Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [55]
Her balance went awry in the sudden blackness. She threw out a hand to find the cold stone wall. Her ears rang, filling the empty chamber with random noise. Had the sound come from before or behind?
After a full minute she said, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ and switched the torch back on. ‘Pull up your socks, Summerfield,’ she muttered, comforted by the sound of her own voice. ‘This isn’t The Mummy.’
The passageway ended in a wide doorway. There were still ancient fragments of wood lying on the floor, all that was left of the doors that must have once filled the space. They had probably been used as firewood centuries ago. The stone walls had been cut before Sappho taught at Lesbos and before Hypatia taught at Alexandria, before the Exxilons visited Peru and the Celtic chieftains rode across Europe, before the Doctor had challenged Fenric to a friendly game of Ya Shah.
On this scale a human life was nothing more than a beat of a butterfly’s wings. Benny felt the weight of time hanging heavily on her. Or was it just the musty air?
She ran the beam of her torch over the walls of the tomb. The wall paintings were not only intact, they were in remarkably good condition. She sat down, gripping the torch under one arm, and got out her diary.
She sketched rapidly, awkwardly, peering into the pool of light on the wall.
The pictures told her everything she needed to know, which was handy, because Boney wasn’t going to turn up the Rosetta stone until next year.
The tomb had belonged to an official and his wife. The period was dead right: no pictures of the happy couple meeting with the gods, just with Pharaoh. The Aten symbol appeared over and over in the hieroglyphs.
104
One picture showed the dedication of one of Akhenaten’s stelae, a large carving in the cliffs near Akhetaten. And there was something more in the illustration of the cliff. There.
Surely the Amarna Graffito hadn’t been present at the dedication of the stela – but the artist, in true Amarna period style, had been trying to represent the area realistically. The lines representing the cliffs formed a rough map.
Using that, it would be easy to track down the Graffito.
And anything else Ace might have left behind her.
Benny stood up. She had no way of reaching back through time to her stranded friend. All she could do was try to find out how Ace had fared. Who knew, there might even be a tomb.
There was a footfall outside the chamber. Benny stood up. ‘I told you to wait outs –’
There was a flash and a tremendous shove against her left shoulder. Suddenly Bernice found herself sitting down with her back to the wall.
She swung the torch around. There were two men in the doorway, squinting in the unexpected brilliance of the beam.
The man with the gun crouched down. His friend was holding a flickering torch. Tall and short, both in black. ‘You were at the tavern,’ she said. Her voice had gone all high-pitched and wobbly. She dropped the torch, put her hand to her shoulder. It was soaking wet. Oh, cruk!
‘Give me the book,’ he said.
Benny didn’t move. The man reached up and plucked the battered notebook out of her lap. There was a large ring on his finger, with a glittering, oval green stone.
‘Why?’ breathed Bernice. ‘Why do you care about finding it?’
The man hesitated, spoke in halting French. ‘We will find Sutekh by following . . . his footsteps? His footprints. The trail he has left for us. This is how it was written.’
‘Oh, the Osiran site at Sheta-Khu’u,’ murmured Bernice. ‘Are you lot in for a surprise.’
The tall man ignored her. ‘Our ancestors fought to sustain the religion of Sutekh. The sacred writings mention this picture.’ He pointed at the wall.
The other man was holding a shovel. Now he smashed it into the wall and started levering off chunks of plaster. Benny shouted, ‘No!’ but in minutes the illustration was gouged out of the wall, falling in a rain of dust and shreds onto the floor.
‘We do not know what we will find there,’ the first man said. ‘Perhaps the hidden