While I was sorry that the great city of Alexandria was now reduced to a muddy town surrounded by farmer’s fields, I took a moment to enjoy that I was there. Alexander himself might have taken this path, on his way out of his camp toward Siwa, the oasis where he was declared to be descended from the gods.
As we walked, the road turned to a mere track that wandered among the cultivated land. Egyptian men in the fields dug or hoed, or simply stretched out on the ground and slept.
Nowhere did I see sands or the remains of ancient temples sticking out of it. I was about to confess I’d underestimated the distance out to the desert when a lad ran up to us.
He must have been about eleven or so, with curly black hair and wide brown eyes, a cut on his cheek that looked red and angry.
In beautiful French, he said, “I will take you to the monuments, sirs. You are English? I will show you what the others know nothing about.”
Neither Brewster nor Bartholomew understood French, and Brewster rumbled a warning. I held up a reassuring hand and addressed the boy.
“What monuments, young man?”
“You come with me. I show you.” He thrust his hand into mine.
It was the bone-thinness of the hand that won me over. He was poor and hungry and simply wanted a few coins to take home to his family.
I was also aware he could be a clever pickpocket, so I turned him loose right away and motioned him forward with my walking stick. “Very well then,” I said, keeping to French. “Show us.”
“What you doing, guv?” Brewster asked.
“It will do no harm to see what he wants to lead us to,” I said. “I’m curious anyway. He claims he will show us ruins other diggers don’t know.”
“He’ll tell you anyfink for a coin, Captain,” Brewster said. “And could be leading you off to a gang to rob you.”
“Possibly,” I said. “Let us see, shall we?”
Brewster grumbled but heaved a sigh and marched on, pushing ahead of me to keep up with the boy. Bartholomew wore an interested expression as he strolled beside me.
“It’s different from what I thought it would be,” he remarked, looking around. “Egypt seems an ordinary place. It’s like the fens in East Anglia more than anything else.”
I’d grown up near the fens, and thought it quite different, but I understood what Bartholomew meant. “This is the delta region,” I explained. “A very fertile land. The crops of Egypt fed the entire Roman empire.”
I could well believe it, seeing the acres and acres of fields spreading out in all directions.
And then, as we followed the lad, the fields simply stopped. We skirted the edge of muddy ground where tall reeds grew and a few feet later, we were marching through sand.
I stared about me in some awe. I’d been to northern India and the Punjab, where the landscape could be barren, but nothing like this. Sand and rock spread to the horizon, the land rising to a ridge in the distance. I knew that far, far out in the haze, many miles distant, was an oasis, but I could scarcely believe any water would be found in all that emptiness.
“Come, come,” the boy said. He trotted fearlessly into the trackless waste, and I hastened to catch up with him.
My leg ached but the warmth felt good on my bones. The sun was sliding to the west in front of us, blinding us in a cloudless sky. When night fell, it would be inky black.
The lad moved quickly, running barefoot over hot sand. Brewster jogged after him, and Bartholomew easily passed me on his way to keep an eye on both of them.
I lagged, my old injury tiring me, but at the same time, my heart beat faster with excitement. I was here in this ancient land, the blue sky soaring overhead, the fog and stink of London far behind. I loved warmth and arching skies, views stretching to all sides. I was not too worried about where the boy took us—I was good at finding my way around, even in unfamiliar places.
The lad suddenly cut to the right, off the track we’d been following. Brewster yelled, “Oi!” and the boy halted and waited for us.
Without words, the lad pointed to a slight rise in the land, which was shadowed by the rapidly setting sun. Then he sped up the small hill and halted on top of it. Brewster and Bartholomew were hard on his heels, leaving me to struggle and pant up the rise.
The boy waited for me to reach him before he pointed both forefingers down at a mound of sand. “Here,” he said. “Dig here.”
“He’s touched,” Brewster said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Too much sun in these parts.” The big man was breathing hard, face beaded with sweat.
The lad dropped to his hands and knees and started moving sand. I knelt next to him, pushing in my larger hands to draw the dirt away.
“Now you’re touched,” Brewster said, but he leaned over, interested, his shadow blocking the worst of the sun.
“No,” I said. “I think the lad is right. There’s something here.”
I took my walking stick and moved caked dirt from around the top of a hard stone. The stone’s lines were regular, the edge that stuck out of the earth sharp and even.
Eagerly I pulled at the sand. Down about four inches, I saw the figure of a duck scratched into the stone, identical to the symbol I’d seen on the obelisks lying in Alexandria—a hieroglyph.
“Good Lord,” I said. “It might be another of the needles.”
The boy shook his head. “A temple,” he said. “My grandfather says they’re all buried here. We dig it out for you, for the English.”
My excitement grew. I had the feeling that digging down to find out what was here would be more complicated than simply hiring the local men with shovels, but I then and there determined that I would excavate it.
As these thoughts went through my head, and the boy waited eagerly for my answer, the sun slid below the horizon. The sky blazed red, the sun’s rays catching in dust to turn the sky the color of blood. Beautiful, then it faded quickly to dark blue, then black.
I rose, a chill setting in. I opened my mouth to tell the boy to take us back to the city. At the same time, Brewster shouted a warning, and I knew we were not alone in the sudden dark.
CHAPTER 8
O ur guide ran down the ridge, ignoring Brewster’s shout. The lad grunted in the darkness and disappeared, right before a curved sword blade came at me.
I blocked it with my own sword, out of its sheath the instant I’d heard Brewster call out. I’d never lost my sense of danger after the wars—if anything, living in London, a city full of predators, had heightened my reflexes.
Bartholomew tried to leap to my aid, but I shoved him aside with my shoulder, snapping at him to find the boy.
Blades clanged. Starlight flashed off a scimitar and in wild dark eyes over a black facecloth. My attacker was young, in the prime of his youth, and I was older and injured. On the other hand, I had years of experience fighting in Mysore and Spain, while I had the feeling this lad hadn’t yet seen true battle.
I turned aside his sword and thrust at him, making him jump and swing. We came in close, his breath huffing through his facecloth, I grim and silent. His blade wafted close to my face, and I shoved my elbow into his ribs, making him stumble. I threw myself against him, tangling my good leg with his to continue his fall.
The man was wiry enough to catch his balance, but he’d forgotten about Brewster.
Brewster fought not for glory but to stay alive. He was behind the soldier before the young man could recover, his arm around the soldier’s neck, his thick knife at his ribs. The scimitar clattered to the ground as the soldier clawed at Brewster’s choking arm.
“No!” I yelled, before Brewster could plunge the blade in. “Don’t kill him. God knows what the punishment would be for you murdering a Turk.”
“Wasn’t aiming to tell anyone, guv,” Brewster said grimly. “Lots of sand out here.” His grip around the soldier’s throat cut off the man’s breath, and the knife was no doubt aimed at a vital organ.
“Let him go,” I said in a hard voice.
“’Fraid not, Captain. He has assassination on his mind, and it’s my job to keep you alive.”
“Let him speak, in any case.” I took a step forward and yanked the cloth from the young man’s face.
I saw whom I’d expected to see, the young soldier who had attacked Haluk’s daughter, whose friend had lain dead near the site of the ancient library.
“Why are you trying to kill me?” I asked the question in French, and I spoke loudly and slowly, as though that would help him understand me.
The soldier stared at me, uncomprehending. I repeated the question in English, with the same effect.
“Bartholomew,” I called into the darkness. “Is the lad all right?”
“Aye, that he is.” Bartholomew strode forward, holding the boy by the arm. “I caught him running to leave us to our fate.”
Bartholomew gave the lad a shake, and the boy ducked his head, ashamed.
“You brought us out here so he could attack us,” I said, realizing.
The boy hung his head even more. “He gave me coin. He said he would kill you and threatened to beat me if I told you.”
“Ask him why.” I pointed the end of my blade to the soldier’s chest. “As you have betrayed us, you may as well act as interpreter.”
“I don’t speak Turkish,” the boy sneered, jerking his head up. “I’m not an Ottoman.”
“You speak it enough to let him bribe you to bring us out here,” I said, unforgiving. “Ask him.”
The boy took in our uncompromising looks, swallowed, and babbled something to the soldier.
The soldier could barely answer through Brewster’s grip, but Brewster refused to lessen his hold. The soldier gasped out words, and the lad translated. “You killed my friend. I saw you.”
I frowned in puzzlement and answered immediately. “You saw no such thing. Your friend died in the middle of the night, and I was in my lodgings far from that spot. I assure you I was in my room, fast asleep, until dawn.”
The lad hurriedly fed the words to the soldier—hopefully correctly.
The soldier tried to shake his head. His answer was more agitated, the young man not reassured by my claim of innocence.
“He says he saw you,” the lad told me. “I told him he’s a liar. All the Turks are.”
The boy had changed sides rather quickly. I wondered what tunes he’d have sung if the soldier had managed to overpower us.
The soldier was choking out the same words, over and over. I gave the Egyptian boy a stern look, and he shrugged. “He keeps saying he saw you.”
I turned my attention to the agitated young man. “What is your name?”
The lad answered before the soldier could. “His name is Ahmed. Ahmed Sadik. Everyone knows Ahmed.”
“I am Captain Gabriel Lacey,” I said to the soldier. “I swear to you upon my honor that I never met your friend, or touched him, or killed him. All right?”
The boy translated. Ahmed listened in disbelief, but he ceased his struggles, his brow creased with worry.
“Let him go, Brewster,” I said quietly.
“Not wise, Captain,” Brewster growled.
“Keep your knife on him, certainly. But I’d like to speak to him man to man, not captor to prisoner.”
Even in the faint starlight I could see Brewster’s extreme annoyance with me, but he eased his big arm from around the man’s neck. The knife remained at his ribs, and Brewster also kicked the fallen scimitar hard enough so that it skittered across the ground and sank into a sand drift.
“Why do you believe I killed your friend?” I asked Ahmed. “How could you see, if you were supposed to be in your barracks?”
“I followed him,” Ahmed answered, the lad translating. “I thought he had gone to meet a lady, the daughter of Haluk. She is not worthy of him. I sought to stop him. I did not find him in the dark, but I saw a man—you—in the place where he was found this morning, and the glint of a knife in your hand. Then when I saw Ibrahim dead this morning, I remembered this. I know you must have killed him.”
“I assure you again, I was not there. You say you never found Ibrahim—this man might have had nothing to do with it.”
Even as I spoke I didn’t truly believe that. Ahmet might not have witnessed the murder but he likely had seen the murderer, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.
I glanced up at the moonless sky. “It is very dark at night, in any case,” I said. “How can you be certain you saw me?”
Ahmed and the lad went back and forth for a time, both of them speaking rapidly.
“Your tallness,” the boy finally said. “Your build. The way you move. He thought it was you.”
I shook my head. “Well, it was not. I have several people who can swear I was at home all night—Englishmen and Egyptians both. Besides, Ibrahim wasn’t killed with a knife. He died from a blow to the head, probably struck with a rock.”
Ahmed, after the lad finished repeating what I’d said, suddenly folded up onto the ground. Brewster hovered over Ahmed as the young man curled his arms around himself and sank his face into his knees, moaning words and rocking back and forth.
“What is he saying?” I asked the lad.
The boy looked disgusted. “That he has no honor, no friends, nothing. That you might as well run him through.”
While a moment ago, Brewster had been ready to do just that, the large man now stood motionlessly, watchful but not murderous. Brewster had a sense of fairness—Ahmed at this moment had ceased to be dangerous, though Brewster would make certain he remained that way.
“Nonsense,” I said briskly to Ahmed as the boy relayed my words. “You are grieving for your friend—it has nothing to do with honor. You are hotheaded and rash, and if you ever threaten a lady again, I will thrash you soundly, but there is no need to give way to melodrama and misery.”
Ahmed raised a sad face to me, starlight glittering on his tears. “He was my closest friend, closer to me than a brother. When he pined after that girl, I told him he’d come to grief. My commander has arrested another soldier, a troublemaker, for the murder, but I know he did not do it. I know it was an enemy. But if not you, then who? How can we ever know?”
“I will find out,” I said. The fact that the lieutenant had arbitrarily chosen another to take the blame angered me greatly. He was simply trying to appear to be doing something about the situation. “First, you will lead us back to town,” I told Ahmed. “And then you will tell me everything about Ibrahim and exactly what you saw last night.”
Brewster heaved an aggrieved sigh. “God’s balls, you’re off again, are you, Captain? Can’t keep your long nose to yourself.”
“Perhaps it was why I was gifted with such a nose, Brewster,” I said.
* * *
The Egyptian servants of the household were alarmed when I turned up out of the dark with a Turkish soldier in tow. I saw a flash of shocked faces and then every single one of the servants vanished. It was left to Bartholomew to usher us into the drawing room and then run off to bring us refreshment.
Brewster insisted that Ahmed turn over his weapons—an alarming number of knives and daggers came out from under his clothes—before he’d allow the young man past the courtyard. Ahmed unwrapped the cloths that kept sand from his face, sat down on a cushion in the drawing room, and became a person.
Bartholomew had managed to procure Turkish coffee, and he set it down in front of us. Ahmed sipped it humbly.
I could not sit on the floor like the nimble Ahmed, so I took one of the low folding chairs and nodded my thanks to Bartholomew before enjoying the thick brew. I would have to learn its secret and take some back with me to England.
Grenville was notably absent. Bartholomew whispered that he’d gone out, but the servants didn’t know where. Matthias apparently had accompanied him.
Bartholomew was not happy that both the Egyptian lad and Brewster were allowed to stay in Mr. Grenville’s drawing room, but I could not speak to Ahmed without the boy, and Brewster woul
d never be persuaded to leave me alone with the quick-to-violence Ahmed. I told Bartholomew to hand Brewster and the boy coffee as well, which Bartholomew did, with polite deference.
I let Ahmed drink, then I told him to tell me all about Ibrahim.
Speaking through the interpreting lad, Ahmed related his tale. His friend Ibrahim, it seemed, had been off duty at a marketplace a few months ago, when he’d caught a glimpse of Haluk’s daughter.
“He saw nothing,” Ahmed scoffed. “A man like Haluk would not allow his daughter to be spied in an open marketplace. She was with her mother in a closed chair, which was surrounded by servants. He saw her eyes as she glanced out the window, and Ibrahim believed himself struck with love. I told him that the daughter of Haluk was not worthy of his attentions, to wait until he returned home to Constantinople and marry a girl there. But Ibrahim was always stubborn.”
Ahmed shook his head, sad that his friend had not listened to sense. “The girl and her father rejected Ibrahim’s suit in the rudest way—they have no honor. Ibrahim was crazed with grief. He would not eat or drink, and in the end, he tried to run himself through. I saved him, I stayed with him and hid this deed from others so he would not be dismissed. I finally made him understand that she was not worth dying for. Then when I saw her emerge yesterday, to display herself so brazenly, without a care, while my dearest friend had nearly died because of her—I lost my senses. If she had stayed at home in the first place, Ibrahim would not have seen her and would not have been humiliated, would not have tried to kill himself. I struck out. I was not myself. I am thankful you were there to stop me. It was the will of God that you were in that place at that moment.”
I agreed. I’d been in time to save a young woman from being hurt, and to save Ahmed the wrath of my vengeance or at least an ignoble death at the hands of the Turkish government.
“You must apologize to the lady and her father,” I said severely. “Make it up to them. Where I come from, you could be imprisoned or hanged for trying to strike her.”
Ahmed shook his head. “I was maddened. I will send my apologies to the girl, and a gift. But I will make clear the gift is for her. Her father, Haluk? He is unworthy. He is …”