THE SYCAMORE SONG
Elizabeth Hunter
Victoria was supposed to be supervising her late father's excavations in Egypt. But nobody there would take a woman seriously, and the problems began to grow.
The mysterious Tariq suggested a solution; but it seemed a rather drastic one.
A sycamore sang to a lady fair,
And its words were dropping like honey dew,
“Now ruby red is the fruit I bear
All in my bower for you.
“Papyri green are my leaves arrayed,
And branch and stem like to opal gleams;
Now come and rest in my cooling shade
The dream of your heart to dream.
“A letter of love will my lady fair
Send to the one who will happy be,
Saying: ‘Oh, come to my garden rare
And sit in the shade with me!
“ ‘Fruit I will gather for your delight,
Bread I will break and pour out wine,
I’ll bring you the perfumed flow’rs and bright
On this festal day divine
“My lady alone with her lover will be,
His voice is sweet and his words are dear—
Oh, I am silent of all I see,
Nor tell of the things I hear!”
From a collection of Egyptian love poems, dating from more than 3,000 years ago, put in the tombs of the departed dead so that they might be sung by the souls in Paradise.
Donald A. Mackenzie: Egyptian Myth and Legend (Gresham Publishing Co.)
CHAPTER ONE
The guide book had said the tree was a sycamore. Victoria had no way of knowing. She leaned against the wall of the enclosure and tried to catch her breath. She had been stupid to come alone, but she had thought the tree would be in a recognisably tourist area where people would be accustomed to strangers - even strange women - walking through their streets and staring about them. Instead, it had been raining the night before, making the streets muddy and full of puddles, and the children had practically mobbed her, shouting things at her that she didn’t understand, until she had lost her head and had taken to her heels, making a mad dash for the sanctuary of the Virgin’s Tree and the comforting smile of the watchman who had accepted her over-large tip and had pushed her through the iron gate, shrieking at the children as he did so
Victoria thought the tree was dead. There were some leaves which she had thought at first belonged to it, but closer inspection showed that they belonged to a creeper that was growing up the far wall. It didn’t matter much. The tree had a magnificent, curling shape, spreading itself right across the enclosed space. It was supported in one place by a stout X-shaped cross that emphasised the silvery, weathered look of the tree itself. It was undoubtedly old. Perhaps it really had given shelter to the Virgin Mary and the Infant Child when they had taken refuge in Egypt. It was easy to be cynical about such stories, but this legend was venerable indeed. Even the local district was called Matareya, meaning fresh water, after the spring of water that the Virgin had used, which alone of all the local sources of water was free of the brackish taste of standing water.
The iron gate creaked open to admit another visitor, a man this time, taller than the average Egyptian, with strange, light eyes that Victoria noticed at once and found fascinating against the clean, tanned texture of his skin. She recollected herself with difficulty, aware that she was staring, and tried to pretend that she had not noticed him at all, putting out an enquiring finger to touch the rusty notice that bore the legend in English and Arabic that this was the Virgin’s Tree.
“It is said that it is three and a half thousand years old,” the man said, his English so perfect that Victoria couldn’t resist the impulse to turn and stare at him.
“I know. I read it up before I came,” she snubbed him.
The man’s eyes swept over her, making her vividly aware of her torn stockings and the dust on her coat that had resulted from the buffeting the children had given her.
“It was unwise of you to come sightseeing by yourself in such an area, Miss Lyle.”
Victoria started. “How do you know my name?” she demanded.
“I knew your father.” The words were dry and held a message that she didn’t understand. She suffered his searching gaze with barely suppressed irritation, lifting her head to a proud angle and giving him back look for look. He was worth looking at, she thought. He had wiry, light-brown hair, and those strange enigmatic eyes that gave away nothing of what he was thinking. Even his polished black shoes had somehow escaped the mud that had gathered in the gutters of the streets outside. She, she thought ruefully, didn’t present nearly such an attractive picture. Her black hair hung loosely about her shoulders because she had lost the ribbon with which she normally tied it at the nape of her neck; her skin, always whiter than she liked, was paler than ever from the English winter; and, while she knew herself to be slim and well made, she couldn’t help recalling her father saying that most men of the Middle East preferred their women to be rather more curvaceous and more obviously feminine to look at.
“Did you know my father well?” she asked him at last, losing the battle of the long silence between them.
“Well enough.”
Victoria wondered what that meant. She had long ago admitted to herself that her father had remained a stranger to her right up to his death. They had, after all, only met on a few occasions when both of them had been inhibited by their lack of knowledge of each other. Her parents had separated when Victoria had still been a baby and she had lived perfectly happily with her mother on the outskirts of London all through her childhood and schooldays. Her father, on the other hand, had spent the greater part of his life abroad, unravelling the mysteries of the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia. His last expedition had been to Egypt and it had been there he had died. Victoria had only known of his death when she had been called to the offices of his London solicitors and had discovered that he had left his considerable fortune to her, provided only that she continued to finance his present expedition.
Mrs. Lyle had been pleased that Victoria had been remembered by her father, but she had been quite adamant that nothing was going to make her leave the comfortable shores of England again, not even her daughter’s agonised plea that she couldn’t possibly face Egypt all by herself.
“I would not go with your father after that first disastrous expedition to Babylon, and I will not go with you,” her mother had said grimly. “Besides, why go at all? All you have to do is provide the money.”
“But there’s no fun in that!” Victoria had retorted. Frightened she might be by the prospect of stepping into her father’s shoes, but she had every intention of going to Egypt and seeing personally how every penny of her money was spent. Why else had her father left it to her?
Perhaps, Victoria thought, this man had known her father much better than she had.
“How did you know who I am?” she demanded. “And how did you know I was here?”
“I followed you from your hotel. I knew you were staying at the Mena Garden Hotel at Giza and I bribed the guide at the gate to tell me when you took a taxi anywhere.”
“But why?” A dawning indignation lit her black-blue eyes. “If you were following me,” she added with a good deal of feeling, “you might have rescued me from those - those brats out there!”
He laughed. “It was your own fault for coming to such a place alone. It was the easiest way of teaching you that you’re going to need help in running your father’s expedition. I wanted to get in first before someone else from the dig gets to work on you. There’s been a whole lot of trouble on the site—”
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think this is the
time for discussing my father’s business,” she said coolly. “I prefer to see how things are for myself.”
“I’ll stay around anyway,” he said. “Has anyone from the expedition been to see you yet?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.” She looked at him with increasing curiosity. “How do you know so much about it?”
“I’ve made it my business to do so. I have an interest in the expedition and I mean to run it for you.” He smiled slowly. “When you’ve found out that you can’t manage without me - as your father was beginning to discover. Our quarrel was a personal one and should never have been allowed to interfere with our work. I want to make amends for my part in that.”
She wondered how much she could believe him, and decided to reserve judgement until she had seen the site and the people working there for herself.
“I wanted to see the Pyramids,” she said, “but the camel-drivers were so pressing that I went back to the hotel. Are there any organised tours that I could join?”
His smile reached his eyes with a mockery that made her regret being so open with him. She hadn’t meant her words as an invitation, but he might well have taken them as such.
“I’ll be pleased to escort you wherever you wish to go, Fadehat el D’emal, if you’ve finished looking at this tree?” His brief break into Arabic reminded her that she still had no idea who he was, nor anything about him.
“I don’t know that I wish to be escorted anywhere by you,” she said frankly.
By way of answer he signalled to the watchman to open the iron gate, giving Victoria a glimpse of the crowd who were waiting for the excitement of watching her struggle down the street through the children once again. “Well,” the man prompted her, “why don’t you go?”
Victoria bent her head. “If you’ll take me back to the hotel I’d be very grateful,” she acknowledged meekly.
“To your hotel,” he agreed. “Or I could take you to my foster-mother who would be glad to look after you for a few days?”
“But I don’t know anything about you,” she protested. “I don’t even know your name?”
“I’m sometimes called Tariq,” he told her.
“Then you are Egyptian?” she exclaimed.
“Does it matter?” he retorted.
“I suppose not,” she said. But it did. She wanted to know about him and she was afraid she would be disillusioned when she did. There was something about him that sounded a deep, unexpected chord within herself. She lifted her eyes to his. “All right, Tariq, why did you follow me here?”
“Because you’re your father’s daughter,” he responded immediately. “Did you think I might have another interest in you?”
“I thought it possible,” she admitted. “Especially as you won’t tell me your full name, nor who you are.”
“What does that prove? I could tell you a lie, a believable lie, and you still wouldn’t know anything about me.”
She considered that for a moment. “You could tell me the truth?” she suggested.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he said, “I used to work with your father, but we parted company a few months before he died. There has been trouble at the site ever since I left and the government is now employing me to look after their interests at Sakkara, and that involves keeping an eye on you.”
“I see. That’s how you knew I had arrived in Egypt, I suppose, and that I plan to continue my father’s work where he left off?”
“They told me you know nothing of your father’s work,” he retorted. “You would have done better to have stayed in England like your mother and left it to the Egyptian authorities to organise the work for you.”
Victoria sighed. “I know,” she admitted. “But I wanted to come so badly. I don’t have to know much to hand out the money, do I?”
“More than you think. Are you going to trust yourself to me, Victoria Lyle?”
She chewed on her cheek, enjoying the sensation of power it gave her to tease him a little. “I’m not sure,” she murmured, modestly lowering her eyes.
“Like any woman?” He put a hand on her arm and drew her through the gate after him with a shouted imprecation at the crowd. He opened the door of a nearby car for her and pushed her into the passenger seat with such force that she subsided on to the leather-covered springs with an outraged gasp. The pressure of his fingers tightened on her arm. “You will need to trust someone,” he warned her. “You would do well to do things my way.”
Victoria rubbed her arm, annoyed that her heartbeat should have quickened at his touch. Attractive he was, but he was not that attractive! “I dislike being manhandled,” she complained.
His eyebrows shot up as her eyes met his. She had never seen anything like the pale greeny-yellow of his irises. They reminded her of the eyes of a cat and she was not at all sure that she liked them on a human being. “Manhandled?”
“Pushed!”
His eyes narrowed. “My dear girl, I barely touched you?”
“You did? You practically threw me into the car - and I don’t like it!”
“Very well, I apologise,” he said smoothly. “Though I think it is you who are trying to annoy me. Why, Victoria?”
Why indeed? She could hardly tell him that his presence disturbed her, making her uncertain and not at all like her usual self. Normally even-tempered, she didn’t know why she should feel herself prickling at every remark he made.
“I accept your apology,” she said.
He got into the car beside her, watching her through half-closed eyes. “You are more like your father than I thought,” he said. “Prettier, but impulsive to a fault. Have you thought you might be in danger while you are here?”
She shook her head. “I came because my father wanted it that way. I had a letter from him - But that is my secret!”
He touched the line of her jaw with gentle fingers, turning her head to face him. Surprisingly, she didn’t find the gesture at all disagreeable. On the contrary, his fingers felt cool and firm and as familiar as her own against her cheek.
“You can trust me, Victoria,” he said again. “Take your time before you make any decisions about anything to do with the site. Will you promise me that? It would be a shame if anything were to happen to your father’s daughter. You ought to be enjoying your first visit here. Go very slowly, and if you have any doubts - any doubts at all - come to me with them. Okay?”
Her instinct was to trust him completely, but she didn’t trust her own judgement as far as he was concerned. She felt as though she was on the brink of something wonderful, but it could just as easily be something disastrous. The truth was that no one had ever affected her in quite this way before, and she wasn’t sure she liked the sensation.
“My father wouldn’t have written to me if he hadn’t thought I could cope by myself. I’m not a fool, Mr. Tariq!”
“No, Miss Lyle, I’m sure you’re not. But there are many things it is difficult for a woman, to do by herself in this country, if not impossible, and you’re going to need help whether you like it or not.”
“Your help?”
He nodded. “My help. What did your father have to say in his letter to you?”
Victoria stirred uneasily. “I told you, it’s a secret:” She picked at a loose thread in her skirt, hoping she hadn’t jagged it beyond repair. “I don’t know anything about you,” she added. “Why should I trust you?”
“What do you know about your father?”
She was effectively silenced. What did she know about her father? About as much as she knew about archaeology and digging up ancient civilisations. A great, big fat zero? And if this Tariq worked for the government as he said perhaps he was worthy of her trust.
“Are you an archaeologist yourself?” she asked him cautiously.
“That’s right.”
“Have you worked at Sakkara?” She waited for his barely perceptible nod. “Some pretty valuable things have been dug up there, haven’t they?”
“A few.”
/> “My father was worried because some of the things have disappeared. He told me to watch out for a man called Torquil Fletcher. And he said not to allow anything to leave the site without my personal supervision.”
Tariq’s hands closed round the steering-wheel until his knuckles showed white. “Did he say why he suspected this Torquil Fletcher?” he asked. He turned the ignition key and set the car in motion down the street, but she could feel his tenseness as he waited for her answer.
She remembered her first excitement when she read had the letter the solicitors had given her. “He’s a gold thief!” she announced dramatically. “He’s no better than the tomb robbers of old, only they, poor things, suffered from the curse of the Pharoahs and always came to a nasty end. Nothing seems to happen to this man!”
Tariq laughed. “Is that what your father told you?”
“Not exactly, but he implied as much. It was rather awful how much he seemed to hate him. To tell you the truth I wondered if there wasn’t something personal between them. My mother always says my father could be terribly spiteful, but it’s difficult to know—” She broke off. “They didn’t like each other very much,” she added abruptly.
“Torquil Fletcher is no thief, Miss Lyle. I know him well and I can assure you of that. If things have been disappearing, you’ll have to look elsewhere for your villain. Are you sure your father really suspected Fletcher?”
She nodded violently. “He said there was no one else it could be. He had worked with everyone else on the team before. Mr. Fletcher wasn’t working for him exactly - I don’t know what his position was—”
“He represented the Egyptian Government.”
“He did? How strange. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes. There’s been a great deal of talk about this latest dig of your father’s.” He looked at her and smiled and she began to think that his strange eyes were rather attractive after all. “But you don’t have to worry about it any more - you have me to do that for you! All you have to do is enjoy yourself and see the marvels of Egypt as your father wished.”
She took a quick breath of relief. She had been worrying about her role at Sakkara and she was more than glad to unload her difficulties on to the shoulders of the man beside her.