Sands of Time (38 page)

The last of her prayers completed, she sat back on her heels in silent meditation.

An attractive woman in her mid forties with short dark hair, it was Serena’s huge green eyes which immediately caught the attention. She was a self-confessed modern-day priestess of Isis – something which at the beginning of their cruise up the Nile, had intrigued and amused her fellow passengers. She had been visiting Egypt as part of a spiritual journey which she had been following for many years now. The visit had been traumatic and in many ways frightening, but it had done nothing to lessen her faith. On the contrary, it had left her more certain than ever of the power of her chosen goddess.

Opening her eyes she surveyed her altar. There, between a statue of Isis and the stately, smug Bast cat with its single gold earring and its inscrutable gaze, stood a small old bottle. The pale encrusted glass reflected no light at all. Rather it seemed to absorb it. She reached out to touch it, hesitated, then almost defiantly she picked it up. The bottle seemed unnaturally cold. Uneasily she glanced round the room. It was full of shadows, the only light coming from the candles on the altar and a small table lamp in the opposite corner. Before she had started her prayers she had closed the curtains. By now it would be dark outside, the streets wet with sleet reflecting the car headlights as homecoming commuters turned down the road and competed for parking positions. She could hear an engine revving now as someone tried to back their car into an impossibly tight slot. A stray beam from the headlights as they manoeuvred penetrated the curtains and hit the wall near her. She caught her breath. Something had moved, caught in the beam. A figure, here in the room with her, or just a trick of her overwrought imagination? ‘Blessed Isis, be here. Protect me. Show me what to do with this bottle of your tears.’ Serena whispered the words out loud. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. Her hands holding the little bottle were shaking.

Why had she told Anna that she would take care of it? That her prayers could keep it safe; keep its powers contained. A bottle that in its three thousand years of history had caused nothing but grief and pain. What was it Anna had said, back in Egypt? Generations of people through thousands of years had died fighting for possession of this tiny artefact with its legendary contents. So, why, in the name of all the gods was Serena looking after it?

Outside, her neighbour killed the car engine. The headlights were extinguished and after a moment she heard a door bang. She took comfort from the fact that next door the lights were coming on and that whoever had come home was turning on the TV, pouring a drink, going to look in the fridge, all the everyday things that reassured. Suddenly she did not feel so alone.

Climbing to her feet she carried the bottle over to the lamp. Strangely she had never examined it closely before. The glass was etched and blistered by time; small cement-like patches of hardened sand had set around the base of the sealed stopper. She stared at it, frowning. So small and yet so powerful. It was her fault that it was here. Anna had wanted to get rid of it in Egypt; to give it back to the goddess to whom it belonged. It was Serena, fool that she was, who had retrieved it and its burden of legends, its curses, its attendant ghostly guardians. When Anna tried again to dispose of it, everything had gone wrong. It wouldn’t stay lost. It had returned. She gave another shudder. Had Hatsek and Anhotep, the priestly ghosts from ancient Egypt, travelled with it to London? Were they here now, in her small house, watching over the bottle in her hand? She froze suddenly, her fingers tightening involuntarily around it. A strange scent was drifting round her. She sniffed cautiously, her eyes straining into the corners of the room. There was no incense on her altar today. Just candles. But this was not beeswax she could smell. She swallowed nervously. This was subtle. Exotic. Redolent of the desert wind. It was the smell of
kyphi
, the incense of the gods.

She took a step back, terrified, scanning the room. There was no one there. No ghostly figures in the shadows. It was her imagination.

She looked at the bottle in her hand then quickly went to drop it back on the altar. Blowing out the candles she made for the hall, heading for the phone in her small galley kitchen at the back of the house.

Slamming the kitchen door she leant against it as she dialled Anna’s number.

‘Anna? I’m sorry. I am going to bring it back.’

On the altar in the darkness in the front room a small plug of sand, dislodged when she had put the bottle down, scattered its grains around the statuette of Isis. Beneath the plug a hairline crack in the ancient glass was exposed to the air for the first time. For a while nothing happened. Then an infinitesimal smear of moisture bloomed on the surface of the glass.

In the dark two wispy figures coalesced, smoke-like, hovering above the altar. For a moment they hung there unseen. When new headlights strobed the darkness from the road outside they had dissipated back into the shadows.

3

Anna was sitting at the table in her living room writing letters when Serena arrived the next morning. The two women gave one another a hug then Anna ushered Serena inside. Anna’s grey-green hazel eyes were shadowed and tired, her complexion pale, her long dark hair tied back with a blue scarf.

‘Anna, you have to make a decision about what to do with this.’ Serena’s voice was tense. ‘I don’t think we can keep it, and, I’m sorry, but it’s begun to scare me.’

Anna showed her into her living room and watched as Serena put a small bubble-wrapped parcel down on the table. ‘What’s happened?’

Serena hesitated as they sat down, one on either side of the table, the parcel between them. ‘I have seen shadows. I’m not sure. Nothing has happened that I can put my finger on. I’ve just become uncomfortable about having it in the house. I think –’ She glanced up to hold Anna’s gaze. ‘I think the priests are still guarding it. I think I’ve seen them.’

‘Here? In London?’ Anna looked shocked.

The two women had been friends since their first meeting in Egypt on that fateful cruise. Together they had read Louisa Shelley’s diary, together they had learned to fear the forces that surrounded the bottle which had once been Louisa Shelley’s and which now, in spite of her attempts to rid herself of it, belonged, it seemed inexorably, to Anna.

‘I know I offered to look after it when the Egyptian authorities returned it to you. I know I said I could cope. But I’m not sure I can.’ Serena hesitated. ‘We have to make a decision. Something has to be done. And done fast! I don’t think we can destroy it. I think to do so would unleash untold terrors. That is what Lord Carstairs thought; didn’t he? He knew more about it than anyone and he wanted to possess it so badly because he believed it contained incredible power. I don’t know what kind of power, but I think we should assume that he was right. Listen, Anna, I’ve been thinking. I’m prepared to go back to Egypt, if that is what you would like. I’ll take the bottle back to Philae and leave it there in the Temple of Isis. The goddess can have it back.’

‘I can’t ask you to do that, Serena.’ Anna stared at her aghast. ‘You’ve already done so much to help me. Oh God, I wish I knew what to do for the best. It’s too dangerous for you to take it back! It’s too dangerous for us to keep it here.’

‘Well, we have to do something.’ There was another short silence. ‘This is all my fault, Anna. If I had let you leave the bottle where you wanted to, in the temple, so much would have been different.’ Serena hesitated again. ‘What do you think should happen to it?’

Anna stood up. Walking over to the mantelpiece she picked up the small leather-covered diary which was sitting beside the clock. They both stared at it. ‘I don’t know. Oh God, Serena, I don’t know how to make a decision like this. I have no idea what to do. I just want to get rid of it. I never want to see it again.’

‘If we can’t decide, perhaps we need another opinion,’ Serena put in quietly. ‘What do you think Toby would suggest?’

‘He would say get rid of it. One way or another.’

Serena nodded. ‘Why did you send him away? He helped you so much, Anna.’

‘I know.’ Anna sighed.

‘And he is in love with you.’

‘Yes.’ Anna bit her lip. ‘I think he is.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I got too close to the story, Serena. Too close to Louisa. She sacrificed everything to keep the bottle from falling into Lord Carstairs’ clutches.’

‘But Toby isn’t Carstairs. For goodness’ sake!’

‘I know.’

She had thought about Toby often over the past weeks, wondering where he was, asking herself why she had sent him away. It wasn’t his fault he was Roger Carstairs’ descendant; it was just a supreme irony. And she was missing him more than she would have admitted even to herself.

‘Why don’t you ring him?’ Serena was watching her face. ‘Ask him to come over. See what he thinks we should do.’

‘You’re right.’ Anna nodded. Suddenly more than anything else in the world, she wanted to talk to Toby.

‘He’s gone home, Anna.’ Frances Hayward was enormously pleased to hear from her. She had not forgiven herself for scaring off the woman whom she had dared hope might be potential girlfriend material for her only son. ‘To Scotland.’

The stunned silence which followed that revelation betrayed clearly the fact that Anna had not considered the possibility that he might not be in London, if she had even remembered at all that he did not live there permanently. ‘I’ll give you his phone number.’ Frances wished heartily that she could produce her son with a click of the fingers. Suddenly the Scottish borders seemed very far away.

Serena had seen Anna’s shoulders slump with dejection and waited as she scribbled a number and ended the call. She shook her head looking back at the small bottle, still in its bubble wrap, on the table. ‘I’m sorry. I thought it could just sit in my front room indefinitely. But it was beginning to get to me. It really was.’ She glanced up at Anna again with a rueful shrug. ‘I probably imagined the priests.’ She looked away quickly. ‘But even so I’m scared. Ring him. I don’t think we can make this decision alone. I think we need help.’

4

Toby was standing in front of his easel in the long low conservatory built on the back of the stone farmhouse he now called home. He had moved after his wife had died and it had taken him a long time to put past unhappinesses behind him and settle in. But slowly, between trips abroad, the routine of writing and painting and hacking his way through the jungle of what might one day be called a garden had brought about a feeling if not of permanence, then at least of ease with himself in this place.

The portrait was coming on even better than he had ever dared hope. At first it had seemed a crazy idea. The illustration in the guidebook was so small and fuzzy; the detail hard to make out. A reproduction of a long lost portrait from an obscure collection in America. Perhaps it was the empty canvas that had inspired him. It had been standing there for months, ignored in favour of watercolour paper. But suddenly, after his visit to Carstairs Castle, the idea had come to him out of nowhere. He had clamped the canvas in place and set to work conjuring those strong saturnine features into paint. He stood now staring at the eyes of his illustrious ancestor. Dark, compelling, powerful. He had no idea what colour they had been in real life. He couldn’t tell from the illustration. In the event the eyes he had painted were, though he hadn’t yet realised it, his own.

He looked up suddenly, the brush suspended in mid air. The light was going. Striding over to the windows he gazed out across the garden towards the hills. The sky was the colour of Welsh slate. Huge drops of icy rain were beginning to plop one by one onto the leaves of the magnolia grandiflora which added such presence to the house. He sighed. Time to stop work.

He stood back and surveyed the portrait again as he reached for a paint rag. The face was almost alarmingly life-like. He frowned. He was not over modest about his own capabilities but he was not a fool about them either. He could recognise something exceptional when he saw it and this was exceptional. His best piece of work ever.

Go on. You don’t need more light
.

The voice in his head was peremptory.

Toby gave a wry smile. He was not usually that dedicated either. Any excuse to stop; grab a cup of coffee, read the paper.

The portrait is nearly finished. Why delay?

Why indeed. He picked up his palette again.

The eyes were holding his own with so powerful a gaze that he found for a moment he couldn’t look away. It was like staring into a mirror. He scowled uncomfortably, aware that behind him the rain was beginning to hit the windows with unusual violence, rattling against the glass, resounding on the roof panels above his head. The wind had begun to roar in the boughs of the Scots pine at the end of the garden, a sure sign that a vicious storm was building in the north. Toby stepped back away from the easel.

No. Go on. Finish it!

The conservatory was growing darker by the minute. Turning towards the table spread with paints and pencils he reached for the lamp and turned it on. It was not a light he could paint by but it flooded the studio area with a warm glow. Putting down palette and brush he sighed. No more painting today.

Now! Finish it now!

‘Don’t be silly. I can’t finish it now. It’s too dark.’ To his surprise he had spoken out loud against the noise of the storm. Appalled, he stared round. The voice, the voice that was egging him on, had come from inside his own head. Or had it? He glanced at the picture. It was barely visible outside the range of the lamplight. He moved closer to it. It was finished, or as near as dammit. All it needed was one or two more touches of the brush. He reached for one and leaned closer, adding a small twinkle to the eyes, a quirk to the corner of the mouth. Then he stood back again, satisfied.