The Eleventh Plague

by Darren Craske

  Quaint unfurled his fingers and the letter-opener fell to the floor.

  ‘Show me…’ he hissed.

  CHAPTER XLV

  The Calling of Destiny

  MANY MILES FROM Cairo, Polly North had managed the long trek from Umkaza with the injured Ahman upon her horse, and they were now in a room at the far end of the Bara Mephista tavern. Ahman was laid out flat on a table, with a bundle of blankets serving as a makeshift pillow. He winced as Polly swabbed water over the wound to his shoulder. The mention of Aksak Faroud’s name had done as the Scarab leader had claimed, and the Clan Scarabs had agreed to assist Polly with her wounded patient. One of them had arrived and offered Polly use of a large wooden crate of medical supplies. She was begrudgingly thankful, but as she rifled through the crate, she recognised the stamps upon the medicines’ labels, and a cold frost of recognition burned into her mind. She had packed the very same first aid equipment for her dig. The Scarabs had obviously stolen it. Although she could not really complain – without the fresh bandages and liniment, fixing Ahman’s wound would have been twice as hard.

  ‘It hurts so much,’ he groaned, his head twitching from side to side restlessly.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have to make sure the wound is clean,’ Polly apologised. ‘Once that Scarab returns to stitch you up, I can bandage your shoulder properly.’

  ‘Thank you…you have been most kind,’ said Ahman.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Polly with a comforting smile.

  ‘What bothers me more, is where Destine can be!’ Ahman swallowed awkwardly, as if the act caused him great difficulty. ‘That devil’s blade struck me…and I fell from the cart…but he did not seem to be bothered with me at all. I think they were after her! But who were they? Why did they want her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ahman, but when we found you there was no trace of your friend at all,’ said Polly. ‘I wish there was.’

  ‘So do I, Miss Polly…so do I.’

  The door to the backroom swung open, and the moustachioed Bephotsi re-entered. His eyes met neither Polly’s nor Ahman’s, making it clear that he wished to be out of their company as quickly as possible. He carried a small wooden box, and from it produced a long piece of thread attached to a crooked silver needle.

  Ahman caught sight of it and his eyes flared. ‘What is that for?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Bephotsi grunted. ‘It is to stitch you up.’

  ‘With a needle like that? I am not a stuffed cushion!’

  ‘You want me to mend you or not, eh? That is a nasty wound. Unless it gets stitched, it will not heal…you might even lose your arm altogether.’

  ‘My arm?’ asked Ahman, licking his lips nervously.

  ‘Look, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure he has done this lots of times,’ Polly said, nudging Bephotsi’s elbow. ‘Right?’

  ‘Of course!’ Bephotsi replied. ‘Although…my experience of this nature does begin and end with pigs, it is true.’

  ‘Pigs?’ squawked Ahman.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ said Bephotsi. ‘I know what I am doing…in theory.’

  ‘In theory?’ screeched Ahman, right before he promptly fainted.

  Ten minutes later, Bephotsi had completed stitching the wound and left the room. Polly wrapped fresh bandages around Ahman’s right arm and shoulder. She covered him with a blanket and the man’s rotund belly protruded like an erected circus tent. He slept soundly, his body’s way of coping with the recent shock, and Polly found herself staring at him. He looked like a kind man, a good man, and at his age he was undeserving of such pain. She began to neatly fold his clothes into a tidy pile, when something caught her eye.

  It was an old and beaten leather journal.

  Curious, she flipped open the first page and read quietly aloud:

  ‘Journal begun August 1833 – Aloysius Bedford, Archaeologist.’ Polly read the words again as if she could not trust her eyes. ‘Aloysius Bedford?’ Licking her lips, she inspected the book in detail. The cover, the binding, the texture of the pages – everything about it, as if it were just as much an ancient treasure as those she was used to unearthing. ‘But…I don’t understand this at all. Bedford’s name is legendary in the field of archaeology. He wrote most of the texts that I used in my foundation years. But then he disappeared…way back in…when was it, 1833? But that’s the year this journal was written! What on earth is this thing? A lost journal by an equally lost archaeologist?’

  Polly breathlessly thumbed through the pages of the book. Notes, diagrams and detailed illustrations, all with fine handwriting in the margins, decorated every single page. She recognised

  – and corroborated – the information within. To her, it was every bit as priceless as the lost artefacts that it depicted.

  ‘The Anklet of Bast discovered in Umkaza site D, although I cannot take credit for the find – my guide, Vincent, was the lucky soul who unearthed it. Now I can say for certain that Umkaza holds much, much more, and Cho-zen Li’s estimations were correct – there is more to be found here, perhaps even the greatest find of my career.’

  As Polly mouthed the words, she felt her knees go weak and she flopped down onto the wooden floorboards. As she did so, she failed to see a faded envelope slip from the book and slide underneath the table.

  Sat with her legs crossed on the floor, Polly was breathless once more.

  ‘Bedford dug in Umkaza? And Cho-zen Li…sponsored it? Since when? Why didn’t Cho-zen mention it to me? Where the hell did this book come from?’ She looked over at the slumbering Ahman; a million questions flooded her brain until it was fit to burst.

  As she turned the page, she came across something that sent shockwaves through her blood. Staring back at her from the page was a drawing of an ornate child’s crib decorated with a variety of gemstones, with detailed pictorial inscriptions of pyramids, winged beasts and a variety of Egyptian deities inscribed at the head and foot.

  ‘The Pharaoh’s Cradle!’ Polly exclaimed, causing Ahman to stir slightly.

  She had seen many artistic impressions of the Pharaoh’s Cradle before, but this was different. The ink drawing was far too accurate, far too detailed to be mere conjecture on Bedford’s part.

  Dotted around the picture were notes on the artefact’s dimensions, and to Polly that seemed to prove only one thing.

  ‘Bedford found it!’ she gasped. ‘He found the Pharaoh’s Cradle! But what does this mean? If Aloysius Bedford found it…where is it? Why did he not reveal it to the world? And why didn’t Cho-zen tell me anything about any of this?’

  The weight of the journal was too much, and it slipped from her shaking fingers onto the floor. It fell open on the last entry, and some unknown force bade Polly to read the text that would end up changing her fortunes for ever.

  I must ensure the Pharaoh’s Cradle does not fall into the hands of those who wish to do harm. Therefore, I have hidden it, and hidden it well. They say the best hiding place is not right under one’s nose; therefore, I have returned the Cradle back to the sand where it belongs, in a fitting monument to my courageous crew who lost their lives. They shall sleep for ever now in the Cradle of their ancestors.

  Signed,

  Aloysius X. Bedford, 1833.

  Polly closed the book and squeezed it as if trying to wring the truth out of its pages. This beaten old journal could be her salvation. No, far more than that…it could be her redemption. She could go back to England with the promise of such richness, such glory! If only she could find the Pharaoh’s Cradle. If only she could decipher Bedford’s cryptic clue…

  ‘The mass grave!’ she cried. ‘The one where we found those old bones in Umkaza! Twenty years old? My God…they were part of Bedford’s crew! Is that what happened to him? Did he…did he die there? Damn it, the treasure it was under my feet the whole time!’

  This revelation quashed any guilt that she might have had. The journal had ensnared her and she was helpless in its grasp. She had to get to Umkaza right away. She could no
t let this chance slip away. What was she thinking? The book was not her property. It belonged to Ahman. As she stared down at the journal, something washed over her body. It was like a disease trying to overcome her, to infect her, and it was something she had never experienced before in her professional life.

  It was greed.

  It was pure, selfish greed.

  CHAPTER XLVI

  The Change in Luck

  THE SHARP TIP of Aksak Faroud’s knife was pressed into the small of Godfrey Joyce’s back for the entire duration of the short journey to the holding cells in the basement of the British Embassy. Soon they came to a pair of iron doors with large iron rivets around the seams, almost like the vault of a bank. Quaint wondered why an embassy would have need of such a secure environment.

  ‘In there you will find what you seek,’ Joyce said, motioning towards the heavy doors. ‘But you must do as you promised…you must let me live.’

  ‘Rakmun was here all this time?’ asked Faroud. ‘I should slit your throat right here and now!’

  ‘Then you will never get your brother out of this place alive!’ squawked Joyce. ‘We don’t tend to get many knife-wielding Egyptians turning up on our doorstep with prisoners, you see – especially British citizens! The Embassy guards would have been on high alert from the moment you rang the doorbell. Only I can get you, and your companions, out of here in one piece.’ Joyce removed a large, brass key and turned it in the door’s lock with a snap. He buried his head in his hands, and slid his back down against the wall, his shoulders rising and falling. ‘Just let me live, I beg of you.’

  ‘Leave him, Faroud,’ Quaint said. ‘He’s not worth it.’

  He snatched open the doors and stepped inside. The room was almost completely dark, save for two small barred windows positioned up high within the wall, catching a sliver of moonlight from the darkening sky outside. Both cells were completely empty, and as Quaint and Faroud’s eyes eventually adjusted to the light, they came to a startling realization.

  In perfect symmetry, they turned their heads to look at each other.

  ‘Trap,’ said Faroud.

  ‘I should say so,’ replied Quaint.

  The words had not even left his lips before he darted towards the open doors, but he was too late. Joyce was not as incapacitated as he had made out – and he was a lot closer to the doors than Quaint was. He slammed the cell block doors shut. The sound of the key being turned in the lock echoed around the basement before mocking laughter resonated through the thick iron.

  ‘How trusting of you gentlemen,’ cackled Joyce, ‘and how stupid. Now you are my prisoners, just as your companions were before you. It’s such a shame. You missed them by a matter of minutes. If you’re lucky, the benches might still be warm.’

  On the other side of the fortified doors, Quaint cursed.

  He looked around the prison feverishly. Although he and the Aksak were not imprisoned within one of the cells, they might just as well have been. The room was bereft of anything. There was no trap door, nothing to use as a battering ram, no windows large enough. No way out.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Faroud.

  ‘We wait for our luck to change, my friend,’ answered Quaint.

  An hour later, they were still waiting.

  Sitting with his back against the wall, Quaint glanced up at Faroud, who had not stopped pacing back and forth ever since Joyce had turned the key in the lock.

  ‘Are you attempting to burrow out of this place?’ Quaint asked him.

  ‘What else is there to do? I thought you were supposed to be a conjuror – can you not pick the lock, or make us disappear in a puff of smoke or something like that?’ the Scarab asked.

  ‘That only works on doves,’ quipped Quaint. ‘And that lock is far too fortified for my meagre knowledge of escapology. Don’t worry, we won’t be here long. Joyce is not just going to leave us to rot…not when he can hand us over to the Consortium. This is all part of my plan…although I admit, it is not without its complications.’

  ‘And what happens if Joyce decides to kill us himself and deliver our corpses to his masters?’ asked Faroud, finally ceasing his pacing.

  ‘Ah…yes, that’s one of those complications that I mentioned,’ said Quaint.

  Just then, the lock snapped in the door and it swung wide open, revealing Joyce’s pet assassins, their dark red hoods shielding their faces in shadow like executioners of old. They produced lethal swords from scabbards at their backs and brandished them menacingly towards the Scarab and the conjuror.

  Quaint looked at Faroud. ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘They are Hades Consortium foot soldiers,’ answered Faroud. ‘I have seen them before. Do not expect much in the way of polite conversation, my friend. They have their tongues removed upon joining the Consortium’s ranks…it helps keep them subordinate.’

  ‘I know a couple of clowns who could do with that treatment,’ said Quaint.

  Joyce then stepped into view between the two assassins. ‘Your time has come, gentlemen. Guards, bind their wrists together so they can’t escape,’ he said, tapping one of his silent guards on the shoulder. ‘Bind them like the cattle they are.’

  Quaint recalled a similar predicament from the previous night. ‘Let’s hope you don’t talk as much as my last partner,’ he said.

  ‘Did you two really expect me to betray the Hades Consortium?’ laughed Joyce, satisfied that he had Quaint right where he wanted him. ‘I knew that you and Faroud were en route, my source within the Clan Scarabs informed me before you even left Bara Mephista.’ Joyce was noticeably more confident now that he was flanked by two Hades Consortium assassins.

  ‘Source? Within my camp?’ Faroud yelled. ‘Nonsense! None of my men would ever dare betray me.’

  Joyce grinned. ‘Oh, they would if they had something to gain, Aksak. In your absence, there is much in Bara Mephista for an ambitious sort to get his hands on, were he that way inclined.’

  ‘Where is Madame Destine?’ sought Quaint. ‘What have you done with her?’

  Joyce laughed a throaty chuckle. ‘Your French companion, as charming as she was, is now in the hands of the Hades Consortium.’

  ‘And my brother? Where is Rakmun?’ asked Faroud.

  ‘At a location of my choosing,’ said Joyce. ‘Until you get to Fantoma, I need you compliant…and his life will be dramatically cut short should you or your friend Mr Quaint decide to make things difficult. If you abide by my commands, both of your companions will be set free. They are useless to the Hades Consortium. But if not, they will die – and not at all pleasantly.’

  ‘You filthy—’ Quaint lunged, just as one of the Consortium assassins stepped into his path and brought the handle of his sword down hard onto the back of the conjuror’s neck. He crashed to the floor.

  ‘What spirit you have, Mr Quaint…Lady Jocasta will no doubt enjoy breaking that for you,’ said Joyce. ‘Men, escort these two out to the stable yard. We ride to Fantoma!’

  CHAPTER XLVII

  The Shot in the Dark

  QUAINT AND FAROUD were led outside into the Embassy’s yard and seated upon a horse. Quaint was at the front with Faroud behind him, their bound wrists linking them to one another. They rode steadily through the desert land for some time, following the lantern from Joyce’s horse-drawn cart ahead, with the Consortium guards at their backs. The opportunity for escape was not forthcoming and Quaint grew restless as his limbs went numb. Every impatient inch of him wanted to get to Fantoma as quickly as possible, and it was agonising in every sense – not assisted by Aksak Faroud falling asleep on him an hour and a half into the journey.

  ‘Hold here!’ said Godfrey Joyce, pulling his cart to a stop.

  Quaint heard a groan from the Scarab leader behind him, and he craned his neck as far as he could. ‘You can wake up now, Aksak.’

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Faroud, blinking life back into his eyes.

  ‘In trouble,’ said Quaint.

  ‘Still?’


  ‘It’s normal for me, I’m afraid,’ said Quaint.

  Faroud peered through the darkness, assaying their position. A large mountain range was silhouetted against the night sky less than a mile away. ‘This is not Fantoma, Cornelius,’ he whispered in Quaint’s ear. ‘Is that a good thing, or not?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Quaint. ‘But all we can do is watch how this unfolds and make our move when we can.’

  ‘I’ve got to rendezvous with my contact,’ said Joyce to the mute Consortium assassins. ‘Get these two dogs off their mount and onto their knees where they can’t cause you any bother.’ With that, he whipped the reins and his cart rode off into the darkness.

  Quaint and Faroud were pulled unceremoniously onto the hardened ground. The assassins drew their swords and towered over them.

  ‘Any ideas how we can get out of this?’ Faroud asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t exactly work at my best under pressure,’ Quaint replied.

  ‘What is Joyce waiting for? Why not just kill us now and be done with it?’

  ‘Don’t knock it, Aksak. Everything is working out just fine so far.’

  ‘You are still clinging to your plan?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ confirmed Quaint.

  ‘Our plan is sunk, my friend. Soon Joyce will return and we shall die on our knees…most undignified for an Aksak,’ Faroud said grimly.

  ‘And for a Quaint,’ added the conjuror. ‘And speaking of the good Mr Joyce…’

  Accompanied by a cloaking trail of dust, Joyce emerged from the pitch darkness. He was not alone – there was a single passenger bound and gagged in the rear of the cart. Quaint and Faroud tried to battle the darkness to identify the passenger, and the cart was feet away when Faroud’s heart rose. It was Rakmun. His brother’s face was bloodied and bruised, and his swollen lips tried to speak through the gag taut between his teeth, but it was nothing but an inaudible garble.