The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 139

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gallery entrance when they told him what they intended. "As soon as we

touch that rubble there is going to be clouds of it - more than our

little blower fan can handle."

"Right," Nicholas agreed briskly. "We will have to wet it all down. Two

lines of men back down the tunnel to the sinkholes One chain passing up

water buckets, and the other chain passing back the rubble from the

cave-in."

"It's going to take a lot of work." Sapper sucked his bottom lip

lugubriously.

"You signed on to be tough,'Nicholas reminded him.

"No time to start whinging now."

The monks, still convinced that they were engaged on the Lord's work,

accepted this new task cheerfully. They sang as they passed the chunks

of broken plaster and -rock in one direction and the clay pots of water

from the sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with

the gang of Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous

work, for each piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it

could be levered out of the pack and passed down the chain. The

staircase was soon running with muddy water and the steps were

treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and unstable, and there

was always the danger of a secondary collapse.

So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel

taxed the ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and

it was hot and oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their

bodies glistened with sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was

dumped into the sinkholes Even that large volume of material made no

difference to the level of the black waters. It was simply swallowed up

into the depths without trace.

Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at

the change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if

only for a few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's

pool was a relief after the close confines of the underground workings.

Mek Nimmur was waiting for him when he climbed out over the wall of the

coffer dam on to the ledge beside the pool.

"Nicholas!" Mek's handsome dark face was grave. "Has Tessay returned

from Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday."

"I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you." Mek shook his

head. "I wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men

seeing her, before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her."

"I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the

escarpment." Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.

"If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to

go," Mek agreed. "I have sent men to search for her."

But Tessay's absence was another worry for Nicholas.

It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the

clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his

satisfaction.

Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both of them

were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring

there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered

murals.

Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried

to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were

still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely

head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire

figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the

paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and

sadly they were consigned to the pit.

There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell

night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the

tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky

that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun

burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only

when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the

hours.

Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside

the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild

cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a

hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working

in the upper levels of the tunnel.

"Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we

should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.

They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded

with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his

way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had

cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.

The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish

on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of

the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had

brought crashing down when they had activated the device.

The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill

wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory

examination.

"When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with

the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this

must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the

levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once

it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked

above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.

"Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your

lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He

has found something else. Come on!'

They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached

Hansith's tall figure.

"What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have

you found, Hansith?"

"Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly."

They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the

end of the blocked gallery.

"There!" Hansith pointed proudly.

Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.

Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock

wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into

the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin

to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first

glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off

at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the

plaster-covered image of the great god.

As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her

warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true

tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is

the veritable tomb."

"Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with

emotion. "Get your men to clear this doorway."

As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind

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