Chapter 7
Friday 6 April
“GONE?” MRS. PEMBROKE SHOT UP FROM THE divan in a flurry of black silk, knocking aside the silver tray containing their breakfast.
The coffee sloshed in the cups, and the fateerah started sliding from its plate, but Rupert caught the tray in time, saving its precious cargo.
While she strode to the shelf of wooden figures, Rupert helped himself to a piece of the buttery pastry, doused it liberally with honey, and sank his teeth in with a quiet sigh of pleasure. Fateerah was so far his favorite Egyptian food. But that was only one part of the present moment’s deliciousness.
Mrs. Pembroke was taking a fit. And every abrupt movement gave him a glimpse of her slim, stockinged feet and perfect ankles.
“Of all the presumptuous—” she began. “I can scarcely credit—” She broke off, and he lifted his gaze from her feet to her face, to watch her try to contain the tempest within…and fail, praise be.
Few sights stirred his senses as did that of Mrs. Pembroke flying into a passion. She glared green fire at the little Egyptians. Her fine bosom—whose perfect contours the dull mourning could not completely camouflage—rose and fell like a stormy sea.
“I daresay Noxious hadn’t time for tender farewells,” Rupert said. “He had a villain to lure out of hiding.”
“He knew who it was,” she said tightly.
“I said only that his servant mentioned a Frenchman named Duval,” Rupert said. He’d told her of the late-night visit to Noxious’s house, but not in unnecessary detail. The word “servant” discreetly covered a multitude of scantily clad dusky beauties.
“I spoke to Salt and Beechey about him this morning,” he went on. “Their description fits our portrait of the villain. Duval is one of the French consul’s dearest friends. He despises the English. Salt says the man’s still nursing a grudge about the Rosetta Stone. Believes it properly belongs to France, it seems.”
“Duval,” she said. She paced for a short time, the black silk whispering against her legs. “I met him once. A dinner at the Swedish consulate. Medium height, dark, elegant—or perhaps sleek is the apter word. Polished manners.”
“Salt and Beechey say Duval’s generally reckoned a canny fellow,” Rupert said. “But lately he’d suffered a series of reverses in the antiquities line.”
“Setbacks seem to sour and deform some men,” she said. She turned toward him, her countenance clouded. “They become angry, anxious, suspicious. They brood. They lose their sense of proportion. They grow resentful of others’ accomplishments and happiness.”
Rupert nodded. Her troubled countenance, as much as the words and grim tone, told him she spoke from experience.
He’d already guessed that she was not mourning quite so much as her costume declared.
She came back to the divan. “It is not a state of mind that makes for clear thinking.”
“This would help explain Duval’s jumping to conclusions about your brother and the papyrus,” Rupert said. “There Duval was, seething about this and that. He certainly mistrusts the English. Easy enough, then, to believe an English scholar knew more than he was telling.”
She settled onto the divan, this time only an arm’s length away. “Three people are dead so far—that we know of. All innocent bystanders. The man must be mad.”
“He’s dangerous, at any rate,” Rupert said. “I suppose that’s why Noxious wasted no time. He set out in his boat yesterday morning. The Memnon. A grand vessel, distinctive and quite famous, I’m told. He made sure everyone at the port knew he was going to search for your brother. No doubt he meant to get the Frenchman’s wind up. It worked. I stopped by Duval’s house on my way here. It seems he left Cairo suddenly yesterday afternoon.”
She said nothing.
Rupert poured her coffee. She took the cup and only stared at it.
“You do know it’s best to have Duval out of Cairo, I hope?” Rupert said. And Noxious, too, he silently added. “You don’t want to risk his taking you hostage. Your brother wouldn’t dare try to escape then.”
She looked up at him. “I understand that. The trouble is, now I know Miles is not in Cairo—and I cannot ask Lord Noxley where these horrible men might have taken my brother, because Lord Noxley is gone, too. I’ve been running about in circles, wasting time, when, given a little information, I might have made progress.”
“That’s hardly likely to occur to him,” Rupert said. “He’d assume you were waiting safely and dutifully at home, with a great dumb ox from the consulate as bodyguard. Meanwhile, put yourself in Noxious’s place: brilliant scheme—waste no time—solve the mystery, race to the rescue. Return with the brother and the valuable item to universal applause. The lady weeps with gratitude…and bestows her—um—heart upon the gallant knight.”
She stiffened. “Another lady, perhaps,” she said. “Not this one.”
“Ah, I rather thought not,” he said. He’d certainly hoped not. He’d hoped she was too intelligent and spirited to accept the passive role Noxious assigned her.
Rupert watched her tense for battle. She thought he, too, underestimated her.
“We’re going after them, then, I take it?” he said.
She blinked once, and the tension was melting out of her, and her mouth was shaping a crooked smile when she caught herself. She lifted her chin. “Of course we’re going after them.”
It was what he’d expected of her. All the same, his heart gave a mad leap, because it was what he’d most hoped for as well. And because he’d surprised and pleased her enough to make her almost smile.
“I thought so,” he said coolly. “Well, then, what’s your pleasure, madam: boat or camel?”
Sunday 8 April
TWO DAYS LATER, Daphne stood in the doorway of her boat’s stern cabin, acutely aware of Mr. Carsington standing close behind her.
“Well?” he said.
“It’s quite…spacious,” she said. It’s too small, she thought, too crowded.
The boat was a dahabeeya, the Nile version of a yacht. Mr. Carsington—surprising her by knowing something of ancient mythology—had named it the Isis, after the Egyptian goddess who’d searched the world for her husband’s body.
The Isis was large and luxurious, boasting six cabins under an unusually tall roof. Sheik Salim had commandeered it for his learned (!!!) friend Mr. Carsington. The sheik did not want his tall English friend to get a stiff neck from constantly bending over.
Viewed from the landing place, it had seemed impressively large, especially compared to the other boats. Within, though, was another story.
Too late Daphne realized it was a limited space, which she’d be sharing with Mr. Carsington for an indefinite span of time.
She’d made a mistake, choosing a river journey.
By land she need only cope with sandstorms, temperamental camels, and marauding Bedouins. It was too late to change her mind, though, and reason told her this was the wiser choice. She would do Miles no good if she got killed, and desert travel was a good way for foreigners to get killed. A large, armed escort might make it a degree safer, but this would take far too long to arrange.
As it was, Mr. Carsington had accomplished miracles. Hiring and provisioning a boat ought to take weeks. He’d done it in two days, though Friday, when he’d begun, was the Mohammedan Sabbath, when it was impossible to get anything done.
Unless you happened to be a genie.
“The cupboards hold your books and notebooks,” the genie was saying. “Leena’s stowed most of your wardrobe and other necessaries in her cabin next door. The other trunks and boxes we’ve put in the cabin after. I hadn’t guessed you’d need so many. Perhaps your collection of masterful disguises is more extensive than I imagined?”
“Miles and I were planning a trip to Thebes,” she said. “We’d already packed for it: medicines, rugs, mats, mosquito net, umbrella, lantern, broom, and candles—the everyday needs. But the other trunks’ contents are mainly his.”
She turned carefully in the narrow passage and started back. She glanced into the maid’s crowded cabin. Leena would sleep in Daphne’s room. However, Daphne could not share one room with her or anyone else the rest of the time, day in and day out. Deprived of solitude, Daphne would turn into a caged beast. The two women could not wander about outdoors on deck all day, either. Both custom and the midday heat forbade it.
I’ll work day and night, Daphne told herself. Hieroglyphs demanded one’s total attention, blocking out troublesome feelings and urges. She would not make herself sick with worry about Miles. She would not fret about the time passing. And above all, she would acquire a suitable detachment regarding Mr. Carsington’s…attributes.
She wished she could do it now, but the task was beyond mortal abilities.
Technically, he was fully dressed. However, he’d untied his neckcloth and undone his coat and waistcoat buttons. Her gaze kept straying to his throat and the V of bronzed skin below it. She remembered the heat and weight of his body against her back in the pyramid.
It was impossible to subdue her vibrating awareness of the tall figure standing inches away. It took all her concentrated will to keep her hands to herself. A step would bring her against that muscled frame.
She edged past him to the door of the cabin assigned to storage. “We’d planned to spend some time in Thebes, making a study of the monuments and tombs,” she went on hurriedly. “These trunks hold Miles’s sextant and artificial horizon, chronometer, large and small telescopes, siphon barometer, thermometer, and measuring tape. And his clothes. His kidnappers did not give him time to pack, recollect.” Her voice shook a little at this last.
“We’ll find him,” Mr. Carsington said.
“Yes, yes, we must.” Alive, she hoped.
“Duval has only a few days’ head start of us,” he said. “Do bear in mind, your brother is valuable.”
“Until his captors find out the truth,” she said.
“He’s a scholar,” Mr. Carsington said. “Obviously he’ll know how to keep them in the dark, to make them believe they must take good care of him if they want to find their treasure. If I were them, in fact, I’d play it safe and take him all the way to Thebes to help search for the tomb. He can talk a lot of incomprehensible scholarly jargon and lead them on for months, looking for it. Or he could set them digging at random. These excavations take many weeks. So you see, time is on our side.”
The words lifted her mind from the depths into which it had so unexpectedly plummeted. Though he wasn’t the scholar the world believed him to be, Miles was by no means a fool.
“Yes, I know that,” she said. “Or ought to know it. It’s simply…” She remembered the woman she’d been less than a week ago, her life entirely a life of the mind, all her flawed being safely engaged in solving an intellectual puzzle.
She looked up at him, into the dark eyes that she, who could read so many languages, found so hard to read and so easy to become lost in. “Unlike you, I am unaccustomed to having an exciting life,” she said. “My mind is used to going at an even, orderly pace. Perhaps, in some ways, I have been like those women locked up in harems. They are ill-equipped for dealing with the outside world. I feel as though I am stumbling blindly about.”
“Ah, is that all?” His mouth eased lazily into a smile. Threads of heat slid over her skin, as though his mouth were there…everywhere. “No need to fret,” he said. “If you stumble, I’ll catch you.”
RUPERT STOOD SO near that she didn’t need to stumble. She’d only to tip slightly in his direction and some part of her heavily camouflaged anatomy would touch his.
He loved this boat. It was a brilliant idea. Close quarters. Narrow, dim passage. And a shifting deck where she might easily lose her footing and need catching.
She edged away and started toward the front of the boat.
“This is my cabin,” he said, indicating the door.
“I deduced as much,” she said, and hurried past it to the front cabin.
He ducked under the frame and followed her inside. “This is the salon, as you see,” he said. “Like the whatsit in the house. The room where you receive visitors.”
“It is called the qa’a,” she said.
“Say it again,” he said.
While she did, he gravely studied her mouth. The lower lip was a trifle fuller than the upper, making a tempting hint of a pout.
“It isn’t complicated,” she said. “You can say it if you try.”
“Kah,” he said.
She pointed to her throat. “More syllables. You make the sound here, in the back of the throat.”
He looked at her throat—the bit one could see, a tantalizing inch or two of creamy skin above the prim collar of her black dress. It would be so smooth against his tongue. And her skin would touch his face…and he would drink in her scent. He leant in.
The boat lurched. He fell against her, and she fell back, onto the divan.
For one glorious moment she lay under him, her magnificent bosom crushed against his chest. His heart leapt into a gallop and his privy councilor leapt to attention. He lifted his head and looked down at her. She looked up at him, eyes wide and dark as an evergreen forest. He felt her breath on his skin, and heard it, too, soft and hurried. Her lips parted. He lowered his head.
She shoved her fist against his chest, and “Get off!” she snapped. “Get off, you great lummox! Someone’s coming!”
That was when he noticed the clamor of voices and footsteps outside. He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up to a sitting position. He left the cabin, closed the door behind him, and took a few calming breaths. Patience, he counseled himself. This wanted a slow siege, not a sudden assault. After giving his reproductive organs another moment to compose themselves, he went outside.
He found a smiling Sheik Salim awaiting him.
THE SHEIK HAD come to inspect the boat and wish them a safe journey. He’d brought two large cats—which Mr. Carsington promptly named Gog and Magog—for rat control. He’d brought other gifts as well as a feast. He was sorry to have to part from his learned (!!!) English friend, he said. To cheer his heart, he had decided to make a fête, which they would enjoy together until the Isis reached Old Cairo, where he must take his leave of them.
Daphne was surprised when the sheik invited her to the party, since women were usually excluded. However, someone had informed him that “the English custom is different,” he explained. He behaved most graciously, including her in the conversation, and complimenting her Arabic.
This was no small gesture, Daphne well understood. Deeply touched, she decided upon a more munificent than usual farewell gift.
She had Mr. Carsington present Sheik Salim with a fine set of pistols.
He remained on deck after the sheik had disembarked. Daphne returned to the front cabin. Then she left it and went to her own cabin. Then she returned to the front cabin. She sat down. She got up. She sat down again.
She could not decide what to do.
Was it cowardly to spend the rest of the day and night hiding in her cabin?
She could not hide from him forever.
But she was hotly aware that at the first opportunity, she’d very nearly run amok.
You are a little impetuous, Daphne, I am afraid.
I’m sorry.
It is your youth. In time you will learn to govern your passions, I know.
She hadn’t known until Virgil told her. No one before had told her they were unnatural, and must be strictly governed. No one could have guessed how ungovernable they’d prove to be, wicked things: the temper…the restlessness…the mad longing, as urgent as hunger or thirst.
For one terrible instant, the longing was more than she could withstand.
It had felt so good, that big, hard body on top of hers. It wasn’t good, she knew. It was animal feeling, animal urges: every instinct poised to attack…her hands a mere pulse beat from reaching up and bringing his handsome face down to hers and—
The door flung open.
“You’ve done it,” came the deep voice. “I’d thought I was unshockable, but you’ve done it.”
Heat washed over her. A wave of cold shame instantly followed. “I—”
“Those were John Manton’s work.” Mr. Carsington dropped onto the divan beside her. “I nearly wept.”
“You—Those—I don’t—” She took a calming breath and ordered her brain back to work. “Who is John Manton?” she managed to get out.
His eyes opened very wide. The dappled sunlight trickling through the shutters softened his features. This and his incredulous expression combined to make him look for a moment like the innocent boy he must have been long ago. Very long ago.
“Who is Manton?” he repeated. “Who is Manton?”
“Ought I to know him?” she said.
He stared at her for a time. “You said you lived a quiet life,” he said. “Was it in a cave, by chance? A monastery?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “I told you I was bookish,” she said. “I do not go about much.”
“Have you ever been to London?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “The Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum, is it not? And the head of Young Memnon. Naturally I went often to London to attend lectures as well. That is how I met your cousin Miss Saunders.”
He shook his head. “Your ignorance surpasseth all understanding. Even Cousin Tryphena knows that the brothers Manton of Dover Street are the finest gun makers in all of England, perhaps in all the world. I hope those weren’t your brother’s. He may disown you—and I shan’t blame him a whit.”
“Before we left England, we bought a great many gifts,” she said. “Mr. Belzoni was quite clear on this point. One of his rivals, you know, lost his chance to obtain for France the head of Young Memnon because he’d insulted the local chief with a paltry gift of bottled anchovies.”
Mr. Carsington’s expression became tragic. “It’s a good distance from a bottle of anchovies to a pair of Manton’s best.”
“I know that,” she said. “Miles did tell me the pistols were for persons who performed services above the common. Sheik Salim spared us a stay in a dungeon at the very least—and possibly a short trip to the headsman. He found this boat and moved heaven and earth to help you make it ready. Furthermore, it was most kind and gracious of him to invite me to the fête and actually converse with me.”
He shrugged. “He would have talked to you from the first, but he thought it improper. Once he understood that English custom permitted him to talk to a lady, he was more than happy to do so. He said he’d never realized a woman’s brain could be so large. I’d never realized it could have so many great, gaping holes in it.”
“Really, such a fuss you make about a set of firearms,” she said. “Could you not see how pleased he was?”
“Of course he was pleased. Who wouldn’t be? Those are Manton’s finest. I have coveted them this age.”
“Then I should think you’d already have a pair. Or do you want more? How many pistols does a man need, exactly?”
He let out a sigh. “My finances haven’t been flourishing lately.”
“Oh,” she said. She wanted to say a great deal more. Or ask, rather. She realized she knew next to nothing about him. But one did not discuss money, except with one’s man of business. She looked down at her hands, hoping her vulgar curiosity didn’t show.
“One of those dreaded summons to my father’s study,” he said. “He told me if I couldn’t live within my means, I was welcome to live within a debtors’ prison. He meant it. All the world knows Lord Hargate never utters idle threats. I thought debtors’ prison might prove rather confining.”
“So you learnt to economize,” she said. “I wish I had some lessons. Miles, too. He is even worse than I. No notion of what’s reasonable and what isn’t. If he had any notion, we mightn’t be in this fix.”
Mr. Carsington was studying her again. “I see,” he said, and she wondered uneasily what, exactly, he saw. “That explains. Everyone knows the local bigwigs prefer gifts of European firearms. It didn’t occur to your brother that a merely serviceable weapon would do.”
“Of course it didn’t occur to him. If you knew Miles…” She blinked hard and swallowed.
“Tell me,” Mr. Carsington said, “if it had been you that day, in Vanni Anaz’s shop, would you have haggled?”
IT WAS A desperate attempt. Rupert didn’t know whether it would provoke her or not, but she was on the verge of waterworks, and he needed a distraction. The question was the first to come to mind.
She blinked, wiping out the almost-tears shining in her green eyes.
“Would you?” Rupert pressed. “Would you think, ‘This would make a lovely gift for Miles,’ and say to Anaz, ‘I’ll take it,’ and not stop to add up piastres and purses and such and convert them into pounds, shillings, and pence?”
She considered, her green eyes moving from side to side in that way she had, as though she read her own thoughts.
“Well…possibly…” She blushed. “Yes, probably. Very likely. It was splendid. Impossible to resist.”
“It was artistic, you told me,” he said. “Superior quality. The papyrus version of Manton’s finest, in other words.”
“Oh, it was,” she said, and her voice grew wistful. “I wish you could have seen it. The colors. The figures. There is a handsome papyrus illustrated in color in the Description de l’Egypte, and it is not half so beautiful.”
She went on to describe her papyrus—for it was hers, Rupert was sure, and every word she uttered only confirmed what he’d suspected when she knelt beside the table in the qa’a of her house in Cairo, when she’d discovered the theft.
She had the thing memorized, practically. She described the illustrations, some in large blocks, most in long lines across the top of columns of signs. She told him the names of the easily recognized gods and speculated about the others.
She must have realized she’d said too much, because she stopped midsentence to explain. “I made the copy for Miles,” she said. “That is why I recall so many details.”
“It sounds a great deal of work,” Rupert said. “I vow, you must be the most devoted of sisters.”
Telltale pink washed across her wide cheekbones. “His penmanship was never good and only grows worse. It is barely legible. He must have an amanuensis—and it gives me something useful to do. And of course one learns a great deal in the process.”
If she’d gone about in Society more, Rupert thought, she’d know how to lie better. He wasn’t sure why she lied. It was clear, though, that she’d insufficient practice. It hadn’t occurred to her to conceal her books, or mix them with her brother’s belongings, for instance.
One had only to glance at the collection in the cupboard to realize she’d mastered at least a dozen languages.
Rupert wondered if the same could be said of Miles Archdale.
Sunday night
WHAT COULD BE said of Miles Archdale was this: he sat on a thin, vermin-infested mattress in the dirty cabin of a shabby boat. He stared at the chain fastened to his ankles. He was calculating how many blows with how heavy an implement would shatter the rusty metal, and wondering how to do it without breaking any of his bones in the process.
The boat seemed to have stopped for the night, which meant a rat and mosquito invasion. A pity he couldn’t train the rats to gnaw at the chain. Or to gnaw on his hosts.
One of them looked as though something had gnawed on him.
Butrus, the leader, apparently, was a square block of a brute. His battered and scarred face reminded Miles of the Sphinx’s mutilated visage, especially the nose, for his was smashed flat. His right hand bore a stump where the little finger should be. While the half dozen or so men occupying the boat were not the most attractive lot of villains, Butrus was by far the ugliest.
Miles was allowed on deck to stretch his legs—in a manner of speaking—only after dark and only with an armed escort. On the first night out, he’d tried calling for help. Butrus struck him with the butt of a pistol, which stretched Miles out on the deck unconscious for a time.
When Miles came to upon the filthy mattress, Butrus advised him not to try such tricks again.
“We are not to kill you,” Butrus told him that first night. “We must not cut out your tongue, because this organ is necessary. We must not cut off your hands. But an ear? A few toes? A foot?” He grinned, displaying a sparse collection of crooked brown teeth. “We must keep you alive. But we need not keep you complete in all your parts.”
Miles had assumed they were holding him for ransom. By the third day, as the boat continued upriver, he grew puzzled. The farther they traveled from Cairo, the more inconvenient the exchange of money for captive would be.
They’d been on the river for seven days now. Where in blazes were they taking him, and why?
The sun had set, and the slow nightfall had drained away the last traces of light in the cabin. He sat in the darkness, his mind moving from the problem of the leg shackles to his sister. By now she would know he was in trouble. By now, he hoped, she’d gone to Noxley for help.
The door opened, and a lantern shone, not very brightly, instantly inhabiting the space with shadows.
Butrus carried the lantern. Behind him came one of his shipmates, bearing the familiar wooden tray. Butrus remained, as he usually did, while Miles ate his supper. This, apparently, was to make sure the prisoner did not secret away the single eating utensil, a wooden spoon. No doubt they feared he’d use it later as a weapon or means of escape—perhaps by waving it about until his captors died laughing.
“Where are we?” Miles asked.
He asked the same question every night. Every night Butrus only laughed at him.
He laughed tonight, too.
Tonight, though, Miles was tired of the game. While Arabic did not trip from his tongue as smoothly and naturally as it did from Daphne’s, his grasp of the language was more than adequate. Especially for dealing with common louts like this one.
“Shall I hazard a guess?” Miles said.
Butrus shrugged. “Who cares, Ingleezi?”
“We’ve traveled at a fairly steady clip since Monday,” Miles said. “This tells me the wind’s been favorable for the most part, and we’re well provisioned.” He calculated briefly. Then, “Minya,” he said. “I estimate we’re not far from Minya.” The area had a bad reputation, if he remembered correctly.
Butrus nodded. “I have heard that you are a man of great learning,” he said. “Your cleverness does not surprise me. Before too long we will take you to a quiet place. There, if you are wise as well as learned, you will do what is asked of you.”
“Ah, I’m to do something,” Miles said.
Butrus shrugged. “Perhaps you will, perhaps you will not. Perhaps you will be unwise, and refuse. This will be better for me, because I have not yet tortured any Ingleezi, and I am interested to improve my learning in this way.”
“A man of ambition, I see,” Miles said. “Most commendable.”
He’d been told the Arabs didn’t understand irony or sarcasm. He couldn’t tell whether Butrus did or not.
The brute merely shrugged and said, “Soon we come to the place where some Feransa await you. They have something for you to read.”
Feransa. Not Ferangi—the all-encompassing Frank, applied to Europeans in general. Feransa was the word for the French.
“It is written in the old language of this country,” Butrus went on. “A papyrus.”
“Hmmmm,” Miles said. He dared say no more until he’d collected his wits. It was a joke, he thought first. It had to be a joke. The trouble was, Butrus was not a joke.
Noxley had mentioned having difficulties with the French and their agents. Belzoni, too, had had several unfriendly encounters with them.
This went beyond the usual rivalry, as intense as it was. This was madness. Did the French truly believe that he—that anyone—could read a papyrus?
Butrus must have misunderstood.
Miles said cautiously, “It’s going to be difficult without my notes.”
“When I torture you, maybe you will remember what is in your notes. Perhaps you would like to hear how I will torture you?”
Miles wondered if it was possible to kill somebody with a wooden spoon, because clearly, he must do something and do it quickly—
Which was when the shouting started.
He heard heavy, hurried footsteps over the decks, and the clank of weapons. Butrus jumped up and started for the door. It flung open, just as the boat gave a lurch. Butrus fell backward. A man burst into the room, another behind him. Miles saw the glint of a blade before the lantern toppled. A figure came toward him. He thrust out his shackled feet, and the figure fell. A sword rose and came down. A scream began and stopped suddenly. The last thing he saw was the sheen of metal slicing through the air down toward him.