The Seventh Scroll tes-2

by Wilbur Smith

  needed, and changing them often meant that the men at the face were

  always rested and strong, and eager to earn the bonus of silver dollars

  that Nicholas promised them for their progress along the shaft.

  At each change of shift, Nicholas disappeared into the mouth of the

  tunnel with Sapper's steel tape and measured the advance.

  "One hundred and twenty feet! Well done, the Buffaloes," he told Hansith

  Sherif, the foreman monk, and then watched the water tric ing past is

  feet. The floor of the tunnel was still sloping downwards at a constant

  angle. He looked back along it towards the pool, and now in the

  floodlights the rectangular shape of the walls was very clear to see. It

  was obvious that the tunnel had been designed and surveyed by an

  engineer.

  He transferred his attention back to the floor of the tunnel and watched

  the run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original

  river level.

  "Eighty or ninety feet," he estimated. "No wonder the pressure in the

  mouth of the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually

  shaped fragment in the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and

  picked it up.

  Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it

  closely. As he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to

  grin.

  Sloshing back along the tunnel, he yelled, "Royan!" Triumphantly

  brandishing the fragment, he demanded, "What do you make of that, then?"

  She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched

  the object out of his grasp.

  I "Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?"

  "Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last

  four thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it,

  probably while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's

  back."

  Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. "You

  are right, Nicky," she exclaimed. "It's part of a wine vessel. Look at

  the flared neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there

  isn't, the black firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period.

  No older than 2000 BC."

  Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the

  mud and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.

  "Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to

  clear any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's

  neck."

  Halfway through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the

  mouth of the tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.

  "What is it, Hansith?" he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. "What

  are you shouting about?

  "We have broken through, effendi." Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his

  teeth gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed

  his way through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out

  of the pack, and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch

  through this window in the wall, but could make out very little

  except-empty black space.

  Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.

  "Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep

  them working! Clear away all this rubbish." But it was not as easily

  done as he had ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft

  was cleared completely of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken

  rock. Only then could Nicholas and Royan stand in the threshold of the

  cavern beyond the tunnel.

  "What has happened here? What has caused this?" Royan's voice was

  puzzled as Nicholas played his torch out into the void.

  "I think this is a cave-in area. There was probably a fault in the rock

  strata running through here and here." He picked out the cracks in the

  roof of the cavern.

  "You think the flow of the water through the shaft has scoured it out?"

  she asked.

  "I would say so, yes."Nicholas turned the beam of light downwards. "The

  floor has fallen out of the shaft also."

  The rock had subsided in front of them, leaving a deep hole. Ten feet

  below where they stood the hole was filled with water, forming a large

  circular pool with vertical rock sides. Overhead the roof had fallen in

  and was now a high dome of irregular rock, and the far side of the pool

  was shrouded in shadows a hundred feet or more in front of them.

  There was no apparent way around this obstacle without entering the

  water. Nicholas shouted to Hansith to bring one of the long bamboo poles

  that they had used for the scaffolding. The pole was thirty feet long

  and they had to manoeuvre its length down the tunnel. Nicholas sounded

  the pool with the bamboo, probing it down into the turbid water as

  deeply as he could reach.

  "No bottom." He shook his head. "Do you know what I think?" He retrieved

  the pole and passed it back to Hansith.

  "Tell me," Royan invited.

  "I think that this is the natural fault that leads the water away to the

  other side of the hills, and comes to the surface again at the butterfly

  fountain. The river has carved its own path., "Why hasn't it drained,

  then?" Royan looked down dubiously in the pool below them.

  "A -bend in the shaft, probably. Water still trapped in the top of the

  shaft like the bowl of a lavatory."

  He probed the waters of the pool with the beam of his torch, and Royan

  exclaimed with horror and disgust as on of the giant eels came racing to

  the surface, attracted by the light.

  "The filthy creatures!" She stepped back involuntarily.

  "The whole river must be infested with them."

  The long dark shape circled the pool swiftly and then disappeared back

  into the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.

  "If you are right, and a section of Taita's adit has collapsed, then the

  continuation of his tunnel should be on the far side of this." She

  pointed across the pool, and Nicholas lifted the beam of the torch and

  shone it in the direction she indicated.

  "Look, icky!" she cried. "There it is."

  The dark rectangular opening yawned at them from across the pool.

  "How do we get across there?" Royan asked, disconsolate.

  "The answer to that is, not very easily. Dammit to hell!" Nicholas swore

  heartily. "This is going to cost us another couple of days that we, can

  ill afford. We are going to have to build some sort of bridge across

  it."

  "What kind of bridge?"

  "Get Sapper down here. This is his department."

  Sapper stood at the brink of the sink-hole and glared across at the far

  bank.

  Pontoons," he grunted. "How many of those inflatable rafts have you got

  squirrelled away?"

  "Forget it, Sapper!" Nicholas shook his head. "You are not getting those

  dirty great paws of yours on my rafts."

  "Suit yourself' Sapper spread his hands in resignation.

  "It would be the easiest and quickest way of doing it.

  Anchor a raft in the middle and build a catwalk over the top of it. I

  need something that floats high-'

  "
Baobab." Nicholas snapped his fingers. "That should do the trick very

  nicely. When it's dried out, baobab wood is as light as balsa. Floats

  just as well as one of my inflatable rafts."

  "Plenty of baobabs growing along the hills," Sapper agreed. "Every

  second tree in this valley seems to be a ruddy baobab."

  hree hundred yards from the top of the cliff grew a massive specimen of

  Adansonia digitata.

  Its smooth bark resembled the skin of one of the great reptiles from the

  age of the dinosaurs. Its girth was tremendous - twenty men with

  outstretched arms could not have encircled it. The upper branches were

  bare and twisted, and it looked as though it had been dead for a hundred

  years. Only the heavy velvet-covered pods proved that it still lived;

  they hung thickly from the high branches, bursting open to spill the

  black seeds which were coated thickly with white cream of tartar.

  "The Zulus say that the Nkulu Kulu, the Great Spirit, planted the baobab

  upside down with its roots in the air to punish it," Nicholas told Royan

  as they looked up at the enormous spread of its branches.

  "Why would he want to do that?" she wanted to know.

  "What did the poor old baobab do that was so bad?"

  "It boasted that it was the.tallest and thickest tree of the forest, and

  so the Nkulu Kulu decided to teach it a little lesson in humility."

  One of the gigantic branches had snapped off under its own weight, and

  lay on the rocky ground beneath the trunk. The wood was white and

  fibrous, light as cork.

  Under Nicholas's direction the axemen cut it into manageable lengths.

  Once they had been carried down the adit shaft to the sink-hole, Sapper

  stapled the logs together and floated them across the pool to form a

  causeway. He anchored this to the rock face at either end, and then over

  it he laid a catwalk of bamboo poles. The bridge of baobab logs floated

  high, and although it bobbed and swayed, it could easily support the

  weight of a dozen men at a time.

  Nicholas was the first one across the sink-hole. He placed a roughly

  made ladder against the high vertical bank, and scrambled up into the

  mouth of the adit on the far side of the pool. Royan was close behind

  him.

  The two of them stood in the entrance to this continuation of the shaft,

  and as soon as Nicholas shone his torch into it they realized that the

  nature of the construction had changed. This section had not been so

  heavily scoured out and eroded by the rush of river water through it.

  The main flow must have drained away through the sink-hole. The

  dimensions were the same, three metres wide by two high, but the

  rectangular shape was more precise and although the walls and roof were

  rough, like IL

  those of a mine, the marks of the tools that had shaped it were now

  clearly visible. The footing of the tunnel was roughly paved with slabs

  of crudely dressed stone, This whole length of the tunnel had also been

  submerged, for it lay below the natural level of the river before it had

  been dammed. The paving under their feet was wet and covered with a

  slime that had not yet had time to dry out since it had been exposed by

  the receding waters. The roof and walls of the tunnel ran with moisture,

  and the air was dank and cold and smelled of mud and rot.

  They waited for Sapper to string the cables for the lights across the

  causeway. He set up the lamps and switched them on. At once they were

  aware that ahead of them the shaft had begun to rise at an angle of

  about twenty degrees.

  "You can see what the old devil Taita. was up to here.

  He has taken us down well below water level to flood the tunnel to a

  length and depth that nobody would be able to swim along. Now he is

  angling up again," Nicholas pointed out to Royan. They started forward,

  moving slowly up the ascending shaft, and Nicholas counted aloud each

  pace he took.

  "One hundred and eight, one hundred and nine, one hundred and ten-'

  suddenly they came to the recent low river level. It was clearly marked

  as a dry line on the walls of the tunnel. The paving under their feet

  was also dry and free of the slippery coating of slime. Fifty paces

  further on they passed the high flood level of the river, which was just

  as clearly etched on the rock floor and the walls. Beyond that the

  tunnel had never been immersed, and the walls were in the same condition

  as the Egyptian slave workmen had left them four thousand years earlier.

  The marks of the bronze chisels were as pristine as if they had been

  inflicted just days before.

  Only ten feet beyond the highest point that the river waters had ever

  reached, they came out upon a stone landing. Here the floor levelled

  out, and then the tunnel turned sharply back upon itself.

  "Let's spare a minute just to think about this as a feat of

  engineering." Nicholas took Royan's arm and pointed back down the

  tunnel. "Taita has placed this landing on which we are standing

  precisely above the high-water mark of the river. How did he work it out

  so exactly? He had no dumpy level, and only the crudest measuring

  equipment.

  is. It's a he And yet he calculated it as accurately as a piece of

  work."

  "Well, he tells us repeatedly in the scrolls that he is a genius. I

  suppose we will have to believe him now." She pulled against his grip.

  "Let's go on. I must see what lies around this corner," she urged.

  Side by side they turned through the one hundred and eighty degree

  corner and Nicholas held the hand lamp high, with the electrical cable

  trailing back down the shaft behind him. As he lit the way ahead, Royan

  exclaimed aloud and seized Nicholas's free hand. Both of them froze with

  astonishment.

  Taita had designed the turning of the ascending ramp for dramatic

  effect. The lower section of the shaft through which they had passed was

  "crudely constructed, the walls irregular and undressed, the roof lumpy

  and cracked. Taita had calculated his levels so finely that he had known

  that the lower levels of the shaft would be submerged and damaged by the

  water. He had wasted no effort on beautifying them.

  Now before them rose a wide stairway. The angle of its ascent was such

  that, from where they stood on the landing, the top of it was hidden

  from their view. Each step stretched the full width of the tunnel, and

  rose, a hand's breadth. The treads were cut from slabs of mottled

  gneiss, polished and fitted to each other so precisely that the joints

  between them were barely visible. The roof of the tunnel was three times

  as high as it had been in the lower reaches of the tunnel, perfectly

  domed and proportioned. The walls and the curved roof were of

  beautifully dressed blue granite blocks, keyed into each other with

  marvelous precision and symmetry. The whole was a masterpiece of the

  mason's art, majestic and portentous. There was both a promise and a

  menace in this vestibule to the unknown. Its simplicity and lack of

  ornamentation made it even more impressive.

  Royan tugged softly at Nicholas's hand and together they stepped on to
/>
  the first tread of the stairway. It was carpeted with a fine layer of

  dust, soft and white as talcum powder. The dust rose in soft eddies and

  wisps around their knees and then subsided as they passed on upwards. It

  muted the harsh glare of the electric lamp that Nicholas carried high in

  his right hand.

  Gradually, as they went on upwards, the top of the staircase came into

  view ahead of them. Royan dug her fingernails into the palm of

  Nicholas's hand as she saw what lay ahead. The staircase ended on

  another level landing, across which a rectangular doorway faced them.

  They stepped up on to the landing and stood before the doorway. Neither

  of them had words to express this supreme moment: they stood in silence

  for what seemed like an eternity, holding each other's hand with a

  fierce and possessive grip.

  Finally Nicholas tore his eyes off the gateway, and looked down at

  Royan. He saw his own feelings mirrored in her face, her eyes shone as

  though lit from within by an incandescent passion. There was no other

  person alive with whom he would wish to share this moment. He wanted it

  to last for ever.

  She turned her head and looked at him. They stared deeply and solemnly

  into each other's eyes. Both of them were aware that this was a high

  tide in their lives, one that could never be repeated. She tightened her

  grip on his hand, and looked back to the doorway facing them. It had

  been plastered over with white river clay, a surface that had mellowed

  to the shade of ivory. There was no crack or blemish in its smooth

  expanse, like the flawless skin of a beautiful virgin.

  Their eyes fastened avidly on the two embossed seals in the centre of

  the expanse of white clay. The upper one was in the shape of the royal

  cartouche, the rectangular knot surmounted by the scarab, the homed

  beetle that signified the great circle of eternity.

  Royan's lips formed the words as she read them from the hieroglyphics,

  but she uttered no sound. "'The Almighty. The Divine. Ruler of the Upper

  and Lower Kingdoms Egypt. Familiar of the god, Horus. Beloved of Osiris

  and of Of Isis. Mamose, may he five for ever!"'

  Below this magnificent royal seal was a smaller, simpler design in the

  shape of a hawk, with one broken wing drooping across its barred breast,

  and the legend: 7, Taita the slave, have obeyed your command, divine

  Pharaoh." Underneath the maimed hawk was a single column of