Whispers in the Sand (15 page)

Anna turned back to the river, leaning on the rail. She, too, was looking up beyond the low bank and the dark silhouette of the trees. The stars were so bright. So clear. She shivered. “So, tell me about my bottle.”

“I don’t remember what I said.” Serena took a sip from her glass. She caught sight of Anna’s face in the darkness and gave a rueful smile. “No, honestly. I don’t. Sometimes I do, but more often than not I go into some sort of trance state. I’m sorry, Anna. But that’s how it is for me. You will have to tell me what I said.”

“You talked about hatred and treachery and blood.” The words hung for a moment in the silence. “You described a man. The priest. You said he was tall, with piercing eyes.” She turned with a start at the sound of footsteps behind them.

“That sounds like me. Tall. With piercing eyes!” Andy had appeared at the top of the steps. “Come on, girls. What are you talking about so secretively? Serena, old thing, I can’t have you appropriating the most beautiful woman on the ship. It’s not allowed. Especially if you’re going to discuss other men.” He gave an amiable grin.

Serena and Anna exchanged glances.

“We’ll join you in a minute, Andy.” Serena did not move from her chair. “Now, bugger off, there’s a good chap.”

Anna hid a smile. She said nothing, watching his momentary discomfiture. It was followed by a shrug. “OK. Don’t shoot!” He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I know when mere males are not wanted. There’ll be drinks on the bar for you if you want them.”

They watched as he padded back across the deck with a nonchalant wave of the hand and disappeared down the steps out of sight.

It was a few moments before Serena spoke. “Andy is a scoffer. A non-believer. I think it would be wiser not to mention any of this to him.”

“I agree.” Anna sat down on the chair next to her. She pulled her sweater round her shoulders with a shiver. “So, what do I do?”

“You could throw the bottle in the Nile.” Serena tipped back her head and poured the last dregs of her drink down her throat. “Then my guess is you’ll be shot of the problem.”

Anna was silent. “It was Hassan’s gift to Louisa,” she said at last.

“And what happened to them?”

Anna shrugged. “I haven’t read much of the diary yet, but I know she came home safely to England.”

“It’s up to you, of course.” Serena leant forward with a sigh, her elbows on her knees.

“You said you were studying Egyptian mysticism,” Anna said slowly. “So, perhaps there is something you could do. Could you talk to him?” Part of her couldn’t believe she was actually asking; another part was beginning to take Serena very seriously.

“Oh, no, that doesn’t qualify me to deal with this.” Serena shook her head. “Anna dear, this is—or could be—heavy-weight. A high priest, if that is what he was, would be way out of my league. Probably out of the league of anyone alive today. Those guys practically invented magic. You’ve heard of Hermes Trismegistus? And Thoth, the god of magic?”

Anna bit her lip. “I don’t want to destroy the bottle.”

“OK.” Serena levered herself to her feet. “I tell you what. You read some more of that diary. See what happened to Louisa. How did she deal with it? Perhaps nothing happened to her at all. I’ll spend the night thinking about this; tomorrow we go to the great healing temple of Kom Ombo. Who knows, perhaps well be able to appease the guardian of the bottle by making an offering to his gods.”

It was late when Anna let herself into her cabin. She stood for a moment, her hand still on the light switch, staring at the suitcase lying on the floor. Behind her, the short corridor was empty. Serena had gone to her own cabin which she shared with Charley on the floor below.

Anna bit her lip. An hour’s cheerful socialising in the boat’s lounge bar talking to Ben and Joe and Sally had relaxed and distracted her. She had not forgotten that the bottle would still be here in her cabin, but had been able to put it to the back of her mind. Leaving the door open behind her, she went over to the suitcase and knelt down. Opening it, she looked in. Only a small bulge in the side pocket showed where the bottle was hidden. Taking a deep breath, she took it out, still carefully wrapped in its scarlet silk. Not stopping to think, she left the cabin, hurried down the short corridor to the main staircase, and ran down to the reception desk at the foot of the stairs on the restaurant floor. There, behind a panel in the wall, was the boat’s safe where they had all lodged their passports and any other valuables they didn’t want to leave lying around in cabins or bags. The desk was empty and in darkness. Taking a quick, jerky breath, she punched the brass bell which lay on the otherwise empty polished surface. The sound resonated round the reception area, but the door behind the desk which led towards the crew’s quarters remained closed. Agitatedly she put out her hand to strike the bell again, then she changed her mind. A glance at her watch had reminded her that it was nearly midnight. It wasn’t fair to expect anyone to be on duty at this hour. Except for Omar. He had told them he was there for them at any time of day or night if there were any problems. But he had meant appendicitis or murder, not a forgotten trinket. That could wait until morning. Or could it?

Turning, she hurried back towards the stairs. His cabin was on the same level as hers, at the far end of the corridor.

Outside his door, she stopped. Was she really going to wake him at this hour of the night to ask him to put something in the safe? For several seconds she stood there, undecided, then, turning away, she walked slowly towards her open cabin door.

On the threshold, she hesitated. She had only been away a few minutes, but something in the cabin had changed. Her fingers tightened involuntarily around the small silk-wrapped bundle in her hand as she stood in the doorway peering in. The suitcase was still lying where she had left it, the lid thrown back, in the middle of the floor. She stared at it. It was empty, but something was different. The obliquely slanting light from the bedside lamp threw a wedge-shaped black shadow across the empty case, a shadow in which something was lying. Something which hadn’t been there before. Her mouth dry, her heart beating fast, she forced herself to take a step nearer. A handful of brown, crumbled fragments of what looked like peat lay in the bottom of the case. She looked down at them warily, then slowly she crouched down and reached out her hand. They were dry, papery to the touch. When she drew her fingers over them, they disintegrated into fine dust. Frowning, she glanced round the room. Nothing else had changed. Nothing had been moved. She rubbed the dust between her fingers, then slowly she bent to sniff her fingertips. The smell was very faint. Slightly spicy. Exotic. For some reason it turned her stomach. She dusted her hands together and slammed the suitcase shut. Swinging it back onto the cupboard, she rubbed her hands several times on her towel, then at last she shut the cabin door and turned the key.

She undressed and showered in nervous haste, her eyes constantly searching the corners of the room. Wrapping the small silk parcel in the polythene bag in which she had packed her film, she tucked it into her cosmetics bag, and zipping it up tightly, she put it on the floor of the shower. Then she closed the door on it.

For several minutes she stood in the centre of her cabin, every muscle tensed, listening intently. From the half-open window she could hear a faint rustle from the reeds. In the distance for an instant she heard the thin piping call of a bird, then silence fell. Turning off the main cabin light at last, she climbed slowly into bed and lay there for a moment in the light of the small bedside lamp, listening once more. Then she reached across and picked up the diary. She did not feel in the least bit sleepy now, and at least she could lose herself for a while in Louisa’s story and see if she could find any references to the bottle and its fate. Leafing through the pages, she found herself looking at a tiny ink sketch, captioned “Capital at Edfu.” It showed the ornate top of one of the columns in the courtyard she had seen only that morning.

“The Forresters decided yet again that it was too hot to do anything other than stay in the boat, so Hassan procured donkeys so that he and I could ride towards the great temple of Edfu…”

Anna glanced up. The room was quiet. Warm. She felt safe. Settling herself a little more comfortably, she turned the page and read on.

The donkey boy who had brought them to the entrance to the temple retired to the sparse shade of a group of palm trees to wait for them while Hassan led the way across the sand. He had commandeered two other small boys to carry the paintbox and easel and sketchbook, their basket of food, and the sunshade. They set up camp in the lea of one of the great walls, Louisa sitting on the Persian rug, watching as the boys set down their burden and, rewarded with a half-piastre, scurried away.

“Come and sit by me.” She smiled at Hassan and patted the rug. “I want to hear the history of this place before we explore it.”

He lowered himself on the edge of the rug, sitting cross-legged, his back straight, his eyes narrowed against the sunlight. “I think you know more than me, Sitt Louisa, with your books and your talks with Sir John.” He smiled gravely.

“You know that’s not true.” She reached for the small sketchbook and opened it. “Besides, I like to hear you talk while I draw.”

Every second the sun rose higher in the sky. She wanted to capture the elegance and power of this place before the shadows grew too short, to record its majesty, the beauty of the carvings which had a delicacy all their own in contrast to the solidity and sheer size of the stone they were carved from. She wanted to reproduce the strength and wonder of the statues of Horus as a falcon, remember the expression of those huge, round eyes surveying the unimaginable distances beyond the walls of the temple. Unscrewing her water jar, she poured some into the small pot which clipped on the edge of her paintbox and reached for a brush.

“The temple has only recently been excavated by Monsieur Mariette. Before he came, the sand was up to here.” Hassan pointed vaguely at a spot about halfway up the columns. “He cleared so much away. There were houses built on the temple and close round it. They have all gone now. And he dug out all this.” He waved towards the high walls of sand around the temple on top of which the village perched uncomfortably over the remains of the ancient town. “Now you can see how huge it is. How high. How magnificent. The temple was built in the time of the Ptolemies. It is dedicated to Horus, the falcon god. It is one of the greatest temples in Egypt.” Hassan’s low voice spun the history of the building into a legend of light and darkness. The sands encroached, then receded like the waters of the Nile.

Louisa paused in her work, watching him as the pale ochres and umbers from her palette dried on the tip of her brush. His face was one minute animated, intense, the next relaxed, as the web of his narrative spun on. Dreamily she listened, lost in the visions he was conjuring for her, and it was a moment before she realised he had stopped speaking and was looking at her, a half smile on his handsome face. “I have put you to sleep, Sitt Louisa.”

She smiled back, shaking her head. “You have entranced me with your story. I sit here in thrall, unable even to paint.”

“Then my purpose has failed. I sought to guide your inspiration.” The graceful shrug, the gentle, self-deprecating gesture of that brown hand with its long, expressive fingers did nothing to release her. She sat unmoving, watching him, unable to look away. It was Hassan who broke the spell. “Shall I lay out the food, Sitt Louisa? Then you can sleep, if you wish, before we explore the temple.”

He rose in a single, graceful movement and reached for the hamper, producing a white cloth, plates, glasses, silver cutlery. Then came the fruit, cheeses, bread, and dried meats.

He no longer questioned her insistence that he eat with her, she noticed. The place settings, so neatly and formally arranged, were very close to each other on the tablecloth.

Washing her brush carefully in the little pot of water, she dried it to a point and laid it down. “I have such an appetite, in spite of the heat.” She laughed almost coquettishly and then stopped herself. She must not get too friendly with this man who was, after all, in her employ; a man who in the eyes of the Forresters was no more than a hired servant.