The Golden One (51 page)

‘I beg you will excuse the interruption, Mrs Emerson, but could we postpone the interrogation for a few hours?’ Sir Edward rubbed his eyes. ‘I need to rest, even if you
don’t, and there are a few domestic matters I must attend to.’

‘Certainly. Just show me where you keep the clean sheets.’

It was the final straw for poor Sir Edward. ‘I – Oh, Lord. I don’t know that there are any, Mrs Emerson.’

‘If there were, where would they be? Come,’ I said in a kindly manner, ‘let’s just have a look. It won’t take long.’

The others declared they would stretch out on the divans, and Sir Edward and I went off on what he clearly believed was a hopeless quest. Eventually we found a cupboard that contained linens of
various kinds. I selected a few. Sir Edward, always the gentleman, took the pile from me. I allowed him to do so, though he had a little difficulty getting hold of it.

‘I was sorry to see that,’ I said, with the lightest possible touch of his arm. ‘It was in France that it happened, I suppose.’

‘Ypres.’ He spoke curtly, avoiding my eyes. Pity he would not accept; acknowledgment of his sacrifice was owed him, and I felt obliged to make it.

‘It must have been dreadful. I am so sorry.’

‘What, womanly sympathy from you, Mrs Emerson? A touch out of character, isn’t it?’

‘It is sincere.’

‘I know.’ His rigid features relaxed. ‘I am sorry too, for speaking rudely. It’s not so bad, you know. It got me out of the army, which was all to the good. I had become
somewhat disenchanted.’

‘Can nothing be done about an artificial limb?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ve got quite a good one. It broadens my repertoire of disguises to a remarkable extent. I’m thinking of attaching a bayonet, or perhaps a hook.’

I patted him on the shoulder. ‘Splendid,’ I said heartily.

‘Or a parasol,’ said Sir Edward. His smile was that of the charming debonair gentleman I had known.

I was to remember that smile for a long time. When I woke from a brief but refreshing nap, he was gone – from the house and from the grounds and, I feared, back into the powder keg that
was Gaza.

It took me a while to discover this. I had decided to sleep on one of the divans rather than go to the trouble of making up a bed which, if events continued to unfold, I might never occupy. When
I went to look in at Esin, I almost fell over Selim, who was stretched out across her threshold. I left him there, since that was where he had chosen to be, and went back to the salon. Ramses and
Nefret lay side by side, his arm round her and her head on his shoulder. I stood for a moment watching them. One of Ramses’s eyes opened and regarded me quizzically.

‘All’s well,’ I reported, and tiptoed towards the divan where Emerson lay.

I did not mean to sleep for more than an hour, but even as I reclined the skies were darkening, and the gentle murmur of rain must have lulled me. It was the sound of heavy footsteps that woke
me – the running steps of a person in haste. I sat up with a start and reached into my nearest pocket. It was the wrong pocket. I was fumbling in another, trying to locate my little pistol,
when a man burst into the room and came to a stop. He was breathing heavily and water poured from his soaked garments.

Emerson was thrashing around and muttering, as he always does when he is suddenly aroused, but Ramses was on his feet, alert and ready. The newcomer, too breathless to speak, held out empty
hands in the universal gesture of conciliation. I could not see him clearly, the room was rather dark. I knew him, though.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So here you are at last. It is all right, Ramses.’

‘No – it – isn’t.’ Sethos got it out one word at a time. ‘Where’s – Edward?’

‘He isn’t here?’ I asked.

‘No.’

Emerson had finally got his wits together. ‘It’s you, is it?’ he demanded, squinting through the gloom. ‘High bloody time.’

‘Bloody too late,’ said Sethos, beginning to control his breath. ‘Did Edward tell you where – ’

‘We were not even aware of his departure,’ I replied. ‘Please compose yourself so that we can converse rationally.’

‘And get out of those wet clothes,’ Nefret said.

‘What, here and now?’

Ramses had lighted several of the lamps. Sethos threw his shoulders back and tried to look as if he were in command of the situation, but he was a wretched figure, every garment saturated and
even his beard dripping.

‘A chill can bring on malaria,’ Nefret said calmly. ‘Get them off at once. I’ll ask Mustafa to make tea.’

‘And something to eat,’ I called after her, as she hastened from the room.

‘And something to wear,’ said my brother-in-law resignedly. He pulled off the sodden lump of his turban and the fez round which it had been wrapped. ‘This is as far as I am
prepared to go, Amelia, while you remain in the room.’

Anxious as I was to hold the long-delayed discussion – urgent as were the questions to be asked and answered – physical needs took precedence. Sethos had had malaria before. It would
be extremely inconvenient if he came down with it again.

‘Come with me,’ I ordered, and led the way out of the room.

Selim, still lying romantically across the girl’s threshold, woke instantly when we approached – and no wonder, on that hard floor. He sprang up, reaching for his knife.

‘He is a friend, Selim,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to help him change his wet clothing.’

‘I do not require a damned valet,’ Sethos snarled.

‘Selim isn’t a valet. You require assistance, and that is what you are about to get. Follow me, both of you.’

A large cupboard in the other bedroom contained an extensive wardrobe, ranging from abas and galabeeyahs to a nice tweed suit that Sethos had borrowed from Ramses the year before. I left them to
it, and returned to the salon. Mustafa had scraped together a rather extraordinary meal – tinned tongue and bread and fruit, and, of course, tea. Before long, Selim and Sethos joined us, the
latter in dry garments, his unruly hair still damp.

‘Well, this is cosy,’ said Sethos, with a decidedly sardonic inflection. ‘A jolly little family gathering. I’ve been chasing you across the countryside all
night.’

‘Were you at the rendezvous?’ I asked.

‘Not until after you’d left. Would you like to know what happened?’

‘Very much so,’ said Emerson, with a snap of his teeth.

‘I had to make a run for it,’ Sethos explained. ‘I – er – miscalculated a trifle, you see. I didn’t expect Sahin would move so quickly or so decisively.
He’s a very efficient man, with a well-organized network of supporters hereabouts. It didn’t take him long to find out you were in Khan Yunus. You weren’t exactly discreet, were
you?’

‘The disclosure of our true identities was unavoidable,’ I said. ‘And if I may say so, criticism from you is unwarranted, under the circumstances.’

‘Possibly,’ Sethos admitted. ‘If I may continue my narrative?’

‘Pray do,’ I said.

‘As I was about to say, the disappearance of his daughter hit him hard and he acted instantly. He sent orders to attack your house. There was a chance the girl was with you. If she
wasn’t, he hoped to acquire a hostage – one or all of you.’

‘How do you know all that?’ I asked.

‘He told me.’ Sethos had been eating ravenously, between sentences. He swallowed a bite of fruit and went on, ‘We had one of those friendly little chats – you know what
they’re like, Ramses. He explained in detail what he meant to do, and added, more in sorrow than in anger, that he was going to lock me up, since he had been forced to the conclusion that my
conversion was not sincere.’

He bit into a piece of bread. The pause was for effect, as I knew; the man could not resist making a dramatic story of it.

‘So you hit him?’ Ramses was as intrigued as the rest of us. ‘What with?’

‘Not my fist, I assure you. He was waiting for that. I was nibbling daintily on a nectarine. I shoved it in his face. He was trying to claw the pulp out of his eyes and spit it out of his
mouth when I broke his water pipe over his head. It made a frightful mess and rather a loud noise, so I didn’t wait to tie him up. I calculated I had about sixty seconds before a servant got
nerve enough to investigate, so I started running – straight out of the house and past the guards. If you don’t have time to be cautious, speed and effrontery are your only hope. It was
a spectacle dreadful enough to throw most people into a panic,’ he added with a grin. ‘The holy infidel, waving his arms and screaming broken phrases from the Koran. Nobody tried to
stop me. Religious frenzy is dangerous. I kept running, divesting myself of my elegant ornaments as I went and scattering them about the streets, to the additional confusion of those I encountered.
I presented the last – a very handsome emerald brooch, which I hated to give up – to the officer in command of one of the guard posts. With my blessing. May I have more tea?’

Ramses was the first to break the fascinated silence. ‘I’m a bloody amateur,’ he murmured. ‘Excuse me, Mother.’

‘You haven’t done so badly,’ his uncle conceded. ‘This last escapade wasn’t well thought out, though. You ought to have had a means of escape arranged before you
shot at me.’

‘You don’t suppose Ramses would do such a thing!’ Nefret said indignantly.

‘Now, now, keep calm. I did not suppose my affectionate nephew really intended to kill me. I credited him with realizing that an attack on me, presumably by my erstwhile employers, would
establish me as a bona fide traitor. I didn’t expect he would go so far as to let himself be caught. That was a complication I did not need.’

‘Accept my apologies,’ said Ramses, scowling at his uncle. Sethos did have a gift for turning people against him.

‘Who was it, then, if it wasn’t you?’

‘A fellow named Chetwode. He’s the general’s nephew. His superior is a man named Cartright.’

‘Oh, that lot. How did you – ’

‘Never mind that now,’ I interrupted. ‘If we keep getting off onto side issues we will never make sense of this business. What happened after you left Gaza?’

‘I decided I had better go to Khan Yunus and warn you.’

‘You might have thought of that earlier,’ Emerson grumbled.

‘I told you, I didn’t know what Sahin intended to do until he informed me. I barely made it out of the city before his men came boiling out in hot pursuit; I had to lie low in the
hills until they tired of looking for me.’ He took a cigarette from the tin Ramses offered him and lit it before he went on. ‘By the time I got to Khan Yunus, all hell had broken loose.
The army was on the scene, trying to suppress the riot, without the vaguest idea of who had started it or why. Your place had been broken into, and some of the locals were taking advantage of the
confusion to carry off anything they could lay their hands on.’

‘The motorcar!’ Selim exclaimed. ‘Did they damage it?’

‘I wasn’t given the opportunity to examine it,’ Sethos said dryly. ‘I hung about trying to look harmless until the military got things more or less under control. You
hadn’t shown yourselves, so I could only hope Edward had warned you in time for you to escape. It was after midnight by then. I had the devil of a time getting out of town, since I had to
avoid not only soldiers looking for rioters but rioters who might be Sahin’s lads. The whole bloody countryside was aroused – looking for a pack of horse thieves, as the sergeant who
collared me explained. I was not in possession of a horse, so he let me go. You people really excel at stirring up trouble! I pushed on and, of course, found the ruined house deserted. You’d
been there – you left an empty biscuit tin – and so had several horses. So I came on here. I couldn’t think where else you might have gone. It took a while, since I was on
foot.’

I observed the faintest tremor in the hand that extinguished his cigarette. It was not the only sign of fatigue; his voice was flat and his face was drawn.

‘You had better get some sleep,’ I said. ‘We will talk again later.’

‘As you command, Sitt Hakim.’ He got slowly to his feet. ‘Is someone sleeping in my bed?’

‘Miss Sahin is in one of the beds. I will make up the other one for you.’

‘There is no need for that.’

‘Clearly it is not an amenity to which you are accustomed. I will do it anyhow. Come along.’

What I wanted, as the Reader must have surmised, was a private chat. Even Emerson realized the reasonableness of this, though he did not much like it. He had never completely conquered his
jealousy of his brother, baseless though it was – on my side, at any rate.

‘Allow me to give you a little laudanum,’ I said. ‘You won’t sleep without it, you are too tired and too on edge.’

‘Are you afraid I’ll sneak out of the house?’ He watched me unfold one of the sheets and then took hold of the other end. ‘I have better sense than that. If Edward
isn’t back by nightfall, I will have to take steps, but I cannot function efficiently without sleep.’

He had tucked the sheet in any which way. I remade that end of the bed. Our eyes met, and he smiled a little; he was thinking, as was I, what an oddly domestic scene this was. ‘I
don’t need your laudanum,’ he went on, removing a container from one of the shelves.

‘How long have you been taking that?’ I asked, as he swallowed a small white pill.

‘Weeks. Months.’ He stretched out on the bed. ‘It works quickly, so if you have any questions – which you undoubtedly do – talk fast.’

‘I only wanted to ask about Margaret. Have you heard from her?’

He hadn’t expected such a harmless subject. ‘Margaret? No, not for months. I couldn’t very well carry on a frequent correspondence, could I?’

‘Does she know what you are doing?’

‘She knows everything about me.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Including – ’

‘Everything.’

‘You have complete confidence in her, then. Are you going to marry her?’

Sethos opened his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You aren’t going to leave me in peace until I invite you into my innermost heart, are you? The question is not whether
I am going to marry her, but whether she will consent to marry me. I asked her. I hadn’t intended to, it – er – came into my head at a particularly – er – personal
moment. She said no.’