The Buried Pyramid (52 page)

Neville raised his head, looking straight up into the arrogant, hook-nosed face of a desert Bedouin who radiated command as casually as the sun did heat. The Bedouin was clean-shaven, except for a narrow, thready mustache that drooped to either side of his mouth, and a sparse beard at the end of his chin. Neither adornment did anything to enhance his features, which were pocked and scarred, perhaps from measles or smallpox.

I suppose he’s adhering to some Moslem regulation,
Neville thought, but for the moment he was so flustered he couldn’t recall what ruling would apply.
No matter how bad his hair looks, he wouldn’t cut it.

“We meet again,” the Bedouin said, in stilted but good English. “Though I think you would not recall me from the first time. It was a night when the fools who followed me thought a mummy walked. I was young, then, a new chieftain, or they would not have dared. I have not forgiven you for that trick, not all these years, all this time. I knew you would return, and I have waited.”

“Ah,” Neville said, not really knowing what else he could say.

“At last you have come, and you shall go before one greater than I to be punished for your sins,” the sheik continued, shifting the rifle slightly so that its barrel was very obviously pointed at Neville.

Up to this point he hadn’t seemed to notice the others, but now Jenny angled her own gun at him and spoke:

“Shoot my uncle, mister, and you’re going to be wearing the landscape.”

The sheik looked neither startled nor surprised, only puzzled. Perhaps, Neville thought, he didn’t realize that this was a girl threatening him.

“Wearing the landscape?” the sheik repeated.

“Like in a grave,” Jenny said. Her American accents, recently mellowed by contact with English speakers, were harsh. “Don’t think I won’t do it, either.”

The sheik blinked.

“I believe you would try,” he said, “but trying and doing are not the same things.”

How Jenny might have replied to this, they never knew, for a voice spoke in Arabic from out of sight behind the sheik.

“Are all four of them there? The four of whom we were told?”

“All four,”
the sheik replied,
“trapped like lice between thumb and forefinger.”

The sheik returned his attention to Neville. “Come out, infidel, and bring your followers with you. You are trapped, and I have many men and many weapons. Come out and we will let you live.”

His tone was wheedling and commanding in turn.

“I don’t trust him,” Jenny said softly, her eyes and weapon never wavering from the sheik.

“He has something in mind,” Eddie agreed.

Stephen said nothing, but Neville could hear his breathing, rapid and nervous, echoing from the depths of the chamber.

“Come out, infidels,” the sheik repeated. “You have guns, but we have guns, too. We have food, water, and time. You may have food and water, but not so much, and I think not so much time.”

Neville refused to answer, and for a long moment the sheik’s dark brown eyes met his own lighter orbs, and neither gave.

“If you come out,” the sheik said reasonably, “we will let you pay us for escorting you to safety. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? You could give us your fine camels and some English gold, and maybe some other presents. If we must shoot you, we will take the camels, of course, and your belongings, but I do not fancy you have much gold with you here in the desert. So you see, we have reason to take you to safety.”

“He has a point,” Stephen said, his breath rasping beneath the words. “Why don’t I believe him?”

“Because you’re too smart to believe a liar,” Eddie said, keeping his voice low, “and not so much a coward that you want to believe him.”

Stephen laughed softly. “I’m so scared, I couldn’t spell my own name on a bet.”

“You’re not running,” Eddie said, “or asking us to surrender. That’s courage enough.”

Neville knew from the sheik’s expression that he couldn’t make out the quiet exchange, but he guessed that the very levelness of the tones in which it was conducted did more for their position than any expression of bravado. Consequently, he kept his peace, not even responding to the offer of safe conduct.

The sheik settled more comfortably on his heels.

“I can wait all day, English,” he said. “I can go sit in the shade of your tent and drink water cooled from the earth. You can go nowhere. I think I shall watch you for a bit, watch your arm grow tired of holding that heavy gun. The good guns are heavy, true?”

Neville bit his lip, forcing himself to maintain what he knew would be an unnerving silence. The others took their cue from him. After the day grew warmer, the sheik did retire. Laughing and singing was heard from the direction of their camp, but the increased trickle of sand told them that someone remained, just out of sight, watching and listening.

It was a long day, harder in that they never dared let down their guard. They rotated posts, though, with Eddie and Stephen standing watch in the front of the chamber so Jenny and Neville could rest, then rotating once more. The water they had carried in kept them from thirst, but could not refresh.

Stephen provided some small distraction for them by translating the inscriptions on the walls. His cultured accents reading off prayers and invocations that had been old millennia ago must have sounded quite peculiar to whomever listened from outside the chamber.

Noon passed and the Bedouin grew quieter, probably taking their afternoon rest. About the time Neville’s watch announced that civilized British were taking tea, there was the sound of booted feet crunching on the sand above.

Neville looked up, expecting to see the sheik, but instead confronted the sun-browned, sardonic features of Captain Brentworth.

“I see you decided to go on a dig after all, Sir Neville,” Brentworth said. The smile with which he accompanied these words was not a friendly one. “I hope you don’t mind our relieving you of your find.”

Neville felt his skin grow hot at the implications of that arrogant “our.” He spoke before he could think.

“Is Lady Cheshire with you then?”

A new voice, laughing, light, and feminine, gave him his reply. “Of course. Who do you think arranged all of this? My goodness, Sir Neville, but you have led us on a merry chase! You should never have refused to share your information. I should so much rather have been your partner than your opponent.”

She purred the word “partner” in a fashion that made Captain Brentworth temporarily shift his glower to her, but she put out her hand and caressed him lightly and the glower faded.

Like a dog,
Neville thought,
patted by the master.

He wondered if he had looked as foolish as Brentworth, and decided he probably had, but forgave himself. No man could look at Audrey Cheshire and not be excused some foolishness.

Voices raised in command came from the direction of the camp. There was a female screech, Sarah Syms saying “Take your hands off of me, you brute!”

Neville felt a momentary wash of confusion. Surely no man would even look at Sarah Syms’s horsey features with lust when Audrey Cheshire was near. Then again, didn’t the Arabs really like their horses, even let them sleep in their tents?

Cheshire and Brentworth had looked back, almost casually when the fracas arose, but now they were on their feet, every line of their bodies defensive.

“What are you doing?” Lady Cheshire said sharply. “Leave my companion alone! Why are you bringing her here?”

The sheik reappeared. Neville could only see his lower body clearly, but from the spread of his legs, he was defiant.

“Silence, woman! I have had enough of your shrewish words. The time has come for you to know who commands. Drop your weapon.”

This last was directed towards Captain Brentworth, who had been in the act of drawing a regulation issue pistol from the holster on his right hip.

Neville saw Brentworth’s hand freeze in mid-motion, drop, and hang limp. An anonymous robed form came forward and removed the gun, patted Brentworth down and removed a second gun from his boot top.

“What are you doing?” Lady Cheshire demanded, and Neville couldn’t help but admire her spirit.

There was an abrupt crack, and a muffled scream. Audrey dropped to her knees, and Neville saw the welt rising on her elegant features. His wide green eyes were wild and terrified. He realized with something like sorrow that she didn’t look lovely anymore.

“Now,” the sheik said, “all of you other English, in the hole with your countrymen.”

Captain Brentworth put himself protectively between Lady Cheshire and the sheik.

“What is this nonsense?” he barked. “We paid you good money to locate these people and this place. We have promised you more on our return. What are you doing?”

“You think that we are your lackeys,” the sheik replied, his tones a snide caress. “You are wrong. Neither you nor my friend the headman Riskali, who sent word to me that in his village were English looking for guides to help them pursue other English into the desert, know that my people have ancient knowledge of the secrets this desert cradles in her care.”

The sheik’s voice rose as he spoke, becoming taut and shrill, a transformation all the more terrifying for his former calm control.

Jenny hissed in Neville’s ear, “They’re distracted—listening to him rant. Should we make a break for it?”

Neville shook his head. “We’d just be shot.”

Eddie growled unhappily, “We may be anyhow, and I’d gladly take someone with me.”

Neville glanced at him and saw his friend’s features remote and fierce. Jenny looked no kinder.

“I want Lady Cheshire,” she said. “If she had kept her nose out of our business, none of this would have happened. You heard the sheik. Cheshire told him we were here!”

Above, Lady Cheshire had raised her tear-streaked face to confront the sheik, “What ancient knowledge? Do you mean these ruins? We will gladly share with you any treasure we find. We could work together. I have contacts in the antiquities markets. You would do far better working with us than selling your finds on the streets of Luxor.”

The sheik spat in the sand in front of her, somehow giving the impression that he failed to spit on her because that would somehow profane his spittle.

“Truly, the Prophet knew what he was saying when he decreed that woman is subordinate to man. Your face is fair, your form skinny but not displeasing. Were you not destined for a judgment that far overrules my own, I would take you as a concubine—or, better, sell you in the markets to the South, for truly I believe touching you would shrivel a man’s member.”

He licked his lips as if reveling in some carnal fantasy only reluctantly relinquished.

“But you have trespassed against an ancient law and an ancient trust. No amount of English gold will free me from my duty.”

The shadow of his rifle swept over the pit. “Walk now, down to join the other English. Call your followers to join you. Do this or we will throw you down, and the hole is deep enough that you will feel pain unnecessarily.”

“He’s serious, Audrey,” Captain Brentworth said. “You can’t bluff your way through this one.”

Slowly, the color draining from her cheeks and leaving the mark of the sheik’s blow to show in high contrast, Lady Cheshire held up her hands.

“Lower me down, Robert. Help Sarah and Rashid before you come.”

The chamber was cramped now, but Jenny and Neville kept to the fore with guns ready—though if there had ever been a problem that shooting couldn’t solve, this was it.

Eddie Bryce pushed past them and stood in the pit, eschewing the shelter so as to look up at the sheik. Scorn shaped every line of his body, and he was terrible in his anger.

“So, you boast of your ancient trust,” he said, and he spoke the pure Arabic of the Koranic scholar. “You are the protectors of the Pharaoh Neferankhotep. You are the servants of commands given by heathen gods! To you I say this: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet. Your faith is a lie. You and your men are lower than vipers, for at least a viper wears its own skin. You creep like a thief, wearing the guise of a just man.”