The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

Author:Juno Dawson [Dawson, Juno]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-One

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

Leonie – Ankara, Turkey

Zehra held an LED lamp aloft as she led them down endless narrow tunnels. Leonie ran her fingertips along the stone wall, and they were wet to the touch. They must be deep underground now, and Leonie sensed more than a little claustrophobia stirring in Senait. This far down, the air smelled old, furtive somehow. It was a powerful space; Leonie heard millennia in the rocks.

Zehra waited outside a final antechamber. ‘Are you ready?’

Leonie guessed, wherever they were going, they’d arrived. ‘Am I ever.’

Zehra stooped to duck through the entryway. Leonie cast a quick look at Senait and followed. On the other side of the opening, Leonie found she could stand up straight and the air was cooler still. They were in some sort of crypt, the ceiling held up by crumbling pillars.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Leonie saw Zehra proudly standing next to a formidable statue.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ Zehra exclaimed, angling her lamp up towards the effigy’s face.

No, Leonie thought, but she didn’t want to piss on Zehra’s chips, as she was clearly besotted. The statue depicted a woman, her stone face neutral in that way Leonie had always found slightly eerie. She rode an elephant, although, in her arms, she held what was clearly a serpent. Very Britney. The snake coiled around her naked form. ‘What makes you think it’s her?’ Leonie said, instead of answering. ‘The Queen of Sheba?’

‘The dates about add up. This is all conjecture, of course, but look at this.’ Zehra held the lamp over writing carved into the wall of the tomb.

‘What language is that?’ Senait asked.

‘We think they’re early Anatolian hieroglyphs. They’re reminiscent of inscriptions found on the Marash Lion, which we estimate came about seven hundred years later. You have to understand that writing as a concept was in its infancy, and where there is writing it was usually to denote a name. Here – we think this symbol means “queen”.’

Leonie considered the statue’s knowing expression. ‘How do you know she’s that queen?’

‘Truthfully, we don’t,’ Zehra admitted, a little deflated. ‘But there’s scant agreement on who she was, or where she was from, in the first place. Some people think Sheba is what we now call Yemen, while others believe she was the queen of Egypt or Ethiopia.’

Senait nodded. ‘In my dad’s stories, the queen was called Makeda.’

Zehra’s face lit up, even in the dark. ‘Please, go on.’

Senait shrugged, a little coy. ‘I don’t know much. Just a story he used to tell me at bedtime.’

‘What did he say?’ said Zehra.

‘That once there was this beautiful queen who learned of a wise and powerful king in the East.’

‘Solomon?’ Leonie asked.

Senait nodded. ‘Makeda wanted to see this kingdom for herself, so went to him and took him a gift: a stone pillar thing with the secrets of the universe carved on every side.’

Secrets of the universe, or the secrets of Gaia? ‘She was a witch?’

Zehra bristled slightly at the term. ‘Historical figures are often imbued with otherworldly powers in legend; I wouldn’t take it too literally.

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