The Buried Pyramid

by Jane Lindskold

  They spent the intervening time collecting the rest of their gear. Neville’s crutch had turned up, and he was deeply grateful to be able to take his weight off his injured ankle.

  Rashid was more alert now. His pupils, when Jenny tested them, were becoming responsive to light. Sarah Syms remained lost in another world, and Lady Cheshire was reluctant to pull her from it.

  “Sarah has faced so much in her life, poor old dear,” Lady Cheshire said softly. “Now she’s back with her Nathan, at least for now. Why should I force her away?” Her large green eyes met Neville’s own, candidly, and full of honest fear. “Reality has so little to offer any of us.”

  “Stephen is working the door puzzle,” Neville said. “We may yet escape this.”

  “But where do we go?” Lady Cheshire asked. “Those Bedouin are sure to be hanging about. There’s water and good hunting, and they’ve won a summer’s worth of loot already. Between your camels and the ones I purchased, they’ve done quite well for themselves.”

  Neville heard himself speaking without consciously willing the words.

  “Audrey, why did you do it? Why did you follow us?”

  Lady Cheshire poked out her chin defiantly, and Neville realized he found the gesture oddly touching.

  “Because you lied to me. Because I wanted to take part in archeological discoveries once again, and I was certain you were onto something big.”

  “How could you know?” Neville asked.

  “Do you remember when you hosted the Antiquities Society meetings at your house in town?”

  Neville nodded.

  “One of those times, I left my reticule at your house—purely by accident, I assure you.” She smiled a trace sourly, “Not that you have any reason to believe me, but I assure you, it was an accident.”

  “I believe you,” Neville said.

  He was aware that Captain Brentworth was looming a short distance away, but he didn’t think the implicit threat in the man’s massive form was what made him say those words.

  “I went back to get it the next day,” Lady Cheshire continued. “You were out. Your butler wasn’t certain whether the reticule had been found, or where it might have been put. He asked if I would wait, or if I would like it sent on to me.

  “I almost had it sent. Then I remembered that your library had seemed quite excellent. I asked if I could wait in the library, and would you mind if I looked at a book or two while I waited. The butler assured me that as long as I left the ones behind the glass untouched, the rest were what he called ‘in use.’ ”

  Neville smiled. The staff had always drawn a very distinct line between the elegant volumes his late father had collected and his own workaday texts.

  “I obeyed the rules,” she went on, “I truly did. What had caught my eye the night before was a new atlas of the Upper Nile. I had thought about adding a copy to my own collection, and lifted it down, interested in seeing if the contents were worth the price the printers were asking.”

  Neville felt his lips curve into a soundless whistle.

  “I remember that volume,” he said, “and what I was doing with it.”

  “Then you remember that one of the detail maps had some rather fascinating notation on it,” she said, her tone lightening and becoming almost teasing. “ ‘Hawk Rock’ with a query mark on it was written in one place. ‘ The village’ and another query mark at a place along the bank. Then there was ‘Miriam’s ruin’ marked quite definitely. What caught my attention was how many places out in the desert had been circled—areas where, as far as I knew, not only had nothing been found, but nothing had been sought.

  “I made some inquiries after I left, and found out that some years before, you had been guide and companion to one Alphonse Liebermann, a rather eccentric German who had published several papers on the historicity of Moses, and related topics. I found myself wondering what Miriam’s ruin might be, and what wonders it might hold.”

  Neville sighed, “And when you heard I was returning to Egypt, you thought I was going on a dig.”

  “You were, weren’t you?” she retorted fiercely. “You were being so secretive! I decided you were trying to bypass the firman system. I didn’t think that was particularly ethical of you, but it gave me an edge. I could follow you, and then, when I caught you with your fist in the biscuit tin, I could demand a part in the project as my payment for not turning you in.”

  “And you didn’t want gold or jewelry?” Neville heard the sneer in his voice.

  “I have jewelry,” she snapped. “Lots of it, and I can get more easily enough. I wanted the chance to be in on a discovery. My late husband was a fine man in his own way, but he only let me hang around the fringes of his digs. He didn’t treat me as you do your niece. For that matter, I’m not like your niece, and I’m too old to change. And who would give me a chance if I did? I tell you, Neville Hawthorne, there are times when a pretty face and form hobble you as much as a broken ankle!”

  Neville wasn’t sure if he believed her protestations. After all, Audrey played her beauty for everything it was worth. On the other hand, maybe she honestly believed it was her only strength. If so, he pitied her.

  He was aware that Audrey had been speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear her story. He might be interested in Audrey Cheshire’s personal woes, but his associates would want to know the end of the tale.

  “So you followed us to Egypt. Then, when we escaped your observation, you took advantage of what you already knew and followed us upriver.”

  “That’s right,” Lady Cheshire said. “We narrowly missed you in Luxor. Then we had to find transport of our own, arrange for camels to meet us, and all the rest. We went directly to the place you had labeled ‘Miriam’s ruin,’ and found nothing but an old, picked-over, rather late-period tomb.

  “Robert made inquiries along the bank, and found a village that was still buzzing with tales about the devious English who had recently been there. It wasn’t very hard to get the natives to help us find guides who knew the deeper desert. Indeed, I think that if he hadn’t been able to contact the Bedouin, Riskali would have guided us himself—you’ve made an enemy there, Sir Neville.”

  “I can live with that,” Neville replied. “You would have been luckier with Riskali as a guide, never mind that he probably knew nothing about the desert.”

  “True.” Lady Cheshire’s indignation collapsed, and she once again looked very tired. “They brought us here after a rather horrid journey through some frightfully empty desert, and you know the rest.”

  Neville looked around the candle-lit chamber, at his injured friend, at Jenny gently pouring water between Rashid’s lips, at Stephen intent upon the door.

  “I do indeed,” he said.

  Lady Cheshire opened her lips to speak, but whatever she would have said—whether further self-justification or apology—was lost as Stephen suddenly leapt back, nearly extinguishing his candle in his eagerness.

  “I’ve got it!” he cried. “We can open the door!”

  20

  The Boat of Millions of Years

  Jenny jumped to her feet when she heard Stephen’s announcement, upsetting Mischief, who chattered simian rebuke for her abrupt motion.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but she didn’t stop. Hurrying over to the door, she found Stephen already launched into an explanation.

  “It was just as I thought,” he said. “Once I’d worked the tiles into the correct order—a task that required patience more than skill—I heard a distinct thump and click. The door didn’t open, though, and I was momentarily baffled.”

  “Momentarily?” Neville said, and Jenny could hear the hope in his voice.

  “Momentarily,” Stephen assured him. “I thought about those four tiles: the beetle, the hawk, the mongoose, and the snake. Why were they there? The ornamentation on the circles showed an evident progression. To a scholar of Egyptology, the symbol tiles actually made the puzzle easier. Then revelation struck me. There was a second lock. Clearly the
tiles could no longer be slid, so I tried pressing them and…”

  He demonstrated, pressing them in order: beetle, hawk, mongoose, and, finally, snake. Nothing happened when he pressed the first two, but when he pressed the mongoose, there was a grinding noise. The snake gave the final release and the door moved slightly, not opening, but obviously loose within its frame, where before it had been snug.

  “Perhaps that released a counterweight,” Neville said, moving forward to push open the door.

  “Perhaps so. If you push the tiles in reverse order,” Stephen said, raising his hand to do so, “I believe it locks the door.”

  “Don’t,” Neville said, gripping his wrist. “It may also reset the tile puzzle, and we don’t want you to have to solve it again.”

  Stephen blinked. “Yes, it might, mightn’t it? My apologies, Sir Neville. For a moment I forgot why it was important to solve the puzzle.”

  “And a good thing, too,” Neville assured him, “or anxiety might have slowed you. Let’s see what’s behind the door.”

  He glanced around, saw Jenny.

  “Grab a couple of candles,” he said, “and be ready to light our way.”

  Jenny took up the candles, but she shook her head in rebuke.

  “Let Stephen and Captain Brentworth open the door,” she said. “Your ankle is unsound, and we don’t know what is on the other side.”

  She thought her uncle might refuse, but after momentary consideration, he stepped back.

  “Brentworth,” he said formally, “if you would do the honors?”

  The big man moved up without comment, and set both arm and shoulder to the door.

  “On my count of three,” he said to Stephen, who had taken up his post behind him. “One, two, three!”

  At the final count, they pushed. The door resisted, then began to open. Someone, probably Lady Cheshire, cheered excitedly. Captain Brentworth and Stephen pushed with renewed enthusiasm, then, as one, staggered.

  Jenny darted forward. “What’s wrong?”

  Stephen steadied himself, then looked back sheepishly.

  “Nothing. The floor is lower here than on the other side. Should have figured it would be uneven, given the amount of sand that has fallen into that shaft. All’s well.”

  They continued pushing. The door opened into a wide corridor, its walls painted with bright scenes of riverbanks and verdant fields. It led forward into darkness.

  There was a freshness to the air that promised freedom, but Jenny noted that the candles she held did not flicker any more vigorously.

  Wherever the air is coming from, she thought, must not be close.

  But something else was bothering her more intensely than how far they might need to go to get out of here, or even what they might find on the outside. She turned and looked at Uncle Neville.

  “We’re going to try to get out of here?” she asked. “All of us?”

  He looked at her, frowning in surprise and disapproval.

  “Do you think we should do otherwise, Genevieve?”

  Jenny shook her head, acutely aware how weary she was, how her eyes were beginning to feel smudged onto her face, of a headache lurking behind her forehead, even of the minor annoyance of her hair escaping from its confining braid.

  “I think we should all try to get out of here,” she said, “but I’m not sure I want those people…” she looked pointedly at Captain Brentworth and Lady Cheshire, “at my back.”

  Uncle Neville looked at her in shock, but before he could say anything, Lady Cheshire spoke up. “But, Miss Benet, you heard me explain how all of this happened. I admit to being overeager, but…”

  Jenny interrupted, tired of pretence and politeness. Her diction was slipping, and she knew it and she just didn’t care.

  “You, ma’am, are a claim jumper, pure and simple. Where I come from, folks don’t take kindly to claim jumpers. In fact, they tend to treat ’em just about how they do horse thieves—and that’s pretty final, if you catch my drift.”

  “Claim jumpers?” Lady Cheshire briefly pretended not to understand. “I suppose you could see it that way, but then the Egyptian government might see what Sir Neville was attempting as little different.”

  “A blackmailing sidewinder of a claim jumper,” Jenny said.

  Captain Brentworth made an angry move, and Jenny’s six-shooter was in her hand. She’d cleaned all her guns while minding Rashid. Rashid had watched her do it, but far from being offended or alarmed, it seemed to her he had approved.

  Of course, you can put any darn thought you want onto him, Jenny thought sardonically. After all, he couldn’t exactly call out and warn anyone, could he?

  Jenny kept her revolver leveled on Captain Brentworth.

  “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about,” she said. “You’ve got that big man there, and I don’t know whether or not he has a gun hidden where the Bedouin didn’t take it off him, but I do know he’ll do anything you want. That’s a weapon in itself. And you’ve been looking all frail and sheep-eyed, but you’re not much more hurt than I am, for all your aching head. Hell, my head aches, and that makes me plain ornery.”

  “Jenny,” Stephen interrupted, his voice even and sensible. “What do you want to do? Shoot them and leave them here?”

  “I might want to,” Jenny said, “given what they’ve done to us and to Uncle Neville especially, but I won’t. That’d put me on their level. No, I won’t do that—but I won’t let them walk at my back, possibly armed, just waiting for a chance to get the upper hand. I won’t do that, and I think you’re all right fools if you’ll let it happen.”

  Stephen glanced at Sir Neville, giving him a chance to speak, but when he said nothing, Stephen said, “That seems sensible, Jenny. I think Lady Cheshire and her associates might even see your point.”

  Eddie had listened in silence, his expression completely neutral, now he spoke up.

  “Neville, I can see you’re upset, but I agree with Jenny. We don’t know what we’ll find when we get outside, but those Bedouin were hired by Lady Cheshire and Captain Brentworth. They’re going to be more likely to work with them than with us. If, in fact, they’ll work with any of us, and not shoot us down on sight.”

  “Isn’t that last,” Lady Cheshire said, her voice very cool, “reason why the captain and I at least should be given weapons? I am a fair shot. He is very good.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I called you a sidewinder, ma’am, and until you prove otherwise, you’re still a sidewinder as I see it. In fact, you’re lower than a rattler—at least the snake gives warning.”

  “What,” said Captain Brentworth, his gaze never leaving the revolver leveled at his chest, “do you want?”

  “We saw the Arabs search you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a holdout, or that you haven’t picked up something else since we’ve been down here. Our gear went all over. It would be easy enough to grab yourself a gun or knife. The Bedouin didn’t bother to search Lady Cheshire, not where we could see, but she herself says she’s a fair shot.”

  Eddie was already moving toward Lady Cheshire.

  “I’m married,” he said, as if that were an explanation, “and I don’t think Jenny should let her gun drop just to search you.”

  Lady Cheshire’s lips thinned, but she said nothing as Eddie made a quick but thorough search. His work was assisted in that she had simplified her clothing for travel, and wearing no bustle, and only a few layers of undergarments. He came up with a small, neat gun of the type often called “muff pistols.” It wouldn’t kill at any distance, but it might up close, and it would certainly maim.

  Sarah Syms was unarmed, as was Rashid. Captain Brentworth, however, had picked up Stephen’s handgun, dropped in the fall and not remembered until now. Eddie handed it to Stephen. “Captain Brentworth has kindly cleaned off the worst of the sand. Take better care of it in the future.”

  Sir Neville’s expression did not alter from neutral disapproval until the weapons wer
e found. Then the disapproval grew, but it had found a focus.

  “I am disappointed in you, Lady Cheshire.”

  “I had forgotten I had it,” she said. “Honestly, I had.”

  Jenny couldn’t tell if her uncle believed the other woman, but he offered no objection to Jenny’s plans.

  Captain Brentworth said nothing to justify his own armament—not even when Eddie relieved him of a perfectly practical clasp knife, more useful as a tool than as a weapon.

  Jenny nodded her thanks.

  “Now, as I’ve said, Captain Brentworth himself is something of a weapon. However, I’d never insult the gentleman by tying him up—not in a dangerous place like this. Instead, he can just do the good thing and keep himself busy helping Rashid along. I don’t think Rashid should walk right yet, and rigging a stretcher won’t be much of a problem. If the captain takes one end and Lady Cheshire takes the other, they’ll get a chance to prove what good-hearted souls they truly are.”

  As Jenny had hoped, neither raised argument against this. Lady Cheshire had proven herself tough enough to ride through the desert. Her wound wasn’t so severe that she could complain that she wasn’t up to bearing half of Rashid’s stretcher—especially when Captain Brentworth would take most of the weight, and she’d provide mostly balance and steadiness. And if they said they were too good to carry an Arab servant, they’d lose any remaining credit they had with Sir Neville.

  “If you handle Rashid at all roughly,” Jenny said, keeping her voice level with an effort, trying to infuse a note of humor, “Mischief will certainly have something to say about that…”

  Again, no one disagreed. A stretcher was rigged. Necessary gear was packed and distributed. Lady Cheshire even suggested that in addition to Rashid, the stretcher could carry some of the dry goods, suspended below.

  Eddie took over organization.

  “We don’t know what we’re up against,” he said, “so I want an able body up front. Stephen, that’ll be you. You can’t shoot, but you can read the writing on the walls and any curses or whatever may give us warning.”