The Alexandria Affair

by Ashley Gardner

  Marcus slept, or seemed to, his arm over his eyes. Brewster and I remained awake, keeping our eye on Marcus, though I was tempted to drift off in the heat.

  Grenville returned in a few hours, the footmen following with large packs on their strong backs. Bartholomew and Matthias set up our camp, and we prepared to sleep under the stars.

  We settled down, Grenville quickly dropping into the sleep of the just. I lay awake, uneasy. I expected Sharkey to come upon us and try to stab or shoot us in the dark. We’d destroyed his house, injured him and his men, and the fire that had demolished five houses had likely brought the notice of the pasha on him.

  Grenville had reported, before he fell asleep, that there was no word of Sharkey in town. Bartholomew, who had learned to communicate with our Egyptian servants, said that there had been much talk throughout Cairo of the fire, but no news of the foreigners who’d lived in the house. No bodies found in the smoking rubble either.

  If Sharkey had escaped, he did not search the desert for us that night. We saw nothing but a few snakes and scorpions, who gave our small fire a wide berth. A beetle once poked its head above the sand and then withdrew with a snap. I wondered how such creatures moved about underground and reflected that their skill would be handy in our coming excavation.

  Day dawned, and we went early to work.

  With Matthias and Bartholomew to lend their strength, we cleared away a great deal of rubble inside the tunnel, finding larger chunks of stone deeper inside rather than only sand and gravel.

  At the peak of the afternoon’s heat, we broke through the last of the rocks that had filled the tunnel, and found a straight, square-sided shaft.

  Brewster wanted to be first inside, to make sure all was well, but Grenville forestalled him.

  “Let Lacey,” he said. “He’s been waiting for this moment for years.”

  I had indeed. Since the night Grenville had first invited me into his private sitting room in Grosvenor Street, and I’d asked where he’d obtained the beautiful antiquities, I’d longed to see the places from which they’d come.

  Brewster seemed to understand. He let out a muted grunt but turned aside and waved me forward. I crawled into the darkness, one of Grenville’s lanterns lighting my way.

  I found wonders. The low walls of the tunnel were covered in hieroglyphs, and farther along, paintings—beautiful paintings in bright reds, yellows, greens, golds. The large men walking were done in the odd style of the ancient Egyptians, everyone sideways and out of proportion, but the wildlife—birds, snakes, crocodiles, hippopotami—were so real, every feather and scale reproduced exactly, that they might come to life and fly past me to the light.

  “Come,” I called back. “It’s beautiful.”

  No one had been here for eons—I somehow knew this. The paintings were undisturbed. I was the first human eye to see them for centuries. The thought made me shiver in awe, but also humbled me.

  I would have artists come and copy them exactly before wind and dust and people crawling through ruined them. Or perhaps they could be removed intact by chiseling out the walls themselves.

  That was a difficulty for another day. I continued along the passage, coming upon nothing but more paintings—no heaps of gold or caches of emeralds had been conveniently piled before me.

  But it didn’t matter. The artist of however many thousands of years ago had reached forward in time, touched my eyes, and enchanted me.

  The others crowded inside the tunnel as I moved on. I heard exclamations as they reached the paintings, and Grenville’s sketchbook rustle as he sought to copy at least a little.

  The tunnel continued onward, and I followed it until it began to slope. A faint smell came from the bottom, and I recognized the pungent odor of bat.

  “We need rope,” Brewster said. “No telling when that’s going to drop off.”

  Bartholomew had thoughtfully brought in two coils. He passed one up to us.

  Matthias said, “I ought to go back and keep watch, sir. In case anyone has followed.”

  He looked above him worriedly, as though the dark, closed-in space unnerved him. Grenville seemed to understand and waved him off. Bartholomew went with him. Truth to tell, I felt better knowing the brothers would be outside and on guard.

  The four of us went on, Marcus readily helping as we tied the rope around our waists and the lantern to one end of it. I pushed the lantern ahead of me—it would be the first to fall if the tunnel indeed dropped.

  It did not. The downward slope became steep, but we picked our way along, holding on to the side walls or the ceiling to keep from slipping. I kept smelling bat dung—the stench became quite thick—but we had yet to see any of the animals.

  The tunnel ended abruptly in a square opening that emitted a faint draft. I groped inside with my hands but touched only empty air.

  I carefully lowered the lantern through the hole, measuring off how many feet I released. After six feet, the lantern struck stone.

  I lay on my belly and peered through the opening, hoping the lamp had not simply landed on a rock ledge. I saw the lantern balanced evenly on a floor, the light showing me regularly shaped stone blocks in a chamber of about ten feet on each side.

  In the thick dust on the other side of the chamber, something glittered.

  I untied myself from Brewster and swung into the hole, ignoring his startled shout. I held on to the tunnel’s ledge to lower myself the six feet, landing easily on my feet.

  Without waiting for the others, I snatched up the lantern, strode across the chamber, and flashed the light on what I had seen.

  In the middle of a pile of sandy gravel the glimmer of gold, bright blue of lapis, and the blood-red fire of rubies winked up at me.

  Chapter 25

  Lord love a duck,” Brewster breathed. He stood just behind me with the others, lifting another lantern. “Tell me you ain’t tamely handing those over to a bloody museum, guv.”

  He reached forward, ready to reverently lift a handful of the jewels that spread themselves before us.

  I grabbed his wrist. “Wait. Grenville,” I called to him. “Draw it. As precisely as you can.”

  Grenville darted forward, turning to a clean page in his book, pencil ready. He crouched down on his heels, peering at the jewels, and then began to sketch.

  “What for?” Brewster asked. “We can lay ’em out on the table at home and draw them there.”

  “Because,” Marcus answered for me. “Whatever string or wires held everything together will have deteriorated long ago. This way, we’ll know what they are supposed to look like when we try to put them back together.”

  “Looks like a jumble to me,” Brewster said. “Like someone dropped ’em. Or threw them in the corner.”

  “Why on earth would they?” Grenville asked as his pencil moved. “They’re beautiful.”

  “The rest of this room is empty,” I observed.

  The floor was blank, except for one solid bench-like piece of stone along the opposite wall. It was the size and shape of a bed for one, or the resting place for a coffin, I realized. The walls and even the ceiling held more paintings, but large bits of them had been gouged out or fallen away long ago.

  “I am guessing that thieves did find it this place,” I said. “Whatever treasure was here, they took, including the body of whoever rested there. Perhaps their hands were so full they dropped the jewelry. Or they’d found so many more valuable things that these didn’t signify.”

  Marcus let out his breath. “What it must have been like then, eh? Full of glorious things.”

  “Sorry, Lacey,” Grenville said. He bent to examine the cache then adjusted a detail on his drawing. “I know you wanted to find a mummy cloaked in gold surrounded by a treasure of the ages.”

  “This will do nicely,” I told him. “Rubies will look lovely in my wife’s hair.”

  “And mine,” Brewster said. “I want something for my trouble following you about.”

  Marcus’s eyes flashed in the
lamplight. “A find like this? You’re going to decorate your wives with it?”

  Grenville continued to draw. “I can think of no better end for them. These were obviously jewels made for a princess. Look at the pictures. The men dominate, but over and over, I see a woman, a very young one, and a man handing her gold, jewels, animals. Her father perhaps? Or a young husband? Poor woman couldn’t have been very old.”

  I studied the paintings around us and decided he was right. The jewels had been placed here in memory of the young woman. A pang of pity touched my heart, though she had been dead and dust centuries before I’d been born.

  “We’ll display them and honor her, whoever she was,” I said.

  Marcus snorted. “No one will let you keep a bit of them. Trust me, I have tried treasure hunting before.”

  “Is that why were you after the Greek book?” I asked as we waited for Grenville to finish. “More treasure hunting?”

  Marcus shook his head. “I wanted to find it because you wanted it,” he said. “And I was interested for its own sake. A scroll from the Alexandrian library? I would be celebrated.”

  “Mr. Denis wants that scroll,” Brewster rumbled warningly. “’S my job to see he gets it.”

  “I don’t think it exists,” Marcus said. “Your man sent you on a wild goose chase, along with his tame dog.”

  Brewster gave him an unfriendly eye. “You watch your mouth. I’m still displeased with you for shooting me.”

  “Gentlemen.” Grenville closed the notebook and rose. “We are in a burial chamber. Have a bit of respect. Now, we need to pick up the pieces very carefully and find a way to carry them out.”

  We settled on simply folding the pieces in our handkerchiefs and transporting them in our pockets. The four of us gathered on the floor as Grenville, with slim, deft fingers, divided up the pieces of ruby, lapis, gold wire, and the carnelian we found underneath, along with beads that proved to be made of beaten gold.

  I declared we should each have an equal share of the find, and that Matthias and Bartholomew should get a bit of it too. Grenville agreed and divided the stash exactly four ways.

  Marcus shot a glance at Brewster as Grenville laid a ruby, then a gold bead, on Brewster’s large handkerchief.

  “You’d trust a thief with this?” he asked, not in anger but in curiosity. “Why will he not simply kill us all and flee with the lot?”

  Brewster scowled, but I held up a calming hand before he could speak. “Brewster answers to a higher authority,” I said. “His employer would not be pleased, and he knows it.”

  Brewster turned on me with a look of hurt. “You fink that’s the only reason? I’d never rob you, guv. I’m grieved you’d say so. I truly am.”

  I raised my brows, nonplussed. I’d come to think of Tommy Brewster as a friend—he’d taken me to his home, introduced me to his wife, and had come to my aid many times, at a cost to himself.

  But I’d had no idea he might think of me as friend in return. I’d believed Brewster viewed me only as the troublesome captain Mr. Denis expected him to look after.

  Brewster looked away, still scowling. I’d have to make it up to him, explain I’d only been trying to assuage Marcus. I had the feeling I’d be standing him ale for a while before he forgave me.

  There was nothing else to do in the chamber. The four walls were solid, the paintings damaged, the entire place robbed except for the jewels, which fit into our pockets. We’d found all there was to find.

  Brewster insisted on going ahead of us, so we boosted him up into the tunnel. He pulled us up in turn, each of us climbing out with the aid of rope and Brewster’s strong arm.

  We crawled back to the brilliant paintings that greeted us with their vibrant beauty. I was struck anew with how the pictures depicted cheerful, happy scenes, incongruous with a tomb, but I supposed whoever created them did so to comfort the princess who’d lain here.

  Ahead of us, Brewster stopped abruptly.

  I coughed at the dust that filled the passage and muffled the lantern light. Had another sandstorm begun above?

  “Guv,” Brewster said, his voice was strangely subdued.

  He lifted his lantern. Instead of more dark tunnel sloping upward before us, his light fell on rubble that blocked the passage from floor to ceiling, cutting into the middle of the exquisite paintings. Sand trickled around our knees, and the air became heavy.

  Our way out had been completely sealed off.

  * * *

  After we stared, stunned, at the solid rubble, Brewster reached out a fist and pounded on it. “Oi!” he shouted. “We’re still in ’ere!”

  “Not a natural collapse?” Grenville asked, his face pale in the flickering lantern light.

  “We would have heard a collapse or felt an earthquake,” I said tightly. “Someone did this deliberately.”

  Brewster yelled again, louder. “Oi!”

  Very faintly, we heard an answering shout. “I’ll send word to Mr. Denis you’re indisposed.”

  And then, nothing.

  “Douse the lights,” I said abruptly. “All but one. Save the candles.”

  “Bloody hell.” Brewster obeyed, blowing out his light as I blew out mine. “If I get out of here, Mr. Sharkey is a dead man.” His eyes glittered with terrible rage, and I knew he’d follow through on his threat.

  “We dug our way in,” I said, trying to sound calm in spite of the watery fear pouring through my veins. “We can dig our way out again.”

  “Our tools are outside,” Marcus pointed out. “What about your footmen? Why weren’t they on guard?”

  “They were,” Grenville said, voice grim. His lantern alone remained lit, pale light flickering over his sharp face. “That worries me very much.”

  “I’m more worried about getting us out of here,” Brewster said. He put large hands on the rubble and began to pull.

  The pile shuddered then rocks rattled toward us, billowing a cloud of dust through the passage.

  “Stop!” Grenville cried. “Before you bring it down on us. I’m certain Mr. Sharkey means to bury us alive.”

  “Which is why he’s a dead man,” Brewster said.

  However, he ceased tugging the rocks until the pebbles stopped sliding and the air cleared a bit.

  Marcus asked the question we were all thinking. “What do we do now?”

  “Go back to the burial chamber,” I said. “The air was better in there.”

  There was not much point in debate. We turned and inched our way back down the tunnel.

  The paintings seemed a bit more sinister now. They depicted life under the open sky, with sunshine, birds, animals playing in the river. Reminding the dead what it was to be alive.

  At the end of the tunnel, Brewster again lowered us into the chamber then climbed in after us. There was nowhere else to go after that. The tomb had a solid roof and floor and four walls without a crease.

  “If Matthias and Bartholomew are all right, they’ll go for help,” I said. “They’ll dig us out.”

  “If Sharkey didn’t kill them,” Marcus said, echoing my fear.

  Grenville answered. “Those lads are resourceful. Bloody clever. They’ll find a way.”

  “They’re servants,” Marcus said. “Why would they risk themselves for a man of your class?”

  Grenville raised disdainful brows at him. “I don’t think much of your upbringing. Loyalty and friendship has nothing to do with a man’s place in life.”

  “I’ll wager Sharkey took care of them,” Brewster said unhappily. “A pity—they’re good lads.” He wiped his brow. “I don’t fancy starving to death down here, and that’s the truth. A mate of mine told me his mum stuck him in a cellar and forgot about him when he was a lad. Drank herself to death upstairs. They found him just afore he were gone. Said it was the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life.”

  “We have our pistols,” Grenville said quietly. “If it comes to that.”

  Brewster looked at Marcus, who had come weaponless. “Don’t wo
rry,” he rumbled. “I’ll do you quick.”

  I broke into the morbid discussion. “Gentlemen, let us not be so quick to give up hope. I’ve had to face—”

  “Oh, God’s balls,” Brewster cut in. “He’s going to give us another of his travelers’ tales. Been in a tighter spot than this, have you guv? In India, maybe?”

  “Spain, if you must know,” I said, ignoring his derision. “French soldiers beat me senseless then strung me up by my ankles and left me to die. Yes, thus far, that was a tighter spot than this.”

  “Good Lord.” Marcus gave me a look of shock. “What the devil had you done to them?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing. I was simply a lone British officer riding by at the wrong time. That is not to say I didn’t put up a hell of a fight.” I had been wandering the countryside in the first place because another man thought I’d coveted his wife, but I did not wish to share this with Marcus or Brewster at the moment.

  Grenville, who knew the entire story, said nothing, but Brewster’s belligerence to me softened a bit. “True, we are upright and breathing.”

  “Yes, we are.” I waved my hand at the walls. “The air isn’t fetid. Smells strongly of bat leavings, but it’s not stuffy—in fact, it’s cool and pleasant. There must be another shaft somewhere letting in the breeze.”

  The others looked cheered at the thought. “But where?” Grenville asked, flashing his lantern around the ceiling. “It could be a tiny opening in a corner. We might bring the hill down on top of us if we try to dig that way.”

  “It does not hurt us to look.”

  In Donata’s library this summer I’d found novels that told of perilous adventures, which might include the heroine being walled up alive, locked in a dungeon, or buried in a ruined tomb. Donata admitted to adoring the novels as a girl, while pretending to her parents that she read only improving books.

  I’d enjoyed the stories—harmless entertainment, if farfetched. In them the heroines had found numerous trap doors, hidden passages, and secret staircases at their disposal, no matter where they found themselves imprisoned. The heroines had been extraordinarily lucky that the villains had locked them into places with multiple entrances.