The Seventh Scroll (29 page)

His enemies quailed before him, he trod them underfoot or gathered together their severed heads like a bouquet of flowers.

Nicholas played the beam over all this splendid array of art, and brought it to a stop upon the central panel that covered the entire main wall above the shelf on which the rotting coffin lay. Here the same godlike figure rode the footplate of his chariot. In one hand he held the bow and in the other a bundle of javelins. His head was bare of any helmet, and his hair flowed out behind him in the wind of his passage, a thick golden braid like the tail of a lion. His features were noble and proud, his gaze direct and indomitable.

Below him was a legen in classical Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a sepulchral whisper Royan translated them aloud:

Great Lion of Egypt.

Best of One Hundred Thousand Holder of the Gold of Valour Pharaoh's Sole Companion Warrior of all the Gods May you live for ever!

Her hand shook upon his arm, and her voice choked and died away, stifled with emotion. She gave a little sob, and then shook herself as she brought herself back under control.

"I know this artist," she said softly. "I have spent five years studying his work. I would know it anywhere." She drew a breath. "I know with utter certainty that nearly four thousand years ago Taita the slave decorated these walls and designed this tomb."

She pointed to the name of the dead man carved into the stone above the shelf on which his coffin lay.

"This is not the tomb of a Christian saint. Centuries ago some old priest must have stumbled upon it and, in his ignorance, usurped it for his own religion." She drew another shaky breath. "Look there! That is the seal of Tanus, Lord Harreb, the commander of all the armies of Egypt, lover of Queen Lostris and the natural father of Prince Memnon, who became the Pharaoh Tamose."

They were both silent then, lost in the wonder of their discovery. Nicholas broke the silence at last.

"It's all true, then. The secrets of the seventh scroll are all here for us, if we can find the key to them."

"Yes," she said softly. "The key. Taita's stone testament." She turned back towards the tabot stone and approached it slowly, almost fearfully.

"I can't bring myself to look, Nicky. I am terrified that it's not what we hope it is. You do itV

He went directly to the column, and with a magician's flourish jerked away the damask cloth that covered it. They stared at the pillar of pink mottled granite that he had revealed. It was about six feet high and a foot square at the base, tapering up to half that width at the flat pedestal of the summit. The granite had been polished, and then engraved.

Royan stepped forward and touched the cold stone, running her fingers lingeringly over the hieroglyphic'script in the way a blind man reads Braille.

"Taita's letter to us," she whispered, picking out the symbol of the hawk with a broken wing from the mass of close-chiselled script, tracing the outline with a long, slim forefinger that trembled softly. "Written almost four thousand years ago, waiting all these ages for us to read and understand it. See how he has signed it." Slowly she circled the granite pillar, studying each of the four sides in turn, smiling and nodding, frowning and shaking her head, then smiling again as if it were a love letter.

"Read it to me," Nicholas invited. "It's too complicated for me - I understand the characters, but I cannot follow the sense or the meaning. Explain it to me."

"It's pure Taita." She laughed, her awe and wonder at last giving way to excitement. "He is being his usual obscure and capricious self." It was as though she were talking of a beloved but infuriating old friend. "It's all in verse and is probably some esoteric code of his own." She picked out a line of hieroglyphics, and followed them with her finger as she read aloud,

"'The vulture rises on mighty pinions to greet the sun. The jackal howls and turns upon his tail. The river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred places, lest the wrath of all the gods descend upon you!"'

"It's nonsense jargon. It does not make sense," he pretested.

"Oh, yes, it makes sense all right. Taita always makes sense, once you follow the way his oblique mind is working." She turned to face him squarely. "Don't look so glum, Nicky. You can't expect to read Taita like an editorial in The Times. He has set us a riddle that may take weeks and months of work to unravel."

"Well, one thing is certain. We can't stay here in the maqdas for weeks and months while, we puzzle it out. Let's get to work."

"Photographs first." She became brisk and businesslike.

"Then we can lift impressions from the stone."

He set down the camera bag and knelt over it to open the flap. "I will shoot two rolls of colour first, and then use the Polaroid. That will give us something to work on until we can have the colour developed." She stood out of his way as he circled the pillar on his knees, keeping the angle correct so as not to distort the perspective. He took a series of shots of each of the four sides, using different shutter speeds and exposures.

"Don't use up all your film," she warned him. "We need some shots of the walls of the tomb itself."

Obediently he went to the grille gates and studied the locking system.

"This is a bit more complicated than the outer gate. If I try to get in here, I might do some damage.

I don't think it will be worth the risk of being discovered."

"All right," she agreed. "Work through the openings in the grille." He filmed as best he was able, extending the camera through the openings at the full stretch of his arms, and estimating his focus.

"That's the lot," he told her at last. "Now for the Polaroids."

"He changed cameras and repeated the entire process, but this time Royan held a small tape measure against the pillar to give the scale. As he exposed each plate he handed it to her to check the development. Once or twice when the flash setting on the camera had either overexposed or rendered the subject too dull, or for some other reason she was not satisfied, she asked him to repeat the shot.

After almost two hours' work they had a complete set Of Polaroids, and Nicholas packed his cameras away and brought out the roll of art paper. Working together, they stretched it over one face of the pillar and secured it in place with masking tape. Then he started at the top and she at the bottom. Each with a black art crayon, they rubbed the precise shape and form of the engravings on to the sheet of blank paper.

"I have learned how important this is when dealing with Taita. If you are not able to work with the original, then you must have an exact copy. Sometimes the most minute detail of the engraving may change the entire sense and meaning of the script. He layers everything with hidden depths. You have read in River God how he cons' ers himself to be the riddler and punster par excellence id and the greatest exponent of the game of bao that ever lived. Well, that much of the book is accurate. Wherever he is now, he knows the game is on and he is revelling in every move we make. I can just imagine him giggling and gether with glee." rubbing his hands to

"Bit fanciful, dear girl." He settled back to work. "But I know what you mean."

The task of transferring the outline of the designs on to the blank sheets of art paper was painstaking and monotonous, and the hours passed as they laboured on hands and knees or crouched over the granite pillar. At last Nicholas stepped back and massaged his aching back.

"That does it, then. All finished."

a She stood up beside him. "What time is it?" she asked, and he checked his wristwatch.

"Four in the morning. We had better tidy up in here.

Make certain we leave no sign of our visit."

"One last thing," Royan said, tearing a corner off one of the sheets of art paper. With it she went to the altar where the abbot's crown lay. Quickly she taped the scrap of paper over the blue ceramic seal in the centre of the crown, and filled it with a rubbing of the design of the hawk with a broken wing.

Just for luck," she explained to him, as she came back to help him fold the long sheets of paper and pack them back in the bag. Then they gathered up the shreds of discarded masking tape and the empty film wrappers that he had strewn on the stone slabs.

Before they covered the granite stele with the damask cloth, Royan caressed the stone panels of script as if to take leave of them for ever. Then she nodded at Nicholas.

He spread the cloth over the pillar and they adjusted the folds to hang as they had found them. From the threshold of the brass-bound door they surveyed the maqdas for the last time, then he opened the door a rack

"Let's go!" She squeezed through and he followed her out into the qiddist of the church. It took him only a few minutes to slide the tongue of the lock back into place.

"How will we get out through the main doors?" she asked.

"I don't think that will be necessary. The priests obviously have another entrance from their quarters directly into the qiddist. You very seldom see them using the main gates." He stood in the centre of the floor, and looked around carefully. "It must be on this side if it leads directly into the monks'

living quarters-' he broke off with a grunt of satisfaction. "Aha! You can see where all their feet have actually worn a pathway over the centuries." He pointed out a smooth area of dished and worn stone near the side wall.

"And look at the marks of grubby fingers on the tapestry over there." He crossed quickly to the hanging and drew a fold aside. "I thought as much." There was a narrow doorway concealed behind the hanging.

"Follow me."

They found themselves in a dark passageway through the living rock. Nicholas flashed his torch down its length, ? A

but he masked the bulb with his hand to show only as ,much light as they needed. "This way."

The passage turned at right-angles and ahead they could make out a dull illumination. Nicholas switched off the torch and led her on. Now there was the smell of stale food and humanity, and they passed the doorless entrance to a monk's rock cell. Nicholas flashed his torch into it. It was deserted and bare. A wooden cross hung on the wall with a truckle bed below it. There were no other furnishings. They went on past a dozen others which were almost identical.

At the next turning of the passage Nicholas paused.

He felt a tiny draught on his cheek, and the taste of fresh air on his tongue.

"This way he whispered.

They hurried on, until suddenly Royan grabbed his shoulder from behind and forced him to stop.

"What-' he began, but she squeezed his shoulder to silence him. He heard it then, the sound of a human voice, echoing eerily through the labyrinth of passageways.

Then came a weird haunting cry, that of a soul in agony, wailing and sobbing. They crept forward, trying to make their escape before they were discovered, but the sounds grew stronger as they went on.

"Dead ahead," Nicholas warned her in a whisper. "We are going to have to sneak past."

Now they saw soft yellow lamplight spilling from the doorway of one of the cells into the passage. There came another heart-rending female cry that echoed down the passage and froze them in their tracks.

"That's a woman's voice. What is happening?" Royan breathed, ut he shook his head for silence and led her on.

They had to pass the open door of the lit cell. Nicholas edged towards it with his back flattened to the opposite wall. She followed him, keeping close and clinging to his arm for comfort.

As they looked into the cell the woman cried out again, but this time her voice blended with that of a man.

It was a duet without words, but racked with all the feral agony of a passion too fierce to be borne in silence.

In their full view a couple lay naked upon the truckle bed. The woman lay spread-eagled, holding the man's hips between her uplifted knees. Her arms wound hard around his back, upon which each separate muscle stood out proudly and gleamed with sweat. He thrust down into her savagely, his buttocks bunching and pounding with the force of a great black battering ram.

She rolled her head from side to side as another incoherent cry was torn from her straining throat. It seemed too much for the man above her to bear, and he reared back like a flaring cobra, his pelvis still locked to hers, but his back arched like a war bow. Spasm after spasm gripped him. The sinews in the back of his legs were stretched to snapping point, and the muscles in his back fluttered and jumped like separate living creatures. The woman opened her eyes and looked directly at them as they stood transfixed in the doorway, but she was blinded with the strength of her passion. Her eyes were sightless, as she cried aloud to the man above her.

Nicholas drew Royan away, and they slipped down the passageway and out on to the deserted terrace. They stopped at the foot of the staircase, and breathed the sweet cool night air that was perfumed by the waters of the Nile.

"Tessay has gone to him,'Royan whispered softly.

"For tonight at least,'Nicholas agreed.

"No," Royan denied. "You saw her face, Nicky. She belongs to Mek Nimmur now."

The dawn was flushing the serrated crests of the escarpment to the colours; of port wine and roses when they reached camp and separated at the door to Royan's hut.

"I am bushed," she told Nicholas. The excitement has been too much for me. You won't see me again before noon."

"Good thinking! Sleep as long as you wish. I want you scintillating and perceptive when we start going over the material which we gathered last night."

It was long before noon, however, when Nicholas was woken from a deep sleep by the harsh and intrusive bellows of Boris as he stormed into the hut.

"English, wake up! I must talk to you. Wake up, man, wake up." Nicholas rolled over and thrust one arm out from under the mosquito net as he groped for his wrist-watch.

"Damn you, Brusilov! What the hell do you want?"

"My wife! Have you seen my wife?"

"Now what has your wife got to do with me?"

"She has gone! I have not seen her since last night."