Touchstone (Meridian Series) (19 page)

      
“Pardonnez-moi, mon Capitan.”
She was quick
to gather her wits, and effected a polite curtsy, as she knew she should.
“Excusez
mon français. Je ne parle qu’un petit peu de français. Est-ce qu’il y a quelqu’un
qui parle anglais?
Does anyone speak English?”

       “I believe I can assist in that regard.” The man
in gray gave her a gracious bow, introducing himself. “May I present myself as
someone you should both know quite well—if I make my point clear enough.” He
gave the two soldiers a sideward glance as he spoke, and his manner made it
obvious that he was trying to convey some urgency. “Call me LeGrand. And do act
like you’ve known me for some time. These gentlemen are quite busy, I’m afraid,
and I should dearly love to send them on their way without further incident.”

       Robert and Maeve just stared at him for a moment,
not knowing what to say. Nordhausen’s eyes narrowed beneath the curls of his
white wig and he was about to ask how this man could have possibly known they
were Americans. Something in LeGrand’s manner spoke of caution, however, and so
instead he opted for discretion.

       “Why of course, monsieur LeGrand,” he began, eying
his concern at Maeve.

      
“Docteur,
LeGrand,” Maeve corrected him.
She had quickly surmised that something was very odd about all this, but her
instinct for caution needed no encouragement. It occurred to her that this man
must be one of the Savants who accompanied the French on their mission to
Egypt
. In that case, it was
more than likely that he would be a professional, or at least highly degreed.

       “You are too kind, Madame,” said the  heavy man in
gray. “How auspicious that I have found the two of you. You see, these men have
been quite on edge of late. The Turkish fleet is anchored not ten leagues away
in
Aboukir
Bay
. Word is that they’ve
swarmed ashore by the thousands. Most inconvenient for our work here, wouldn’t
you say? In fact, this very road is growing ever more dangerous for travelers. Won’t
you be so kind and accompany me to town? I have sent for a carriage, which
should arrive at any moment.” He winked at the French Captain as he spoke.
“Why, there it is now!”

       LeGrand pointed at a distant silhouette on the
road to the east, backlit by the blazoning sun. He spoke quickly to the
soldiers in French, and they regarded the carriage with a look approaching
disdain.

       “Monsieur Fauche, the good Captain here, is
somewhat bothered by civilian doings these days. It has been an arduous
campaign this past year, you understand. He has had his hands quite full, and
needs no bother from the likes of scholars and hangers on, or so he describes the
men of letters these days.”

       “Of course,” said Maeve, her wits about her now.
“Please thank the Captain for his gracious escort. You say the Turks have
landed nearby?” She feigned surprise, casting a fearful glance over her
shoulder toward the sea. “A lady cannot be too careful under such
circumstances, yes? Please tell the Captain how comforting it is to have the
protection of his guard.” She offered a smile, and the Captain met her glance
with a pleased expression as Le Grand conveyed her thanks. The Frenchman tipped
his cap with a gentlemanly nod of the head, sitting a bit taller in the saddle
now.

      
“Bonjour, Madame,”
he said with a smile,
then nodded to Nordhausen in farewell as he pulled his mount about and gestured
at his compatriot.  The two men rode off, heading west on the road to
Alexandria
.

       “A patrol,” LeGrand explained. “Wanted to know
what I was doing out here, in fact. How lucky for me to happen upon the two of
you as I did.”

       “Oh?” Nordhausen’s suspicions needed an answer
now. “And just what were you doing out here at the break of dawn, Doctor, if
you do not mind my asking?”

       “Why, I was waiting for you, of course.” LeGrand
smiled at them, gesturing warmly at the approaching coach. “I believe the lady
dropped something a moment ago, and I thought to return it.”

       Nordhausen looked at Maeve, and they were both
bewildered again, but LeGrand let out a hearty laugh and reached into a pouch
that was sewn into the lining of his riding cape. “Madame,” he said warmly as
he held out an object.

       It was all Maeve could do to stop her jaw from
gaping open, for LeGrand was holding her beaded purse.

15

The
carriage arrived
in a
flourish of dust, a small covered gig drawn by a single horse. LeGrand gestured
magnanimously, though his eyes were wells of apology. “Forgive me, but it is
simply impossible to find a decent carriage in
Egypt
these
days. I managed to hitch this together in the bazaar. The French have
confiscated most of the good riding stock, but I found a plough horse and got
him for a good price.”

       Robert
and Maeve were still taken aback, Maeve staring from the beaded purse, to
Robert, to LeGrand in bewilderment.

       “Oh,
do hop on,” said their host. “The driver knows the way, and when we reach town
I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions. I’ll meet you there soon. Good Day!”
He rode ahead, and Robert shrugged his shoulders.

       “Ladies
first,” he said. “We may as well ride. It will be quite warm soon, and who
knows how far the town is.”

       They
climbed into the carriage and the driver, a surly looking peasant in a soiled
white tunic, goaded the horse with a thin stick to get it moving. They sat on a
plain wood seat, and the carriage cover was little more than a stretch of
canvas draped over a trellis of thin cedar.

       “What
do you make of this?” Maeve was still gawking at the beaded purse, her mind
trying to grasp how it could have come into LeGrand’s hands.

       “That’s
the same purse you took through the Arch?”

       “Exactly
the same. I had it on my shoulder… but now that you mention it, I can’t recall
having it with me when we manifested here. I think it must have slipped off my
shoulder when we first arrived—in that house—wherever
that
was.”

       “Very
strange…” Nordhausen eyed the purse with a furrowed brow, considering. “Perhaps
it shifted to this milieu separately?”

       “And
LeGrand just happens across it by chance and makes a miracle guess that it must
certainly belong to a hapless American couple who would be arriving soon along
that very same road.” The tone of her sarcasm quickly dispatched any rational
argument the professor had thought to make.

       “Yes…
a bit sticky, isn’t it? Did you hear that French Captain call us Americans?”

       “He
did.”

       “I
thought the same, but I’ll be damned… What’s going on here?”

       “Well,”
said Maeve, “at the very least I’d say our cover is blown.”

       “Could
it be our dress? Are you sure this clothing is appropriate?”

       “The
costume is fine. No, I had the sense that LeGrand
expected
us. He said
as much when he gave me this.” She held up the purse

       “Perhaps
he was only being coy. I mean, suppose the purse did shift separately, and he
happened upon it by chance. He spies us on the road and makes the natural
assumption that we dropped it—that you dropped it. Why, if I found such a thing
I would certainly assume it to be the possession of a lady. And you’re the only
one who matches that description in these parts right now.” He resurrected his
first argument, but Maeve just shook her head.

       “This is simply too much of a coincidence to have
happened by chance, ” she said. “His actions were very telling; very
deliberate. He was making subtle implications from the first word out of his
mouth. I think he meant exactly what he said, Robert. He expected us here. He
was riding out with this carriage to find us and, if that’s the case, then
he’s—“

       “Not
from this milieu?” Nordhausen finished her thought. “Well, it wouldn’t surprise
me one bit. I go off to
Jordan
to recover my Ammonite, and look who I run
into—an Arab on a courier mission to the twelfth century! It’s clear now that
these people are operating throughout the continuum, whoever they are. But how
would this LeGrand fellow know we would be here?”

       “You
forget that if he is another time traveler, they have hundreds of years to
research what we do… what we’ve done… what we’re
going
to do. It’s
maddening, but how else to explain this?”

       “I
think we had best get some answers from LeGrand.”

       The
way was not far, and they soon found themselves at the outskirts of a dry and
dusty looking town. There were a few small farms, brown fields watered by
narrow irrigation channels, with clusters of date trees lining the way ahead.
The buildings seemed adobe mud for the most part, though farther on they began
to encounter a few more substantial stone structures. It was to one of these, a
single story inn at the edge of town, that the driver took them. Nordhausen was
pleased to see that LeGrand was already waiting for them, his horse tied to a
rickety hitching post.

       Dismounted
he turned out to be a fairly short man, broad in the shoulders, yet with a
sturdiness that tended more to brawn than to excess weight. Gray-brown tresses
of hair dangled freely from beneath a floppy headpiece, framing his round face
and high, ruddy cheeks. As the carriage pulled up he smiled broadly, his eyes
alight with a mischievous glint that seemed ignited by his wit.   “Greetings,
my American friends. I trust your ride was enjoyable. Lovely morning, though
I’m afraid it will get very hot this afternoon. Then we’ll have the flies, the
French soldiers, and all the rest. But for now, may I offer you a quiet place
to shelter from the sun? Perhaps a cup of tea?”

       “You
are too kind,” said Maeve. “We have a hundred questions, Doctor LeGrand, not
the least of which is this purse.”

       “Ah,
yes, the purse. I thought that would tickle your imagination. Let me see… How
did I come by it, and how in blazes would I know it was yours, let alone that
you would be here, this very morning, on the road to
Alexandria
?”

       “Precisely,”
said Nordhausen, somewhat annoyed with the man’s flippant manner.

       “Well,
the lady left it behind. You really should be more careful, I suppose. But,
seeing as though you are still relatively new to this business, I can
understand.”

       “Left
it behind?” Nordhausen pressed him. “What do you mean? You found it on the
road, yes?” He put forward his hypotheses, hoping that LeGrand would confirm
his guess and relieve them of their worst fears.

       “On
the road? Not exactly,” said LeGrand. “If you must know, I found it a year ago,
in
Alexandria
. You see, I had the pleasure of riding in
the van with Napoleon’s guard when he entered the city that day. Imagine my
surprise when someone took a pot shot at the man from a window overlooking the
alley.”

       Nordhausen
gaped at the remark, looking at Maeve in amazement.

       “Yes,”
LeGrand pressed on. “No one was hurt, thank goodness. The soldiers were very
efficient. They searched every house on the street and found a recently
discharged musket. But the assailant—the assailants I should say,  had
vanished. Witnesses claim they saw a man and a woman at the window when the
shot was fired. It was very strange… until I found the purse, of course.”

       “I
don’t understand,” said Maeve.

       “Well
it was clearly European in style, beaded in the fashion of 19
^th
century
France
. By the way, your costuming is very good,
my lady. The professor’s wig is a tad small for his face, but I think it lends
him an air of credibility, wouldn’t you say?”

       Nordhausen
resisted the instinct to straighten his wig, folded his arms, and glared at the
man. “See here… speak plainly now. Just who are you and how do you know us? How
did you know we would be here on this road?”

       “Well
the purse, of course. It was all written down. Really, Miss Lindford, you
should be a bit more cautious. Using a ball point pen to make notations is one
thing, but taking the note with you through the Arch is quite another. Tisk, tisk.”

       That
last remark swept away any notion that this man might be a local. Maeve looked
at Robert and the two of
them quickly recalibrated
their thinking to the proposition that LeGrand was indeed a fellow traveler in
time
.

       “Oh,
it was all in your notes,” LeGrand continued. “You penned the target date you
were trying to reconnoiter, the premise of your entry, details about the
 Perla,
the missing Americans lost at sea, your idea in assuming their identity—quite
clever, really. But then again, I should expect nothing less from the
redoubtable Maeve Lindford.” There was a special fire in his eyes as he said
that, and Maeve was warmed enough to return a half smile.