Chapter 15
WHAT THEY HEARD WAS THE DONKEY. SHE sounded agitated, though it was hard for Rupert to be sure. Sound carried oddly in here. Small wonder that Mrs. Pembroke, with her mind in ancient Egypt, hadn’t heard him calling earlier.
“Something’s frightened Hermione,” he said. He did not want to let go of the woman in his arms, so soft and yielding. But he could not risk the donkey breaking loose and bolting. She’d provide transport if either of them became injured or sick. She’d provide food if the situation grew desperate.
Gently he set Mrs. Pembroke aside. “I’d better see what the trouble is.” He bent and collected his trousers, pulled them up, and started out, tying the waist string as he went.
“Wait, wait,” she said.
He turned. She was stumbling after him, naked from the waist up, tugging up her trousers with one hand, holding the candle in the other. “Take the candle. I’ve another.”
By Zeus but she was a magnificent specimen of womanhood, he thought regretfully as he hurried out to the hysterical Hermione.
DAPHNE WAS NOT far behind him. She had her kamees on by the time she reached the first chamber, where Hermione was making a fearful row.
“I thought it was a snake,” Mr. Carsington called over the braying. “But there’s nothing moving that I can make out. No snakes, scorpions, or other alarming beasties.”
Daphne crouched down and moved her candle slowly to examine the floor of the chamber. “I see nothing alive, either,” she said. “Bits of rock and plaster. Rusks or dried reeds or dried animal dung or…oh.”
Mr. Carsington was crooning to the donkey. “Come now, my dear, it’s all right. We’re here now. You were afraid of the dark, I daresay, poor girl. We abandoned you, and you started imagining there were monsters.”
“I think it’s this,” Daphne said. She picked up a long, pear-shaped object, slightly mangled. It was composed of a familiar brown substance.
Hermione raised loud objections and tried to back out of the tomb, dragging Mr. Carsington with her. While he struggled with the donkey, Daphne retreated to the opposite end of the chamber.
Hermione quieted somewhat, though she was still restless, still complaining.
“What the devil is it?” Mr. Carsington demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Daphne said. She dripped wax onto the stony floor and set her candle onto it. Then she squatted Egyptian style, to study the object in the light. “An animal or bird of some kind. They mummified cats, you know. And hereabouts, wolves and jackals.”
“Mummy,” he said. His voice was cold, distant. “I should have guessed. Are you sure it isn’t human?”
“Reasonably so,” she said. “It’s still in the wrappings, but it’s too small and the wrong shape for a human, even an infant. I collect Hermione stepped on it. Or sniffed it, looking for food. She is remarkably squeamish, is she not? You’d think an Egyptian donkey would be accustomed—”
“Perhaps you could put it somewhere,” Mr. Carsington said in the same cold voice. “At a distance. Where she can’t smell it.”
Daphne’s mind flashed a recollection: Mr. Carsington gazing at the detritus on the ground near the Pyramid of Steps at Saqqara…the grim expression…the rapid ascent of the sand slope.
“Are you squeamish, too?” she said.
“Certainly not,” he said.
“Amazing,” she said. “I thought you were utterly fearless.”
“I am not afraid of a lump of petrified matter,” he said stiffly.
“Come here,” she said.
“I’m trying to keep Hermione calm,” he said.
“She’s calm,” Daphne said. “It’s far enough away not to worry her. Don’t you want to look? It’s very interesting. I’ve never seen an animal mummy before, at least not in one piece…more or less. It’s only a bit dented.”
“Hermione is not as calm as she appears,” he said. “We’d better not give her an excuse to bolt. If she runs away—”
“You’re afraid,” Daphne said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
“Then come here,” she said.
He petted the donkey.
“Come here,” Daphne said.
He muttered something to Hermione about “silly females.”
“Mr. Carsington,” Daphne said, “come here.”
He stroked the donkey’s head and began to whistle softly.
“Rupert,” Daphne said.
At last he turned to look at her.
“Ta’ala heneh,” she said.
TYPICAL, RUPERT THOUGHT.Make love to a woman, and she thinks she owns you.
Well, maybe she did.
Rupert, she said, unprompted. She called him by his Christian name, and they were not even making love. Yet to his ears it sounded like lovemaking: the way she crooned his name, the way the foreign words sounded in her mouth. His mind conjured harems and concubines and dancing girls and she was all of them, it seemed, all the most alluring women in the world in one.
Oh, he was in a bad way, a sad, sad way.
He went to her. Obediently he looked down at the thing in her hand. His mind revolted, and his gaze shifted away, to her bosom. It was mostly exposed, since she’d neglected to fasten the neck of the crepe shirt.
Except for the obnoxious veils, Egyptians did know the proper way to dress a woman.
“It disgusts you?” she said.
“Certainly not,” he said.
She glanced down at herself, at her barely veiled bosom shimmering gold in the candlelight. “I meant the mummy,” she said. She did not attempt to cover the exposed flesh.
This lack of modesty was perfectly agreeable to him. Still, it did not make it easier to think. He tried, though he wasn’t sure why.
“Not disgusting, exactly,” he said at last.
“The mummies trouble you,” she said. “I remarked it before. They trouble me, too, especially when I find them in pieces, after someone’s torn them apart, looking for amulets and such. But they enchant me as well.” With her index finger she lightly stroked the thing in her hand. “See how beautifully it is wrapped, how lovingly preserved.”
He tried to see the beauty she spoke of, but he couldn’t. Looking at the thing was too upsetting. He turned away.
There was a silence. He could feel her thinking, wondering.
“I saw a mummy unwrapped in London,” he said harshly into the silence. “A great entertainment, with a lot of aristocrats gawking and a physician presiding over the proceedings. It was a woman, naked, the poor creature, once they’d removed her lovingly prepared wrappings. They pretended it was a scientific inquiry, but most of the audience was there for a sensation. It was all a show to them, as though she’d never been a living woman, once, like their wives and sisters and mothers and daughters.” His throat tightened at the recollection. He could say no more. He’d choke.
“I see.” She set down the mummy and rose.
He looked at her, and at the thing she’d set aside. He knew she wanted it. He’d seen the longing in her eyes, the same expression she wore when he found her studying the pictures on the walls. Yet she set the little mummy aside for his sake.
His heart clenched and twisted.
“It’s only a bird or a cat,” he said. “Somebody’s pet or sacred animal. You found it. You might as well keep it. The next person to come along will trample it accidentally or tear it apart on purpose, looking for treasure. At least you will treat it kindly.” He bent and picked it up. The smell made him gag. He held his breath and offered the thing to her.
Her eyebrows went up.
“Yes, yes, take it,” he choked out, resisting the urge to throw it at her.
“Are you sure?” She took it from him though, the gods be thanked.
He retreated a pace. “Of course. Didn’t I tell you I’m easy to manage? A lively bout of lovemaking makes me mere putty in your hands. I vow, I am overflowing with kindness and generosity.”
…and with something else, something different from the sense of well-being he usually experienced. There was an ache, a something not quite right and not quite wrong.
“But it also makes me devilish hungry,” he added quickly. “As I recall, we’ve bread in the saddlebags.”
IT MEANT NOTHING to him, that was clear to Daphne. He’d spoken of feelings, but desire was all he meant. He’d satisfied a bodily appetite, no different from hunger. That was the way he saw it. He’d said so: she was in lust with him, and the logical response was lovemaking. For hunger, the logical response was eating.
In other words, the passionate interlude held no more significance for him than did the simple meal of bread and water they ate a short time later in a corner of the first chamber, surrounded by images of the tomb’s owner and his women and long columns of hieroglyphs.
Meanwhile, Daphne’s world had come crashing down about her ears. She stared blindly at the hieroglyphs wobbling in the candlelight. She felt as though she’d spent her adulthood in a kind of darkness, translating at least one part of her life into the wrong language.
“Any idea what it says?” he said.
She dragged her gaze back to him. He had not put his shirt back on. The faint light glimmered on bronzed skin and traced the outlines of his muscled torso. His eyes were dark, unreadable.
Not that she could have read them easily, even in better light. Rupert Carsington’s eyes were not windows into his soul, as Virgil’s eyes had been. But then, Rupert Carsington seemed to keep very little hidden. His words and actions were plain and direct. His anger, too. He didn’t hide it behind a veneer of gentleness and saintly patience. He spoke his mind…instead of trying to dismantle hers.
“You know I don’t,” she said. “I have explained the difficulties of decipherment to you time and again.”
“Yes, but now that you’ve relieved the terrible lust oppressing your mind, I thought you might have a burst of insight or inspiration,” he said.
“I had an insight,” she said, “but not about hieroglyphs. As to the lust…”
“Ah, yes. Not quite relieved, I daresay.”
“That was not what I—”
“The trick with lust is, you can only eradicate it with steady application,” he said. “Steady, repeated application. So, as soon as it begins to vex you again, be sure to let me know.”
“That is not what I…” But it was part of what was on her mind, and so she said quickly, to get it over with, “Do you find me womanly?”
“Did the sandstorm dry up your brain?” he said. “Do you think I mistook you for a man?”
“I mean, do you find me un womanly?”
He bent closer and peered at her face, scarlet now, she’d no doubt. “Where?” he said. “In what way?”
“Not…feminine. Indelicate. Too…” She recalled Virgil’s gentle admonitions, his infuriating patience, and anger burnt away embarrassment. “Too boisterous,” she said tightly. “In lovemaking.”
“A woman—too boisterous—in lovemaking?” Mr. Carsington said incredulously. “There’s no such thing. Where did you get that fool notion? Never mind. Don’t tell me. I can guess. You shouldn’t have married an elderly man.”
“Virgil was four and fifty when we wed,” she said. “That is not exactly Methuselah.”
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen and a half,” she said.
“You’d have done better with two husbands of seven and twenty,” he said. “As to the late lamented, he should have married a woman closer to his own age, whose animal spirits were of a similar strength. He might have lived longer. More important, he wouldn’t have needed to cover up his lack of vigor by criticizing his handsome, passionate wife.”
“His…lack…of vigor,” Daphne repeated. “Was that—”
“Not that there’s any excuse for him,” Mr. Carsington went on indignantly. “To tell such hurtful lies—and he a clergyman! I hope you made him do without for a long, long time—a fortnight at least—to teach him a lesson. By gad, that was ungentlemanly—and you shackled for life to the brute. He made you feel unwomanly—you, of all women!—when it was he who was unmanly. It makes my blood boil. Come here.”
“Ungentlemanly?” she said. “Unmanly?”
“He was a small man,” he said, “else he wouldn’t have tried to cut you down to size.”
She stared at him, trying to take it in. He said she wasn’t unwomanly—he, a man of vast experience.
“I must have the truth,” she said. “You must not be tactful. This is important.”
“Tactful?” he echoed. “I cannot believe that a woman of your intelligence could not see what he was about. It must be obvious to the slowest of dimwits that he was jealous of your brain, because he knew his wasn’t as big. He was afraid you’d accomplish something and put him in the shade. That’s why he forbade you to study ancient Egyptian writing. Obviously he was jealous of your passion and energy, too. You were too much woman for him.”
“Too much woman,” she repeated, savoring the words. Not too little. Not too much like a man. Hers wasn’t a man’s brain. It was simply her brain, that was all.
“You may have noticed you are not too much for me.” His black eyes gleamed.
“You don’t mind about my brain,” she said.
“I’m not afraid of your brain,” he said. “Come here. “Ta’ala heneh.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
It was not polite or gentle. It was long and bold, sinfully deep and lascivious, and it melted her muscles, along with the remnants of her morals. She did not even pretend to struggle. She sank back in his arms and let her hands rove over the powerful contours of his chest and shoulders, his arms, his back.
She was not sure she could ever get enough of touching him. She didn’t know how she’d managed to keep her hands off him for as long as she had. He was warm and strong and fiercely alive…oh, and he was beautifully made, on the grand scale, and perfectly proportioned. Her hands slid down to cup his buttocks, so smooth and taut, and he groaned against her mouth, then drew away.
She opened her eyes, dismayed. She’d been too bold, disgusted him. But no, he’d told her she couldn’t be too bold.
“I meant to please you before,” he said. Growled.
“You did,” she said. She’d never been so pleased in her life. She’d never guessed it was possible to be so pleased—and the word was grossly inadequate.
“But I was in a hurry,” he said, “after waiting so confounded long for you to come to your senses.”
“I was perfectly satisfied,” she said. She’d thought she’d die of pleasure and happiness. She’d thought she’d burst from it, from the feelings, so immense.
“What do you know?” he said. “Your previous lover was an old man.” He kissed the special place behind her ear. He kissed her neck, the base of her throat.
She didn’t argue. What did she know? Nothing, apparently, when it came to lovemaking.
This man did, though. He was writing mysterious messages in kisses upon her skin, along her collarbone and down, across her breasts, and down. He eased her out of his arms and onto the mat. Her clothing slid away from her body, and his mouth was there instead, the lightest of brushes, writing kisses over her skin.
His lips told a long and complicated tale upon her belly, and then the kisses moved lower, and his fingers were there, too, tracing the contours of the most secret of her places. It made an ache in the pit of her belly to be explored and known so, a sweet, killing ache.
She tangled her fingers in his hair because she must touch him, do something. The ache was everywhere, beating in her heart and making a strange current in her veins and thrumming over her skin. Oh, and there…the tiny flesh-bud, wicked thing…his thumb teasing…and then he took her in his mouth.
Oh, no, you mustn’t. It’s…indecent…lewd. Wrong, surely. We’ll be damned for all eternity…. I don’t care. Let me be damned. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.
Pleasure, almost unbearable, swept through her, wave upon wave of a dark joy. Again and again she trembled on the brink of ecstasy; again and again he carried her over. Until she could bear no more, not alone. She curled up, grasped his shoulders. “In me,” she gasped. “Be in me.”
He came up onto his knees. She dragged her hands over his chest, down over his taut belly, and down to his virile member, immensely erect and hot to the touch. She stroked it, longingly, lovingly, and he gave a strangled laugh. “Ah, well, then, don’t be so shy,” he said. He set his big hand on her chest and pushed her down, and remained so for a moment, looking at her.
She gazed up at him, and for that moment, in the darkness with its faint, flickering candlelight, it seemed she’d entered the underworld and this was no mere mortal who straddled her but a demigod.
He smiled and moved into her, so slowly, so deliberately. Ah, but deep, deep, where she needed him.
“Like this?” he said. “In you like this?”
“Yes,” she said. She moved, taking him in deeper still. “And like this.”
He moved inside her slowly this time, as though they had all eternity. Slowly she moved with him, relishing the heat and the rolling swell of pleasure. She was his and he hers for this time. She was in no hurry to reach the ending and the separation that must follow.
He bent and kissed the top of her cheekbone, so tenderly she thought her heart would break. But her heart beat on, harder and faster. The slow pleasure swelled into pulsing need, and then she was lost again in the storm. But now he was with her, and the tempest was rich and wild and wondrous. She plunged into it with him in the same way she’d plunged with him into pyramids, into danger. The world lit up in showers of gold, and it spilled through her and around her, a happiness like a glimpse of a perfect hereafter. He gave a low cry, and shuddered once, and a liquid heat filled her.
The storm slid away, and he sank down upon her, and she sank, too, into a welcoming quiet and peace.
THE INSTANT HE returned to himself, Rupert knew what he’d done.
This made twice he’d behaved like an adolescent with his first lover.
The first time, he’d made a great hurry of the business, as though it was the only and last chance he’d ever have and death was coming in the next breath.
The second time, he’d managed the bare essentials of pleasuring her, only to forget himself at the crucial moment.
He’d not only fallen on top of her, great clumsy oaf that he was—and she lying on a thin mat, on a stony floor—but he’d spilled his seed inside her.
Idiot, idiot. Great dumb ox.
What if—
Never mind. Worrying accomplished nothing.
He lifted himself off her and scooped her into his arms. He slid up to a sitting position and arranged her upon his lap. She laid her head upon his shoulder, and he felt her breath on his skin. He stroked her hair, glistening ruby and garnet in the candlelight. His gaze wandered lower, and he saw ruby and garnet there as well.
He smiled, forgetting his grievance with himself for the moment. That part had surprised her.
She was a woman of experience, yes, but not very much experience and that little not very good.
The thought restored his humor. It was like having all the benefits of a virgin without any of the drawbacks, he told himself.
And as to his mistake—well, the damage was done and couldn’t be undone. He could only take care of her. This he was well-equipped to do. He relaxed, leant back against the wall, and promptly fell asleep.
“WAKE UP! WAKE up!”
A frantic whisper in the darkness. Someone shoving at him.
Rupert quickly shook off sleep. “What?” he said. “What?”
“Someone’s out there and I—Hush!”
Rupert listened.
Voices. Men’s voices. Their guards? He rose and started pulling on his clothes.
“There are a number of them,” she whispered. “I went out to check on Hermione, because she was complaining again. I heard them outside. I don’t know if they heard her. But I know they’re looking for us.”
“Well, it’s about time somebody—”
Her hand clamped over his mouth. “I heard them because they were arguing—about whether to kill you or hold you for ransom. We have to hide.”
Rupert pulled her hand away. He hurriedly wrapped the sash round his waist, found his pistol, and shoved it into the sash. “We can’t hide,” he said. “For one—”
“Don’t talk, just listen,” she said. “That rumble you think is a whisper carries.” She pushed him. “Back. The in most chamber.”
He didn’t know where “back” was. Either the candle had burnt out or she’d wisely extinguished it. The darkness was impenetrable. But she grabbed his hand and led, and she seemed to know what she was about.
It didn’t take as long this time to get to the end.
The dead end.
“We’re going to be trapped,” he muttered. “Which is what I was trying to tell you. Unless you’ve discovered a secret passage.”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“Then what?” He felt the walls and found a recess.
Then he remembered: the French diagrams she’d lectured about earlier. A shaft would be marked with an entrance, actual or symbolic, like this recess.
She tugged on his arm. “Not the center recess. This way.”
“We’re going to hide in a burial shaft,” he said. “That’s your cunning plan.”
“There’s no other way out,” she said. “I explored the entire chamber earlier, because I’d read that some of the Theban tombs are labyrinths. This isn’t.”
While she spoke, she was pulling him to the left. “Hurry,” she said.
Rupert could hear the voices now, distorted, seemingly distant. But he knew they were not very far away. This was not like the interior of a pyramid. With torches or lanterns, the men would be here in minutes.
He wanted to stand and fight, and he would have done, if he’d had some idea of the odds. But there was no way of knowing how many men there were, or how dispersed. Three might come inside while another ten or twenty waited outside. And if they killed him, what would become of her?
“You’d better let me go first,” he said, though reason rebelled at the prospect: a narrow burial shaft, a small space at the bottom with room for a coffin and not much else, most likely. Anyone who wished them dead would have no difficulty arranging it.
“No, let me,” she said. “I know where it is. Oh, do hurry. I can hear them. Get down. It’s safer to crawl. Someone’s excavated…ah, here it is. Can you feel it?”
She caught his hand and curved it over the edge of an opening. “There,” she said. “It’s clear to the bottom. I checked earlier.”
“I’m going first,” he said.
THE SHAFT WAS steeply angled. Rupert went down backward, and half slid to the bottom. She followed closely, using the same method. The sepulchral chamber was surprisingly large. But the floor was covered with rubble, and a disagreeably familiar smell signaled ancient dead in the vicinity.
He’d no time to dwell on the dead, though. Mrs. Pembroke had hardly reached the bottom when he heard the voices. He pulled her back, well out of range of the shaft.
A light shone where they’d been standing a moment before, and voices called down in Arabic.
Rupert loaded his pistol.
A new voice spoke, in French with a thick accent this time. There was nothing to fear, the voice said. He and his friends had come to rescue the English lady and gentleman. Since sunset, when the wind died down, everyone in Asyut had been looking for them.
Rupert touched Mrs. Pembroke’s lips, signaling silence, and by cautious inches drew her farther away from the shaft—until they came up against a corner of wall.
Nowhere else to go.
He moved to stand in front of her.
No sound for the longest time but his breathing and hers. The others, above, were listening, too, no doubt, for signs of life. But they must come a good deal closer to hear any.
At last someone spoke. Then someone else. They seemed to be arguing. Rupert caught the words: Ingleezi, jinn, and afreet.
Were they talking about him?
Tom had used tall tales about Rupert’s supposed magical powers to persuade Minya’s kashef to cooperate. The boy had greatly embellished various incidents that had occurred during the journey upriver, citing these as “evidence” of his master’s close personal relationship with supernatural powers. Apparently, Rupert possessed as well a fearsome skill in administering “the eye”—the calling down of curses and calamities upon those who gave offense.
On the other hand, the men might merely be continuing the argument about whether to shoot him or cut off his head, or debating whether to sell the English lady into slavery or rape and kill her. They’d mentioned demons only because such beings were known to haunt burial chambers.
He turned and put his mouth close to Mrs. Pembroke’s ear. “What are they saying?”
“The tomb is haunted,” she whispered. “Why climb down when the demons or hunger will soon drive us out? says one school of thought. The other fears we’ll find a way out. They seem—” She broke off because the row above them had ceased.
Rupert heard movement at the top of the shaft, a rustling and scraping. Someone had decided to risk demons, evidently. He cocked his pistol.
Even before he emerged into the chamber, the man was easy to see. He had a torch in his hand as well as being lit by the torches or lanterns above, but he hadn’t yet spotted Rupert and Mrs. Pembroke in the shadows. From the sounds of it, another fellow was close behind him.
Rupert took aim.
Then something flew past him, and the man crumpled to the floor.
Mrs. Pembroke pressed a hard, irregular object against Rupert’s side. A chunk of rubble.
She said nothing, but Rupert understood. He bent and picked up several chunks of rubble from the floor. When the villain’s associate started into the chamber, Rupert threw as hard as he could. The man fell.
Someone called down.
While those above called to their unconscious comrades, Rupert hurried to one of the bodies, grabbed the feet, and dragged him deeper into the tomb. Mrs. Pembroke did the same without being told.
By gad, she was a wonderful female.
Rocks instead of firearms. Near-silent destruction. Much more effective than shooting pistols—balls ricocheting off stone walls—and very possibly bringing the entire crumbling structure down upon their heads.
Those from above would hear at most the clatter of rocks—which could be falling rubble. They couldn’t be sure what was below: their prey or hungry ghouls.
Now several voices called for Amin and Omar.
Under the noise, Rupert said, “If they come to—”
“Help me get these two into the sarcophagus,” she whispered.
“The sarc—What?”
“I can’t kill a man in cold blood,” she said. “We’ve nothing strong enough to tie them with. It’s right here. The lid’s broken.”
The men’s torches lay where they’d dropped them, one still burning feebly. It illuminated very little. At first Rupert couldn’t discern the sarcophagus. But she’d already started dragging one of the inert men. Rupert did likewise, guided by the sound of her panting.
Getting the men into the coffin was easy enough. Keeping them in was another matter. Rupert heaved a few pieces of the broken lid on top. That at least would slow them down.
He doubted they’d be considerate enough to remain unconscious until their friends gave up and went away.
He doubted the friends would give up and go away.
Maybe it was wiser to simply kill this pair now and improve the odds. A knife would do it quietly enough.
Rupert’s entire being recoiled. He’d never yet killed anybody, and like her, found the notion of doing so in cold blood abhorrent.
Then she said, “I was wrong.”
He looked toward the sound of her voice. He could barely make out her shape against the surrounding darkness.
“Behind the coffin,” she said. “There’s a hole.”