‘There you are!’ shouted Keisha, walking into the kitchen as a deep bass line started up, shaking the house to its foundations. ‘Tonight’s gonna be the bomb.’
Chapter Eight
1881
*
The next day dawned grey and cold, with no sighting of the warm Anatolian sun that had accompanied them all the way from Smyrna. Alexandre shivered in the damp morning air as he washed and dressed in thick breeches, waistcoat and jacket.
A mood of anticipation permeated the camp as everybody looked forward to viewing the site for the very first time. The two families followed Isik to the ventilation shaft. The area surrounding it had been cleared and they crowded around the narrow opening that had been cut roughly from the soft volcanic rock.
Without delay, the guards secured a rope around a nearby rock and lowered Alexandre’s father into the depths of the Cappadocian earth.
After a couple of long minutes, a shout came from below.
‘Very good! You can pull up the rope!’
Harold went next and Alexandre peered down after him. Isik pulled the rope back up and looked questioningly at Alexandre. He hesitated. His father had not said he was permitted, but surely he could not object once he was down there.
The rope squeezed his chest and dug in under his arms. Holding a lantern in one hand, he used his free hand to steady his descent and stop himself banging into the sharp sides. He shivered and inhaled the musty, damp scent of age-old decay.
The light from above grew fainter and he looked up to see the shrinking features of Maman as she squinted down at him. The shaft widened out at the bottom and Alexandre’s feet finally touched uneven ground. He held the lantern out unsteadily in front of him.
‘Alexandre!’ Papa exclaimed. ‘Well, now you are here, come and look at this. We require your help.
In the gloom of the cavern, he stepped over stones, rocks, dead birds, rodents and other fragments of debris.
‘What is it?’ he asked, holding out his lantern and looking directly at the spot where his father pointed. An entrance way had been carved out of the wall, but behind it sat a huge smooth slab of rock with a small hole through the centre of it.
‘The entrance is blocked,’ said his father. ‘Come. Help us push.’
Alexandre set down his lantern and they put their shoulders against the slab.
‘This is not going to budge an inch,’ Harold declared. ‘My guess is the others are all the same.’
Alexandre looked around the room and saw the same thing on all four sides – huge entrance ways blocked by slabs of stone which had been put into place from the other side.
‘Look,’ Alexandre pointed to a hole in the ground that he had almost put his foot into. It was in the corner of the room and was much smaller than the shaft they had come down, only a few inches across. Harold poked at it with a rod, clearing any blockages. He dropped a small stone into it and heard a skitter as it hit the bottom a couple of seconds later.
‘There is a lower level!’ His father could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘This legend of an underground city may indeed be based on fact.’
‘As long as the demons are not also based on fact,’ Harold smiled.
‘I want to try something,’ Papa said. ‘Pass me that rope, Alexandre.’ He took the rope and began to feed it through one of the holes in the stone slabs. ‘It is as I thought,’ he said after a moment. ‘This stone slab is no more than a few inches thick and the hole goes right through to the other side.’
‘There must be another entrance to this place nearby,’ said Harold thoughtfully.
‘I think you are right, my friend. Come, let us return to the surface.’
The two families spent the next week in an agony of frustration; they could not budge the stone slabs no matter how hard they tried. Gunpowder would have been the obvious choice, but Alexandre’s father said they must try less destructive options.
Marie-Louise drew up a plan whereby they would search the surrounding area for another shaft. They had managed to employ only forty three men from the outlying villages who would help them in their endeavours. It was a simple, but monotonous job. With sharpened sticks they would test the ground, tapping and prodding inch by inch, to try to find another opening. Isik’s guards would also join in the search.
Victoria reasoned that if she were to build an underground city, she might first try to dig where water had already begun to erode the rock – in a cave. And so the workforce split their time between prodding the ground and hunting for caves. To ensure everybody did a thorough job, a large bonus was offered to the person who found the entrance.
The weather was wet and cold and, after the initial excitement, boredom set in. Hours turned into days and days turned into weeks.
*
Thinking. This was something Alexandre had never really done much of back home in Paris. There had always been too many things to do and too many people to see. No time to reflect and ponder the universe. It was amazing how one grew to enjoy letting one’s mind wander over the views and the meandering, circling questions in one’s head – mainly questions about Leonora.
At first he had grown restless, wanting to move on to the next view and the next thought. But then, as the days unwound he came to realise it was entirely feasible to allow oneself the luxury of wallowing in a single idea for as long as one could. It was liberating to realise time was not his master anymore. No omnibus to catch, lectures to hurry to, dinner engagements to be late for or errands to run.
Everybody worked hard here, but clocks were not watched. Of course, Papa was conscious of the passing of time and worried about finding another entrance but, in the day-to-day scheme of things, life just unfolded.
Nor did Alexandre mind the monotony of the work, or the continuing soggy weather. It suited his mood. He almost enjoyed his misery over Leonora. He felt … not quite love, but almost.
He longed for a solitary look from her, for a small morsel of affection. Something to indicate she did not actually hate him and that there may be a chance for reconciliation. He burnt up with images of her long white neck, her slender arms and those pale, dark rimmed eyes that flashed scorn whenever she happened to catch his eye. He had never before felt so consumed with thoughts of someone else.
She worked as hard as any man and was always the first to volunteer for an unpleasant or dangerous task. She was so far removed from the Parisian girls he had grown up around. A true original. What his friends would probably class as an ‘eccentric’. She was his beautiful eccentric. Well, not quite his, but there was still time.
How could he make her talk to him again? He stabbed his stick moodily into the ground and thought hard about what he could do to win her back, but his mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings. He could not think clearly. He needed a confidante, someone to talk to.
Isobel would ordinarily have been his first choice, but she still wasn’t speaking to him, especially now the weather was so vile and they all had to pull their weight in the search process. As it was, neither girl would have anything to do with him, taking great pains to avoid being in his company. He might as well have been infected with the plague. His back now ached from bending and he stretched his arms above his head.
‘Aarghh!’ he growled in frustration and the other workers looked up at him in surprise. He jabbed the stick into the ground again with such force it snapped in two and a splinter of wood stuck into his finger, drawing blood.
‘Damn it to hell!’ He threw the stick down and strode back to the camp.
One morning, soon after, Alexandre found himself working near his sister. He was pleased for the chance to try to patch things up and hoped she wouldn’t walk away.
‘So, Belle, are you ever going to forgive your errant brother?’
Isobel glared at him, dropped her shoulders and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Alexandre, it is such hard work being cross with you!’
‘Then am I forgiven?’
‘Yes. But only
because it is too tiring to keep ignoring you.’
‘Oh, I am relieved. It has been a difficult time with both you and Leonora against me.’
‘Yes, what did happen with Leonora? First she disliked you, then she really fell for you and now she seems to despise you more than ever. She will not open up to me, even though I have tried to prise it out of her. Why is she now so set against you? Whatever did you say to her on the journey?’
‘I made an error in judgement.’
‘Errors in judgement seem to be your forté at present.’
‘I know.’
‘So? What was this monumental error that sent the beautiful Leonora running from your open arms?’
‘I ... I told her about ... about Paris and the ball.’
‘Oh, Alexandre! You didn’t. You actually told her about Lily Bouvier? Do you have soup for brains?’
‘I know, I know. I am an imbecile.’
‘I cannot disagree with you there, brother.’
‘Do you have any words of advice for me? Any way in which I can win back her heart?’
‘Pray?’
‘Is all hope lost then?’
‘Let me think on it.’
After days of drizzly damp weather, the spring sunshine had returned and it was really rather pleasant to stroll along together with no animosity between them. Birds chirped in the trees under a clear blue sky. They walked in silence for a few moments along stony ground which rose up on one side into a steep white escarpment.
‘What is it we are actually supposed to be looking for?’ Isobel asked.
‘Did you not listen to Papa at all?’ Alexandre asked and she gave him a look, so he went on to explain. ‘We are to try and find some type of entrance in the rocks. A cave or a sealed doorway. Anything which may lead down into the cavern.’
‘But there are rocks everywhere,’ she replied.
‘Yes, but caves. We must look out for caves.’
‘This is all so boring. But at least the rain has decided to leave us alone for the time being and my hair is not frizzing to oblivion.’
‘So will you speak on my behalf? To Leonora, I mean?’
‘I will try, but she is very close-lipped about you. I have already tried to find out what happened, but she changed the subject and gave me a cross look.’
‘Thank you, sister. And I am sorry you are not happy to be here. I will try to make it more enjoyable for you.’
‘Hmm,’ she replied, giving him a sideways glance.
*
Nothing appeared to be yielding any results for anybody. Not with Alexandre and Leonora, and certainly not with finding another entrance. Not prodding the ground, nor searching in caves. It all seemed hopeless. It was now mid May and Didier’s fears of failure worsened.
It was Harold who came up with another possible solution:
‘If there is an underground city in the legend and we have found a part of this city, then some of the legend must be based on fact. We need to hear the whole legend from start to finish and, somewhere in the telling, it may make mention of a location. You never know, there may be a nugget of detail in the old stories that will point to an entrance or give us some kind of clue.’
‘Isik,’ Didier turned to the Turk, who was listening quietly. ‘Do you know of anyone who might know the ancient tales in their entirety?’
‘I will find out. But I am sure they will not wish to speak to you about this. Do not forget, most people are praying you do not find the entrance. I doubt they will want to help.’
‘All the same, it cannot hurt to try.’
After a few days of asking around and greasing palms with coins and favours, Isik was told of an old woman, said to have lived for more than a century, who knew the legends word-for-word. She lived in a village, a day’s journey on horseback to the north and east.
‘Papa,’ said Alexandre. ‘I wish to travel with Isik to find this woman.’
‘My son, I am sorry but the answer is no. We need every pair of hands here.’
‘You can easily do without me here. I am making not one jot of difference to the search.’ Alexandre was determined to persuade his father. He had started to feel confined and frustrated, needing to escape from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the camp where everyone was miserable and disheartened. Even Jacques’ and Freddie’s high spirits had been dampened of late. And seeing Leonora’s icy features everyday was making him irritable. Maybe a day away would give him some relief.
‘I know you are a grown man, Alexandre and I do not want to restrict you, but there is no way on God’s earth your mother will let you go off into the Anatolian desert without us.’
‘But we will be armed and away from the main routes. We will be safe. Papa, please, I am not a child. You can persuade her ...’
‘Enough.’ He held up his hand. ‘Let me think on it.’
At these words, Alexandre knew he had won. He bowed his head and left his father alone to work on Maman who would not be at all happy with this decision.
First thing the following morning, Alexandre and Isik left for the old woman’s village. As they travelled further away from the Silk Road, the area became more heavily populated. They passed through small towns and settlements set into towering cliffs, with hundreds of cave dwellings and rock-cut churches. From a distance they looked like great slabs of chalk-white honeycomb.
Pillars of rock called fairy chimneys rose from the hillsides in between the houses, giving a magical quality to the scenery and emerald green grass made lush by the recent rain carpeted the lower levels.
The two handsome men received suspicious glares as they cantered through the settlements, but Isik reassured Alexandre it was nothing to worry about. Travelling strangers armed to the teeth were never a welcome sight in any peaceful village.
Alexandre had never really been given to thinking about the greater world and where he fit into it. He usually thought about the world and where it fit into his life. But travelling through the Anatolian countryside, seeing all these people in all these villages, well ... it set him thinking about all the people in all the villages in all the countries throughout the world and he thought about the insignificance of his own petty life.
What set him apart? What had he contributed? What difference had he made? What had he actually put into the world? For that matter, what had he taken out? Not a great deal, not when he thought about it.
He knew he was a good person, a caring brother and a loyal friend. But what else? Did there need to be anything else? Would there be a day of reckoning when he would have to account for himself? And if so, what would he say? Umm, I am good. People seem to like me. I am an amusing companion. This was not a long or inspiring litany. He would have to do better.
He would endeavour to make more of a mark on this world. What was it his father always said? ‘Opportunity is a duty’. Well, he would start to live by this saying. He was resolved.
As the sun began to set, the two men reached the outskirts of the village where the old woman lived.
Together they entered the settlement, an eerie place at this time of day. Birds screeched their evening song and the warm wind gave a low groan as it swept through the valley, picking up dust and leaves in small spinning vortexes and depositing them randomly on its way.
It was quiet. The time for meals to be prepared and for people to relax after a hard day’s work. Piebald goats bleated and a small fluffy dog yapped around their horses’ hooves. The noise brought a few village children scampering out of their houses.
‘A piastre to the child who can point me to the house of the village leader!’ Isik called across to them in his native language.
They all shouted and pointed at once to the larger of two square houses, which sat in the shade of the hillside. The children jostled each other, falling over themselves to reach the men. Alexandre laughed and showered a sprinkling of coins and sweets at their feet.
Isik gave his chestnut stallion a squeeze with his calves and the horse broke from
a walk to a steady canter. Alexandre followed suit on his grey mare and they headed towards the imposing residence.
Alexandre had not expected to find such a wealthy-looking settlement. He had pictured a dusty, shabby place with spare accommodation and poorly dressed inhabitants.
When they reached the house, they dismounted and led their horses to a stone trough of water, tethering them to a couple of wooden posts. Whilst they did this, the front door to the house opened and a servant politely enquired as to their business.
‘Greetings to you,’ Isik said. ‘I am Agha Isik Kaya and this is Monsieur Chevalier, from France. He is here as a guest of our government. We are passing through and come seeking food and shelter for the night.’
The servant nodded and went back into the house. Five minutes later he returned, following a richly dressed middle-aged gentleman.
‘Greetings to you,’ The man said. ‘Do you understand English? I am afraid I have no French.’
‘Yes,’ Alexandre replied. ‘English is fine.’
‘Good, good. Please, Monsieur Chevalier, Agha Kaya, won’t you come in? I am Asil Sahin Rais and you are welcome to my hospitality. One of my servants will see to your horses.’
Alexandre and Isik followed their host inside. He showed them to a room where they could wash and change and then the house servant came to take them in to dinner.
Three pretty children stood in the hallway, staring with unabashed curiosity. The boys were handsome and the girl was as sweet as honey.
‘I am Yusue Sahin,’ said the eldest boy. ‘This is my brother, Yunue and my sister, Aysun.’ He held out his hand and Alexandre shook it.
‘My name is Alexandre Chevalier and this is Agha Kaya. I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Master Sahin.’ The men both shook each of their little hands in turn.
Where are your weapons, Sirs?’ Yusue asked.
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