The Alexandria Affair

  “It does not hurt us to look.”

  In Donata’s library this summer I’d found novels that told of perilous adventures, which might include the heroine being walled up alive, locked in a dungeon, or buried in a ruined tomb. Donata admitted to adoring the novels as a girl, while pretending to her parents that she read only improving books.

  I’d enjoyed the stories—harmless entertainment, if farfetched. In them the heroines had found numerous trap doors, hidden passages, and secret staircases at their disposal, no matter where they found themselves imprisoned. The heroines had been extraordinarily lucky that the villains had locked them into places with multiple entrances.

  But Egyptian tombs seemed to have been constructed the same way. Apparently, from what I’d read on the subject during our voyage, the builders had given themselves several ways out, so they could seal in their king and then escape. Still more passages had been built to divert thieves to side chambers.

  “Show us the map again,” I said quickly to Grenville.

  Grenville handed me his lantern and we gathered around while he opened his sketchbook and flipped to the drawing he’d made of Marcus’s map.

  “This must be the tunnel we came down today.” I pointed to the line that slanted from the surface to the open square. “This is where Grenville crawled along.” That passage ran parallel to the tomb before it angled sharply downward to the cave that had contained the bats. “Which leaves this one.”

  The third shaft was suspended between the first two, bending from cave to tomb.

  “But there must be still another shaft,” I said. “The bats have to get out somehow. They don’t go through the hole you found first, Marcus, because we had to dig that out. The tunnel that leads down here was also blocked. So either this last shaft connects with one that comes out at the surface, or the cave with the bats has another entrance.”

  I tapped the third tunnel as I spoke. Though it bent toward the tomb, there seemed to be no opening in the walls of this room to access it.

  “We can’t dig through solid rock,” Brewster pointed out.

  “But the Egyptians liked tricks and traps,” I said. “My readings said that they left exits for those who buried the king or queen, which is probably what thieves of old found. Let us see if any of these stones can be moved.”

  We searched. With the desperation of men with one shred of hope, we examined every stone in the walls. Brewster even lifted up Grenville, who was the lightest of us, so he could study all the stones of the ceiling. We spent one candle and lit the next from its embers.

  Grenville dropped to the floor as he finished in the last corner and shook his head. “If there is any way out here, then we are not clever enough to discover the trick of it.”

  Brewster and Marcus also sat down, Brewster with his back to the wall, resting his head against the stones. Marcus sat cross-legged, hands dangling from his knees.

  I started to feel despair wash over me, as well as fear. Grenville’s idea of us shooting ourselves or each other might come to pass.

  No, damn it, I would not give up. My wife waited for me—she would bring forth my child soon, a daughter. I knew she would be a daughter, knew it with all my heart.

  I found myself sitting on the floor, my head in my hands. I’d curled up thus at times when melancholia had struck, though it hadn’t touched me in a long time. What I experienced at the moment wasn’t melancholia, not quite. In those times, I had not cared whether I lived or died.

  I cared now. I closed my eyes, shutting out the pinpoint of candlelight, trying to seek calm.

  I seemed to see myself walking on the bright sands of the desert, but I carried a little girl in my arms. She was about three years old, and wore in her hair the gold and rubies that we’d found, the jewels flashing in the sunlight.

  I carried her down into the tunnel, which had widened considerably, the opening surrounded by people, donkeys, camels and their drovers, and vendors selling souvenirs.

  I lifted my daughter to see the beautifully painted birds and beasts on the walls, the colors so resonant that the animals seemed to move. My daughter clapped her hands in delight, then squirmed to get to her feet.

  As soon as she touched the ground, she ran down the tunnel toward the burial chamber. I followed in alarm, reaching to catch her before she tumbled through the opening and fell down the drop.

  She continued to run, right into the hole, but the drop was gone, the floor of the tunnel dug down to the tomb’s level, plenty of light within. At the opening, my daughter turned and held out her hand to me.

  I took it. I could feel her fingers, warm and small, against mine, my love for her overwhelming me.

  She led me to where I sat now. I sank down, seeming to juxtapose my self of tomorrow with that of today. My daughter knelt at my feet, smiling with red lips, her eyes dark like mine but with the shape of Donata’s.

  “Here, Papa,” she said, and patted the floor at my feet.

  I snapped open my eyes. My daughter had vanished, the light that had filled the tomb gone as well.

  I dragged in a breath, finding it dry and clogged. I coughed, then got to my knees.

  “The floor,” I said, my voice a harsh croak. “Check the floor.”

  The other three men, who’d been sitting in postures of listlessness like my own, scrambled up and began crawling around the room again, brushing dust and sand from the stones.

  I moved my hands forward to the exact place my daughter had showed me in my dream.

  I pushed, and the stone moved.

  CHAPTER 26

  N othing was easy about getting the stone out of the floor.

  If we’d had a few iron bars and a fulcrum, we could have lifted it in a trice—as it was, we had rope, candles and lanterns, and the few small hand tools Grenville had brought inside with him. I’d even left my walking stick above, unsure I’d need a prop in tunnels where I could not even stand.

  After a very, very long time of chipping around the mortar that held the stone in place, we lifted the block a fraction of an inch, catching it with our fingers . . . only to have it slip out again. We tried again, and again. And yet again.

  I grasped it once more, refusing to give in to despair. I would not picture excavators a few years from now digging down here to find our bones, fingers desperately clutching the stone.

  I had no idea if the image of my daughter had been a dream, a waking vision, or my own mind trying to show me the irregularity in the floor in front of me. I would not fail her, I decided. I would live to see her, to bring her back and show her the wonders of Egypt.

  The stone ground upward enough that Brewster got his big, gloved hands around two corners of it. Marcus caught another corner, and I grabbed the fourth one. We wriggled the block upward, my hope rising with it.

  “Grenville, now,” I said abruptly.

  We’d cut our rope into multiple pieces and knotted them into wide loops. As Marcus and I lifted one side, Grenville quickly slid one loop over the two corners and pulled it tight. While Grenville braced himself and held that, I fixed another loop around the side Brewster held.

  Pulling the ropes alternately, two of us on each, we worked the stone out of the floor, slowly, slowly. So must the ancients have hauled the stones upward, one at a time, to construct the giant pyramids. At last, when the stone was almost out, Brewster, Grenville, and Marcus, tipped it until I was able to slide my hands under the bottom and haul it all the way out.

  Catching our breaths, we released the ropes and pulled them from the block, hoping against hope that we’d found an opening, and not simply a loose stone.

  Our second candle guttered. Grenville quickly touched the flame to the wick of the third candle, and light flared high. Grenville closed the lantern’s shield, tied a rope to the ring on top, and lowered it into the hole.

  The lantern went down—two feet, four, eight, ten. There it stopped, the lantern clinking on another floor.

  “Well,” Grenville said, as though we sa
t in his box at Covent Garden, waiting for the next performance. “Now to see whether it is another tunnel or simply a deep hole.”

  He prepared to tie a length of rope around his waist, but I forestalled him. “No, let me.”

  I had to go down. I don’t know why I was compelled to, but I knew it had to be me. I’d promised my little girl.

  Brewster lowered me down, knowing it would be useless to argue. At the bottom I groped my way around the small square shaft. On the fourth side, about at my waist height, was another hole. When I inserted the lantern, I saw that it ran straight ahead, as least as far as I could see.

  “It is indeed a tunnel,” I said. “Shall we see where it leads?”

  * * *

  It led a long, long way into the earth. We crawled, the rough stone beneath us cutting into our gloves and knees, the tunnel’s ceiling scraping our backs.

  We’d gone, at my count, at least a mile when the last candle died. I gazed at the glowing wick as long as I could before it too faded, and we were in darkness.

  We continued forward. There was no other way.

  The blackness pressed on us, as did the silence. We heard each other breathing, heard the grating of sand on the tunnel floor.

  It seemed a long time since I’d stood straight. My knee hurt like fury, so much that I feared I’d ruined it forever.

  Donata would have to push me around in a Bath chair, her wasted wreck of a husband. She’d find another lover while I nodded by the fire at home, too feeble to move.

  My beautiful Donata. She could stretch out her hand and have any gentleman she wanted. And yet, she’d chosen me.

  I pictured her as she’d been the first time I’d seen her, standing in full sunshine in a billiards room, her dark hair soft under a lace cap, cigarillo smoke wreathing her sharp face. “Well, come on then,” she’d said in her cool, clear voice.

  She’d meant that I should play billiards with her instead of staring at her like a fool. I heard her voice again, the past blending with the present. “Come on then, Gabriel. Be useful.”

  Her breath, scented with acrid smoke, touched my face. Her eyelashes were sharp points of black.

  I decided I very much loved her.

  “Guv.” Brewster shook my foot.

  I realized I’d halted, my mind conjuring images that encouraged my body to lie down, rest, and bask in memories.

  “Damnation,” I said. I crawled on, every inch agony.

  “Talk to us,” Grenville said from behind Brewster. “Tell me what you were reading to me on the ship, when I was too ill to comprehend much. The idea about the dark star. As it is so very dark, the subject is apt.”

  For a moment, I remembered nothing of what he meant. Then I wet my parched lips, thinking it through.

  “Laplace’s theory,” I said, recalling his tome about mathematics and astronomy. “He postulates the existence of a star that has so much gravity in it that even light could not escape it. It would therefore be dark—we’d see only a place of blackness.”

  Brewster grunted. “Rot. Stars give off light. You can’t have one with no light at all.”

  “He means it as a mathematical possibility,” I answered. As I remembered Laplace’s arguments and his neatly written equations, my thoughts focused, the darkness weighing not quite so heavily. “All things, if thrown hard enough, can in theory fly off a world into empty space. The amount of strength needed can be calculated with precision—Monsieur Laplace simply takes the equations to their extreme end. He postulates about a place so full of gravity that it would be harder and harder to throw something from it, until even the corpuscles of light itself could not be hurled away.”

  “Ah,” Grenville said. “That was one of his older theories. I believe he has now rejected the notion that light is a corpuscle, as Mr. Newton called it. Men of science have decided light is a wave and travels through a medium, just as water travels on the sea. So Monsieur Laplace’s speculation comes to nothing. If light travels in waves, it cannot weigh anything to be pulled back down by this star with its large gravity.”

  I had to concede the truth of this. But I rather liked the notion of a dark star, drifting like a strange menace and swallowing all light, like this tunnel did.

  We continued, talking about scientific ideas and their possibilities. Marcus proved very well read in both the ancients and the moderns.

  Brewster too knew a surprising amount. Though he’d had the barest schooling, he’d been fortunate enough to have a landlady teach him to read as a lad, and had perused many books. He knew a great deal about the worth of things and had a catalog of art in his head that any collector would envy.

  I had been an indifferent student as a lad, often beaten for my lack of interest, but had found the eagerness to learn as an adult. I’d discovered that reading for one’s enjoyment was much more satisfying than doing it to please others. I now read everything from Cicero to Daniel Defoe to Donata’s harrowing novels by Minerva Press.

  It was becoming too dry to talk, but I had something else on my mind that I wanted to know.

  “I can forgive you trying to harm me, Marcus,” I told him. “Your anger at me and my father is understandable. I’ll make you answer for nearly hurting Peter and shooting Brewster, but that is another matter. But what about Ibrahim?”

  “Who?” Marcus asked behind me, his puzzlement unfeigned. “Who the devil is Ibrahim?”

  “You might not have learned his name. He was a Turkish soldier in Alexandria, who was found at the site of the ancient library. Did you kill him?”

  Marcus started, then his voice went harsh. “No. I swear to you. I don’t harm innocents.”

  “Huh,” Brewster said. “Only blokes what stand in your way.”

  “You are not an innocent,” Marcus said crisply.

  “You were seen.” I cut into the discussion. “You were there, in the place Ibrahim was discovered.”

  Marcus rumbled a growl. “Yes, damn you. I do not know how you seem to know these things. I was there. I went to the place where the library supposedly stood, to meet the blasted vendor who sold me the map to this bloody tomb. I’d met him in the market, but was with the bey’s guards and couldn’t discuss the intriguing map he hinted at. If I could find something worth selling to a museum, I might make my fortune and cease my drudging. I managed to slip away in the night, meet the vendor near the old walls, and get the map. When I was returning, I passed by the site of the library, and nearly tripped over the body of a Turk, mostly buried in sand. I thought to help the poor man, but then I saw he was already dead, his head bloody. I discovered that when I touched him. I also knew that if I were found there with a dead man, his blood on my hand, I’d be arrested and convicted in a trice. So I fled. That is the truth.”

  I believed him. The story was plausible and his vehemence was real. I could picture him stumbling across the body, pulling a knife as he looked around for the killer, then hurrying away. Ahmed had seen Marcus with the knife, but he probably hadn’t seen Ibrahim if the body had already been covered. The night had been dark; both men had turned and gone their separate ways.

  “What about the gunfire the night you met with me in the street?” I continued.

  Marcus let out another noise of irritation. “Very well, I fired that shot. As I told you, I had to escape from the bey if I wanted to come to Giza and look for this tomb—his idea of employment was akin to slavery. I managed to get out of his house again that night, but one of his men found me. I shot at the man to frighten him off. When he fled, I made for the harbor and hid there until I got onto the boat for the Nile. Not even to annoy you would I stay with that man one moment longer.”

  Again a plausible tale. “The bey decided I had fired the shot,” I told him. “He was ready to arrest me.”

  “Ah, well,” Marcus said. “Then you had a taste of what I suffered with him.”

  “Which you wouldn’t have had to, if you hadn’t followed me to Egypt at all,” I said severely. “You must have had other, more
important things to do.”

  “Not really. My only need for the past several years, once I sold my commission, was to find you and take back my inheritance.”

  “Which, sadly for you, isn’t worth tuppence,” I said. “My father cheated us both.”

  Marcus only grunted and fell silent. We crawled on, all conversation dying into the darkness.

  The tunnel was endless. I could not remember a time when I was not in darkness and stillness, stones cutting into my skin. The throbbing ache in my leg widened until it blotted out everything—memories, worries, coherent thought. There was only here and now, darkness and agony.

  I must have fallen asleep as I went, because a blinding pain flashed through my head, and I jerked open my eyes.

  I thought I’d run into the wall beside me, rattling myself awake, but I put out my hand out in front of me and met solid stone. The wall I found was as hard as those to either side, above and below.

  “It’s blocked,” I said, my voice barely working. “There’s no way out. Just another wall.”

  The despair I’d been keeping at bay now swooped in to seize me. I clenched my fists, raging at the desperation, my famous temper now finding release against ton or so of rock.

  I banged my fists into the wall, over and over again, my gloves ripping to shreds, my hands bloodying. The others didn’t try to stop me. They understood.

  I kept pounding. I hated the earth for trapping me, like the dark star trapped all light, keeping me from the lady I loved, the daughter who was my life, my new daughter waiting to appear. Like the light, I fought and fought, needing to escape, even if I shattered myself in the process.

  Monsieur Laplace had been wrong, I thought as a white beam struck my eye, momentarily blinding me. The waves of light could not be contained by the heavy darkness, and they exploded away in triumph as I slammed my fist against the loosened dirt.

  Heat hit me next, and the smell of sand, wind, and the particularly pungent odor of donkeys.