Chapter 20
UNDER THE THIN BLANKET, SHE WAS SOFT AND wondrously curved and practically naked. As he pulled her tight against him, Rupert discovered that there was almost nothing in the way: a scrap of thin fabric, her kamees, bunched up at her waist. All the rest was skin, clean and silken-smooth and…strange.
Something was missing.
He buried his face in her neck and sniffed.
He raised his head. “What have they done to you?” he whispered. “Something’s missing. The goddess scent.”
“What have they done to me? To me? I thought you were dead.”
“I know. I thought I was, too, at first.”
“I saw you shot,” she said. “You clutched your chest and went over. You didn’t come up again.”
“The ball grazed me, just under my arm,” he said. “A scratch. But I tripped. Lost my balance and went over. And, as usual, I hit my head. I came to my senses a good ways downriver, clinging to a piece of boarding plank. It was deuced embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing.”
“The boys look up to me,” he said. “I’m a hero. Heroes don’t trip. Heroes don’t knock their heads on the way down. I must have looked a complete clodpate.”
She pulled his face to hers and kissed him. So gently and sweetly at first. He tasted tears. He should have said, No weeping again, but he couldn’t. The tender kiss started a queer ache inside him, not quite happy and not quite sad. It was the thing she did to him: stirring up feelings he had no names for.
He’d been wild, half-mad, when he finally caught up with the Isis and clambered aboard, wet and bruised but scarcely bleeding at all, though you’d never know it to hear everyone carrying on. It had taken him most of the five days’ journey to Thebes to calm down, collect his wits, and realize how lucky his clumsiness was.
If the villains hadn’t believed he was dead, they would have made sure of it.
Now they wouldn’t be expecting him. They wouldn’t be looking for him.
He had to make the most of the opportunity.
In a minute.
Right now, he was starved for the taste of her, the feel of her, the warmth and willingness and wickedness of her. He slid his hands down her smooth back, and brought them down to enclose the delicious inward turn of her waist. He grasped her wonderfully naked backside and crushed her against his groin.
“I missed you,” she murmured against his mouth. She rubbed her cheek against his, in that way she had, and something opened up inside him, deep and dark. He didn’t know what it was or why.
But he remembered the emptiness. He remembered how he’d see a strange bird and turn to point it out to her, and then remember she wasn’t there.
He remembered looking into her cabin, where they’d made slow, silent love. He couldn’t stop himself from picking up a cushion and pressing it to his face, hungrily seeking her scent…running his fingers over the covers and spines of her books…staring into the pages of her notebooks at the neat script and the words he didn’t understand and the sketches: the little figures and signs, all incomprehensible.
“I missed you, too,” he said. He’d missed her terribly, beyond anything he could have imagined.
He wanted to capture her mouth again, and everything else, and claim her in the most primitive of ways.
There wasn’t time.
He drew away. “Well then, we’d best be going,” he said.
“Going?” she said in a dazed voice. “We’re going?”
“Yes. Now. You. Me. The window.” He sat up, silently ordering his privy councilor to settle down. “Where are your clothes? Never mind. A cloak will do. You’ve clothes on the boat.”
“I don’t think—”
“You haven’t time to think,” he said. “We need to leave before the guards begin to sober—or someone smells the hashish and gets suspicious,” he said.
She rubbed her face. “Hashish?”
“Remember your drugged doorkeeper? So cheerfully useless? How else do you think I could climb up the side of the house without setting off an uproar?”
“I can’t leave Miles,” she said.
“I know, but he’s not conveniently situated at the moment,” Rupert said. “I can’t get to his window, and I can’t go through the house. We couldn’t drug everybody, and there are a great lot of people in the way. A maidservant sleeping outside your door. Other servants elsewhere, everywhere, underfoot. And then there are the guards prowling the passages.”
“How do you—”
“Leena’s been spying for us,” he said. “Made friends with a talkative servant girl. Can we go into the details later? We can’t dawdle.”
“I cannot leave Miles,” she said. “If I disappear, he’ll pay.”
“No, he won’t. He’s too valuable for them to harm. We’ll devise a cunning plan to get him out. By tomorrow. I promise.” He rose from the divan. “Where’s your cloak?”
She rose slowly. “He isn’t valuable,” she said.
“You know that and I know that,” he said, “but—”
“Noxley knows my secret,” she said.
THERE WAS A short, taut pause. Then, “Yes, of course,” he said, “I should have known this would be complicated.”
“I told him,” she said. “I had to. Miles could never keep up the pretense, living under the same roof, day in, day out. He started drinking to avoid answering difficult questions, and he has no head for liquor.”
“I understand,” he said. “I assumed it couldn’t be helped. We’ll deal with the problem. In the meantime—”
“Miles believes Noxley’s insane,” she said. “I’m not sure of that. I am very sure he won’t do anything to Miles. Noxley likes to appear noble and kind.” Another fraud, like Virgil. “He has others do the dirty work for him: torturing, maiming, killing people.”
“Daphne—”
“Shhhh.” She laid her fingers over his mouth.
Sounds. Footsteps. Voices. Outside the door.
He looked that way. He heard it, too.
She pushed him toward the window. “Go.”
“Not without you.”
She didn’t want him to go without her, either, but they had no choice. And no time to argue.
She made a fist and hit him backhanded in the chest. “You’re alive,” she said. “Stay alive, or I’ll never get out of this. Go.”
The sounds grew louder.
Daphne hurried back to the divan. Go, she begged silently. Please go.
She felt rather than heard him move away.
There was a quick, impatient rap at the door. A maidservant’s voice called softly: was all well with the lady?
Daphne lay down and drew up her thin blanket. The door flew open.
She sat up hastily and looked about her, in the manner of one abruptly awakened.
A maidservant stood in the doorway, holding an oil lamp. Behind her a tall, bulky figure loomed.
“The guard heard sounds,” the servant said, holding the lamp aloft. “Voices, he says.”
“Did he?” Daphne said. “I must have been talking in my sleep. I had very strange dreams.”
4 May
DAPHNE WENT WITH Noxley and Miles to Karnak again on Friday. It was amazing how glorious the place seemed, now the black weight had lifted from her heart. She soon filled her notebook, and Lord Noxley sent a servant to Luxor for another. She spent the latter part of the day in a small room called the Chamber of Kings. Under the various pharaohs’ sculpted images were their hieroglyphic names, which she copied.
“You will not be bored, I think, if we return tomorrow?” Lord Noxley asked her as they started back to Luxor at sunset.
“I believe I could spend a month and never grow bored,” she said. “But another day will suffice, if you have other plans.”
“We can always return,” Noxley said. “But perhaps if you made a general survey of Thebes, you might then choose the places of greatest use to your studies. I thought we might make a tour of the western bank next week. I do suspect you will find that area even more fascinating, Mrs. Pembroke. There one may study not only temples and palaces but the tombs as well. Equally important, the Tombs of the Nobles will supply you amply with papyri.”
He went on to denounce the inhabitants of western Thebes, the Qurnans, who destroyed the tombs, tore mummies to pieces, and burnt beautifully decorated mummy cases for firewood.
“It was their ancestors who stripped bare the kings’ tombs in the Biban el Muluk, you may be sure,” his lordship said. “The whole greedy, thieving tribe should have been eradicated long ago, but the Turkish authorities will not bestir themselves. The trouble is, no one here considers tomb robbing an important crime. The Turks are diligent only in collecting taxes and bribes and bullying the peasants. They are barbarians who do not understand or care about bygone civilizations. They dismantle ancient temples to build factories.”
“We’re not so different,” Daphne said. “We of supposedly enlightened nations plunder and destroy, too. It cannot be right to violate the dead, to tear mummies to pieces to find jewelry and papyri. But without the papyri, how are we scholars to understand the past? Is it right to leave the monuments here, at risk of destruction? Or is it right to take them away to our palaces and museums and mansions abroad? I don’t know what the answer is. I only know that my papyrus came from one of those tombs—courtesy of the Qurnans.”
Noxley shook his head. “Yours came from no ordinary Theban tomb,” he said. “It came from a king’s tomb, from the Biban el Muluk.”
“That’s what Anaz claimed,” Miles said.
“Now that I’ve had an opportunity to study it closely, and compare it to a host of others, I am more inclined to believe him,” Noxley said. “The cartouches, for instance. I’ve seen any number in royal tombs and on temples and other monuments, but never on a papyrus. Still, most papyri are written in the script, you know, not the picture signs, so I may have seen royal names without realizing.”
Daphne had not seen enough papyri to make any such generalizations. “How many other papyri have you studied?” she said.
“I should never presume to say I’ve studied them, not as you have,” he said. “I’m an explorer, not a scholar. But I’ve seen a great many—and at present I have at least two score.”
“That is a great many,” she said. More than twice as many as she owned.
“You are welcome to make use of them,” he said. “I know your visit to Thebes started off on the wrong foot, but I am determined to make it right. Let me begin fresh by speaking frankly and honestly, as you clearly prefer. I should dearly love to discover a royal tomb. And you, I know, wish to unlock the secrets of the hieroglyphs. Working together, as allies—I shall not presume to speak of anything more, at present—but as allies, as a team, we are more likely to realize our ambitions, do you not think?”
“And Miles?” Daphne asked. “What is his role?”
Noxley turned a sweet smile upon her brother. “Archdale, you deceived me dreadfully. I was furious at first, to think what a fool you’d made of me. But you only did so on this lady’s behalf. And so I forgive you. I am sure you’d rather try to discover a royal tomb than spend your time learning Coptic and solving word puzzles. You had some ideas, I believe, about locating tomb entrances. Perhaps we might put our heads together?”
“Certainly,” Miles said. “Much more agreeable than having it cut off.”
Lord Noxley laughed, as though it were a joke, and went on to talk about Belzoni’s tomb and the likelihood of there being others even more impressive.
The conversation lagged as they reached Luxor and had to make their way through its narrow byways. Shortly before they reached the house, an old woman accosted Daphne and offered to tell her fortune.
Noxley gave her a coin and told her to come another time: the lady was weary today. The crone took the coin and offered to give the lady a charm for good fortune. Noxley shrugged.
The fortune teller took Daphne’s hand and muttered, too low for anyone but Daphne to hear, “He comes with fire. Be ready.”
THOUGH SHE WAS his sister, Miles had always understood that men turned into drooling idiots on account of Daphne’s figure.
That was natural enough.
What he didn’t understand was why those who managed to get close to her must be queer in the attic.
The poetically handsome Pembroke, with his sweet, gentle ways, had turned out to be a pious hypocrite of a tyrant. He was possessive, madly jealous of other men, and even more madly jealous of Daphne’s superior intellect.
Noxley was another one with a beautiful exterior and charming ways and a black heart. And he was a fine one to speak of Miles’s deceiving him, considering how he had completely taken in Miles.
Like Pembroke, Noxley was possessive to an extreme. This was a man, after all, who thought all of Thebes belonged to him. He was also a torturer and killer by proxy. And when someone presented him with a man’s head in a basket, he lit up like a child who’d got a new hobbyhorse or a set of toy soldiers.
The closest he came to a redeeming quality was his lack of jealousy of Daphne’s mind. But then, he believed her mind would eventually lead him to a great discovery, if not a great treasure. Noxley wanted fame and power, but he wasn’t averse to increasing his wealth, either.
But Daphne said they had to go along, and she was right. They were prisoners in Thebes. They were watched constantly. They couldn’t get away without help, and everyone here was either too corrupted or too terrified to take such a risk.
At the moment, you’d think Noxley was the dearest, sweetest fellow in the world.
They’d had their dinner and as he’d done before when only Miles was here, Noxley brought out the papyrus. This evening, though, he had several others brought in, and he was laying them out carefully on the carpet for her perusal.
Daphne knelt beside him, her attention completely on the documents. Noxley’s attention was completely on her, especially her bosom, as she launched into one of her stunningly boring lectures on Dr. Young’s work and where she agreed and disagreed with him, and why.
Perhaps because his mind was elsewhere, it did not put Noxley to sleep as you’d expect. Still, he did eventually acquire the vacant, dazed expression with which Miles was more than familiar. Those who could stay awake always looked that way after listening to Daphne for a time.
Boring, studious Daphne. If she didn’t have her nose in a book, she had it smudged with ink, while she drew her little charts and her rows and columns of alphabets, signs, words. Shy, reclusive, logical Daphne.
The same woman who’d set out—with Rupert Carsington! Hargate’s Hellion!—on a mad scheme to rescue her brother.
This wasn’t the sister Miles thought he knew. Yet this was Daphne, beyond question, droning on about Coptic and other brain-strangling arcana.
“The sun sign, for instance,” she was saying, pointing to a cartouche. “Here it stands alone, and I am quite sure it is ra or re, the Coptic for sun, whereas Dr. Young puts it in combination with a pillar symbol and gives the god the name Phre—”
A bloodcurdling scream cut her off. Another followed, then shouting.
Lord Noxley leapt up.
The noise intensified. From nearby came the patter of bare feet at a run. A servant shrieked, and others called on God to preserve them.
Miles made out the word “fire.” He quickly rose, too. Daphne came up more slowly.
Noxley ran out of the room. Miles started after him. Daphne grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she said quietly.
She gathered up an armful of papyri and looked about her expectantly.
A cloaked and hooded figure appeared in the doorway. “Trouble outside,” he said in thickly accented English. “This way. Come.”
“Who are you?” Miles demanded. “What kind of trouble? Let me see your face.”
Daphne pushed him, hard, toward the door. “Don’t ask questions,” she said.
“But he might be one of Duval’s—”
“He isn’t!” she snapped. “Stop talking. Start running.”
ONCE HE’D GOT them out of the main room and into the less well-lighted passage, Rupert had to throw back his hood, so he could see.
He heard Archdale whisper, “Who is he?”
“Rupert Carsington,” Rupert said.
“But you’re dead.”
“Not anymore,” Rupert said. They’d reached the stairway. He paused, withdrew the pistols from his girdle, and handed them out.
The brother said, “Better give her a knife. Daphne doesn’t—”
“Is it loaded?” Daphne said.
“Yes. Be careful.”
“But Daphne doesn’t—”
“Yes, she does,” Rupert said. He unhooked the rope from his sash. “Your room,” he told Daphne. “I’ve people waiting below your window.” He sent Archdale up after her, and followed, listening for signs of pursuit.
The boys had started a conflagration at the front door, where it would cause the most spectacle and confusion. But they could hardly haul a load of firewood, even if Egypt could supply such a thing. Straw and dung fueled the fire, and it would soon be seen for what it was.
Rupert had mere minutes.
LORD NOXLEY HAD reacted instinctively: he was under attack—Duval, no doubt—and he must organize his forces.
He’d grabbed a rifle and was nearly at the front door—after having to fight his way past panicked servants—when he realized his mistake. An open attack wasn’t in Duval’s style.
This was a diversion.
Lord Noxley hurried back into the qa’a.
They were gone, and most of the papyri with them.
He ran out of the room, shouting for Ghazi, then raced up the stairway to the large bedchamber he’d planned to transform into a bridal suite before too much time had passed.
She wasn’t there.
But he was.
When Lord Noxley burst in, the tall figure was at the window. He turned.
Carsington.
The dead man.
Not dead enough.
Lord Noxley cocked the rifle, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
RUPERT DOVE FOR the floor, rolled, and grabbed Noxley’s legs, bringing him down. The weapon discharged, and the ball pinged against the wall.
Rupert grabbed Noxley’s wrist and banged it on the stony floor. The man let go of the rifle—then shoved his elbow into Rupert’s gut, broke free, and scrambled onto his feet. He ran toward the window, but Rupert was quickly up again and close behind. He grabbed Noxley and flung him against the wall. Noxley bounced back, and came at him fist first. He thrust it into Rupert’s jaw with surprising force.
Rupert drove his fist into Noxley’s gut.
It was a harder gut than you’d think, and the man only grunted instead of crumpling in a heap as men usually did when Rupert hit them. In a flash, Noxley struck again. So did Rupert, and he was not gentle.
But Noxley went on, furiously giving back blow for blow, though he soon began to weaken.
“Give it up,” Rupert gasped. “You’re good, but I’ve got stamina.”
“She’s mine,” Noxley said. His hand moved, and something glinted there.
And Rupert thought knife, an instant before it thrust into him.
DAPHNE WAS AWARE of her brother, below, calling to her, but she went on climbing back up. She’d heard the gun go off, and waited, holding her breath, for Rupert to come out.
He didn’t.
But it wasn’t over, she realized a moment later. She heard thuds and thumps, the clatter of broken crockery. They were still fighting.
It wasn’t a great many men. Three at most. Perhaps only two.
She had to help Rupert before any more came, and he was outnumbered.
She found a place for her foot, and was looking for the next foothold to get her back to the window when something flew over her head. It made a small arc, then, as she watched, horrified, dropped to the rocks below. A body. It was human.
“Rupert!” she cried.
“Coming,” said an impossibly deep voice from over her head.
She looked up. Rupert leant out the window. “Don’t dawdle,” he said. “We haven’t got all night.”
THEY HAD NEARLY reached the landing place when they heard the shouts. Daphne glanced back. Men seemed to be coming from every direction. Some carried torches, in whose light she saw weapons gleaming. She saw a pair of figures pause at the body, before Rupert grabbed her arm and turned her about. “Run!” he said. “Archdale, get her to the boat.”
“No!” She drew her pistol. “You’re not facing them alone.”
A shot rang out. Men were running at them. She cocked her weapon and fired.
After that was chaos. Shouting, the clash of swords, the occasional blast of a firearm. Men started running toward them from the other side, from the river. She thought she recognized voices. The Isis’s crew had joined the fray.
She saw two men tackle Miles and bring him down. She ran to them and started beating the men with the butt end of her weapon.
It was a while before she noticed the noise subsiding.
Then a familiar voice called out. “Cease, lady, or the big Ingleezi dies, truly, this time.”
She turned, and saw everyone was looking the same way. Rupert was clutching his side. A dark stain was spreading outward from the place he held. Ghazi held a pistol to Rupert’s head.
The last of the fighting stopped.
“The master is dead,” Ghazi said. “I am master now.”
Daphne thought quickly.
She remembered what Noxley had said about his men: thinking is not what they do best.
“Very well,” she said in Arabic. “Congratulations. You’re welcome to be master. I’m sure you’ll make a fine one. But what has it to do with us? It was the Golden Devil who wanted me—for a bride. It was the Golden Devil who wanted my brother—to help read the ancient writing. Surely you can find your own brides? You don’t need to steal them.” She fervently hoped Noxley hadn’t told anybody how much his future spouse was worth in pounds, shillings, and pence. “But do you truly wish to devote your life to digging in the sand to find holes in the ground with painted walls? Did you want to be a leader of diggers and scavengers or a leader of—um—the most feared assassins in all the Ottoman Empire?”
While she spoke, Ghazi’s expression took on a troubled and confused expression. He glanced about him. His men were looking troubled, too. He quickly regained his composure. “This is foolish talk,” he said. “The big Ingleezi has killed the Golden Devil. You have shot one of my men. And it is not the first time. You will not go free.” With his free hand, he signaled to his men. “Take her. And the other man.”
Rupert sagged. “Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”
He folded up and sank to the ground.
“No!” Daphne cried. She ran toward him, pushing the astonished Ghazi aside, and sinking to her knees beside Rupert. “He’s no danger to you, you great bully,” she cried. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”
“I will put him out of his misery.” Ghazi aimed the pistol at Rupert. Daphne threw herself on top of Rupert.
“As you wish,” said Ghazi. “I kill two at once.”
“Fire your weapon,” Miles called out, “and pharaoh’s treasure goes up in smoke.”
During the momentary distraction, he’d grabbed somebody’s torch. He held a papyrus close to the flame. “This is what the Golden Devil wanted,” Miles said. “This is what Duval wants. Worth a king’s ransom. Everybody play nice, or it’s ashes.”
Some of the men were muttering, “What’s he saying?” because Miles made the speech in English. But Ghazi had no trouble comprehending.
Thinking wasn’t what he did best. This, however, was simple enough to comprehend. He knew the papyrus was valuable. He knew Duval wanted it. And he knew that these old, crumbly anteekahs took fire easily.
Still, once he had the papyrus, he’d no reason to let them get away, Daphne thought.
“Let them go,” someone called from the crowd. “The Turkish soldiers are coming. Remember what they did to the one they thought had killed the big Englishman?”
Ghazi threw down his pistol and advanced toward Miles.
Miles looked at Daphne.
“Give it to him,” she said.
Miles gave Ghazi the papyrus. Ghazi unrolled it a bit, gave it a glance, then quickly tucked it into his girdle. He moved away, snatched up his pistol—
And kept on walking, away from them.
His men turned away and followed him.
All but one, the one who’d warned about the Turkish soldiers.
He came forward.
“Let me help you, mistress,” he said. In English.
She had turned away, to attend to Rupert, who was showing signs of consciousness. But the English words and something in the man’s voice made her look up again.
She gazed into a familiar face, one she hadn’t seen in more than a month.
“Akmed?” she said.
“This man saved my life,” he said. “I will help you save his.”