Doll and Joe, however, gave it only a cursory glance. There were no hieroglyphs on the bust, and so it was not a curiosity to hold their attention for long. They carried on down the gallery, lingering only to cast their eyes over the obsidian monolith that was Nectanebo’s sarcophagus. It too was covered in hieroglyphs, and so merited passing attention. But EA24 was their goal.
The battered block of stone was almost black in colour. However, Malinferno had been told by his friend Thomas Elder, who worked at the BM, that it was so because someone had covered it with boot polish in order to make the whitened inscriptions stand out better. At the bottom of the stone, with only the right corner lost, was a text in Greek. Above it was a band of writing in an unknown script. Then above that stood the fragmentary section of Egyptian hieroglyphs. And in the midst of the puzzling symbols, there was the cartouche Malinferno and Doll had been trying to decipher. They were alone before the mysterious object, and stood in silence, examining its surface. Malinferno felt as if he were communing directly with the ancient scholar who had carved the stone. The man’s lips were making the shape of words, but no sound was issuing forth. So he simply could not understand what the scribe was attempting to say to him. Meanwhile, Doll had leaned closer to the stone and her eyes moved from side to side along the Greek text. Malinferno could see that her lips, too, were moving silently. Puzzled by his companion’s actions, he went to speak. But Doll held up her hand to stop him, and she carried on scanning the lines of Greek text.
After a while, she still ignored Malinferno’s obvious signs of boredom, and turned her attention to the hieroglyphs at the top. So he ambled away to look at some more of the artefacts that had been taken from the French at the turn of the century. When the French in Egypt had surrendered to the English in 1801, one of the spoils of war had been a large collection of items gathered by French savants. The stone EA24 had been one, and Nectanebo’s sarcophagus another. Malinferno drifted over to further spoils in the form of a row of lion-headed statues of the goddess Sekhmet. Then he heard a bitter voice ringing out down the long gallery.
‘Look, Étienne. Yet more of the English plunder like that taken from us twenty years ago.’
Surprised by the familiar voice, Malinferno looked towards its source. Standing at the back of the mêlée that still clung around Young Memnon, he saw a figure he recognised. It was of an old man dressed in an antiquated form of court garb that had gone out of fashion years ago. And atop the fellow’s head was a powdered, white wig only affected by footmen these days. He was leaning heavily on a cane, and favouring his left leg which, though sporting a well-shaped calf, Malinferno knew to be wooden. Thomas Chippendale the Younger would have been proud of its shape. Indeed, he may well have turned it in his workshop.
Jean-Claude Casteix was one of those savants who had collected Egyptian artefacts for Napoleon Bonaparte, only to see them stolen by the British. Swallowing his pride, Casteix and some of his colleagues had followed them to London. The French general Menou had been scornful of the scientists’ behaviour, suggesting they could be ‘stuffed for the purpose’ of the voyage, along with their trinkets. Casteix reviled the English, and hated his exile, but had preferred to stay with the goods he had accumulated in Egypt. Now he stood sneering at the latest English outrage: the huge statue of Young Memnon stolen by Belzoni from under the very nose of the French Consul-General, Bernadino Drovetti.
His remark, intended to carry through the Egyptian Gallery, and overheard by Malinferno, was addressed to his companion, an elegant and, in contrast to Casteix, fashionably attired young man. Casteix’s disdainful gaze turned Malinferno’s way, and fell on him just as Doll called out to him.
‘Joe, I’ve just worked out something interesting.’
Malinferno tried to ignore Casteix, whom he had once consulted to learn more about Egyptology, only to be regaled with a tale concerning the loss of the Frenchman’s left leg to the snapping bite of a crocodile in the Nile waters. He hurried back to Doll Pocket, but could hear the stomping thud of Casteix’s wooden leg approaching up the gallery.
‘What’s that, Doll?’
Doll’s eyes were bright. ‘I’ve just calculated that there are some four hundred and eighty Greek words on the stone.’
Malinferno knew better than to question Doll’s figure, even though he knew she could not have had time to count every word. But she was fearfully adept with mathematical calculations. So he confined himself to querying the import of this revelation.
‘And what use is that in deciphering the words on the stone?’
‘Indeed, young lady, what can be the import of such irrelevant knowledge?’
The second enquiry, disdainful in its tone, came from the breathless Jean-Claude Casteix, who had now joined them before EA24. The other man, fitter apparently, for his breathing hardly increased at all, stood at his friend’s shoulder, his head cocked on one side like an alert hound.
Doll Pocket smiled enigmatically. ‘It is meaningless. Unless you compare it with the number of hieroglyphs on the stone. By my reckoning, there are one thousand four hundred and ten of those.’
Casteix’s companion looked puzzled, and, pointing with his silver-topped cane, spoke up in a distinct and, to Doll’s ears, engaging French accent. ‘Madame, what have all these numbers to do with decipherment?’
Casteix hurriedly interposed an explanation of the other man’s interest, introducing him with a flourish of his hand. ‘Monsieur Étienne Quatremain, here, is, like Champollion, a student of hieroglyphs.’
Quatremain waved away his friend’s flattering description. ‘I am no more than an amateur filled with curiosity. Not to be compared with Champollion, the future translator of hieroglyphs.’
Doll looked askance at Malinferno, who contained his disbelief over Quatremain’s claim for his countryman. He merely raised his eyes to the ornate ceiling over their heads. The preening Frenchman meanwhile continued in his charming tones.
‘But you have still not explained, Madame, your obsession with the numbers.’
Doll smiled sweetly, and fluttered her eyelids at the young Frenchman. Malinferno could see all the signs of Doll being in one of her moods when she pretended to be dim-witted to fool someone. Such a deception usually ended in the discomfiture of the other party. Surprisingly, though, she did not spring the trap on Quatremain this time. Instead she giggled inanely.
‘I’m sure there is some meaning in them, sir. But for the moment I cannot see it.’
Casteix snorted, his opinion of womankind confirmed.
‘Come, Étienne, let us seek more stimulating company elsewhere.’
His sweeping gesture was somewhat spoiled by his hand almost knocking his antique wig off his head. He clutched at it and, leaving it a little askew, stomped off down the gallery, scattering the idle gawpers in front of Young Memnon. His young companion bowed elegantly, his cane held to one side, and turned to follow. But not before he cast a wink in the direction of Doll. Malinferno wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a simpering smile of pleasure fleetingly play across her features. And it did not seem feigned to his jealous eye. With a proprietorial gesture, he took her arm.
‘What was all that about numbers of words on the stone?’
‘Don’t you see? It’s obvious.’
He always got vexed when Doll made it clear that he was slow in reaching what for her was an obvious conclusion. He might have walked away and sulked for the rest of the day, except he desperately wanted to know what she had concluded.