Shadows on the Nile (43 page)

Monty, I’m sorry. I’m coming back
.

The thought of him speeded up her feet. Above her the sky was immense, a vast sheet of intense blue that seemed to take up the whole world, with just a smear of sand at the bottom that she was trudging over. No wonder Fareed had set up his headquarters out here, where only scorpions cared to venture. As she walked, she went over in her head their conversation in the cave, forcing her mind to consider each of his words. They frightened her. It was only a matter of time before he let those black
galabayas
loose on the group in the house they were watching.

She scrambled up a steep bank of slippery sand and could not suppress the hope that from the summit she would see something in the distance. Her heart plummeted when from the top she saw nothing but desert. It had swallowed her and was never going to spit her out.

She stepped over snakes. Squirming masses of them. Yet when she blinked they were just ripples in the sand. Her heart banged noisily in her chest. She was seeing things. Trees waving their branches in the wind, a cool inviting lake floating in the sky. Scarab beetles scuttling around her feet and crawling up her legs. Worst was Tim’s head. It kept bobbing up disembodied on ridges and boulders, rolling like a football down into gulleys or lying half-buried in wave after wave of sand. Eyes wide open.

She tried to be rational. How much can dehydration warp the brain?

She didn’t know. The landscape seemed to throb with heat and the desert became a blur around her. She lost track of time and spent hours thinking of nothing but placing each foot in front of the other. She felt something start to grow inside her, something hot and hard in her chest and it took her a while to recognise it as hatred. She hated the sun, hammering on her head. She hated the desert that would not relent. She hated each grain
of sand and grit that rubbed her skin raw. She hated Fareed. She hated his moral fervour, she hated his passion for his country, she hated him for being right.

She clung to the hatred, cradled it to her, and used its strength to drive her forward. It was when she realised that the sky was starting to grow darker and that for hours she had still been following the sun that she collapsed on to her knees in a rocky wadi and screamed her rage. She lifted a stone to hurl at the laughing face of the sun in the west.

Instantly she felt a needle-sharp pain in her hand. She dropped the stone and watched a dark crab-like creature scuttle away from it. It was a scorpion.

‘Montague, stop it. You’ll get yourself killed.’

Monty was not going to get himself killed. Nor was he going to stop. He was searching the riverbank, checking the interior of every hut, every mud-brick house and every boat this side of the river. There was a row of houseboats moored along the Nile and he barged his way aboard each one, using every scrap of his English charm to make it work and a good deal of the money in his pocket when it didn’t. He had convinced himself that the Nile was the key – so the logical action now was to search the riverbank for her.

‘Jessie! Jessie!’

He bellowed her name, but there was no answering call. He headed for a mud hut with a rush mat roof that was isolated from the rest. It looked promising.

‘Montague, you daft bugger. I mean it. What you’re doing is dangerous. You’re asking for trouble.’

‘Jessie!’ he called.

‘Are you listening to me or have you got cloth ears?’

‘I’m listening, Maisie.’

‘This isn’t helping.’

For the first time since he’d heard of Jessie’s disappearance, something snapped in Monty and he drew to a halt. Maisie
was right. This wasn’t helping. All he was doing was blocking out reality, replacing pain with activity, in an attempt to forget that he had left her alone at a moment when she had needed him. This blind search was not the way to find her. Even he knew that.

‘Montague,’ Maisie said, taking both his lapels in her hands, ‘what would you do if you were chasing a fox?’

He frowned at her tall grey figure. ‘I’d follow the hounds.’

‘Well,’ she gave him a shake, ‘let’s do that.’

Jessie heard the figure beside her as a soft murmur in the sand. Her own shadow stretched far ahead of her, as the sun sighed and sank down on to the horizon behind her, so it struck her as odd that the figure had no shadow.

When she turned her head she realised why. Serket had come to her. It took an effort to decide whether this was good or bad. Her hand was extremely painful, the poison seeping along her arm and burning her flesh. She had tied it with her blouse across her chest, keeping the hand higher than her heart. She kept telling her mind that most scorpion bites were not fatal but her mind kept arguing that what if this was one of the scorpions of Egypt that carry deadly poison? What then? She should not be pumping poison around her body by walking. She should rest.

If she rested, she would die.

Red welts had risen on the skin of her arm like burns. Her vision kept blurring, so that she stumbled over stones and missed her footing on the sand, so that time and again she was on her knees, the broken landscape distorted and swollen around her, a strange hissing sound coming from her parched mouth.

And now Serket was here.

Goddess daughter of Ra. She was beautiful, draped in red garments with raven-black hair and bearing an
ankh
in her hand, the Egyptian key of life. Because Serket can kill or Serket can heal. On her crown she wears an enormous scorpion and her name can be translated as ‘she who tightens the throat’ or ‘she who causes the throat to breathe’. The bringer of life and the bringer of death.
Serket had come for her.

‘Sir Montague Chamford, sir, I have fine news for you. I have learned who Anippe Kalim is.’

‘Yasser, you are a man of rare ability.’

‘Allah is mighty and bountiful in bestowing his blessings,’ Yasser beamed, but his eyes were sharp and more nervous than previously.

‘So you know where this young woman lives?’ Maisie Randall asked. She discarded the mint tea with scorn. ‘Come along, cough it up. Where can we find the girl?’

The handsome young Egyptian focused his attention only on Monty. ‘It is not all good news,
bey
.’

‘I’m waiting!’

‘The price has gone up.’

‘What?’

‘You did not tell me that your Anippe Kalim is running with dangerous dogs.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She is an archaeology student from Cairo University. When she was there, she became part of a revolutionary group who are known to use violent methods to achieve their aims.’

‘And what are their aims?’

‘To rid Egypt of the invading forces and give Egypt back to the Egyptians.’ He said it in a toneless voice which carried no hint of his own opinion. ‘They are not to be crossed,
bey
.’

‘Why would they be interested in Jessie Kenton?’

‘That I don’t know, I’m sorry.’

‘So where does this revolutionary organisation have its headquarters?’

‘No one knows for sure. But there are rumours.’

Monty sighed elaborately. Yasser was playing a strong hand. He reached into his pocket for his wallet but it was Maisie who folded her arms across her chest and addressed Yasser firmly.

‘Listen here, sonny. We are talking about a young woman’s life here. I want you to get that into your head right
now. It’s not a game played for money, dangling scraps of information in front of us till Sir Montague digs deeper into his pockets again. A young woman’s life, Yasser. Remember that! Imagine if it was your daughter.’

The Egyptian was taken aback by her outburst, and for the first time Monty stepped closer than politeness allowed. He stood a good head taller than Yasser and could smell his hair oil.

‘What are the rumours?’ he demanded.

Yasser glanced quickly from Monty to Maisie Randall and back again. The smile faded. ‘There is talk of caves. Somewhere off to the west.’ He bowed his head respectfully to Maisie. ‘Mrs Randall, I have a daughter, my little Rabiah. She is my treasure, Allah be praised.’

‘So help us.’

‘I warn you, there are stories of the desert devouring any trucks that dare to enter that area. Even whole camel trains have vanished. People are frightened. Some say that Set, the god of the desert, takes revenge on non-believers who would steal his secrets.’

‘That’s poppycock, and you know it,’ Monty asserted.

Yasser shrugged. ‘It is still dangerous,
bey
.’

‘If we track down Anippe,’ Monty insisted, ‘we’ll find Jessie.’

‘God willing,’ Yasser murmured unhappily.

‘And if we find Jessie,’ Maisie added, ‘we’ll quickly run her brother to earth.’

Monty had a sense of something unexpected having slipped into the room. He turned to her and the woman’s face looked soft and changed in the slanted light from the window blinds, for once more human than heron.

‘How do you know about her brother?’ he asked.

‘She told me about him in Cairo.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, the poor kid was all chewed up at losing him. But I told her at the time, we all lose things, honey. That’s the way life is. What you’ve got to do is learn to live without.’

Monty swung back to Yasser. ‘Any news on the whereabouts of
Timothy Kenton?’

‘No, sir. I think you must be mistaken. He is not in Luxor or I would know by now.’

He looked sincere. But Monty didn’t believe him for a second. Something had scared him. A chill ran through Monty and for a long moment he stared at the street outside going about its business, a laden donkey chewing on weeds in the dust.

‘Yasser,’ he said steadily, ‘it is the nature of man to want to survive, is it not?’

‘Most certainly, yes, sir.’ His words were uneasy.

‘Then let us assume that Miss Kenton is surviving. You may have written off her chances, but I have not, and I intend to track her down.’

‘It is not wise, Sir Montague.’ He shook his head dolefully.

Monty lost patience. ‘Just find me a damn camel!’

Maisie unfolded her arms. ‘And one for me.’

The moon hung over Jessie’s head. It was so vast and so bright that Jessie feared it might fall on her. Its light slid in and out of the dips and hollows of the desert, turning them into silvery blanket-folds that invited her to lie down and rest.

She was cold. So cold she couldn’t feel her feet properly or push the strange fogginess from her brain, and her ears were filled with the night hum of the desert. The vibration of it ran through her whole body and through the ancient stones under her feet. Sometimes she looked around her, startled, convinced the vibration came from the hooves of horses, but there was never anything but rocks and ridges and the taste of sand between her teeth.

Her arm was on fire. But it was only when she stumbled and fell to her knees that she realised Serket had abandoned her. The goddess had gone. Left her alone. That was when she began to suspect that she might be dead. If Serket had vanished, it was because she had completed her job with her poison and her sting, and now Jessie was wandering through the blackness
of Duat, the ancient underworld peopled by monsters and demons. Waiting to have her soul weighed against Ma’at’s feather.

She tipped her head back and howled at the black sky and for answer a shooting star streaked across the heavens, so fast she would have missed it if she’d blinked. It made her force herself to her feet once more and walk. As long as she had breath in her body she would walk, because there were no shooting stars in Duat.

Something touched her infected arm. Jessie drew a quick stunned breath, but she did not dare take her eyes from the shadowy patch of ground in front of her in case she fell again. The falls were happening again and again, jarring and disorientating.

‘Jessie.’

She took no notice.
Keep walking
. A thousand times in the last hours she had heard Monty whisper her name in her ear, and she had steeled herself to ignore it.

‘Jessie.’

Tears rolled down her cheeks, warm on the icy skin of her face. She could feel his breath, sense his touch on her shoulder, and she became aware of the warmth of his chest as he drew her against him. She knew then that the balance of her mind had gone and reality had become a thing of her own making.

‘Monty,’ she breathed.

Again it came in a gentle whisper. ‘Jessie.’

But it wasn’t Monty. She could smell the
galabaya
this person wore and hear the bad-tempered groan of a camel. It couldn’t be Monty. When strong arms lifted her, she struck out with her good hand and heard a grunt of pain. She wanted to see another shooting star to prove to herself she wasn’t dead, but blackness slithered up from within her and spread as cold as the desert night through her head.

Monty could not take his eyes off her. Her face on the pillow looked wretched. Her creamy skin was burnt by the sun and her lips were Parched and cracked, but the doctor had given her
something to make her sleep and something for the pain. She was lying quietly now. The terrible moaning had stopped and her head lay still, instead of tossing from side to side

‘The doc said it’s a bloody scorpion sting but she should recover in a few days. So don’t look so grim.’ Maisie cuffed his shoulder. ‘You got to race through the desert on a bloomin’ camel, didn’t you? A great Lawrence of Arabia story to tell her when she wakes up.’

‘I know. She’s strong.’ But still he could not take his eyes off her. He softly rubbed ointment onto her lips. ‘But her arm is bad.’

‘Like a bloody plank. Poor kid.’

‘Maisie.’

‘What is it?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t be a daft bugger.’ She cuffed him again. ‘You’re the one who did the hunting.’

‘I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you come with me, but you might have found it tough.’

Maisie grinned. ‘Anything you can do, Sir Montague
bey
, I can do just as good, I tell you straight.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Silly towel-headed camel-drivers! Why did they think I’d be unlucky for them?’

‘Just an excuse, Maisie. They didn’t want a woman along.’

She huffed and puffed her annoyance, but he knew it was more for show than anything else.