Mr Impossible (40 page)

“
You must
develop a stronger stomach,” Lord Noxley told him. “These
people respect only force, especially the Qurnans. Now they will
think twice before harboring any more of Duval’s friends.”

Ghazi had other
news, which he conveyed privately to his master as they set out for
the house: Archdale’s sister was not waiting quietly in Cairo,
as everyone had assumed. Despite Ghazi’s best efforts, the
authorities had failed to charge Hargate’s moron son with
either the murder of the two men in the pyramid or that of Vanni
Anaz. Consequently, Carsington was at large and at present taking
Mrs. Pembroke up the Nile in search of her brother.

“
By the time
these things happened, I was far from Cairo,” Ghazi said. “Even
if I had known—”

“
You couldn’t
turn back then.” Lord Noxley slowed his pace, so they might lag
behind the rest of the party. He considered for a time, then his
expression brightened. “Perhaps it’s for the best,”
he said. “We’re here now. Why should she not be? Do go
fetch her. As to Carsington, I should like it very much if you would
make him go away.”

SEEING FARUQ’S
HEAD gave Miles his first inkling of something being not quite right
with Noxley’s.

In Dendera, Noxley
had mentioned a “nasty business.” Until it was settled,
he told Miles on the way to the boat, Miles would be safer in Thebes,
where Noxley could rely upon the loyalty of the Turkish soldiers
stationed there. The French kept clear of Thebes at present.

It was not as
though Miles had any choice but to go where his friend chose. Once
the
Memnon
set sail, though, Noxley explained the “nasty business.”

By “the
French” his lordship meant, it turned out, a man named Duval,
whom Miles vaguely recalled meeting at a consulate affair. Noxley
said this was the man who’d hired the kidnappers. When they
ransacked Miles’s belongings, they were looking for the
papyrus. The next day, others of Duval’s henchmen went to the
house and took both the papyrus and the copy.

In other words,
Duval believed not only the story about the treasure-filled pharaoh’s
tomb but also that Miles could read hieroglyphic writing.

So far, to Miles’s
relief, no one had discovered the truth about Daphne. He preferred to
keep it that way. She was vulnerable enough as it was.

Had she not been
out at the time of the theft, she might have been taken, too, as a
hostage, to make Miles cooperate with the French lunatic. But she’d
been at the consulate, trying to make them do something, which, as
everyone knew, they never did, unless the something involved getting
ancient artifacts on the cheap. The theft sent her to Noxley, who had
promptly set out to recover both Miles and the papyrus.

Clearly his
lordship had succeeded on both counts.

Clearly Duval was a
dangerous man.

Still, the business
of the head…

It was all well and
good to say, “When in Rome…” But the English had
stopped cutting off people’s heads and displaying them for the
edification of the masses some years ago, and Miles saw no reason for
recommencing a barbaric practice merely because one was among
barbarians.

Preoccupied with
making sense of his friend’s behavior, he took little note of
his surroundings beyond observing that the present-day Egyptians had
built their houses in, around, and on the ancient temple of Luxor.
Where the pharaoh and his high priests must have once performed
sacred rituals, the peasants had built pigeon towers.

Noxley’s
house, which occupied a corner of the southern end of the temple, was
not the most imposing structure. No doubt it would easily fit in the
entrance hall of his lordship’s ancestral home in
Leicestershire. By Luxor standards, though, it was spacious and
elegant, boasting upper and lower floors, the former airy and ideal
for summer sleeping quarters.

At the house,
Noxley suggested locking up the papyrus and the copy in a strongbox.
Miles agreed, though he won-dered who’d have the temerity to
try to steal anything from anybody with Ghazi about.

Miles retired to
his assigned chamber, bathed, and col-lapsed on the divan. He slept
until a servant woke him for dinner.

When he rejoined
Noxley in the comfortably appointed
qa’a
, Miles found he
hadn’t any stomach for dinner.

“
My poor
fellow, pray forgive me,” Noxley said. “You must be sick
to death of native fare. Let me tell Cook-—”

“
It isn’t
the food but Faruq,” Miles said. “That head preys on my
mind. Are you quite sure it’s wise to encourage persons like
Ghazi in these barbaric practices?”

“
Why is it
any more barbaric than hanging a man at Tyburn?” Noxley said.
“I should say it was more merciful. It can take a good while to
die on the end of a rope, you know. As to keeping the head for
display, this is the only way to make sure the word spreads. We want
to leave Duval in no doubt of his chief henchman’s demise. Then
he’ll know he’s lost the papyrus as well as you.”
Noxley smiled. “He’ll be frothing at the mouth, like the
mad dog he is.”

“
I only met
him the once, and he seemed sane enough to me,” Miles said.
“Yet he cannot be, to believe that anyone has deciphered
hieroglyphs yet. He must be madder still to act as he has, upon such
a delusion.”

“
It is a
delusion, beyond question?” Noxley looked up from his plate,
his expression oddly childlike.

“
The papyrus
contains royal names,” Miles said. “That’s all any
scholar can ascertain at present.”

“
You didn’t
buy it because you believed it described a royal tomb, as Vanni Anaz
claimed?” Noxley said, still watching him with that childlike
expression. “Nothing about it told you it might be a treasure
map of some kind?”

Miles shook his
head. He’d bought it for Daphne. Because it was beautiful, in
near-perfect condition. Because she had nothing half so fine in her
collection. Because he knew her eyes would light up as they used to
do, a long time ago, before she wed Pembroke. Her eyes had lit, and
Miles had never seen her happier than when she set to work on it. To
him, this made the thing worth ten times what he’d paid.

“
I heard the
French consul general, Drovetti, offered Belzoni ten thousand pounds
for the alabaster sarcophagus he found,” Miles said. “I
thought the papyrus, another rare specimen of great artistry, was of
proportional value.”

“
Perhaps
you’ve explained Duval’s problem, then,” said
Noxley. He signaled a servant to take away the dinner tray.

When the servant
had gone, he said, “Duval has always believed the French
‘discovered’ Egypt, because of the scientific expedition
and the
Description de I’Egypte
. He hates the English
partly because we beat them but mostly because we took the Rosetta
Stone as spoils of war.”

“
Good gad,
that was twenty years ago,” Miles said. “It isn’t
as though the French never took valuable items from nations they
conquered. I haven’t noticed them giving any of it back.”

“
Try telling
that to Duval,” Noxley said. “Still, he was no worse than
any of the other antiquities hunters until recent years.”

Since you came and
took men like Ghazi into your employ? Miles wondered. But the
recollection of Faruq’s head made him cautious. “Any idea
why?” he said.

“
Belzoni,”
Noxley said. “Duval has been in Egypt for more than twenty
years. Belzoni was here for less than five, and now he’s famous
around the world. Duval had exca-vated in the Biban el Muluk, the
Valley of the Tombs of Kings. He never found a royal tomb, but
Belzoni did—a magnificent one, containing a rare alabaster
sarcophagus. Neither Duval nor Drovetti could find the entrance to
Chephren’s pyramid, but Belzoni did. The French couldn’t
find a way to move the head of Young Memnon, but Belzoni did, and now
it’s in England.”

“
Twenty years
of work and nothing to show for it,” Miles said.
Rather like
Virgil Pembroke’s case
, he thought. “He must have
been mad with jealousy.” Again, like Pembroke, so jealous of
Daphne’s gift for languages.

“
Imagine what
he felt when he heard about the papyrus Anaz had sold you,”
Noxley said.

“
The last
straw,” Miles said.

Noxley smiled.
“I’ll admit I felt a twinge of jealousy, too. Anaz must
have taken a liking to you. He’s dead, by the way, poor
fellow.”

Chapter 18

26 April

RUPERT SAW HIS
FIRST CROCODILES ABOVE Girga, half a dozen of them basking on a
sandbank.

The river had grown
shallow, and sandbanks formed a maze of obstructions through which
the
Isis
must pass. Previously he’d gazed at flocks of pelicans and wild
ducks gathered upon them. That was to say, his eyes had been turned
in that direction. His mind had been elsewhere.

On her.

On getting off the
boat and finding someplace private. They were drawing closer to
Thebes by the hour. Time was running out. Once they found her
brother, nothing could be as it was.

Rupert told himself
he ought to be planning how to get her brother out of the villains’
clutches. He ought to be planning how to protect the women and
children.

Instead, his mind
was busily devising and discarding schemes for slaking his lust on
Daphne Pembroke’s magnificent body.

Even now, gazing at
the crocodiles, he was wondering how they might help him get her
naked.

All his brain
produced was an excuse to see her. He left the deck and went inside,
where she’d lately been spending the hottest part of the day.
He found her not in the front cabin but in her own. The door stood
open for ventilation.

Spread out upon the
divan was a familiar document bearing three kinds of writing. It was
a copy of the Rosetta Stone. Her lap held a notebook.

He tapped on the
open door. She looked up. A flush overspread her creamy countenance.

He wanted to kiss
all that rosy skin. And all the paler parts. Then work his way down.

“
Crocodiles,”
he said.

“
Really?”
She set the notebook aside. “Where?”

He found an
umbrella and led her out to the deck. He held it over her while she
gazed raptly at the strange creatures. It was a long time before she
spoke.

He didn’t
need to say anything. It was enough to be near her, to watch her
surprise and pleasure transform everything he looked upon. The
crocodiles somehow became more exotic and miraculous. With her, one
always felt as though one gazed upon marvels.

“
I can
scarcely believe they’re real,” she said at last. “Look,
one slithers into the water. It is like a dream.”

Rupert became aware
of two boyish voices nearby, quarreling, by the sounds of it. He sent
a quelling look in their direction.

Tom hurried to him.
“Please, sir, I must speak to you.”

But he could not
speak in front of the lady, the boy said. This was talk for men. With
a shrug and a smile, Daphne went back inside, out of the baking sun.

‘
This had
better be important,“ Rupert told the boy.

“
Oh, yes,
sir. Yusef is very sick.”

Rupert studied the
other lad, who hung back, looking abashed. His turban was all askew
and his clothes hung crooked.

“
Illness is
the lady’s department,” Rupert said. “I’m not
the doctor here.”

“
He is sick
with love, sir,” Tom said. “This is why he has no care
for his clothes.”

“
Love?”

“
Yes, sir.
For Nafisah. His suffering is very great. I told him that you are our
father now, and you will arrange for his happiness, but he does not
believe me.”

Rupert looked again
at Yusef, whose expression had become pathetically hopeful.

Rupert reverted to
Tom. “Since when am I your father?”

Tom explained. The
plague had taken most of his family. His uncle Akmed had disappeared.
Yusef had no family, either. Muhammad Ali’s soldiers had burnt
his village to the ground two years ago and killed everybody.