by Wilbur Smith
She did not let him finish. ‘The river!’ she cried. ‘Not the sea! I was mistaken in the translation. I read it as “tide”. I assumed Taita was referring to the sea, but it should have been “current”. The Egyptians made no distinction between the two words.’
They both rushed back to the desk and her notebooks. ‘“The current behind me and the wind in my face”,’ Nicholas changed the quotation.
‘On the Nile,’ Royan exulted, ‘the prevailing wind is always from the north, and the current always from the south. Taita was facing north. The north castle.’
‘We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,’ he reminded her.
‘No! I was wrong.’ Her face was alight with the fires of inspiration. ‘“O, my beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips.” Honey! The bee! I had the symbols for the north and south inverted.’
‘What about east and west? What can we find there?’ He turned back to the texts with fresh enthusiasm. ‘“My sins are red as carnelians. They bind me like chains of bronze. They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes towards the evening star.”’
‘I don’t see—’
‘“Prick” is the wrong translation,’ he stuttered eagerly. ‘It should be “sting”. The scorpion looking towards the evening star. The evening star is always in the west. The scorpion is the western castle, not the eastern castle.’
‘We had the board inverted.’ She jumped up excitedly. ‘Let’s play it that way!’
‘We still have not determined the levels,’ he objected. ‘Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?’
‘Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We are either right or wrong. We will play the sistrum first as the upper level, and if that doesn’t work we can play it the other way round.’
It was so much easier now. The intricacies of the maze had become less forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white chalk signs in Nicholas’s handwriting on each corner and at each fork and T-junction of the tunnels. They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and found the way still clear before them.
‘The eighteenth move.’ Royan’s voice trembled. ‘Hold both thumbs. If it takes us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent’s south castle, then that will be the check coup.’ She drew a deep breath and read it aloud to him. ‘The bird. The numbers three and five. With the lower level symbol of the three swords.’
They paced it out and passed the five junctions into the lowest level of the maze, reading their position from the chalk marks on the stone blocks of the walls at each fork.
‘This is it!’ Nicholas told her, and they stood together and looked about them.
‘There is nothing outstanding about this spot.’ Disappointment was bitter in Royan’s tone. ‘We have passed over it fifty times before. It is just like any of the other turns.’
‘That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell! He wouldn’t have put up a signpost saying “X marks the spot”, would he now?’
‘So what do we do?’ She looked at him, for once at a loss.
‘Read the last epigram from the stele.’
She had her notebook in her hand. ‘“From the black and holy earth of this very Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey, and the wooden spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed, and reap the grape and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and eat the loaf. I follow the rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth.”’
She looked up at him. ‘The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to the four faces of the stele? The earth?’ she asked and looked down at the slabs beneath their feet. ‘The promise of reward from the earth? Under our feet, perhaps?’ she asked.
He stamped his foot on the slabs, but the sound was dull and solid. ‘Only one way to find out.’ He raised his voice and it echoed weirdly through the labyrinth. ‘Hansith! Come down here!’
Sapper sat on the high seat of his yellow front-end loader in the rain and cheerfully cursed his gang of Buffaloes, secure in the knowledge that they understood not a word of his insults. The rain swept over them in intermittent gusts off the high mountains. It was not yet the solid, drenching downpour of the true wet season. However, the river was rising sullenly, turning dirty blue-grey with the mud and sediment that it was bringing down.
He knew that the flood had not yet begun in earnest. The thunder that growled ominously along the mountain peaks like a pride of hunting lions was only the prelude to the vast celestial onslaught which would soon follow. Although the river was lapping the top course of gabions of Sapper’s dam, and was roaring through the bypass that he had cut into the side valley, he was still holding it at bay.
His Buffaloes were packing more baskets with aggregate, using up the last of the steel mesh from the stores in the quarry. As soon as each of these was filled and wired closed, Sapper picked it up in the front bucket of the tractor and drove it down the bank of the Dandera. He reinforced all the weak spots in the dam wall, and then he began raising it another course. Sapper was fully aware of the overturning effect that the river would exert once it began to pour over the top of the wall. Nothing would be able to withstand its power once this happened. It would carry away a rock-filled gabion as if it were the branch of a baobab tree. It needed only a single breach in the wall to bring the entire structure tumbling and rolling down. He had no illusions as to just how swiftly the river could do its fatal work.
He knew that he dared not wait for the first breach to develop in the wall before he warned Nicholas and Royan in the chasm downstream. The river could easily outrun any messenger he sent, and once the wall began to go it would already be too late. It would be a matter of fine judgement, and he slitted his eyes against another gust of slanting rain that blew into his face. His instinct was to call them out of the chasm now – there was already less than twelve inches of free-board at the top of the wall.
However, he knew that Nicholas would be furious if he was made to evacuate the workings prematurely, and in so doing aborted all their efforts. Sapper was fully aware of the extreme risks that Nicholas had taken and of the crippling expenditure he had made to reach this stage. Before they had left England, he had hinted to Sapper of the straitened circumstances in which he found himself. Although Sapper did not understand the intricacies or the responsibilities of being a ‘Name’ at Lloyd’s, there had been so much publicity in the British press that he could not but realize that, if their venture here failed, the next stop for Nicholas would be the bankruptcy courts – and Nicholas was his friend.
The squall of rain blew over, and a bright hot sun burst through the low cloud banks. The flow of the river seemed undiminished, but at least the water level on the dam wall was no longer rising.
‘I’ll give it another hour,’ he grunted, engaging the gears of the tractor and easing her down the bank to place another gabion in position.
Nicholas worked shoulder to shoulder with Hansith’s gang as they began to strip the paving slabs from the floor of the lowest level of the maze. The joints between the slabs were so tight that, even using crowbars, they had difficulty prising them apart. In order to save time, Nicholas made the hard choice of going into a destructive search. He put four of the strongest men in the team to work with home-made sledgehammers, lumps of ironstone on wooden shafts, to break up the slabs so that they could be more readily levered out of the floor. He felt guilty about the damage they were causing to the site, but the work went ahead very much faster.
The high spirits and enthusiasm of the men were at last beginning to wane. They had worked too long in the oppressive confines of the maze, and every one of them was fully aware of the rising level of the river at the head of the gorge, and of the mortal threat behind those waters. Their expressions were surly and there was little laughter or banter. But more worrying for Nicholas was the fact that at the beginning of this shift Hansith had repor
ted the first desertions. Sixteen of his men had failed to report for duty. They had quietly rolled their blankets during the night, picked up whatever items of value or utility they found lying around the camp, and crept away into the darkness.
Nicholas knew that it was no use sending anyone after them – they had too much of a start, and would be halfway up the escarpment already. This was Africa, and Nicholas was certain that now that the rot had started it would spread very quickly.
He joked and jollied them along, not allowing them to sense his true feelings. He worked shoulder to shoulder and sweated along with them in the excavation in an attempt to hold them. But he knew that, unless they made another discovery under these slabs to keep their interest and expectations alight, he might wake up tomorrow to find that even the monks and the faithful Hansith were gone.
He had started lifting the slabs in the angle of the corner of the maze, and they worked out from there in both directions down the arms of the tunnel. His heart sank as they broke up each paving slab with the hammers only to find beneath it the solid stratum of the country rock with no indication of any joint or opening.
‘It doesn’t look very hopeful,’ he muttered to Royan as he took a short break to drink from one of the water flasks.
She too was looking unhappy as she poured water from the flask into his cupped hands, so that he could wash the sweat and grime from his face.
‘I may have got the symbols for the levels wrong,’ she suggested. ‘It is just the kind of trick Taita would play, to work out combinations which would both give a logical solution.’ She hesitated before she appealed to him for guidance. ‘Do you think I should start working back the other combination—’
Her question was interrupted by a bellow from Hansith. ‘In the name of the Blessed Virgin, effendi, come quickly!’
They spun around together. In her haste Royan dropped the flask, which shattered at her feet. She did not seem to notice that it had drenched her legs, but ran back to where Hansith was standing with the hammer poised for another stroke.
‘What is it—’ she broke off as they both saw that beneath the paving slabs Hansith had uncovered another layer of dressed stone sills.
These were laid neatly across the floor of the tunnel from wall to wall, recessed into the surrounding rock, with knife-edge joints between them. Their sides were smooth and plain, without engravings or markings upon them.
‘What is it, Nicky?’ Royan demanded.
‘Either it’s another layer of paving, or it’s a cover over an opening in the floor,’ he told her eagerly. ‘We won’t know until we lift one of them.’
The stone sills were too thick and heavy to be cracked with the primitive hammers, although Hansith tried his best. In the end they were forced to dig around the first of them and lever it free. It took five men to raise the end of it and lift it off its foundation.
‘There is an opening under it.’ Royan went down on her knees to peer into the space that it had left. ‘Some kind of open shaft!’
Once the first sill was removed it was easier to get a purchase on the others that blocked the rectangular opening. When they had cleared them all away, Nicholas shone the lamp down into the dark shaft that was revealed. It stretched from wall to wall of the tunnel, and the head room was sufficient for even Nicholas to stand up to his full height on the steps that led down at a forty-five degree angle.
‘Another stairway,’ he exulted. ‘Surely this must be it. Even Taita must have exhausted all the false leads by now.’
The workmen were crowding up behind them, their sullen mood evaporating at this fresh discovery and the certainty of additional bonuses in silver dollars that they had earned.
‘Are we going down?’ Royan asked. ‘I know we should be careful and check it for traps, but we are running out of time, Nicky.’
‘You are right, as always. The time has come when we have to press on regardless.’
‘Caution thrown to the winds.’ She took his hand, laughing. ‘Let’s go down together.’
They descended side by side, one cautious step at a time, with the lamp held head high and the shadows retreating before them.
‘There is a chamber at the bottom,’ Royan exclaimed.
‘Looks like a store room – what are all those objects stacked along the walls? There must be hundreds of them. Are they coffins, sarcophaguses?’ The dark shapes were almost human, standing shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, around the walls of the square chamber.
‘No, I think those are corn baskets on one side,’ she said, recognizing them. ‘Those on the other side look like wine amphorae. Probably some sort of offering to the dead.’
‘If this is one of the funeral store rooms,’ said Nicholas in a voice tight with excitement, ‘then we are getting very close to the tomb now.’
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Look – there is another doorway on the far side of this store room. Shine the light over there.’
The beam picked out the square opening facing them across this lower chamber. It was inviting, beckoning them almost seductively. They almost ran down the last few steps into the chamber lined with the reed baskets and pottery wine jars. But as they reached the level floor of the store room they ran into an invisible barrier that stopped both of them dead and sent them reeling backwards.
‘God!’ Nicholas clutched at his throat, his voice a strangled choke. ‘Get back. Got to get back.’
Royan was sinking to her knees, also gasping and hunting for breath.
‘Nicky!’ she tried to scream, but her breath was trapped in her lungs. She felt that a steel noose had encircled her chest and, as it tightened, the breath was being forced out of her.
‘Nicky! Help me!’ She was strangling, like a fish thrown up on the bank. The strength drained from her limbs, and her vision began to break up and fade. She did not have the strength to stand.
He stooped over her and tried to lift her, but he was almost as weak. He felt his own legs buckling, no longer able to support even his own weight.
‘Four minutes,’ he thought desperately as he suffocated. ‘That’s all we have got. Four minutes to brain death and oblivion. We have to get air.’
From behind her, he slipped his arms under her armpits and locked his hands together over her breasts. Again he tried to lift her, but his strength was gone. He began to walk backwards towards the stairs down which they had run so lightly, and every pace required a huge effort. She was already unconscious, lying inert in the circle of his arms. Her limp legs trailed across the stone floor as he dragged her back.
The lowest step caught his heels and he almost toppled over backwards. With an effort he regained his balance and lugged her back up the steps, her feet sliding and bumping loosely over the treads. He wanted to shout to Hansith for help, but he did not have the air in his lungs to utter a sound.
‘If you drop her now, she’s dead,’ he told himself, and he struggled up another five steps, his lungs hunting for precious air and finding none. His strength oozed out of him a drop at a time as his vision slid and wobbled and distorted.
‘Let me breathe,’ he pleaded. ‘Please God, let me breathe.’
Miraculously, like a direct answer to his prayer, he felt the precious oxygen slide down his panting throat and swell his lungs. At once his strength began flooding back and he tightened his grip around Royan’s chest and lifted her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her body in his arms and sprawled out of the mouth of the shaft on to the slabs of the tunnel at Hansith’s feet.
‘What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?’
Nicholas had no breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.
‘Come on!’ he pleaded with her. ‘Speak! Talk to me!’
There was no response, so he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and blew down her throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest swelling and inflating.
He sat b
ack for a count of three. ‘Please, my darling, please breathe!’ There was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.
He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs with his own breath he felt her stir under him.
‘That’s it, my darling,’ he told her. ‘Breathe! Breathe for me.’
At the next breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring round at the circle of faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked out Nicholas’s pale face amongst the black faces of the men.
‘Nicky! What happened?’
‘I am not sure – but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are you feeling now?’
‘It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was strangling me. I couldn’t breathe, and then I passed out.’
‘It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage. You were only out for less than two minutes,’ he reassured her. ‘It takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to kill the brain.’
‘I have a terrible headache.’ She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘I heard your voice calling me back. You called me “my darling”.’ She dropped her eyes.
‘Just a little slip of the tongue.’ He lifted her to her feet and for a moment she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his chest.
‘Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I will never be able to repay you.’
‘I am sure we will be able to work something out.’
She was suddenly aware of the men’s eyes watching her and drew away from him. ‘What kind of gas? And how did it get there? Was it another of Taita’s tricks, do you think, Nicky?’
‘One of the gases of decay, most probably,’ was his opinion. ‘Because it is trapped in the lower part of the passage, it must be a heavier-than-air type. I would guess that it is probably carbon dioxide, although it could be something like methane. I think methane is heavier than air, isn’t it?’
‘Did Taita do it deliberately?’ The colour was returning to her cheeks, and she was recovering swiftly.