Chapter 34
When Darcy and Richard returned to their lodgings, the entire party was gathered in the common room. Elizabeth stood with her arms crossed, her frustration restrained, while Mrs. Bell sat rigid with disapproval. Yusuf stood near the window, his usual calm replaced by visible tension.
“What happened?” Richard asked immediately.
Bennet looked up from his chair with the vague unconcern that Darcy recognized from his time in Hertfordshire.
“My father had a visitor this morning,” Elizabeth said, her voice clipped. “Dr. Hassan called.”
Darcy’s stomach dropped. “What did you discuss with him?”
Bennet seemed oblivious to the alarm spreading to the newcomers. “The good doctor was extremely interested in our quest, and I saw no reason to be secretive. After all, the goal is to locate the lost library, not to hoard the glory for ourselves. Thus, I shared all four clues with him.”
“You did what?” Darcy’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“Caution, my dear young man, can easily become paranoia. Dr. Hassan was most gracious and offered his complete assistance. He even suggested several locations where―”
“Dr. Hassan went straight from here to George Wickham and the two brutes we saw with him when we arrived,” Richard stated bluntly. “That was minutes after we received reliable confirmation that your ‘scholar’ is a known thief.”
Bennet paled. “That cannot be. He has credentials…”
Elizabeth’s fists rested on her hips. “If Dr. Hassan and Mr. Wickham find the scrolls first, every manuscript will disappear into private vaults. We will never see them.”
“Given Wickham’s character, he would destroy anything he could not sell simply to ensure we gain nothing from this expedition.” Richard snarled.
Darcy’s heart pounded so loudly he feared the others could hear. “And if those men accompanying Wickham are French? Imagine the loss.”
Yusuf stepped forward. “I have studied the fourth clue since you departed this morning. I believe this must refer to the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, ancient burial chambers built during Roman times but incorporating Egyptian and Greek elements. They have three levels connected by a spiral staircase. The lower level is partially flooded. There are numerous side chambers where early Christian monks could have hidden manuscripts.”
“Dr. Hassan will be able to deduce that the clue leads there,” Bennet said apologetically. “It is where Alexandria’s greatest secrets would have been hidden when the city fell to successive conquerors.”
“How far?” Darcy asked Yusuf.
“Less than an hour’s walk.” The young man hesitated. “The site is largely abandoned. Few people visit since the populace believes it is cursed. As children, we ignored the adults and played there many times.”
“Then we go now.” Richard was already moving toward his room.
Gathering what they deemed necessary, Darcy took Elizabeth’s hand in his.
The ladies declared that they must be permitted to accompany them, and the two men reluctantly agreed, realizing they should be safer with their armed companions than they would be if they stayed at the inn unprotected.
Bennet also refused to be left behind, as his knowledge of ancient languages would certainly be essential to their success.
Yusuf insisted that they stop by his home before entering the catacombs. When he rejoined them, he carried a considerable length of twine.
Within minutes, they were in the western portion of the city. Upon their arrival at Kom El Shoqafa, their guide spoke with an aged man who stood outside the entrance.
“Sir,” Yusuf said to Darcy. “Shaykh Rajul, the old man, informs me that no one has entered the catacombs in the last hour. However, he stepped away for a while and recently returned. The others may not have gotten here yet, but they may be ahead of us. There is only one way to know, and that is to enter.”
The catacombs were a vast underground necropolis dating to the second century.
Descending the torch-lit passages, the load of years pressing down upon them.
Layer upon layer of human remains, artistic treasures, and lost history extended deep into the earth beneath their feet.
The artist led them confidently, his familiarity with the underground tunnels immediately apparent.
His torch cast dancing shadows on walls decorated with a mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman motifs.
The catacombs expanded beyond their expectations with passages stretching before them like arteries of stone.
The group followed Yusuf deeper into the labyrinthine complex. For all Darcy knew, Wickham and his confederates had already reached the chamber they sought.
The first chamber was magnificent, decorated with carvings that seemed promising.
Bennet painstakingly translated every inscription, only to realize that they were merely prayers for safe passage to the afterlife.
The second chamber’s walls had been carved with what appeared to be detailed texts.
Closer examination revealed they were accounting records for ancient grain shipments.
By the time they stood at yet another intersection where four passages converged, the weight of their failures pressed down upon them like the tons of stone above their heads.
As he had done at every crossroads, Yusuf broke off a length of string, tied a knot at the end facing where they had just traveled, and then arranged it against the column on the left side of each area they searched.
“This is our seventh burial chamber,” Elizabeth said wearily, brushing dust and cobwebs from her travel gown. “Each one held promise, yet none have yielded anything of value to us.”
Mrs. Bell’s usual cheerful demeanor had also fled. “The inscriptions are becoming repetitive―generic prayers and burial formulae. Nothing that suggests hidden knowledge.”
Hope grew as they approached this new chamber, but it was tempered now by the reality of their six previous disappointments. Darcy suggested, “Let us stop a moment and reconsider the final clue that led us here.”
“Beneath the waves of time, the daughter-city of Alexander holds what fire could not claim,” Elizabeth recited, her voice echoing strangely in the stone chamber. “Where the last Ptolemy wept, knowledge waits for worthy seekers.”
“We have been over this a dozen times,” Richard said with impatience. “Every interpretation tells us this should be the right place, yet we find nothing.”
Bennet held his torch higher, studying the carved inscriptions decorating the walls around them. “Have we been thinking too literally about physical locations?” he asked. “What if ‘beneath the waves of time’ refers to knowledge that has been buried beneath layers of history?”
“The catacombs underneath us,” Richard suggested, his excitement rekindling despite his vexation.
“And where the last Ptolemy wept must reference Cleopatra VII and her defeat by the Romans. The end of an entire dynasty, the fall of ancient Egyptian independence.”
Yusuf looked up from the knot he was tying in the twine. “There is a chamber deeper in the complex known as the Hall of Caracalla. It is extremely difficult to reach. I hesitated because of the danger. The passages grow more unstable the deeper we go.”
“Why is it called the Hall of Caracalla?” Elizabeth asked, sounding curious instead of exasperated for the first time in hours.
“It is named for the Roman emperor, but local legends say that the descendants of Cleopatra’s daughter might have married into the royal family of Syria, who were the ancestors of Caracalla’s mother.”
“Which would make her a distant relative,” Darcy noted.
“Yes. Whether this is true or not, only the dead buried here would know.” Yusuf pulled the last loop of the string tight. “I have never ventured there myself. I have been warned since infancy that it is not safe.”
Darcy saw his own desperate hope reflected in his cousin. After hours of disappointment, any new possibility seemed worth the risk. “Can you lead us there after we return the ladies to their lodging?”
“Absolutely not!” Elizabeth immediately responded. Mrs. Bell was as adamant. Neither lady could be convinced to leave despite Yusuf’s warning.
The young man hesitated and then nodded slowly. “I will take you, but we must be very careful. You must understand…if this chamber proves as empty as the others, there may be nowhere else to search.”
His sobering reminder hung in the air. Elizabeth met Darcy’s gaze in the torchlight, and her gaze held the same mixture of hope and despair that coursed through his own veins.
They had come too far to turn back now, but the possibility of ultimate failure loomed larger with each passing minute.
In all likelihood, this was their last chance to justify months of travel, the risks they had taken, and the faith they had placed in Professor Drye’s research.
“Lead on, Yusuf,” Bennet said with determination. “Whatever lies ahead, we shall face it together.”
They followed the artist through increasingly narrow corridors, past burial niches and more tunnels leading off into the darkness. Each time they stopped, they listened for human voices. The only noise was the constant drip of water into the lowest levels.
After crawling on their hands and knees through several thick dust-covered passageways, they reached the Hall of Caracalla.
The chamber was impressive. But it was empty, completely void of anything other than stone or dust. Elaborate Roman frescoes adorned the walls, and the room was filled with marble sarcophagi that spoke of wealth and status.
It was unmistakably a burial chamber for Roman nobility, not the hidden repository of Alexandria’s ancient manuscripts.
“This cannot be right,” Bennet said, his torch casting dancing shadows across the painted walls. “Where are the scrolls? The library collections?”
Elizabeth turned slowly in place as she studied every inch of the chamber. “How can this be wrong?”
Richard had stationed himself at the entrance to the chamber, his torch in one hand and his knife in the other. He scanned the area for anything unusual. “Wait! The architecture is wrong. These walls are too thick, even for a room of this size.”
Yusuf’s head tilted as if listening. “The acoustics are odd. When I speak near this wall, my voice sounds different.”
Darcy approached the wall Yusuf indicated, running his fingers along the carved stonework.
The surface at first appeared solid, but as he examined it more closely, he noticed a large marble plaque bearing a Latin inscription honoring Emperor Caracalla.
It was little different from the multitudes of other inscriptions they had already found, so he began to turn away.
Then the light from Richard’s torch bounced off some of the letters, causing Darcy to spin back. “Look at this inscription.” His voice quickened with renewed anticipation. “The Latin is…peculiar.”
Elizabeth’s father hurried over. He adjusted his spectacles as he studied the inscription.
“To Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Caracalla, glorious emperor, the guardian of wisdom watches eternally beneath Alexandria’s earth.
” His frown deepened, now in concentration, not despair.
“But there are irregularities in the grammar and spelling.”
“Exactly as we have found before,” Elizabeth said excitedly. “In Rome, Athens, and Constantinople, the errors in the Latin revealed the true message.”
Bennet traced his finger along the carved letters, identifying the anomalies.
“Here―sapientiae should be sapientiam if it is meant to be accusative. And custos should agree in case. But if we read only the irregular letters…” Working together with elation, they identified each grammatical error and spelling mistake, writing down the aberrant letters in Elizabeth’s journal.
“The errors spell out a sequence,” Bennet observed. “But what does it mean?”
Darcy studied the wall. He touched the carved border that surrounded the inscription.
Hidden within what appeared to be standard Roman scrollwork were tiny astronomical signs, mathematical figures, and classical elements, each no larger than a coin.
His heart pounded. “These decorative elements…they are not merely ornamental. Look at these small symbols carved into the molding.”
“Would the irregular letters correspond to positions?” Bennet proposed. “S is for Sol, the sun symbol. A is for Alpha, the mathematical symbol. Might each letter tell us which symbol to press?”
Darcy’s previous disappointment was completely forgotten in the elegance of the solution.
“It is brilliant! Anyone could read the inscription and see that it honored Caracalla. Still, only someone who recognized the pattern from the previous clues gathered across the Mediterranean would notice the errors and understand their significance.”
Working methodically, he pressed the tiny decorative pieces in the sequence revealed by the grammatical mistakes. Each depression produced a soft click. They heard ancient mechanisms engaging deep within the wall. With each successful press, their confidence increased.
“It is working,” Richard said. He stepped away from his post, his earlier frustration replaced by amazement.
When the final symbol was pressed, the large marble plaque began to move.
It was not the grinding collapse they might have expected from ancient masonry but the smooth, deliberate motion of a masterfully engineered locking system.
The plaque swung inward on hidden hinges, revealing a passage that led deeper into the bedrock beneath Alexandria.