Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire Read online

  “Sometimes pilots get shot down and find themselves in the midst of war,” she snapped back. “And what I saw on the ground, in person, were invaders running roughshod over a whole bunch of different countries and cultures, stealing people and artefacts as if they were theirs to take. Once you see that, once you understand how that feels in person, you begin to recognise it in other less obvious areas.”

  “I respectfully disagree with your implications, Captain,” Will replied darkly. “This is not the same thing as what happened during the war. Ours is a noble pursuit of science, not domination!”

  “Very true,” Teddy interjected, drawing up for a moment, cold sweat and dripping water having plastered his hair to his forehead. He wiped it away as best he could with the back of his tweed jacket sleeve. “And I know Sam would agree with you, Dr Sandford. That isn’t what she was saying. Only that maybe we need to make sure we tread carefully in our noble pursuits, because sometimes even good intentions might not seem that way to those on the receiving end of our actions. Our gaze into history should always be humble and respectful and undertaken with a light touch. And, to return to the question Jessica here asked moments ago, while it is true some of those men on Napoleon’s expeditions went to Egypt for noble reasons, to study and learn more about the world – and our part in it – we must remember that in the end a great deal of history was stolen from those lands. Taken in great warships and sent back to France.”

  Sam stepped over what she hoped was only an animal skeleton lying broken across the crumbling pathway. “Except most never made it,” she added.

  “Because the British intercepted them?” Jess asked, and Sam nodded.

  “It turns out our own empire has been pretty good at taking things that didn’t belong to us. And, let’s face it, we haven’t always been the best of friends with France. So after Napoleon’s adventures in Egypt, it just so happens that the British navy was lurking in the Mediterranean in wait. They attacked his ships and what wasn’t sunk was captured. Of course, if you want a bright side, you can argue that they at least put everything on display in the British Museum, to be studied, enjoyed, and protected for generations to come.”

  “Everything except what they had originally sought in those encounters,” Teddy added.

  He recoiled as Sam stopped abruptly and directed her torch light at him.

  “You think the British attacks on the French were designed to retrieve the keys to the Hall of Records?”

  He shielded his face and waved away the light until she moved it, then rubbed his eyes as he answered. “Yes, I believe that’s exactly what they were doing. The British and French were at the throats of each other at that time, of that there is no doubt. Yet I always had the impression these particular attacks were different. I have witnessed parchments that attest to the British looking for something in particular during these raids. However…”

  “What?” she persisted.

  “… however, it appears they left the scene of their crime without everything they came for. Yes, they took enough of the treasure the French had themselves taken from Egypt – certainly enough for the British to have crowed about their success. But what is less well known is that during the attacks a single French ship managed to escape and return to France. On board was the first true adventurer. One of those who had travelled to Egypt to seek knowledge, not fame or fortune or power. A world-wise traveller named Henri. Samantha Henri.”

  Jess gave her sister a sidelong glance. “Isn’t that–”

  Sam nodded. “That’s who I was named after. Mum wanted a daring and fearless female role model for me to follow, apparently. “It’ll keep life interesting”, she said.”

  “And how’d that work out?”

  “Not going to lie… some days I would have preferred a quieter namesake.”

  Teddy put a hand on her shoulder. “In fact, you have shared far more of her path to infamy than your mother would have liked. For the more I read about her, the more I believe she was working for her rulers. Her government. Just like you have been. Very much a gun-for-hire on their various quests and conquests around the world. Including in Egypt. After which I believe she was the one who snuck the Osiris Stone from the British and carried it with her to Paris.”

  “Gee, not much to live up to there, eh, Sam?” Jess said, the bare bones of a smile touching the corners of her lips.

  “Not much at all,” Sam agreed dryly. “Although at least she had some degree of choice with her adventures. She wasn’t roped into it through her little sister and her boyfriend opening Pandora’s Box and bringing it home to kill the family.”

  “I’m sorry, exactly whose old flame is trying to steal this thing to take over the world?”

  “Old flame, Jess. Old. And I extinguished him for this exact bloody reason.”

  Will’s lips thinned impatiently, and he held up his hand to stop either of them arguing further. “But if that’s the case and Samantha Henri saved the Osiris Stone from the British… what is it doing down here in the dark and the damp of this wretched place? Why not hand it over to her government to protect? Put it in the Louvre, perhaps?”

  Sam carried on along the path. “Because she knew the British would come after it eventually. And likely she felt she could not trust her own government to do the right thing either. If there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that governments can’t be trusted with anything.”

  “True,” Teddy agreed, following close behind. “Yet, in the end, Paris was perhaps the best place for your namesake to have brought the Osiris Stone for its own protection. It is said there are nearly two hundred miles of tunnels in these catacombs. These crypts were the perfect place to hide an artefact of such power. She knew all too well the danger of it falling into dastardly British hands.” He added quickly, “No offence to you dear girls, of course.”

  Sam shrugged. “Dastardly is probably underselling it.”

  “So did anybody come after it in the end?” Will continued.

  “Oh yes, of course,” Teddy replied. “The British tried, as you can imagine. Other countries too. But, thankfully, not many of them knew where to start looking.”

  “So how do you happen to know what they couldn’t figure out?”

  Sam could hear the smile in her old friend’s voice as he said, “Because I pride myself on being a patient man, Dr Sandford. Those who seek power can only ever see what’s right in front of them. There is no patience in their makeup. They simply look for the gleam of the treasure they desire, without taking the time to follow the twists and turns of the trail that brought it there. My knowledge was earned through years of late nights in the place that keeps the answers to every problem – the library!”

  “The library?” Jess repeated dubiously.

  “Of course. Before the fieldwork and showing off your treasures at fancy museum exhibitions, you need to do your research. Being, as you might say, a square. I’ve always found that reading books allows you to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before, to better help you see your place in the world and where you need to go next.”

  Sam glanced over her shoulder to see Will’s face twitch angrily at Teddy’s inadvertent dig at his profession. But the museum curator didn’t take the bait. His eyes were on the prize now.

  “So it’s definitely down here? The Osiris Stone is hidden in these catacombs?”

  “Yes. I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt they are down here.”

  “Wait,” Sam said. “What do you mean they?”

  “Ah, well, that’s the one part I have not yet mentioned, my young friends. It seems, Samantha, that your namesake disappeared from history after her return to Paris, which led me to believe that she is also buried here along with the Stone. All signs point to her last act in this life being to stay and protect the Stone. As a sacrifice to save those she loved. Her country. Perhaps even the world?”

  A chill entirely unrelated to the cold catacombs ran through Sam’s body.

  It sh
ouldn’t have mattered. She knew it really shouldn’t make any difference what had happened all those years ago. Millions of people had lived and died and loved and lost in that time. Wars had been fought. New ideas and technologies had twisted fate and driven destinies. The world had changed considerably.

  And yet, as a child, this woman had been Sam’s hero. She had shown the girl just what was possible for a woman to achieve, even in a world filled with power-hungry men. She too had worked for – and, now, seemingly against – her government. Always trying to do the right thing.

  To consider, even for a moment, that she might have done this great and terrifying thing, burying herself alive in this dark, cold place all alone, knowing nobody would remember her great deed…

  Jesus Christ.

  She instantly pictured herself in the same situation, wondering if she would be capable of making the same choice.

  Maybe. Back during the war. Back when she was younger and more naive and didn’t feel as if she had anything to lose. There had certainly been times when she had let the bloodlust, the adventure, get the better of her as she rushed into the fight. When she had been willing to give up everything and nothing at all in the heat of the moment.

  Yet as she looked at her sister, and remembered her Dad’s sad nod of acknowledgement back at Teddy’s place, Sam knew she would struggle to let go of her family now. They needed her – and she had come to realise just how much she needed them too.

  “Are you okay, Samantha?” Teddy asked.

  She nodded, turning quickly so he didn’t have time to recognise the lie. She led them onwards, following the torchlight into the dark once more.

  They moved in silence now. Every so often coming to a turn or a choice of paths. And Teddy would stare at them as he mentally charted their course, mutter to himself in German, and then nod in whatever direction they needed to go.

  “Easy to get lost down here,” Will said after a while.

  “And many have, Dr Sandford. You might not have noticed, but we have passed quite a few of our predecessors along the way.”

  “We have!?”

  “Yes, although it is difficult to tell their bones from the others. After a while, all death looks the same.” Teddy put a gentle hand on Sam’s shoulder to slow her down and pointed ahead to where the path finally came to an abrupt end. “Let us hope this is not our time to join them, eh?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Trapped

  The path finished at a stone wall.

  Real stones this time, not bones. Thick and heavy and cutting straight across the tunnel. Deliberate and impassable.

  But while others might have figured it for a dead end, Sam could see why they would be mistaken. Because across it, barely visible in the flickering torchlight having been worn away by centuries of damp, were inscriptions of all kinds. And not just 200-year-old graffiti. There were older markings too, including faded Latin words and what looked like some stylised versions of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  She ran her light over the wall, at each marking, trying to get an idea for the story here. There was always a story to be found in archaeology – Teddy had taught her that much. Even if she hadn’t gone on to study the subject like her sister, she had been fascinated with the science, engaging her old friend in long discussions on those nights in England while they waited for air raids and sirens and death.

  “There is always a context to an artefact,” he had said. “A beginning, middle and end as to where it is found, why it is there, and what shape it is in. Follow the signs and you will be able to piece its story together.”

  So what’s this wall’s story?

  Her fingers traced the grooves, clearly discerning the sharper, more recent markings. Her instinct immediately removed these from her focus, letting her see everything that was left.

  If Teddy was right, Samantha Henri had passed this way to seal her fate. Yet Sam knew she wouldn’t have left a clue behind to alert anyone to the possibility the Osiris Stone might be down here too.

  No, only the older carved symbols and words mattered. Telling the visitors what to do next.

  Unfortunately they were badly worn away.

  Her gaze drifted to the walls on either side. It was only now she realised that they were no longer bones, but were formed of the same impenetrable grey stone that blocked their way ahead. And, in each, several skull-shaped niches had been cut in rows and columns to form a giant square. Some had been filled with human skulls. Others lay empty.

  Beside the holes on the right-hand wall, Jess was tracing her fingers across a pictogram which had been painted showing skulls in two different patterns.

  “Well this looks easy enough,” Will said as he joined her, trying to sound as though he knew what he was doing. “See there, above the pictograms, it’s very faint but you can just about make out the Egyptian symbol for ‘mirror’, can’t you?”

  Jess laughed. “So we just put the skulls into the wall in the patterns depicted in the nearest pattern? That’s easy!”

  “So I thought, but I have tried and nothing happens.” Teddy sounded disconsolate as he gestured downwards, where the light revealed several cracked and broken skulls littering the floor.

  “And you lot call yourself archaeologists,” Sam said. She lifted her torchlight back up to the pictogram. “It’s a mirror, yes?”

  “So?”

  “Mirrors reflect. It’s not referring to copying the pattern next to it, but reflecting the pattern on the opposite wall.”

  Teddy looked between the pictogram and Sam, then spun to the wall opposite where another set of skull holes could be found. “I am a stupid, stupid old man. How could it have been so simple and yet I still missed it?”

  But even as his face lit up in triumph, and Jess and Will squeezed each other’s hands in premature celebration, Sam couldn’t help the frown that crossed her face. It seemed too easy. Too simple an explanation. If this was a test of some kind, it wasn’t nearly hard enough to prevent the wrong type of people from getting past, surely?

  Jess wasn’t prepared to stand around any longer. She was already fixated on solving the problem, directing Will to rearrange the patterns that Teddy had previously tried on the opposite wall.

  Sam meanwhile kept her eyes moving, warily scoping their surroundings, trying to suppress the horrible feeling that she was missing something.

  Until she saw her sister pick up the final skull.

  “Wait!” Sam yelled.

  Too late. Jess slotted it into place.

  For a moment, nothing happened. There was only silence.

  But only for a moment.

  Then two stone panels slid from the walls behind them and smashed together in the middle to seal the group into the chamber, before two holes opened in the walls above the pictograms – and thousands of spiders started pouring out.

  Will screamed as they tumbled over him, crawling through his hair and down his neck. Jess quickly pulled him out of the hideous waterfall and helped him shake them out again.

  “I told you to wait!” Sam chastised loudly, over the sickening pitter-patter as the creatures now poured directly onto the floor and started clambering over each other. She started looking for the reset mechanism. There was always a reset mechanism.

  “But it’s the right pattern!” Jess cried, clearly panicking, though not as much as Will, who was now doing his best to climb up her to avoid the spiders trying to crawl back up his legs. Sam pulled a face. How had he survived South America?

  They quickly huddled in the centre of the room, stamping and kicking out as the army of spiders quickly filled the floor.

  But as quickly as they appeared, the deluge stopped. And rather than attack the group in their midst, the spiders began escaping through each and every tiny crack in the chamber walls and floor as fast as they could.

  Sam frowned and flicked off one particularly large arachnid she saw still clinging to Teddy’s back. It scuttled off into a corner and disappeared.

  Will r
emoved himself from Jess and tried to straighten his jacket without it seeming like he had been anything but calm in the last few seconds. His face still a beacon of embarrassment.

  “Is that it? H-honestly, I was expecting a little more danger on this trip,” he stammered.

  “How did they even rig that to pour spiders out hundreds of years later anyway?” Jess asked, peering into one of the holes. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Stretching up, Sam felt around inside the other hole. Then brightened as her fingers found what they were looking for.

  “There’s a lever in here. Which means I don’t think the spiders were part of the plan. They just happened to be hiding back there. And if you look in the other hole, I reckon there’ll be another one. This is the next step in the puzzle. We just need to solve it to get out.”

  Jess shook her head. “You were right before. Maybe we need to wait and rethink–”

  But Teddy had already stepped up, reached into his hole and grasped the other lever. At a nod from Sam they pulled at the same time.

  The room immediately shook as another stone wall dropped down over the others that had blocked their retreat a minute ago. If there had been any hope of prising their way out of this place, it was now gone. The chamber was locked down. Water tight.

  Which was unfortunate, because with a tremendous roar water suddenly began gushing out of the lever holes.

  “And I told you to wait!” Jess yelled at Sam through the spray. “At least I only unleashed a few damn spiders. Why do you always have to go one better?”

  Sam looked around wildly for a clue to get them out of this mess. There had to be one. This was a test, wasn’t it? What was the point in a test if it didn’t have any questions.

  It was then she spotted the markings on the stone door that had dropped from the ceiling.