The Buried Pyramid (55 page)

“I see it,” Stephen said, “and I agree, top and two side of a wide door.”

“And look at the art on the door itself,” Neville continued, “assuming it is a door.”

“Let’s,” Eddie suggested, sounding a bit exasperated.

“The art on the door,” Neville went on deliberately, “is also divided into sections—more like tiles set in place, than sculpture carved directly into the stone—and one tile is missing.”

Stephen reached out and tapped the surface of the door with his finger.

“These ‘tiles’ are stone,” he said, “but I see what you mean. The gap is interesting. Did one fall out, or was it left this way deliberately?”

“We didn’t try anything,” Neville admitted. “I wanted you to inspect it before we monkeyed with it. The door ornamentation is very Egyptian, but somehow it looked—I don’t know how else to put it—wrong to me.”

Stephen inspected the art for so long that Neville began to fear for their candles. He forced himself to remain patient—reminding himself that they had packed both candles and lantern oil in quantity.

“You were right!” Stephen said suddenly, clearly excited. “Look here. The design is made up of lotus and papyrus flowers—stylized, of course—around a central border. They’re interspersed with these round figures—I’ll get back to them—but only in the central border is there anything that doesn’t fit the overall pattern.”

He pointed and continued, “Four figures: a scarab, a mongoose, a snake, and a hawk wearing the uraeus—the cobra crown.”

“Is that last Horus again?” Eddie asked.

He sounded genuinely curious. Neville swallowed hard. It could be the information would be useful.

“Maybe,” Stephen said, “but I think it’s someone else, someone associated with the scarab.”

Neville couldn’t help himself. “Stephen! This is not the time for a lecture.”

“Sorry,” Stephen said. He shook his disordered hair out of his face. “The scarab represents the rising sun: Ra in the morning, also known as Khepri. There are various theories why . . .”

He took a look at Neville’s face and stopped.

“In that context, the crowned hawk probably represents Ra at midday. In later periods, he did get merged with Horus, but in Neferankhotep’s day, he wasn’t. That’s important, because it gives us a clue as to who the mongoose is meant to be.”

Neville tried to look encouraging.

“Yes?”

“Ra at evening was called Atum, and Atum was usually depicted as a human wearing the double crown. However, there’s evidence that Atum had an animal avatar as well . . .”

“Why not?” Eddie said reasonably. “Everyone else seems to have had at least one.”

“And if I recall correctly,” Stephen concluded triumphantly, “that avatar was a mongoose—the creature that kills the snake. Ra at night, in the underworld, is threatened by the monster snake, Apophis. If my guess is right, Apophis is represented by the snake tile.”

Neville looked at the mural.

“They’re not in that order, though,” he said. “The hawk comes before the scarab, then the snake, and the mongoose last.”

“I think that in order to unlock the door,” Stephen replied, “The tiles need to be put in the correct order. I suspect that the empty space was left deliberately—to permit sliding the tiles within the frame.”

He put up a hand and pushed down against the tile above the open space. It slid stiffly, grating against sand in the track, into the opening.

“Amazing that it still works after all these years,” Eddie murmured. “But then, these are the people who built the Great Pyramid.”

Neville leaned forward eagerly. “Then it’s just a matter of readjusting the tiles until they are in the correct sequence?”

“That’s at least the first step,” Stephen said, “and I don’t think it’s going to be simple. Remember I said I’d come back to the round figured tiles?”

Neville nodded.

“Given the overall context, I’d say that they’re meant to represent the sun in the phases of his journey, rather like the phases of the moon, only with the amount of ‘colored in’ space indicating the sun’s position.”

Neville bent closer to look at the monochrome stone tiles.

“You mean,” he said, “this one that’s completely textured—or ‘colored in’—indicates noon, while the one with only a little shading on the left edge would be, say, early morning?”

“That’s right,” Stephen said. “My guess is that the phase tiles need to be set in order with the signifier for the start of a phase dawn, midday, evening, and night, set in the appropriate place. It’s going to be tedious, but I am sure it can be done. By the way, Sir Neville, you were right that it looked ‘off.’ The puzzle has two settings—this one and the correct one. In this one, some of the alignments on the flowers and other borders are slightly wrong. I think that’s what you saw.”

Neville was pleased by the compliment, but he didn’t want to make too great a fuss. Instead he slapped the younger man heartily on the shoulder.

“If you’re sure you have this figured out,” Neville said, “then get to it. We’ll bring you water and something to eat, and better light.”

“Thank you very kindly,” Stephen said. His voice was distant, his hands against the wall. Already, he’d nearly forgotten them in the challenge of the puzzle.

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