Napoleon’s Pyramids

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Our ride back north toward Cairo was a journey through layers of time. Grassy mounds marked the remains of ancient cities, peasants told us. Rolling dunes sometimes revealed the tip of a buried temple or sanctuary. Near Minya we came across two colossal stone baboons, fat and polished, their serene gaze toward the rising sun. They were twice the height of a man, draped in what looked like feathered cloaks, as majestic as nobles and as timeless as the Sphinx. The gigantic apes were manifestations, of course, of the mysterious Thoth.

We skirted hundreds of mud-brick villages by riding on the desert fringe next to ranks of date palms, as if the green sward were a sea lapping at a beach. We passed a dozen pyramids I hadn’t seen before, some crumbled into little more than hills and others still showing their original geometry. Fragments of temples littered the sand around them. Ruined causeways sloped down to the lush green bottomland of the Nile. Pillars jutted into the air, holding up nothing. Astiza and I moved in our own small bubble, aware of our mission and possible pursuit, yet oddly content. Our alliance was a refuge from anxiety and burden. Two had become one, ambiguity had been replaced with commitment, and aimlessness had found purpose. As Enoch had suggested, I’d found something to believe in. Not empires, not medallions, not magic, and not electricity, but partnership with the woman beside me. Everything else could start from that.

The trio of pyramids that were our goal finally rose from the rim of the desert like islands from the sea. We’d ridden hard to arrive on October 21 ^ st, the date I’d guessed had some mysterious significance. The weather had cooled, the sky a perfect blue dome, the sun a dependable god’s chariot drawing its daily transect of heaven. The high Nile was just visible through its belt of trees. For hours the monuments seemed to get no closer. Then, as the afternoon’s shadows began to lengthen, they appeared to inflate like one of Conte’s balloons, huge, beckoning, and forbidding. They reared out of the earth, as if their apex had erupted from the underworld.

That image gave me a thought.

‘Let me see the medallion,’ I suddenly asked Astiza.

She took it off, the yellow metal on fire in the sun. I looked at the overlapping Vs of its arms, one pointed up, the other pointed down. ‘This looks like two pyramids, doesn’t it? Their bases joined, and their summits pointed in opposite directions?’

‘Or the reflection of a single one in a mirror or water.’

‘As if there was as much below the surface as above, like the roots of a tree.’

‘You think there’s something under the pyramid?’

‘There was under that temple of Isis. What if the medallion represents not the outside, but the inside? When we explored the interior with Bonaparte, the shafts inside sloped like the pyramid’s sides. The angles were different, but an echo of them. Suppose this is not a symbol of the pyramids, but a map of pyramid shafts?’

‘You mean the ascending and descending corridors?’

‘Yes. There was a tablet on the ship I came to Egypt on.’ I’d suddenly remembered the silver-and-black tablet of Cardinal Bembo that Monge had showed me in L’Orient ’s treasure hold. ‘It was filled with levels and figures as if it might be a map or diagram of some underground place with different levels.’

‘There are stories that the ancients had books to instruct the dead how to negotiate the perils and monsters of the underworld,’ she said. ‘Thoth would weigh their heart, and their book would guide them past cobras and crocodiles. If their book was correct they would emerge on the other side into paradise. What if there is some truth to this? What if somehow bodies interred in the pyramid actually took a physical journey through some cavernous gauntlet?’

‘That could explain the absence of any mummies,’ I mused. ‘But when we explored the pyramid we confirmed that its descending corridor dead-ends. It doesn’t rise again in the opposite direction like this medallion. There is no descending V.’

‘That is true of the corridors we know,’ Astiza said, suddenly excited. ‘But what side of the pyramid is the entrance on?’

‘The north.’

‘And what constellation does the medallion display?’

‘Alpha Draconis, the polestar when the pyramids were built. So?’

‘Hold the medallion out as if the constellation were in the sky.’

I did so. The circular disc was held against the northern sky, light shining through the tiny perforations and making the pattern of Draconis, the dragon. When I did so, the medallion’s arms were perpendicular to north.

‘If that medallion were a map, which sides of the pyramid would the shafts be on?’ Astiza asked.

‘East and west!’

‘Meaning perhaps there are entrances not yet discovered on the east or west flanks of the pyramids,’ she reasoned.

‘But why haven’t they been found? People have climbed all over the pyramids.’

Astiza frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And why the connections to Aquarius, the rising Nile, and this time of year?

‘I don’t know that, either.’

And then we saw a scrap of white, like snow, in the desert.

It was a curious tableau. French officers, aides, savants, and servants were arranged in a semicircle for a picnic in the desert, their horses and donkeys picketed behind. The party faced the pyramids. Camp field tables had been put end to end and covered with white linen. Felucca sails had been rigged as canopies, with captured Mameluke lances as tent poles and French cavalry sabres thrust into the sand as pegs. French crystal and golden Egyptian goblets had been laid out with heavy European silver and china. Bottles of wine were open and half-empty. There were lavish heaps of fruit, bread, cheese and meat. Candles were ready for lighting. Seated on folding stools were Bonaparte and several of his generals and scientists, all of them chatting amiably. I also spotted my mathematician friend, Monge.

Dressed as we were in Arab robes, an aide-de-camp came to shoo us away like any other curious Bedouins. Then he noticed my complexion and Astiza’s beauty, only partly covered under the tattered cloak that she’d drawn around her as best she could. He gaped more at her than me, of course, and while he was doing so I addressed him in French.

‘I’m Ethan Gage, the American savant. I’m here to report that my investigations are nearing completion.’

‘Investigations?’

‘Of the secrets of the pyramid.’

He went to murmur my message and Bonaparte stood, peering like a leopard. ‘It’s Gage, popping up like the very devil,’ he muttered to the others. ‘And his woman.’

He beckoned us forward and the soldiers looked greedily at Astiza, who kept her gaze over their heads and walked with as much decorum as our costumes would allow. The men restrained from rude comment because there was something different about us, I think, some subtle signs of partnership and propriety that signalled we were a couple, and that she was to be respected and left alone. So their gaze reluctantly turned from her to me.

‘What are you doing in that dress-up?’ Bonaparte demanded. ‘And didn’t you desert my command?’ He turned to Kleber. ‘I thought he deserted.’

‘Damned rascal broke out of jail and eluded a pursuing patrol, if I recall,’ the general said. ‘Disappeared into the desert.’

Thankfully, word did not appear to have reached them of the events at Dendara. ‘To the contrary, I’ve been much at risk in your service,’ I said blithely. ‘My companion here was held for ransom by Silano and the Arab, Achmed bin Sadr: her life for the medallion we’ve discussed. It was her courage and my own determination that got us free to resume our studies. I’ve come looking for Doctor Monge to consult on a mathematical question that I hope will shed light on the pyramids.’

Bonaparte looked at me with disbelief. ‘Do you think me an idiot? You said the medallion was lost.’

‘I said so only to keep it from Count Silano, who does not have your interests, or those of France, at heart.’

‘So you lied.’

‘I dissembled to protect the truth from those who would misuse it. Please listen, General. I’m not jailed, not captured, and not fleeing. I came looking for you because I think I’m near a major discovery. All I need now is the help of the other savants.’

He looked from me to Astiza, half-angry and half-amused. Her presence gave me a curious immunity. ‘I don’t know whether to reward you or shoot you, Ethan Gage. There’s something baffling about you, something that goes beyond your crude American habits and rustic education.’

‘I just try the best I can, sir.’

‘The best you can!’ He looked to the others, because I’d given him a subject to pontificate on. ‘It is never enough to do your best, you must be the best. Is this not true? I do what’s necessary to exert my will!’

I bowed. ‘And I am a gambler, General. My will is irrelevant if the cards don’t go my way. Whose fortune doesn’t vary? Isn’t it true you were a hero at Toulon, then imprisoned briefly after the fall of Robespierre, and then a hero again when your cannon saved the Directory?’

He scowled a moment, then shrugged as if to concede the point, and finally smiled. If Napoleon didn’t suffer fools, he did enjoy the stimulation of argument. ‘True enough, American. True enough. Will and luck. In one day I went from a cheap Parisian hotel, in debt for my uniform, to having my own house, coach, and team. In one day of fortune!’ He addressed the others. ‘Do you know what happened to Josephine? She was imprisoned too, destined for the guillotine. In the morning the jailer took her pillow away, saying she wouldn’t need it because by nightfall she wouldn’t have a head! Yet just hours later word came that Robespierre was dead, assassinated, that the Terror had ended, and that instead of being executed, she was free. Choice and destiny: What a game we play!’

‘Destiny seems to have trapped us in Egypt,’ a half-drunken Kleber said. ‘And war is not a game.’

‘On the contrary, Kleber, it is the ultimate game, with death or glory the stakes. Refuse to play and you only guarantee defeat. Right, Gage?’

‘Not every game must be played, General.’ How strange this man was, who mixed political clarity with emotional restlessness, and the grandest dreams with the meanest cynicism, daring us to call him on it. A game? Is that what he’d say to the dead?

‘No? Life itself is war, and all of us are defeated in the end, by death. So we do what we can to make ourselves immortal. The pharaoh chose that pyramid. I choose… fame.’

‘And some men choose home and family,’ Astiza said quietly. ‘They live through their children.’

‘Yes, that’s enough for them. But not for me, or the men who follow me. We want the immortality of history.’ Bonaparte took a swallow of wine. ‘What a philosopher you’ve made me at this meal! Consider your woman, there, Gage. Fortune is a woman. Grasp her today, or you will not have her tomorrow.’ He smiled dangerously, his grey eyes dancing. ‘A beautiful woman,’ he told his companions, ‘who tried to shoot me.’

‘It turns out, General, that she was trying to shoot me. ’

He laughed. ‘And now you’re a pair! But of course! Fortune also turns enemies into allies, and strangers into confidants!’ Then he abruptly sobered. ‘But I’ll not have you running around the desert in Egyptian dress until this matter with Silano is sorted out. I don’t understand what’s going on between you and the count, but I don’t like it. It’s important we all stay on the same side. We’re discussing the next stage of our invasion, the conquest of Syria.’

‘Syria? But Desaix is still pursuing Murad Bey in Upper Egypt.’

‘Mere skirmishing. We have the means to push north and east as well. The world awaits me, even if the Egyptians can’t seem to grasp how I could remake their lives.’ His smile was tight, his disappointment obvious. His promise of Western technology and government had not won the population over. The reformer I’d seen in the great cabin of L’Orient was changing, his dreams of enlightenment dashed by the seeming obtuseness of the people he’d come to save. Napoleon’s last innocence had evaporated in the desert heat. He waved aside a fly. ‘Meanwhile, I want this pyramid mystery resolved.’

‘Which I can best do without the count’s interference, General.’

‘Which you will do with the count’s cooperation. Right, Monge?’

The mathematician looked puzzled. ‘I suppose it depends on what Monsieur Gage thinks he has figured out.’

And then there was a rumble, like distant thunder.

We turned toward Cairo, its minarets lacy across the Nile. Then another echo, and another. It was the report of cannon.

‘What’s that?’ Napoleon asked no one in particular.

A column of smoke began rising into the clear sky. The gunfire went on, a low mutter, and then more smoke appeared. ‘Something’s happening in the city,’ Kleber said.

‘Obviously.’ Bonaparte turned to his aides. ‘Get this mess packed away. Where’s my horse?’

‘I think it may be an uprising,’ Kleber added uneasily. ‘There’s been street rumour, and mullahs calling from their towers. We didn’t take it seriously.’

‘No. The Egyptians have not taken me seriously.’

The little party had lost all focus on me. Camels lurched upright, horses whinnied in excitement, and men ran to their mounts. As sabres were pulled from the sand, the awnings began to droop. The Egyptians were rising in Cairo.

‘What about him?’ the aide-de-camp said, pointing at me.

‘Leave him for now,’ Bonaparte said. ‘Monge! You and the savants take Gage and the girl with you. Get back to the institute, close the doors, and let no one in. I’ll send a company of infantry to protect you. The rest of you, follow me!’ And he set off on a gallop across the sands toward the boats that had transported them across the river.

As the soldiers and servants hurriedly packed away the last awnings and tables, Astiza quietly kept a candle. Then they scurried off too, following the trail of officers. In minutes we were left alone with Monge, except for the footprints of the vanished banquet. A whirlwind had passed, once more leaving us all breathless.

‘My dear Ethan,’ Monge finally said as we watched the exodus toward the Nile, ‘you do have a way of arriving with trouble.’

‘I’ve been trying since Paris to stay out of it, Dr Monge, with little success.’ The sound of revolt was an unmelodic rattle echoing across the river.

‘Come, then. We scientists will keep our heads down during this latest emergency.’

‘I can’t go back to Cairo with you, Gaspard. My business is with this pyramid. Look, I’ve got the medallion and am on the brink of understanding, I think.’ At my gesture, Astiza brought out the pendant. Monge started at the new design and its seeming Masonic symbolism.

‘As you can see,’ I went on, ‘we’ve found another piece. This trinket is a kind of map, I think, to hidden places in the Great Pyramid, the one you said embodied pi. The key is this triangle of scratches on the central disc. In a tomb to the south I realised they must represent Egyptian numbers. I think they’re a mathematical clue, but of what?’

‘Scratches? Let me see it again.’ He took the piece from Astiza and studied it under a hand lens.

‘Imagine each bunch of scratches as a digit,’ I said.

He counted silently as his lips moved, then looked surprised. ‘But of course! Why didn’t I see this before? Now this is an odd pattern, but appropriate given where we are. Oh dear, what a disappointment.’ He looked at me with pity, and my heart began to sink. ‘Gage, have you ever heard of Pascal’s triangle?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Named for Blaise Pascal, who wrote a treatise on this particular progression of numbers just one hundred and fifty years ago. He said many wise things, not the least of which was the more he’d seen of men, the better he liked his dog. See, it’s a pyramidal kind of progression.’ Borrowing a dragoon’s sabre, he began scratching in the sand and drew a number pattern that looked like this:

1

1 1

1 2 1

1 3 3 1

1 4 6 4 1

‘There! You see the pattern?’

I must have looked like a goat trying to read Thucydides. Groaning inwardly, I remembered Jomard and his Fibonacci numbers.

‘Except for the ones,’ Monge said patiently, ‘you’ll notice that every number is the sum of the two numbers to each side above it. See that first 2? Above it are two 1s. And the 3 there: above it are a 1 and a 2. The 6? Above it are two 3s. That’s Pascal’s triangle. That’s just the beginning of the patterns you can detect, but the point is that the triangle can be extended downward indefinitely. Now, look at the scratches on your medallion.’

I

I I

I II I

I III III I

‘It’s the start of the same triangle!’ I exclaimed. ‘But what does that mean?’

Monge passed the medallion back. ‘It means the pendant can’t possibly be ancient Egyptian. I’m sorry, Ethan, but if this is Pascal’s triangle, your entire quest has been futile.’

‘What?’

‘No ancient mathematicians knew this pattern. It must undoubtedly be a modern fraud.’

I felt as if I’d been hit by a blow to the stomach. A fraud? Was this one of the tricks of the old conjurer Cagliostro? Had this long journey – Talma’s and Enoch’s death – been for nothing? ‘But it looks like a pyramid!’

‘Or a pyramid looks like a triangle. What better way to pass on a crude piece of old jewellery than by linking it to the pyramids of Egypt? Yet it was probably some scholar’s toy or good-luck piece, with pi and the legs of a compass. Perhaps it was a joke. Who knows? I merely suspect, my friend, that you’ve been duped by some kind of charlatan. The soldier you won it from, perhaps.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘There’s no embarrassment. All of us know that you’re not really a savant.’

I was reeling. ‘I was sure we were so close…’

‘I like you, Ethan, and don’t want to see you come to any harm. So let me give you some advice. Don’t go back to Cairo. God knows what’s happening there.’ The sounds of firing kept getting louder. ‘Bonaparte suspects your uselessness, and frustration is making him impatient. Take a boat to Alexandria with Astiza and take ship for America. The British will let you through if you explain yourself, as you do so well. Go home, Ethan Gage.’ He shook my hand. ‘Go home.’

I stood in shock, barely comprehending that all my exertions had been for nothing. I’d been certain the medallion pointed a way into the pyramid, and now the greatest mathematician in France had told me I’d been bilked! Monge smiled at me sadly. And then, gathering up his few belongings, he mounted the donkey that had borne him here and slowly began riding back to the capital and his institute, gunfire growling in the distance.

He turned. ‘I wish I could do the same!’

Astiza was looking after Monge in frustration, her face dark and contemptuous. When he was out of earshot she exploded. ‘That man is a fool!’

I was startled. ‘Astiza, he has one of the finest minds in all of France.’

‘Who apparently believes that learning begins and ends with his pompous opinions and his own European ancestors. Could he build this pyramid? Of course not. And yet he insists that the people who built it knew far less of numbers than him, or this Pascal.’

‘He didn’t put it that way.’

‘Look at those patterns in the sand! Don’t they look like the pyramid before you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet they have nothing to do with why we are here? I don’t believe it.’

‘But what’s the connection?’

She looked from sand to pyramid, pyramid to sand. ‘It is obvious, I think. These numbers correspond to the blocks of the pyramid. A single one at the top, missing now. Then two on this face, then three, and so on. Row after row, block after block. If you follow this pattern, each block will have a number. This Monge is blind.’

Could she be right? I felt a rising excitement. ‘Let’s complete a few more rows.’

The pattern soon became more apparent. Not only did the numbers grow rapidly bigger near the pyramid’s apothem, the imaginary line that bisected the pyramid’s face, but to either side of this centre point they would pair outward. The next line, for example, read 1, 5, 10, 10, 5, 1. Then 1, 6, 15, 20, 15, 6, 1. And so on, each row getting broader and its numbers bigger. By the thirteenth row from the top, the centre number was 924.

‘What number are we looking for?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then what good is this?’

‘It will make sense when we see it.’

On we figured. As the sun sank toward the western horizon the pyramid shadows lengthened. Astiza touched my arm and pointed to the south. There was a plume of dust that way, marking the approach of a sizable party. I felt uneasy. If Silano and Bin Sadr had survived, that was the direction they’d be coming from. To the northeast we could begin to see the glow of fires in Cairo and hear the now-steady roar of French artillery. A full-scale battle had broken out in the supposedly pacified capital. Napoleon’s grip was more fragile than it seemed. I saw a round bag begin to lift into the air. It was Conte’s balloon, no doubt being used by observers to direct the fight.

‘We’d better hurry,’ I muttered.

I began sketching numbers faster, but each row added to the sequence was two numbers longer than the one before, and more complicated. What if we made a mistake? Astiza helped fill in the numbers with the necessary arithmetic, murmuring as she added in her quick mind. On and on our pyramid grew, number by number, block by block, as if we were duplicating its construction on the sand. Soon my back ached, my eyes began to blur. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Was it all a hoax, as Monge had implied? Had the ancient Egyptians known such puzzles? Why would they invent something so obscure and then leave a clue to find it? Finally, some one hundred and fifty rows of blocks from the top, we came to a stone that had the same digits as what the mathematician had told me was the Egyptian value for pi: 3160.

I stopped, stunned. Of course! The medallion was a map to a certain point on the pyramid! Face north. Imagine a shaft and door on the west or east faces. Remember pi. Look for a block valued pi under this ancient number game. Time it to Aquarius as the Egyptian used the sign, for the rising of the Nile, and… enter.

If I was right.

The western face of the pyramid glowed pink as we began to climb it. It was late in the afternoon, the sun low and fat, like Conte’s balloon. Our horses were tied below, and the sounds of gunfire in Cairo were muffled by the bulk of the monument between us and the city. As before, our climb was an awkward scramble, the blocks high, steep, and eroded. I counted as we climbed, trying to find the row and block that corresponded to pi, the eternal number codified into the dimensions of the pyramid.

‘What if the numbers refer to the facing stones, now gone?’ I said.

‘They would match these inner ones, I hope. Or close to it. This medallion would be directing us to a stone that led to the core.’

We had just reached the fifty-third row, panting, when Astiza pointed. ‘Ethan, look!’

Rounding the corner of the adjacent pyramid was a party of galloping horsemen. One of them spied us, and they began to shout. Even in the dying light I had no trouble making out the bandaged figures of Bin Sadr and Silano, lashing at lathered horses. If this didn’t work we were dead – or worse than dead, if Bin Sadr had his way.

‘We’d better find that stone.’

We counted. There were thousands of blocks on this western face, of course, and when we came to the supposed candidate, it looked no different than its brothers around it. Here was a rock eroded by millennia of time, weighing several tons, and firmly wedged by the colossal weight above it. I pushed, heaved, and kicked, to no effect.

A bullet pinged off the stonework.

‘Stop! Think!’ Astiza urged. ‘There has to be a special way or any fool could have stumbled upon this.’ She held up the medallion. ‘It must have something to do with this.’

More shots pattered around us.

‘We’re like targets on a wall up here,’ I muttered.

She looked out. ‘No. He needs us alive to tell him what we’ve discovered. Bin Sadr will enjoy making us talk.’

Indeed, Silano was shouting at those who had fired and shoving their muskets down, instead pushing them toward the base of the pyramid.

‘Great.’ I fumbled with the medallion. Suddenly I realised the second pyramid was shadowing our own, its long triangle reaching across the sands and climbing the layers of stone to where we were standing, pointing at us. Its capstone was intact, its point more perfect, and its apex seemed to shadow a block a few to the right and several courses lower than where we were standing. Each day, as the sun marched along the horizon, the shadow would touch a different stone, and this was the date I’d surmised from the calendar. Was our count of the blocks off slightly? I bounded down to just above the shadow and held the medallion up to the sun. Light shone through the tiny perforated holes, making a star pattern of Draconis on the sandstone.

‘There!’ Astiza pointed. A faint tracery of holes, or rather chisel points, near the base of the stone, mimicking the constellation pattern on the medallion. And beneath it, the joint between our stone and the one below was slightly wider than the usual. I crouched and blew the dust away from this tiniest of cracks. There was the subtlest of Masonic signs chiselled into the stone as well.

I could hear Arabs shouting to each other as they started to climb. ‘Gage, give it up!’ Silano called. ‘You’re too late!’

I could feel a shallow breath of wind, air coming from some hollowness on the other side. ‘It’s here,’ I whispered. I slammed the stone with my palm. ‘Move, damn you!’

Then I recalled what others had named the medallion since I’d won it. A key. I tried sliding the disc into the crack but it was slightly convex and its swell wouldn’t fit.

I looked back down. Now Silano and Bin Sadr were climbing as well.

So I reversed the pendant, easing in the linked arms. They stuck, I jiggled, they moved in farther…

Suddenly there was a click. As if pulled by a string, the medallion arms jerked deeper into the stone, the disc breaking off and bouncing down the blocks toward Silano. There was the creak and groan of stone upon stone. The men below us were shouting.

The stone had suddenly become weightless, lifted a fraction of an inch off the rock below. I pushed, and now it rotated in and up as if it were made of down, revealing a dark shaft that sloped downward at the same precarious angle of the descending corridor I’d explored with Napoleon. A ten-thousand-pound block of stone had become a feather. The key had disappeared into the rock as if swallowed.

We’d found the secret. Where was Astiza?

‘Ethan!’

I whirled. She’d climbed down the precipitous slope to nab the disc. Silano’s hand had closed on her cloak. She wrenched free, leaving him holding cloth, and scrambled back upward. I pulled out Ash’s sword and leapt down to help. Silano pulled out a new rapier of his own, eyes gleaming.

‘Shoot him!’ Bin Sadr shouted.

‘No. This time he has no trick with his rifle. He’s mine.’

I decided to forego finesse for brute desperation. Even as his blade whickered through the air toward my torso, I yelled like a Viking and cleaved down as if I were chopping wood. I was a course higher than him, giving me a two-foot height advantage, and was so quick he was forced to parry instead of thrust. Steel rang on steel and his blade bent under my blow, not breaking but twisting against his wrist. It was still sore, I gambled, from when my rifle exploded. He turned to save his grip but the move cost him his balance. Cursing, he lurched and collided with some of the other brigands. The lot of them went spilling down, clutching at the rock to arrest their bumpy fall. I threw the sword like a spear, hoping to stick Bin Sadr, but he ducked and another villain took the point instead, howling as he tumbled.

Now Bin Sadr charged up at me, a deadly point jutting from the end of his snake-headed staff. He thrust. I dodged, but not quite quick enough. The blade, sharp as a razor, shallowly sliced my shoulder. Before he could twist to cut deeper, a stone hit him in the face. Astiza, her hair wild as a Medusa, was hurling down broken pieces of pyramid.

Bin Sadr was sore too, wielding the staff with one arm because of his bullet wound, and I sensed a chance to truly unsettle him. I grabbed the snake shaft, hauling upward, even as he desperately pulled it back, blinking against Astiza’s bombardment of rocks. I relaxed my grip for a moment and he tilted dangerously backward, unbalanced. Then I jerked again and he lost the staff entirely and fell, bouncing down several courses of stones. His face was bloody, his precious staff mine. For the first time I saw a flicker of fear.

‘Give it back!’

‘It’s firewood, bastard.’

Astiza and I retreated to the hole we’d made, our only refuge, and crawled inside. Bracing ourselves against the walls of the shaft so we wouldn’t slide, we reached up and pulled at the entrance stone. Bin Sadr was scrambling up toward us like a madman, howling with rage. The block came down as easily as it had risen, but as it swung it retrieved its own weight, gaining momentum, and it slammed shut in the villain’s face with a boom like a great boulder. In an instant we were plunged into darkness.

We could hear faint howls of frustration as the Arabs pounded on the stone door from the outside. Then Silano called out, in rage and determination, ‘Gunpowder!’

We might not have much time.

It was black as a bowel until Astiza struck something on the sides of the shaft and I saw the glint of sparks. She lit the candle she’d taken from Napoleon’s table. So dark was it that the shaft seemed to flare from this feeble light. I blinked, breathing hard, trying to collect myself for the next step. There was an alcove next to the entrance, I saw, and in it, jutting up to and connected by a hinged arm to the stone door we’d come through, was a shaft of glittering gold. The shaft was a stunning thing, at least two inches thick, the gold probably sheathing some base material from corrosion or rot. It seemed to be a mechanism to take up the weight of the stone door, moving up and down like a piston. There was a socket where it connected, and a long well that it descended through. I had no idea how it worked.

I tried tugging the door. It was wedged like a cork, once more impossibly heavy. Retreat seemed impossible. We were temporarily safe and permanently trapped. Then I noticed a detail I hadn’t observed before. Ranked along the shaft wall, like a stand of arms, were dry brushwood torches, mummified by desiccation.

Someone wanted us to find our way to the bottom.