Labyrinth Gate (27 page)

In one corner of the tent Charity lay half sitting on a couch, dozing over the weekly menu that she was preparing for Mistress Cook. In sleep she looked even more beautiful. The fresh air had given her cheeks heightened color, and the abundance of food to be had at an earl’s table, even in such conditions as this, had filled her out, adding a lusciousness to the suggestion of her figure beneath her gown.

“What do you suppose it represents?” asked Chryse as she smoothed out a crease in one of the sketches. A host of figures, a procession, perhaps, filled the page: the hindquarters of hounds, a trio of bare-bosomed, full-skirted women, five men attired for war or for hunting, all traced in two colors: one a frequently-interrupted line of the actual remains, one a light continuous line of Sanjay’s superimposed reconstruction. On a page next to it, she could compare it with an exact rendering of the find, a fragmented picture obscured by large gaps of worn-away stone that an observer who was not also an artist might have difficulty making sense of.

Maretha raised her head. She had grown more relaxed as the dig progressed, free of her father’s constant presence, seeing little of her husband, engaged in work she found stimulating. The smile that lit her features now made her face quite handsome, unmarked by worry or by that disquieting sense of confinement and foreboding that sometimes came over her.

“What I suppose it represents would certainly be more a reflection of my thoughts than any accurate explanation of its real meaning, don’t you think?” she asked.

“But Maretha, if you aren’t qualified to guess, then who is?”

“No one, I think. No one but one who has lived in that time and seen the hand that painted these frescos.” She paused to compare two glyphs, made a little sound of satisfaction under her breath, and quickly penciled in the new glyph below the other in her catalog. “Once I’ve studied this material for as many years as my father has, I might be willing to write a paper on my theories.”

Chryse, watching her face, was struck by the lack of resemblance between Maretha and her father; one could see the Farr blood more readily in Charity. She had never seen a picture of Maretha’s mother. “Would you agree with your father?”

“I don’t know.” She looked troubled, as if the admission was blasphemous. “I think ritual must have been of primary importance in the life of this city, and this culture, but how to interpret that ritual—She set down her pen and examined her fingers. “My father and the earl are certainly more knowledgeable than I am, so one must give serious consideration to their theories.”

“Even if one doesn’t find human sacrifice palatable?”

“Who are we to judge? Think back to the circumstances in which we found Mog and Pin. Were the ancients necessarily any more cruel?”

In the silence Chryse carefully penned three glyphs onto a clean sheet of parchment, double-checking them several times from Sanjay’s drawing. “You might check this top one against number sixty-two.” She lifted the paper to survey it in a different angle of light. “I wish that these people had had the forethought to standardize their notational system. They’re making it difficult for us.” She set down the paper to take a sip of tea, then leaned back in her chair, stretching, unclosing and closing her right hand. “We should have brought a piano along. I’m getting out of practice.”

Maretha chuckled. “Perhaps I can ask my husband to have one sent up here.”

“Do you think he would?” Chryse’s reply was more jest than serious, so it surprised her when that shuttered look descended on Maretha’s face, like the closing of windows in a house.

“He might. He treats me very well.”

“You sound as if you can’t understand why he should. Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself? It was no easy bargain on your side. I think you deserve far more than you’ve received from it so far.”

But Maretha only shook her head, her eyes dropped, her shoulders bowing in a way Chryse hadn’t seen since before her wedding. “I told him I wouldn’t—” Her left hand toyed nervously with her pen. “That I didn’t believe he married me because he needed an heir.”

“I’m not sure—”

“I haven’t—We haven’t—I couldn’t bring myself to—” Maretha flushed. “He hasn’t touched me, in
that
way.”

“Oh.” Chryse’s voice was as soft, if less impassioned. “But isn’t that what you wanted? To be free of him?”

“I wanted my freedom,” said Maretha fiercely. “But I feel the bargain has not been paid in full on my part. What can he want of me, Chryse? What can he want?”

“I don’t know. He wanted to come here, after all.” Maretha did not respond. “I’m sorry, Maretha.”

Maretha lifted her gaze finally to look at the blonde woman. “I agreed to it. I could have refused to marry him.”

On the couch, Charity stirred and yawned and sighed deep from her chest. Her hands shifted to rest on her belly.

“Easy to say now,” said Chryse. “I’m not so sure it would have been so easy then.”

Maretha glanced away from her, towards her cousin, not in any furtive way, or as if she were avoiding the unspoken question, but as if she were distracted by the sight of Charity asleep. “I still wonder why he chose me when he could have had Charity.”

“Oh, Maretha.” Chryse sounded a little disgusted. “Humility is all very well, but too much humility is as much a vice as too much vanity.”

Maretha laughed. The sound startled Charity out of her doze; she blinked slowly and all at once lost her grip on the menu. It fluttered to the floor just as the tent flap stirred, a larger echo of the sound, and Sanjay came into the tent.

Charity made a little
oh
of surprise and sat up quickly, straightening her dress. Sanjay kissed Chryse on the forehead and smiled at Maretha, proffered a short bow in Charity’s direction. His face shone with excitement.

“Sanjay!” Chryse stood up. “What is it?”

He sat down in the third chair, laughed, and stood up again. “Come on.” He extended a hand and lifted Maretha to her feet. “We’ve got to go down to the excavation.”

“What have you found?”

“The treasure!” Charity started up with an animation she had not shown in days.

“A whole room of gold and jewels!” Sanjay laughed again. “No, nothing so mundane. This is much better: I think we’ve found some kind of cache, beneath the floor. There’s a loose stone slab that can be moved, but we thought you should be there, Maretha.” As he said this one hand drifted back to clasp Chryse’s.

“I’ll come too,” said Charity. She followed her cousin out the entrance.

Chryse pulled on Sanjay’s hand, holding him back for a moment. “What if it is the treasure, hidden under there? What do we do?”

In his look she could see the same lack of answers that she felt in herself, but he merely shrugged. “Let’s not count our bridges until we come to them.” When she chuckled, he grinned. “Isn’t that right? You Occidentals have the most peculiar sayings. There might be trouble, though.”

“Why?” They went outside, catching up to Charity and Maretha.

“The workers refuse to dig underground. Some kind of superstition.”

“Oh dear.” Maretha frowned. “That will make it difficult. I don’t suppose anyone thought there might be underground levels to this city.”

“I wonder whether their technology was sophisticated enough to manage such construction,” said Sanjay.

“But wouldn’t that depend on—” began Chryse.

“—on what kind of technology they used?” finished Sanjay. He lifted one dark hand to touch the coat pocket where he carried, as always, half of their deck of cards, and his gaze shifted quickly to the little pouch dangling from the waistband of Chryse’s gown, where she carried the other half. He turned his attention back to Maretha as they hurried along the well-worn path that led through the ruins to the central excavation. “I’m afraid this refusal is quite serious. Not a single worker has dissented.”

“Not even Thomas?”

“Mr. Southern crossed himself, and said he was sure you would make the right decision.”

For an instant Maretha’s expression fixed in a look the more surprising for its bitterness. “Don’t I always? But no, it would do no good to antagonize the workers now. There is quite enough to do aboveground. By the Lady! Has everyone gathered here?”

They had walked up to the excavation from the high side, a low height that looked out over this portion of the site. Beyond, on the far side the dug-out area sloped smoothly into undisturbed ground. The mound Billy had fallen through was obliterated, its remnants half carted off and half heaped in a haphazard pattern across the building revealed by its absence.

The centralmost portion was about half uncovered. Frescoed walls curved in on themselves, and it was clear from the arc of their curve that they met under the rubbled ridge on which Sanjay, Chryse, Maretha, and Charity now stood. Pillars dotted the ground, some still twice a man’s height, others broken off halfway down, still others shattered into splintered pieces that littered the tile floor. The tiling was stark: one dark and one light color that interwove as it curled into the center, following the slightly off-center line of the pillars to a low circular platform that had just two days before been uncovered in the very middle of the building. From their vantage point, they could guess that the edifice itself was built on the pattern of a spiral.

On the central platform stood Professor Farr, Kate, Julian, and, to no one’s surprise, the earl. Kate was crouched at the base of a great pillar, twice the diameter of any of the others, that stood in the middle of the platform. With one hand she brushed at something on the stone floor, but as swiftly as if Chryse or Maretha had called out to her, she looked up at the party standing above on the ridge and waved.

“We’d better go down,” said Sanjay. “Before they get impatient.”

They circled about a third of the way around the site before climbing down to the building remains. The workers, clustered at the edges of the dug-out area, separated to let them pass.

“Ain’t right, your ladyship,” said one as they reached the platform, “to ask us to go unnerground, not in any wise, and certain not in a place like this.”

Maretha turned. Thomas Southern had stepped forward to speak to the worker, but she forestalled him with a lift of her hand. “I can assure you that Professor Farr respects your feelings on such matters.”

“Regent don’t,” a lighter voice muttered, meant to be heard only by its neighbor, but a trick of the hollow amplified it.

“In any case,” continued Maretha, ignoring the comment, “there is no guarantee that there is any underground work to be done here at all.”

“The flooring all looks the same to me,” said Chryse to Sanjay as they went to stand by Julian. The floor of the platform was made of plain fitted stone, unadorned by carving or paint. “How did you find the loose slab?”

Kate rose from her crouch and stepped aside to let Sanjay kneel where she had been. “See here.” He brushed with his fingers at a series of small holes, no more than three fingerwidths across, that pierced in two lines a large section of the stone. “It occurred to me that those holes could be used as a means to shift the slab, and with the help of a few fellows, we found we could. So I called everyone together. Who knows what we might find.”

“You have a keen eye,” said the earl from directly behind Sanjay, “to have seen such a delicate clue. Who knows what we might find?”

Sanjay tilted his head to give the earl a speculative glance, as if to say,
You might.
The earl smiled, a frosty cordiality, and, much to the surprise of the others, Sanjay smiled back, as if he and the earl shared some secret, or recognized some likeness between them.

“How do you think it worked?” asked Chryse into the pause.

“Rope handles.” Kate looked at Sanjay for confirmation.

“That’s what I was thinking.” He stood up and beckoned to Thomas Southern. “Did you get the crowbars and rope?”

Southern brought several burly laborers, each armed with a heavy iron crowbar, and they set their backs to levering up the great slab. It was slow work. The earl stepped off the platform, brushing unseen dust from his white cuffs. Professor Farr ventured too close in his excitement and had to be drawn back by his daughter.

At last they shifted the slab enough that ropes could be slipped through the holes in the stone, and with a grating that echoed across the hollow like the rumbling of a distant avalanche, heard after it is seen, they dragged it to one side.

Only the earl did not crowd forward to see what lay beneath. There was silence.

“Oh dear,” said Maretha.

The top of a staircase lay revealed in the afternoon sun. A single step, alone; the rest was buried in rubble and debris.

“A little dynamite,” began the professor.

“Uncle, I’m not feeling well,” said Charity with what was apparently an unexpected rush of common sense. “Could you take me back to my tent.” She was, indeed, pale, in distinct contrast to the rose that had flushed her cheeks while she slept.

Professor Farr blinked in his vague way. “Not feeling well, my dear?” He looked uncertainly at Maretha.

“This can wait, Father.” Maretha cast a glance both grateful and concerned at her cousin. “Perhaps—” She turned to Southern. “Perhaps you could assist the professor, Thomas.”

“If you wish, your ladyship.” His acquiescence seemed disapproving, but of what it could not be told. He offered Charity his arm with what appeared to be great reserve, quite in contrast to his usual manner. Charity seemed not to notice as she took it and let him escort her out of the site. The professor followed.

Maretha turned to face the earl, who had come up on the platform to examine the buried stairwell. Behind, the workers were muttering, their voices swelling with discontent.

“My lord,” she said in a soft voice that scarcely carried to Chryse and Sanjay’s ears. He met her gaze. His face bore no discernible expression. “Don’t force this.” She made an infinitesimal gesture toward the stairwell, and a second toward the tide of revolt stirring in the laborers.

His gaze, drifting with lazy arrogance over the crowd of workers, stilled their talk as if he had spelled them to silence. “Do you suppose,” he said on a slow, exaggerated drawl, “that they would dare to resist me?” Her expression darkened, fire rising in her eyes to match the chill in his, but he spoke again before she could reply. “Not yet,” he said, with the barest bow to her. “Not yet.” He scrutinized the opening, stair peeping from rubble, for a few more silent moments, then strode away abruptly into the ruins beyond.