Secrets of Malta by Cecily Blench

Author:Cecily Blench
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre Publishing

Chapter 31

Syria, 1926

Vera tried not to think about the letter she had found in Schuster’s desk. There was nothing to be gained by dwelling on it. She would have to wait for the Professor to return and perhaps she could take her suspicions to him. Until then, she would focus on the throne room that was being excavated.

‘What do you want the men to do?’ asked Laiq, watching Vera walking slowly across the tiled floor at the bottom of the deep pit. She stopped to run her hand over the wall, on which life-sized figures were carved in low relief. ‘The Professor said there was nothing else in here.’

‘Well, there may not be,’ said Vera reluctantly. The carvings were beautiful, and a remarkable discovery, but they were not the treasure she had longed for.

‘Still an impressive find, though,’ said Laiq, gesturing to the steps and the platform where a throne had almost certainly once stood. ‘He’s pleased with it. Although I suppose he wishes he’d found it himself.’

Vera looked up. ‘Why do you say that?’

Laiq shrugged, looking uncomfortable. ‘Well, you’re . . .’

‘Inexperienced?’ said Vera sharply. ‘A woman?’

‘The world is how it is,’ said Laiq, holding his hands out. ‘He’s a man. My wife says that men have egos where women have brains.’

‘I think I’d like your wife,’ said Vera with a smile.

‘Anyway, it isn’t my place,’ said Laiq, and he bowed briefly. ‘I will pass on your instructions to the men once you decide what you want them to do.’

Mohammed climbed down the ladder and waved, squatting to look at the carvings they had uncovered. Laiq frowned at him but said nothing. Vera walked across the floor, tilting her head now and then. She had noticed, when the dirt came out, that the tiles were uneven. Leaning down, she prodded the raised corner of one tile, and felt it give slightly.

She knelt beside it and peered at the gap between the tiles. At one end, they were pushed close together, the stone touching, but the gap grew wider, and at the other end there was a half-inch space between them, filled with tightly compacted earth.

‘It looks as though they’ve been taken up and put back at some point,’ she said, squinting.

‘Same here,’ said Mo, pointing near the entrance. ‘This is uneven.’

‘Surely they wouldn’t have been laid like this,’ said Vera. ‘Not in a palace. They can’t have been taken up recently, though.’

‘It must have happened before they were buried under the earth,’ said Mo.

Vera looked around the room. She tried to imagine what this chamber had been like thousands of years ago when it was first built. She pictured the ornate carvings, the guards standing by the door, the golden statues, the mighty throne, and on it, a queen.

‘Laiq, tell the men to lift the tiles.’

He summoned a group of workmen and at once they began to lever up the tiles.

‘Carefully, carefully!’ said Laiq, frowning. Before long, one of the men was able to slip his fingers under the edge of a tile.

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