tobacco?”
“A brewer turned antiquities dealer would be more accurate, but I wouldn’t put it past Degrelle to have his fingers in other shady ventures, like tobacco or something tobacco-like. He always was a heavy smoker. He has some interest, if I recall, in the Khairy Pasha palace in Cairo, which manufactures cigarettes with imported Turkish leaves. Come to think of it, the last time we met in Cairo, he offered me one of his ‘cigarettes’. He bragged he had them especially prepared by Ionides, of Alexandria. He sends him a thousand at a time, and and he claims he arranges for a fresh supply every fortnight when on extended stays in Egypt.”
”At Hemanieh, I organized the site into ten by thirty foot intervals. No raking and such nonsense. Too destructive. I carefully excavated in six-inch levels, and recorded the exact position of each artifact. That’s how one of the boys,” she paused, “found this,” pulling out an ivory statuette from the pocket inside her brown leather flight jacket. What Ferguson observed was a naked bug-eyed monstrosity. The head grossly oversized, its nudity comically obscene. “Let me see that … Worth anything?” Ferguson thought that beauty isn’t everything.
“Oh, certainty, to the antiquities dealers, like Degrelle, if they got their paws on it. This one will find a home in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which is backing the concession to supplement its holdings. She is an ancient Badarian mortuary figurine of a woman,” Ferguson nodded. “I can certainly see that ugly thing in a grave. Not cursed I hope,” he chuckled, giving the six inch figurine a twirl between his hands before quickly handing her back, wiping his hands on his pant legs, and guzzling back a long swig of his cheap scotch whisky. He grew silent, on the topic of curses, mummy curses and disturbing burial grounds. He wasn’t superstitious, but thought now his quip a little too close to the marrow, on the eve of flying back through a possible dust storm with “just enough” fuel . Ellen did not reply, but starred blankly into the fire.
“When do you need to be back in Aswan?”
“In that we are in agreement, soon. I have some guests arriving. I have a room, my office really, at the Cataract Hotel … where I collect my notes.”
“Oh look,” interjected Ferguson. “I have a copy of the New York Times,’ pulling a roll paper out of his satchel. “It’s only a month old. You’re from New York aren’t you?”
“Yes, but no thanks. I never read the Times.”
Ellen passed beneath the huge Moorish archways and chandeliers and looked in on the beautifully laid out tables of the Cataract hotel restaurant. “Fit for a Queen,” belted an upper class American to her fur laden friend, both in their mid 50s, the speaker’s head wrapped in a scarlett turban, made of local materials. Where is my little Frenchman?”
No sign of Poole. Ellen was also dressed for the part, as she always did. Trading the aviator jacket and the stench of petrol, for a wrap of rich purple velvet over her white satin gown, a pearl necklace and the aroma of palms, expensive perfumes and fine cuisine. She found an ideal point of perspective, seated on a cream chesterfield leather sofa, with teal blue cushions looking out on the lobby.
“Ms. James?”
“Yes,” Looking up at the porter in his red fez. “A telegram.” Thank you. Ellen read it, raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips, folded it gently in two, and tucked it in her purse. “Nassau, quite.” Ellen walked out onto the terrace and sat on one of the wicker chairs overlooking the black rocks of the Nile, white sailed boats intersecting in the fading light. She was awaiting word from her foreman at Hemamieh, concerning the “unfortunate incident”.
Beads of sweat sand-soaked poured down Ellen’s cheeks as she stood now over the expanding trench by the town and what Ellen was certain was the tomb of Kaikhenet, a local governor from the Fifth Dynasty. The sun was at its zenith. A total of sixty Egyptians were on the payroll, the largest group was of the 30 men were Quftis, who like Sherpas, carried on a half century long tradition of working as specialists, in this case, excavators and supervisors on archeological missions. The men worked with their fathers and sons, absorbing and passing on the tradition and skills this entailed — Ellen called out directions above the din of the Egyptian workmen, the foremen and skilled excavators, the bucket-carriers and boys minding the donkeys that fetched water.
The trench had reached approximately 8 feet deep and was nearly complete. Ellen stood on the edge peering in. Two young boys, one no more than 8, the other older, perhaps 14, looked up and smiled back at the funny white lady in her cloche had, brown vest and gators. The young lad had unearthed with his shovel and quite by chance that mortuary statuette, just the day before. Ellen had rushes over to do the fine work of extraction herself. “Careful now, eyes on your work. I don’t want anything broken,” she said smiling back.
No sooner said that the earth moved beneath her feet as Poole, her foreman, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back from the pit. The younger boy kept his gaze on Ellen, no fear, only a still deathlike calm as he disappeared beneath the rock and earth as if absorbed into the air. “God,” Ellen uttered amid the wails and howls of the workers. The two fathers’ voices could be heard distinctly, identifiable by their higher pitch, indistinct words, which required no translation — painful to the eardrum, like nails on a chalkboard.
The older boy was pulled out unhurt, but the younger boy was found dead, his emotionless face, unchanged from the moment of burial. “His body was returned to the boy’s family along with compensation for his loss,” said Poole. A local doctor and two policemen had been called to the site. Ellen stood over the trench at dusk, alone, the wind heaving her back from the edge, as if reenacting the moment Poole had pulled her back. The sand now stinging her eyes, she turned away. She whispered. “Where are you?”
A sudden clap of laughter from the cardroom brought her back, although she persisted in rubbing the sands of Hemamieh from her eyes. Poole was now sitting in the wicker chair next to her, his goggles still hanging ‘round his neck, his blue eyes gleaming, the frame of his goggles still sand-blasted onto his face. “Poole,” said Ellen, “Any news?”
“I’ve come directly, as you can see, slapping the dust from his jacket. The report,” handing her the single spaced typed police report of the incident. “That trench was sound,” by any objective standard,” exclaimed Poole. “The Inquest agreed. It found that you and your mission bore no responsibility for the boy’s death and recorded a verdict of ‘Act of God’. Of course, I took the liberty of ensuring generous compensation all round, including of course to the police, for time and trouble,” Poole smiled.
“Was that really necessary?” said Ellen calmly and slowly, without emotion. “Standard practice, we’re still on budget.” Getting up and bowing slightly, “I must be getting back. When will you be rejoining us? We have the trench almost cleared.”
“Soon enough. I have some other business. Perhaps two weeks.” Poole had hardly left her sight when Ellen’s view of the Nile was veiled in a cloud of smoke, and a distinct aroma of a certain Alexandrian tobacco. “Degrelle, you snake.”
“Why Mademoiselle James, I am flattered.” Degrelle stood before her in his white silk suit, impeccably pressed, a Panama hat in hand. His face was freshly shaven, his raven black hair well oiled in the heat. “Will you join me in the restaurant, only for a moment, away from the flies?”
“They must have come with you, Degrelle, I hadn’t noticed any before.” Degrelle, used his fly whisk to swat at them, but without much success. “Please, I really must have a word.” Ellen rose, questioning Degrelle without words. “Yes, the pilot said you might be here. Nice fellow. Not very chatty, for a Scotsman. I have chartered a flight with him to Luxor.”
Seated, Degrelle got right to the point. “Mademoiselle, I understand you have in your possession of a certain, unique, ivory statuette. A mortuary figure, ivory, from El Bandari? As you know, I am great lover of Egypt and its culture … and people … and have connections with some of the finer, indeed better, aficionados of Egyptian antiquities. If you’d be willing to part with this trinket, I am prepared, in light of our long time association to make you a very generous offer, on behalf of one of my clients, who wishes to remain anonymous, and you will undoubtedly understand. All of which is said here in confidence, and I can assure you any details of such a mutually beneficial transaction will remain entirely between you and me. Indeed, how opportune that I should come upon your pilot when I did and find you here. This allows me to once again be of assistance to you, as I was in the Yucatan, another chance to assist you in perhaps making up for some of your financial losses related to that ‘unfortunate incident’, not to mention the political problems this creates. I can’t recall of any fatalities on an archeological mission, in recent memory, certainly not in my memory. I also have connections in the Ministry who can make your legal and political difficulties go away, as they say.”
“I think not Degrelle, although I remain obliged for Mexico. As for the statuette, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. The pilot misunderstood. There is no ivory statue. There were some small broken ivory pieces, and I may have mentioned an interesting two little statuettes in terracotta. And even if there was a statuette in ivory, I’ve just learned the Inquiry has ruled, “Act of God”. There are no financial or ‘political’ difficulties as you say and, really, do you never take a hint?” Degrelle grimaced, “I see.” Degrelle signaled to the passing waiter, “a liqueur, Ellen, a chartreuse? A creme de menthe?” Degrelle’s tone was pleading, with unwanted familiarity.
“A glass of Moiselle, thank you. And you Degrelle, go right ahead.” Degrelle swallowed, loosening his tie. “A Pernod, thank you.” Degrelle opened his briefcase abruptly and pulled out a package. “Perhaps this may be of interest. I really must be leaving. My flight departs in an hour.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Ellen lit one of her cigarettes. “Here,” passing her the package with both arms. Ellen accepted the offering, ripping off the paper promptly to get at the contents, cigars. “I understand you will be heading up river by steamer to Hierakonpolis. I have a friend, a dear friend, who just so happens to be working at a nearby on the west bank, a business venture related to artifacts. I would be much obliged if you could take these with you tomorrow. I will have him meet you, at dock, or anywhere you like, whatever is most convenient to you. It is a gift. In return, a box for yourself.”
“How did you know about Hierakonpolis?”
“People talk, as you know. Some just listen. As most of the Pharaohs know by now, it is hard to keep a secret in Egypt,” Degrelle chuckled swatting away another fly with his ivory handled wisk. Ellen handed back the package. “I don’t know where you got that idea but you have been misinformed. I certainty hope you find another way to get your friend his gift. I don’t recognize the brand. My Arabic is dreadful. And that curious symbol, a circle with a line through it, and the two dots. yin and yang perhaps. I don’t recognize it.”
Degrelle smiled, “Unique, very unique blend. Very new. My source in Alexandria expects wonderful things. Reaching into his pocket, Degrelle pulled out a single cigar of the same brand. “Please, take one at least, for your fiance? If he wishes, I can send a box as a wedding gift.” Degrelle, leaned back with satisfaction. Ellen accepting the cigar, passed it under her nose, in very un-ladylike fashion, She pulled the telegram from her purse, dropping the cigar in its place. “You do have good sources, but I haven’t accepted yet.”
“But you will, very handsome, wealthy and well connected. The parents, close friends of you father at the Times, yes? The ideal husband,” Degrelle said with a gleam off his gold tooth. Ellen waved the telegram in the air like a fan, and for the first time showed some amusement. “Christopher would like me to join him in Nassau. What would you do Degrelle?”
“Accept of course, you can’t play at archeology forever. And just think what you and I could do with such wealth and connections, imagine! US connections and into the Caribbean! You know the joke, I am sure you’ve heard it, ‘Women make such good archeologists because they are so good at digging up the past!’” — Degrelle belly laughed, then reigned himself in, appearing less mercantile and more reflective: “The past is gone and done with. It’s what the past can do for us in the present, that’s what matters. King Tut wanted eternity, and he is now going to make some Englishmen rich. Like Mr. Mussolini told me over tea, the past is just a tool, a myth, but the myth is what makes the present dynamic, living, what makes history. Women are present creatures. Say yes of course, yes, and remember your friends.”
“Degrelle, you are perhaps the last person any respectable women would ask for matrimonial advice. You are amusing, I grant you that. But you and I have never been associates and never will be. I think it is time you caught your plane.”
“Ah well, what might have been, what might have been!” Degrelle slapped shut his briefcase, and rose up with mock solemnity. “So happy to see you Mademoiselle James, until next time, which I hope will be soon. My offer regarding the ivory statuette, I am willing to keep that open should circumstances change, or the substance,” he smirked, “of your wooden statuette change.”
“Your Pernod, Sir,” the waiter extending the tray. Degrelle snatched the glass and emptied it like schnapps, in shot style, then grabbed the two bottles, leaving only lonely glasses of water and the Moiselle. He tucked both bottles under his arms, and began walking briskly, his nose upturned: “Charge it to the room,” glancing back at Ellen with a smile. Ellen nodded, with relief, a small price to pay to see the last of Degrelle — for now.
Ellen in a wine coloured frock, walked from the garden in bloody contrast to the dirty, dark, dusty stretch of road by the river. The steamer Karmak, she observed to be docked and in the lengthy process of reprovisioning for the trip up river, departing on the morrow. Swarmed she was by bead-sellers, vendors of postcards and plaster scarabs. “You want a scarab, very cheap, very lucky!” Ellen pressed on, as she had pressed on in the jungles of Yucatan only two years before. The cry of a hawk, and the imagined flap of wings touched her eyelids. A donkey boy offered her a ride to the quarry, but she told him politely she preferred to walk. She stopped, patting the donkey on the nose, feeling in that moment its suffering, then turning abruptly away determined to think of that no more.
On the deck of the Karnak, she was utterly alone with the Nile. A white suit intruder pressed in against her, causing her to cringe, but it was not Degrelle. The gentleman was polite and unfamiliar, with moustache and a French accent, “excusez-moi, madame.” After several deep breaths, her gaze returned to the passing Nile. She bent her head downwards, cupped it in her right hand, and prayed, silently to herself, holding tightly onto her pearls with her left hand. Pausing abruptly. She looked out at a village and the passing palms, and white sailed ships, removed her pearls from around her neck, placed them in her jacket pocket, sighed one more time and returned to her cabin.
Back in the desert, the sand blowing in her eyes, at last at Hierakonpolis, which she knew must be the City of the Hawk, ancient Egyptian Nekhen. The earliest known western visitor to Hierakonpolis was Vivant Denon in 1798 as a member of the Napoleonic Expedition to Egypt. Aside from considerable amounts of habitation and structural debris, Denon had noted an eroded but intact portal to a destroyed sandstone building of substantial size. What was it? What was this place? What of the wide extent of debris covering the lowland? She held in her hands two nearly identical and mysterious terracotta statuettes, blackened by fire, arms extended to form a heart above the head of each figurine, the heads, birdlike and threatening, the bodies shapely and unmistakably female.
Ellen walked and paced, over and over, outside her tent. The Namibians were beginning to question her sanity, and chuckled, audibly. She thought of gin and tonics in Nassau and how much that pleased her hedonistic side and vanity, which was not what she should be preoccupied with under the veil of stars needed desperately to formulate a plan of action. Embarrassed by the contradictions, but with no one to see and condemn her, she quickly recovered. She was already far beyond contradiction.
Broken, death, jagged, earth. Ellen continued her pacing and dreaming. Without a moment of sleep, she merely expanded her physical meanderings further and further from the tent. Ellen stopped, bent down, and began to fill her pockets with several interesting sherds. These were examples of C ware and three pieces she noted might be Badarian, reinforcing her first indication of the remote age of the desert occupation.
Then it stuck her. “To anyone who has worked over a predynastic settlement, there cannot be the slightest doubt about the character of the place. The most amazing thing was its extent. Hierakonpolis, yes no question, was the beginning before beginnings. It was surely the capital of southern Egypt at the time of Narmer.” With her eyes and with her reviving senses, and places that don’t have names yet, she could see … see that it was in all probability, the capital for centuries before memory.
She was again in the Yucatan, clawing at the earth. “Senora,” came the voice so familiar a continuity of memory. Ellen, turned and there stood Ale, as if emerging from her day dreams. Ellen paused, turned her head, and rubbed more of sands of Hemamieh from her eyes. “What … What are you doing here!”
Ale’s head dropped, like a rag doll. “Justiniano sent me to find you. His father is dead. They shot him. He was captured by rebel army officers, tried by a military tribunal, and executed by a firing squad along with three of his brothers and eight friends. I would have been shot too if Justiniano had not got me out.”
Ellen took Ale in her arms and cried, “Oh… Oh, I’m so sorry! Justiniano, is he….”
“He is safe. And there is more, Gilles, they found him, at last, we know where he is, or we think we know.”
“Where?” said Ellen.
“He is in Bueno Aires, he has been seen!”
“Then we must go to him, you and I, we must.”
“But he …” Ale hesitated, doing three quick signs of the cross, “… he remembers nothing.”
“Then … then we must make him remember.”
This is a work of fiction. Although its form, content and narrative may at times suggest real people, real documents and records, autobiography or that the work is historical non-fiction, it is a product of the imagination. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.
to be continued …