While Macarius refilled the other two, I pushed the lamp that was now lit down as far as I could reach. It flickered in the upward draught and nearly went out again. What it showed was another flight of steps. Though worn, these were of better workmanship than the first. How far they led I couldn’t say. But, four feet wide, they led straight down. On either side of them now were walls of smoothly shaped and mortared stone. As if reading my thoughts, Macarius tugged at the displaced slab. It was enormously heavy. Even with my help, it couldn’t be lifted back into place. Of course, we were all alone down here. No one would follow us in. Anyone who might follow us in had no interest in closing the stone over us. But we strained and shuffled and gasped for breath over that slab before we felt confident enough to give our full attention to this new flight of steps. As ever, I went first.
I counted a hundred and seventy-nine steps, and each one had a regular drop of perhaps ten inches. That made near enough another descent of a hundred and fifty feet. I was beginning to shake again with fear. It didn’t matter that the air was as fresh as on the surface, or that granite was the least likely of any rock to collapse upon us. It reminded me of the journeys into the Underworld described by the poets of the Old Faith.
We were now in an immense cavern. Even holding up our lamps and straining to see into the gloom didn’t give us more than a vague idea of its walls and ceiling. From what I could see, there had been a limited effort to reshape its features. The floor had been smoothed, and there were a few courses of stonework. Otherwise, it was much as nature had left it. Now we’d emerged from the narrowness of the steps, the draught was no longer perceptible. Its only evidence was the continued dry smell of nothing in particular. Had we now reached the level of the Nile? I wondered. If so, there had been no seepage of damp into this cavern. I stepped forward.
‘A moment, please, My Lord,’ Macarius said.
I stopped and waited while he got out one of the spare lamps, lit it and set it on the fourth step leading up. He was right. We’d need some reference point for getting back. But now, which way? Should we try to hug the walls and trace the limits of the cavern? Or should we strike out for its centre? I chose the latter. My lamp threw a pool of light that was reliable within a six-foot radius. Beyond that was gloom and then darkness. By looking back at the glow on the steps, we were able to navigate a straight path across the floor. This was far less regular in its finish than in the corridors. It was also more cluttered. There were pieces of smashed furniture and scraps of cloth that might once have been clothing.
Perhaps a hundred feet from the bottom of the stairs, we came across a stone block. Of shaped granite, it was about six feet long and three wide. Its top was about a yard above the floor, and had depressions carved into it that reminded me of a bed that the slaves haven’t yet had time to pat into shape. Even without the ancient stains that showed dark on the darkness of the stone, it was plain what function the block had served. As the Bishop muttered more of his prayers in Egyptian, I stepped back. I felt something crunch and give underfoot. I bent down and picked up some strips of withered leather. Restraining thongs look the same in all times and places. I dropped them again and wiped my hands on my outer tunic.
‘Why bring victims down all this way?’ I asked. ‘Those reliefs don’t indicate any sense of shame about their tastes. Why bother with any secrecy at all?’
The Bishop folded his arms and pushed his head even further onto his chest as he continued praying. Macarius had gone off about twenty feet. He’d set his lamp on the floor and was making scraping sounds nearby. Good idea! I thought. I left the Bishop to his communion with God and joined Macarius in gathering up some of the broken furniture. We arranged it into a tight pile on top of the block. It was so dry that the merest touch from the flame of one of our lamps was enough to set it burning. The ancient wood made almost no sound as the flames consumed it. The slight and pale smoke was carried gently back towards the steps where the lamp still burned. For the first time, we had enough light to see properly round this cavern.
The roof was too high or too dark to be seen. But we could now see the continuation of the reliefs, carved into the stonework that ran in stretches round the walls. At regular spaces, we saw doorways set into the walls. Each of these was flanked by statues of alarming ugliness and ferocity. Our eyes were drawn, though, to what must have been the centre of the cavern. Here, a single statue rose about fifteen feet and glowered down at us from eyeholes cut deep into the stone. It had nothing about it of the smooth serenity the Greeks in their best days gave to their art. Nor had it the dull smoothness of the Egyptians. Instead, the thing radiated an arrogant nastiness that made me want to look away. ‘It’s your business to know who I am,’ it seemed to sneer. ‘Who you are is a matter for you alone.’ Rising diagonally from the waist was a giant erection that much attention had polished to a gleam. The arms, pressed together, were outstretched slightly downward over a stone tub about the size of an Egyptian sarcophagus. A flight of steps led up to a stone platform about five feet below its shoulders. I swallowed, guessing what I’d find, and went over to climb the steps. I looked down into the tub.
‘What do you see?’ Macarius asked.
I stared awhile at the deep layer of white ash and the little scraps of bone that still here and there projected from it. I opened my mouth to speak, but found trouble in arranging words to describe the horrors I could see. Instead of my own words, I found myself quoting one of the Greek poems of Claudian:
First Moloch, horrid King besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud
Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire
To his grim Idol.
‘God have mercy upon their souls!’ the Bishop cried with a fresh burst of prayer, now in Greek. It was his duty to believe that, since they’d died without the Faith, these unfortunate children were even now writhing in still hotter flames. But the Christian mind, I’ve sometimes found – if not often – is gentler in these things than the more consistent theologians would have it.
Still on the platform, I looked round. It wasn’t hard to imagine this cavern once as a kind of pandemonium. Then, the altar flames would have burned night and day, and the air would have been filled with stinking smoke and the shrill cries of the dying. If the reliefs lining the walls here and above were accurate, there would also have been music and laughter too, and drug-driven orgies. I could easily imagine how the floors in that approach corridor had been worn by the shuffling steps of thousands as they’d queued there – learning from the reliefs what they could expect when it was their turn to be dragged screaming down the steps into the cavern. If I still thought no better of the Egyptians as a race, I could now see that Menes had done the world a favour by taking Soteropolis and shutting this place down.
That had all been thousands and thousands of years ago. Now, the smoke was long since dispersed and the screams fallen silent. The altar fires were cold and the instruments of torture and death perished by age. Whatever draught came through had anciently cleansed this place.
The fire Macarius had lit was dying now, and he was having to gather fresh wood. I strained harder to see what might lie outside the contracting pool of light. I focused on the far side of the cavern. I could see nothing reliably. But perhaps a hundred yards away, there was a faint glint as if of something metallic. It was too far – even with a replenished fire – for me to see what it was.
‘We must go this way,’ I said, pointing. I climbed down, and, lamp in one hand, burning spar in the other, I hurried across the floor. I stopped after a few dozen paces. Even with the lamp alone, I’d not have missed it. But the good light I now had with me showed at once the chasm that ran across the cavern, dividing where we were from where I wanted to be. It could only have been a natural feature, though it might well have been smoothed and tidied in a few places. At the narrowest point, it may have been thirty feet across. About ten yards to my right, there was a bridge of rope and wooden planks.
‘After so long, My Lord,’ Macarius said, ‘I wouldn’t trust this.’
I nodded. The three of us stood together just by the bridge. Thick ropes were tied to high bollards carved directly from the granite of the cavern. It looked solid enough. But he was right. This had been here for millennia. I looked round for something solid to throw. The first thing I saw was a skull, grinning though dark from scorching. There was nothing else suitable that I could see, so I reached down and picked it up. I tossed it lightly so that it fell on to the bridge about six feet from the edge. With a soft crack, the plank where it landed gave way and fell, taking the skull with it, into the depths. I listened and listened, but heard no impact of the fall. I took up a fairly substantial piece of broken wood and threw that into the middle point of the chasm. Again, I listened. Again, I heard nothing. The makeshift torch had burned down three-quarters, but was still bright. I held it over my head and looked straight forward. Still, I could see the glint of something on the far side. Still, I could see nothing that made sense.
‘We’ll find nothing here,’ I eventually said. I strained for a final look across the chasm, then turned with reluctance and led the way across the floor towards those doorways into the wall.
