“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.
“Andwhere the last Ptolemy weptmust 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. “Thereisa 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?” Elizabethasked, 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 followedthe 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?sapientiaeshould besapientiamif it is meant to be accusative. Andcustosshould 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?”
