Whispers in the Sand (22 page)

In the dark, faintly, she could smell a sickly, resinous smell. What was that stuff? And where on earth had it come from? With a shudder, she reached for the diary. The urge to sleep had gone.

5

Hail thou lion god! Let not this my heart be carried away from me!

Three hundred years have passed. In the luminous desert, the rock face changes from silver to deeper velvet black where the shadows hide it from the moonlight. As the three men creep towards the cleft in the cliff, they are barely more than shadows themselves. Their sandals make no sound, so the sudden chink of metal on rock as the pick begins its work is the more shocking in the silence.

The men work without speaking, swiftly and with certainty that this at last is the place for which they have been searching for so long. They have looked for signs, taken bearings in the daylight. But the exposure itself, the rape of the site, has to be quick and secret lest pharaoh’s men see them and exert the punishment tomb robbers have courted for a thousand years.

The note of the pick—metal on stone—changes. The three men stop and hold their breath, listening as one. Then, cautiously, they step closer, hands outstretched to feel amidst the tumbled rubble for the hidden edge of the doorway.

Many, many years before, so legend has it, another pharaoh ordered the sealing of the tomb after the murder of the high priest

Leaving the Forresters to entertain the passengers of a neighbouring
dahabeeyah
on their first day moored at Aswan, Louisa excused herself on the grounds of a headache induced by the intense heat of this southern latitude and persuaded them, with little difficulty, she noticed, that nothing would be better for her than for Hassan to take her over the narrow strip of water in the sandal to visit the low, blessedly green, northern tip of the Island of Elephantine.

He brought the small boat ashore on a narrow sandy beach and helped her out. She stared round in amazed delight at the trees and flowers—hibiscus, poinsettia, bougainvillaea, mimosa, and acacia. After the low arid cliffs and the sandbanks of the approach to Aswan, it was like heaven.

By now, it was with no embarrassment at all that she took the bag from Hassan which contained her loose, soft green gown and native slippers and vanished behind some bushes. They were both used to the routine now. Safely sheltered, she would strip off her dress, her petticoats, her stockings, her corset, even her drawers, feeling for a few brief moments the heaven of the sunlight and the touch of the light wind on her hot, bare skin, then she would pull the featherlight gown over her head and make her way back to Hassan, who would by now have unrolled the rug, set out her paints and sketchbook and the baskets which contained their food and drink.

Today she lingered longer than before over her transformation. The island was silent, save for the calls of birds in the trees and the gentle lap of water on the shore. There were Nubian villages further north, Hassan had told her, but here, although boats frequently rowed or sailed across from the town, it was completely quiet.

There was no one around as the sun rose higher in the sky. If she straightened a little, she could see the river; even the
Ibis
at anchor near the other boats in the distance. The dappled sunlight touched her shoulders. She smiled, lifting the hot weight of her knotted hair off her neck with her hands. It was heaven to feel her breasts free in the languid air, to experience the soft touch of leaves against her thigh.

“Sitt Louisa, there are people coming.” Hassan’s voice was very close, just the other side of the bush. He sounded agitated.

With an exclamation of horror and embarrassment, she grabbed her dress and pulled it on, hastily brushing back her hair as the hem settled around her bare feet. Scooping up her discarded clothes, she wadded them into a pile and emerged breathless.

“Here. Please. Quickly!” Hassan took the clothes from her and put a pencil into her hand. He stooped and pulled something from the picnic basket. “Please, Sitt Louisa, a veil for your hair.” With only the slightest hesitation, he shook out its folds and laid the silk scarf over her head, draping one end across her shoulder.

As a group of some half-dozen people emerged onto the path nearby talking loudly, Hassan was once more the respectful servant, unpacking the food at the edge of the rug whilst Louisa, although somewhat unconventionally dressed, was respectably covered from head to toe. Becoming conscious of her bare feet even as the visitors approached, she had drawn them quickly out of sight beneath her gown. She didn’t think they had seen.

They were English, from Hampshire, on their last day in Aswan before setting out for the long voyage back to Alexandria. For a terrible moment she thought they wanted to stay, to sit down beside her, to talk, but after a pause for breath, an exchange of greetings, a polite, cursory glance at the sketchbook which Hassan had, with enormous presence of mind, folded back to show a river scene from the previous week, they were gone, the sound of their conversation dying away as swiftly as it had come.

Louisa dropped her pencil and threw back her head. The veil slipped from her hair. “If you hadn’t warned me, I should have been caught totally naked!”

Hassan dropped his eyes. “I am sure you were careful and modest, Sitt Louisa.”

She smiled. “Even so. I didn’t hear them coming.” She slipped off the stool onto the rug, and her bare toes once more peeped from beneath her hem.

His eyes met hers. “You look happy here amongst the flowers.”

“I am happy.” She leant back on her elbows, staring up at the trees above their heads. “It is beautiful here, Hassan. A paradise.” A hoopoe was flitting back and forth on the branches above their heads, flirting its crest, its pretty pink and black plumage a gentle contrast to the lush green, its mellow call echoing across the water.

“The hoopoe is a bird of good fortune.” Hassan leant against the trunk of the acacia tree. He was watching her closely, an indulgent half-smile on his face. “Would you draw a picture of the bird for me?”

She sat up and looked at him, astonished. “Would you really like one?”

He nodded.

“Then of course I will.” Her eyes met his again. This time he did not look away. She felt a flutter of excitement deep inside her, and for a moment she found she couldn’t breathe.

She swallowed hard. This must not happen. She could not let it happen. She had to stop it now while it was still possible. But she was still looking at him, drowning in his gaze, feeling the strangeness of new, infinite possibilities. She couldn’t look away.

It was Hassan who broke the spell. In one lithe movement he was on his feet, heading down to the beach where he stood for a moment staring out across the water, clenching his fists. When he turned back to her, he was in control of himself again. “I shall serve the food, with your permission,” he said formally.

Unable for a moment to trust herself to speak, she nodded.

She ate very little, her eyes on the Nile, watching feluccas swooping back and forth in the strong breeze which had arisen, funnelling down between the low cliffs. Lost in her dreams, she did not even try to keep track of the time. Slowly, the sun was moving across the sky.

“Sitt Louisa?” She realised suddenly that Hassan was standing at the edge of the rug. “Shall I pack away the food? The flies…”

She nodded without speaking, and he bowed. Silently he filled the basket with the almost untouched bread and goat’s cheese and fruit. When he had finished, he disappeared for a moment into the trees. When he returned, he was holding a spray of scarlet flowers in his hand. He presented them to her as if they were the most precious gift on earth.

She took them without a word. Examining them closely, she took in their beauty, the perfection of petals and stamens, then she glanced up. He was watching her. She smiled almost shyly, suddenly as self-conscious as a young girl, then she raised the flowers to her lips and kissed them gently.

Neither of them spoke. It wasn’t necessary. Both knew that, from this moment, their relationship had changed forever.

“Do you want to go back to the boat now?” She could hear the regret in his voice.

She nodded. “There is always tomorrow, Hassan.”

“If it is the will of Allah!” He bowed almost imperceptibly. “I will take you on an excursion to see the unfinished obelisk where it lies still in the quarry where they were cutting it from the stone thousands of years ago. We will have to go on camels!” He smiled mischievously.

“Then you can be sure that the Forresters will not want to accompany us!” She said it with some spirit. “I should like that, Hassan. And then there are so many things to see. The cataract, Philae, the souk.” She watched as he loaded the baskets into the small boat.

When he had finished he turned to her. “You should change your clothes now.”

For one moment, she thought of refusing, of climbing back into the sandal in her cool, loose-fitting gown, feeling the warm water which slopped on the bleached boards of the little boat rippling over her toes, then she realised the folly of the dream. The Forresters would be scandalised. She might alienate them so much they refused to allow her to travel any further with them. She had no money to hire her own boat. If they put her ashore, she would be stranded until the steamer came, and even then she would not be able to afford the ticket back to Cairo.

Taking the bundle of clothes from him, she retreated once more to the bushes, and this time it was with a heavy heart that after a few moments of glorious nakedness she began to wriggle back into the stiffly boned corset, struggle with its laces, pull on her drawers and stockings, and at last step into the black-dyed muslin. Then, the final act of constraint, she wound her hair into a knot and rammed her ivory hairpins into it to hold it neatly in place before putting on her black lace cap once more beneath her sun hat.

“I hate it like this,” she wailed at Hassan as she watched him pack away the soft gown, still warm from her body. “I want to be free!” It was a useless wish, for even as she said it, she knew it could never be. Not as long as she had the two boys at home waiting for her. She saw him, just for a second, hold the material against his cheek, then it was folded away and the basket had joined the others in the boat.