Lady of Heaven (40 page)

“What does that
mean?”

“That means my
theory that this might be a mine shaft just got shot to hell.  These stairs
look as if they were built rather than carved out of the hillside.”

Morgan’s
excitement blossomed. “Can you see the doorway down below?”

He shook his
head. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s still too dark down there. I need to widen this
hole a little more.”

With that, he
began swinging the pick again. With his power, he was able to knock out several
more inches of dirt fairly quickly. As he moved to the westerly section of the
hole, the pick hit what felt like a cement. It wouldn’t move any further as he
tried to chip it away. But it was too hard so he began to scrape with the pick,
trying to move through whatever it was. The more he scraped, however, the more
he appeared to reveal what looked like a flat, hard surface. Curious, he
dropped to a knee to take a look.

Morgan dropped
the rope and scooted to the edge of the pit. “What is it?” she demanded. “What
did you find?”

Fox didn’t know
how to answer her.  He was brushing away at the flat surface with his gloved
hands.   The more he brushed, the more surface was cleared until finally, he
began to see what it was.  He let out a snort of surprise.

“I’ll be bloody
damned,” he shook his head, both stunned and deeply pleased. “It’s like a
landing or a floor of some kind.  I can see the contact points were the stones
come together.  The stairs descend off this landing.”

Morgan was at
the edge of the pit, beginning to squirm with excitement. “Can I come down,
please? Please, please, please?”

She sounded like
a little kid.  He held out a hand to her and she took it, carefully making her
way down the side of the pit with his powerful assistance.  She stood next to
him, holding on to him as if he would save her from sliding down into the
gaping stairs.  It was a little scary, but incredibly fascinating.  She looked
all around her feet.

“Do you know
what this looks like to me?” she gripped his arm with two hands. “I’m obviously
no expert, but it looks to me like the way the stones fit together on the
pyramids.  You know how precise they are on the interior? Like, you can’t even
get a piece of paper in between them?  That’s what it looks like to me.”

Fox was staring
at whatever it was they were standing on;  he could see at least six stones,
all fit together with striking precision, and then the stairs adjoined them,
disappearing down into darkness. 

Of all the
things he thought he might be thinking or feeling at this moment, unadulterated
shock wasn’t one of them. He thought he would have been quite clinical and
professional about everything.  But he just wasn’t.  All he felt was
astonishment.  He lifted his head and began to survey their surroundings,
watching the desert change color as the sun rose.

“The Romans
built their settlement around this,” he muttered, his gaze moving over to the
great house off to the west. “Over there are the bath house and the commander’s
quarters, but the encampment was built around this.  It was built around a…
temple.”

Morgan was
gazing up at him, her brown eyes wide with curiosity.  “Remember what I said
about that?” she put in. “I noticed they didn’t build on the hill but all
around it. I thought it looked strange.”

Fox could hardly
believe it.  He looked down at his wife, a myriad of emotions on his face. “I
can’t even explain what I’m feeling right now because I don’t know,” he said
softly. “All I know is that this is astonishing, all of it.”

She smiled at
him. “Can we go down the stairs and see what’s at the bottom?”

He slapped a
hand against his leg in a gesture of consent. “Why not?” he replied. “Let’s do
this.”

Morgan was
grinning so broadly that it nearly split her face in half.  Fox winked at her
as he turned to Allahaba and Jabeel. “Jabeel, clear away what you can from this
surface.  I want to see how far it extends and what, exactly, it’s a part of. 
Al, you’re going to monitor Morgan and me as we descend the stairs.”

Jabeel took
Fox’s pick eagerly while Allahaba collected the end of the rope.  But Fox waved
him off, instead removing the rope from around his waist. He didn’t see any
need for it, at least not at the moment.

“I go first, all
right?” he looked Morgan pointedly in the eye.

She nodded
innocently. “Of course.”

“No running
ahead.”

“I won’t; I
promise.”

He lifted an
eyebrow like he wouldn’t be surprised if she lied to him just to keep him
happy, to which she simply smiled. The dimples always cooled him off, caved him
in, and bent him to her will. For Fox Henredon, those dimples could move
mountains. Fox took the flashlight from Allahaba and positioned her behind him.

“Stay behind me,
please,” he told her. “Hold onto me so you don’t slip and fall down the stairs.
They’re dusty and slippery.”

Morgan did as
she was told and began to follow him down the steps. With Allahaba watching
vigilantly at the top of the stairs, Fox and Morgan proceeded carefully down
the steps.  Fox would take a step and pause, taken another one and pause again.
Morgan stayed right behind him, holding his torso as if they were on a motorcycle
ride together.  Any move he made, she made. 

Fox inspected
the walls and stairs as they descended; they were made of limestone, cut and
fitted together with astonishing precision. Rather than a terracotta or sand
color, they were very pale, nearly white.  Fox ran his hands along the stones,
wondering where they had been quarried and suspecting that little search alone
would take several years.  The fact that they were quarried and carted out into
the middle of nowhere by people who didn’t even use wheels had him baffled. 
Greater minds than his were going to have to figure it out.

About half way
down the stairs he switched on the flashlight and shined it down the steps so
they could see where they were going. Dust floated up in the yellow beam as
they reached the bottom steps and Morgan finally came out from behind him,
wanting to see what was on the other side of the doorway.  Until Fox flashed
the light through the archway, it was pitch black.   But when the light finally
shone through the ancient doorway, through the dust and flotsam floating in the
air, it was as if they had stepped into another time.

Fox stood in the
doorway, the flashlight shining a pillar was approximately ten feet in front of
them.  He just stood there, staring, the Maglite beam falling upon scenes that
hadn’t seen the light of day in thousands of years.  Morgan gasped as her
astonished gaze beheld limestone column that had been carved with lotus blooms
and fish, delicately winding their way up the stone as if to swim in an
imaginary river. Carvings of people, like nothing she had ever seen before,
adored the columns in neat rows and up towards the ceiling, a line of fierce
limestone cobras bordered the top of each pillar. There was no color, only
carvings, and Morgan was astounded.

“Oh, my God,”
she breathed. “Look at all of the art work. It’s beautiful!”

Fox was
speechless; his wide-eyed gaze drank in the most magnificent carvings he had
ever seen, like a man walking into an art gallery of undiscovered
masterpieces.  He forced himself to move forward, his flashlight falling on a limestone
column of such magnificence that he could hardly believe it was real. 

There were rows
and rows of carvings in front of him; he could see Nut, the goddess of the sky,
as she held up the night for her loving subjects. There was a row below it with
a throne scene where Isis and Osiris sat atop their thrones, being adored by
their subjects. He just stood there and stared at it, unaware that his wife was
now wandering.

Morgan wasn’t
wandering to disobey him; she was wandering because she was so fascinated.  The
stairs descended into the far end of a small hypostyle hall, eight large
limestone columns rising from floor to ceiling. 

All of the
columns, from what Morgan could see, were delicately carved with lotus flowers
and fish.  The hall wasn’t very big, exactly the size of the hill that encased
it, but it was tall and rectangular shaped.  When she looked at her feet, the
floor itself was mosaic, like something one would find in an ancient Roman
villa. It was covered with dust and dirt, but as far as she could see, the
entire floor was mosaic pattern made from little chunks of colored materials. 
She could make out more fish and flowers.

Just as she
opened her mouth to call her husband, something caught her attention and she
turned to left, seeing something ghostly and box-shaped looming in the
darkness.  Wildly curious, she made her way over to whatever it was, barely
illuminated by the sunlight that was filtering down through the stairwell.

Morgan
approached, realizing it was a rectangular box on some kind of raised pedestal.
She could see lotus petals carved around the base. The floor around her was
dusty and uneven and the mosaics seemed to have disappeared as she circled the
box, reaching out to touch it.  It was coated with dust but the moment she
stroked her fingers across it, some kind of white-veined material became
evident. 

She brushed away
at the surface, blowing off the dust, realizing that the structure was polished
white stone with black veins running through it.  She could see little flecks
of something in the white, realizing when the light caught it that they were
gold glints.  Thrilled, she was moving around the side of the pedestal, moving
in the dark as she headed for her husband, when the floor suddenly gave out.

Morgan screamed
and Fox bolted.  As the floor opened up and began to swallow her, Fox raced
across the floor and slid to his knees, like a baseball player sliding into
second base, grabbing for his wife before she could fall away completely.  He
grabbed her by her arms, the sheer force of his strength keeping her from going
any further. She was up to her armpits, the rest of her body hanging down into
a void.

Fox rose to his
knees and easily pulled her out of the hole.  Morgan threw her arms around his
neck, shaken but unharmed.  She held him tightly as if afraid the hole was
going to suck her back in again.

“What in the
hell happened?” Fox demanded.

Morgan shook her
head, turning to look at the black hole that had nearly swallowed her up. “I
don’t know,” she breathed, struggling to catch her breath. “I was walking and
suddenly the floor collapsed.”

Fox began to
back away from the hole with her in his arms, fearful that more of the floor
might collapse under his weight.  But in doing so, the flashlight beam fell on
the big rectangular block in front of him and his fascination, for the moment,
outweighed his sense of caution.

“Bloody hell,”
he breathed. “What
is
this?”

Morgan was still
clinging to him as he stood up.  “It’s made out of something with gold in it,”
she said. “You can see the gold flecks in the material. It’s really beautiful.”

Fox gave the
hole a wide berth as he went to inspect the massive, dusty block.  He ran his
gloved hands over it, brushing off the centuries of dust, peering closely at
it.  After several long moments of scrutiny, he finally shook his head.

“It looks like a
sarcophagus,” he said.

“Is that what it
really is?”

He shrugged.
“I’d wager it is, although I’ve never seen one made out of quartz like this.”

Morgan looked at
the giant, heavy coffin. “Is that what this is made of?”

He nodded,
running his fingers over it again. “The gold around here is quarried in veins
of quartz,” he told her. “White quartz, just like this. The material they built
this from was local.”

“Is it
Egyptian?”

“It looks like
it.”

 Morgan didn’t
say anything further as Fox continued to study the coffin.  She was suddenly
more interested in the hole that had opened up beneath her. She took the
flashlight from Fox and, preoccupied, he didn’t ask what she wanted with it.
Lying on her stomach near the hole that had nearly consumed her, she scooted
forward, bit by bit, making sure the floor didn’t collapse further until she
could peer inside.

The yellow light
beam fell on a chamber in some disarray. The floor was about eight feet below
and she could see debris all over the floor.  The flashlight beam moved across
the floor, noting remnants of what looked like leaves. But that didn’t make any
sense. Shaking her head, baffled, she followed the flashlight beam as it
trailed across the floor as far as she could go, hit what looked like part of
the wall, before finally coming to rest on something she couldn’t quite make
out. It looked like a dark box of sorts but she could only see the corner of
it. By this time, Fox had joined her.

He lay on his
belly beside her. “What are you looking at?”

She handed him
the flashlight. “It looks like there was a mad party down there,” she told him.
“There’s debris everywhere.”

Fox was silent
as he shined his flashlight into the hole. Although Morgan followed what he was
looking at, she couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. But the chamber below
was cluttered, as if homeless people had been congregating down there. In
silence, she lay beside Fox, watching him inspect the ancient trash below. It
was strange to know that they were the first people in several centuries to
survey the scene. After several long minutes of inspection, Fox finally sighed.