to hide something else within it. Alternately, maybe the ancients always wanted to be able to find where the cave was by marking it with something so huge it could never be lost: the Great Pyramid.’
‘Because the cave was the real resting place of the pharaoh?’
‘Or something even more important.’
I looked at the ibis-headed statue. ‘You mean the prize everyone wants, this magical, all-knowing Book of Thoth.’
‘This may be where we find it, I think.’
I laughed. ‘Then all we have to do is find our way back out!’
She looked at the ceiling. ‘Do you think the ancients hollowed this space out?’
‘No. Our geologist Dolomieu said limestone gets carved by flowing water, and we know the Nile is close by. Sometime in the past, the river or a tributary probably flowed through this plateau. It may be sieved like a honeycomb. When the Egyptians discovered this, they had an ideal hiding place – but only if it could be kept secret. I think you’re right. Build a pyramid and everyone looks at it, not what’s underneath.’
She held my arm. ‘Perhaps the pyramid shafts Bonaparte explored were simply to convince the ordinary workers and architects that Pharaoh would be buried up there.’
‘Then some other group built the shaft we just came through and carved this writing. And they came down here and returned, right?’ I tried to sound confident.
Astiza pointed. ‘No, they did not.’
And ahead in the gloom, just past the feet of Thoth, I saw a carpet of bones and skulls, filling the cave from one side to the other. Death grins and blank sockets. With dread, we walked to inspect them. There were hundreds of human bodies, laid in neat rows. I saw no mark of weapons on their remains.
‘Slaves and priests,’ she said, ‘poisoned, or with their throats slit, so they couldn’t carry secrets out. This tomb was their last work.’
I toed a skull. ‘Let’s not make it ours. Come. I smell water.’
We picked our way across the bone chamber as best we could, the dead rattling, and passed to another cave chamber with a pit in the middle. Here a ledge skirted the pit, and when we gingerly looked down it, our torchlight caught the reflection of water. It was a well. Rising out of the well and into a narrow hole in the ceiling was a golden shaft identical to the one I’d seen when we entered the pyramid. Was it the same? The cave could have twisted to lead us directly under the secret door, so that this shaft was the one that controlled the weight of the block we had entered past.
I reached out and touched the shaft. It rocked gently up and down as if floating. I looked more carefully. Down in the well, the shaft stuck straight up from a floating golden ball the diameter of a man. The shaft would push up or drop down depending on the level of the water. On the side of the well was a chiselled water gauge. I grasped the cool, slick coating of the shaft and pushed. The ball bobbed. ‘Old Ben Franklin would have loved to guess what this is.’
‘The markings are similar to those on Nile metres used to measure the rise of the river,’ Astiza said. ‘The higher the rise, the richer that year’s crops, and the greater the tax assessment the pharaoh would impose. But why measure down here?’
I could hear running water somewhere ahead. ‘Because this is connected to an underground branch of the Nile,’ I guessed. ‘As the river floods, this well would rise, and with it the shaft.’
‘But why?’
‘Because it’s a seasonal gate,’ I reasoned. ‘A lock that is timed. Remember how the calendar pointed to Aquarius and today’s date, October 21 ^ st? Whoever created the stone door that we came through designed it so it could only be opened at the time of maximum flooding, by someone who understood the secret of the medallion. As the river rises, it lifts that globe, pushing this shaft upward. It must lift a mechanism above which can hold the weight of the stone block so that, with the medallion key, it can be opened. In the dry season this cavern is locked tight.’
‘But why must we enter only when the Nile is high?’
I jiggled the shaft uneasily. ‘Good question.’
We went on. The cave snaked so that I no longer knew what direction we were heading. Our first torches burnt to stubs and we lit the next. I’m not a man afraid of tight spaces, but I felt buried down here. Underworld of Osiris indeed! And then we came to a large room that dwarfed any we’d seen so far, an underground chamber so large that our torchlight could not illuminate the far side. Instead, it made a path on dark water.
We stood on the shore of an underground lake, opaque and still, roofed by stone. In its middle was a small island. A marble pavilion, just four pillars and a roof, occupied its centre. Heaped about its periphery were chests, statues, and shoals of smaller things that even at this distance gleamed and sparkled.
‘Treasure.’ I tried to say it casually, but it came out as a croak.
‘It’s as Herodotus described,’ Astiza breathed, as if she still did not quite believe it herself. ‘The lake, the island – this is Pharoah’s real resting place. Undiscovered, never robbed. What a gift to see this!’
‘We’re rich,’ I added, my state of spiritual enlightenment not quite a match for commonsense greed. I’m not proud of my commercial instincts, but by heaven I’d been through hell the last few months and a little money would be just compensation. I was as transfixed by the valuables as I’d been by the riches in the hold of L’Orient. Their value to history didn’t occur to me. I just wanted to get at the loot, bundle it up, and somehow sneak out of this sepulchre and past the French army.
Astiza squeezed my hand. ‘This is what the legends have been hinting at, Ethan. Eternal knowledge, so powerful that it had to be hidden until men and women were wise enough to use it. In that small temple, I suspect, we’ll find it.’
‘Find what?’ I was transfixed by the glint of gold.
‘The Book of Thoth. The core truth of existence.’
‘Ah, yes. And are we ready for its answers?’
‘We must safeguard it from heretics like the Egyptian Rite until we are.’
I touched the water with my boot. ‘Too bad we don’t have a spell to walk on water, because it looks like a cold swim.’
‘No, look. There’s a boat to take Pharaoh to the sky.’
Sitting beside the lake on a stone cradle, pretty as a schooner, was a narrow and graceful white boat with the high prow and stern of the type I’d seen in temple wall paintings. It was just big enough to float the two of us, and had a gilded oar to scull with. And why hadn’t it rotted? Because it was not built of wood at all, but rather of hollowed alabaster with ribs and thwarts of gold. The polished stone was translucent, its texture velvet.
‘Will rock float?’
‘A thin pot will,’ she said. Handling the craft carefully, the two of us dragged it down to the opaque water. Ripples fanned out across a lake as smooth as a mirror.
‘Do you think anything lives in this water?’ I asked uneasily.
She climbed aboard. ‘I’ll tell you when we get to the other side.’
I boarded, the boat delicate as glass, and pushed off with Bin Sadr’s staff. Then we glided toward the island, sculling and looking over the side for monsters.
It was not far – the temple was even smaller than I would have guessed. We grounded and got out to gape at a pharaoh’s horde. There was a golden chariot with silver spears, polished furniture set with ebony and jade, cedar chests, jewelled armour, dog-headed gods, and jars of oil and spices. The hummock sparkled with precious gems like emeralds and rubies. There was turquoise, feldspar, jasper, cornelian, malachite, amber, coral, and lapis lazuli. There was a red granite sarcophagus, solid as a bunker, with a rock lid too heavy to lift without a dozen men. Was anyone inside? I’d little interest in finding out. The idea of grubbing into a pharaoh’s grave didn’t appeal to me. Helping myself to treasure did.
Yet Astiza had eyes for none of this. She barely glanced at the spectacular jewellery, dazzling robes, canopic jars, or golden plate. Instead, as if in a trance, she walked up a path sheathed in silver toward the little temple, its pillars carved with baboon-headed Thoths. I followed.
There was a marble table under the marble roof. On it was a red granite box, open on one side, and inside this a golden cube with golden doors. All this for a book or, more accurately, rolls of parchment? I pulled the small door handle. It opened as if oiled.
I reached inside…
