The Exodus Quest

THIRTY
I

Night had fallen while they'd been in the Royal Tomb. The rocks in the wadi gleamed like bones as Gaille picked her way across them, then up the hillside. Faisal led the way, cutting a ghostly figure with the dustsheets draped over his shoulders. He walked confidently along the cliff-face path, finding places for his feet that Gaille could barely see in the gloom until he turned and picked them out for her with his torch. She took the first step, her ankles weak with fear. Then the next. Faisal smiled at her when she finally reached the end, seeking a smile in return, some kind of forgiveness, or at least of understanding; but she remembered how she'd shared her chocolate with him earlier, and gave him such a scathing look instead that he dropped his eyes in shame.

He pulled back the sackcloth curtain, nodded her through the black gash in the rock, a tree-trunk split by lightning. With his torch pointing down, the reflected light revealed a wide, low chamber, rows of voluptuous fat pillars carved from the limestone either side, the gaps between stacked high with rubble. Everyone gathered inside. Khaled led them along the passage to a shaft. A rope ladder was moored to an iron peg hammered into the ground. 'Down,' he ordered Gaille.

'What are you going to do with us?'

'Just get down.'

She dangled her legs over the drop, turned onto her front, grabbed the rope, elbows scraping on the rough stone as she probed with her foot like a tongue at a loose tooth until she found a rung. Faisal shone his torch down for her, so that she could see the plain limestone wall as she descended, the rubble floor covered with litter. In the fluttering light, she glimpsed a candle glued by its own congealed wax to a stone and a half-used book of matches, so she grabbed them both. Stafford arrived down next, then Lily. The ladder slithered up the wall like a fugitive snake, trapping them there. A mutter of conversation above, then the fade of footsteps and silence.

'Hey!' shouted Stafford. 'Anyone there?' Nothing but echo. 'You think they've gone?' he asked.

Gaille struck a match, lit the candle from it, took it to the walls, too sheer and high to climb, even if they'd had some tool with which to gouge holds in them.

'What are they going to do with us?' asked Lily. 'Did they say what they were going to do?'

'No.'

'They must have said something.'

'I don't think they know yet,' said Gaille. 'I think they're making this up as they go along.'

'How do you mean?'

She took a deep breath. The candle fluttered, giving the feeling of a vigil, as though someone had died. 'This is a mess, that's all. They stumbled upon this place by accident. They should have reported it, but they chose to loot it instead. That's a very serious crime. They'll go to gaol for years if they're caught.'

'Then why take the chance?'

'Because they're poor. A conscript earns maybe three hundred US dollars a year. Imagine trying to live on that. Imagine trying to marry or bring up a family. Then imagine coming across an artefact worth a thousand dollars. A single artefact. What would you do?'

'You sound almost sorry for them,' said Stafford.

'They'll let us go, won't they?' asked Lily. 'I mean they have to.'

Gaille didn't answer at once, but her silence was eloquent. 'The police will come for us,' she said.

'But they'll be looking in Assiut!'

'They'll be looking everywhere,' Gaille assured her. 'One thing the Egyptians have is manpower. We just need to keep our nerve.' The candle guttered, already burning low. They couldn't afford to waste any more. She cupped her hand around the flame to blow it out, and darkness enveloped them once more.