Part 13 (2/2)

She spun round. 'Ha.s.san! Oh Ha.s.san, thank G.o.d!' She flung herself at him. 'I thought you had gone without me.'

His arms folded round her. For a moment he held her, then she felt a featherlight kiss on her hair. 'I would not go without you, Sitt Louisa. I would guard you with my life.' Slowly she raised her face to look at him. 'Ha.s.san -'

Her reaction had been instinctive; unthinking.

'Hush. Do not be afraid, Sitt Louisa. You are safe with me.' For 170.

a moment he said nothing more, gazing at her face, then he smiled. 'We have fought this; I thought it forbidden. But now I believe that it is the will of Allah.' He raised a finger and touched her mouth. 'But only if you will it.'

She stared at him. She ached to touch him; for a moment she could say nothing, then slowly she raised herself up on her toes and she kissed his lips. 'It is the will of Allah,' she whispered.

For Louisa time stood still. It was as though all she had ever dreamed, ever imagined in her wildest fantasies, had coalesced into the next moments of ecstasy in his arms. She never wanted the kiss to end. When at last it did, for a moment she stood, dazed. Was it possible to feel so happy? She glanced up at him and they remained close together staring deep into each other's eyes. It was a long time later that he noticed her bare feet. 'You must not go without your shoes, my love. There are scorpions in the sand. Come.' He scooped her up into his arms as though she weighed no more than one of their baskets and carried her back to the rug. Before he allowed her to sit down he picked it up and shook it. Then he grinned. 'Now it is ready for my lady to sit.'

Sitting down she drew up her knees and hugged them. The real world was closing in again. 'Ha.s.san, I am a widow. I am free. But you. You have a wife in your home village. This is not right.'

He knelt beside her and took her hand. 'A Christian may not have more than one wife. It is written in the Koran that a man can love more than One woman. I have not seen my wife, Sitt Louisa, for more than two years. I send her money. She is happy with that.'

'Is she?' Louisa frowned. 'I wouldn't be.'

'No, for you are a pa.s.sionate woman. You wouldn't understand one who no longer wishes for the pleasures of the bed. We have two sons, for which Allah be praised. Since the birth of my smallest boy she has not loved me as a wife should.'

'I could not love you as a wife, Ha.s.san. When summer comes I have to go home to my own sons.'

He looked away. There was sadness in his face. 'Does that mean we should chase away the days of happiness which lie within our grasp?' He took her hands in his. 'If heartbreak must come, let it come later. Then there are the days of happiness to remember. Otherwise there is nothing but regret.'

She smiled. 'Perhaps it is fitting that we should declare our love 171.

in the temple of Isis. Is she not the G.o.ddess of love?' She reached up and kissed him again but he had suddenly grown tense. He pushed her away.

'Ha.s.san, what is it?' She was hurt.

'Ma feem tis.h.!.+ I do not understand. Lord Carstairs. He is there!' He waved towards the distant colonnade.

She caught her breath. 'Did he see us?'

'I don't think so. I searched everywhere. I went to look for his boat, but it had gone. It is a small island. There is nowhere he could have been hiding.' He shook his head in anger. 'Wait here, my beautiful Louisa. Do not move.

In a second he had left her, slipping like a shadow along the colonnade. Louisa held her breath. The silence had returned.

Anna put down the book and rubbed her eyes. So, Louisa had found herself a lover in Egypt. She smiled. It was the last thing she had expected of her great-great-grandmother. She pictured the face in the photograph Phyllis had shown her. Louisa had been in her sixties at a guess, when the picture was taken. The high-necked blouse, the severe hairstyle with the inevitable bun tightly drawn onto the nape of her neck, the direct dark eyes, the prim mouth. They had given no clue to this pa.s.sionate exotic romance.

She glanced at her watch. It was three o'clock in the morning and she was exhausted. She s.h.i.+vered. The story had had the desired effect. It had for a while taken her mind off her own fears and the increasing antagonism between Andy and Toby. She stared round the cabin. There was no scent now of resin and myrrh. Nothing but the smell of cooking drifting through the open window from the busy, noisy town which did not appear to sleep and which stretched out along the bank behind them. With a sigh she stood up.

There was something she had to do before she could sleep. The piece of paper taped into the back of the diary was so flimsy 172.

it was hard to read even the clearer Arabic script. She held the book under the lamp and squinted at the flimsy sheet. Yes. There they were. She hadn't even noticed the small hieroglyphics in the corner. The Ancient Egyptian characters were so minuscule it was almost impossible to make them out at all.

So, now she knew the names of the two phantoms who guarded the tiny scent bottle. Anhotep and Hatsek. Priests of Isis and Sekhmet. Biting her lip she shook her head.

Shutting the diary she slipped it into the drawer and pushed it shut. Louisa had survived to become a famous artist and a somewhat prim-looking old lady. Whatever magic those two evil men had brought with them into the modern age it cannot have been as frightening as all that. After all, she had brought the scent bottle home with her to England.

173.What then didst thou do to the flame of fire and the tablet of crystal and the water of life after thou hadst buried them? I uttered words over them.

I extinguished the fire and they say unto me, what is thy name?

Hail... I have not done violence to any man. Hail ... I have not slain any man or woman.All memory of the entrance to the temple tomb is lost once again; the dunes lie beneath the cliff face in a desolate corner of the land. The spirit may roam by day and come forth by night over the earth but the bottle is a prisoner, forgotten, wrapped in its own silence and, without it and the secret it contains, what reason is there to come forth?

One of us has gone before the G.o.ds .. that which came forth from his mouth was declared untrue. He hath sinned and he hath done evil and he hath fled from Ammit the devourer.

174.When we hide from the G.o.ds all time is the same. When the G.o.ds bid us sleep they do not say for how long. A further two hundred thousand suns roll over the desert and once more robbers turn their eyes towards these dunes. The priests stir. Perhaps the time has come.Anna woke with a start. She lay still, staring up at the ceiling of her cabin where striped shadows from the slatted shutters rippled amongst the bright reflections from the water outside the window. Her head ached and she pressed her fingers against her temples. Her exhaustion was total. She felt too tired even to sit up. It was when she glanced at her wrist.w.a.tch that the adrenaline kicked in. It was almost ten o'clock.

The boat was deserted. She stood in front of the noticeboard outside the dining room, which had long ago stopped serving breakfast, wondering where they had all gone. The schedule for today had completely slipped her mind. The neatly typed sheet in front of her had the day's activities carefully listed. This morning there was an optional outing to Aswan and the bazaar followed by a short visit at midday to the Old Cataract Hotel. She frowned. She would like to have gone there. Slowly turning away she wandered up to the lounge. Ibrahim called out to her as she made for the shaded afterdeck. 'You have missed your breakfast, mademoiselle?'

She smiled at him, touched that he had noticed. 'I'm afraid I overslept again.' 'You like me to bring coffee and croissant?' He hastily stubbed out his cigarette. He had been polis.h.i.+ng the bar and now he tucked the duster away on a shelf and came over to her.

'I should love it. Thank you, Ibrahim.' She smiled at him. 'Has everyone gone ash.o.r.e?'

'Nearly everyone. They want to spend lots of money in the bazaar.' He grinned.

175.

While he fetched her coffee she made her way to a table at the far end of the shady deck, beneath the awning of white canvas. It was the opposite end of the s.h.i.+p from the row of pots with their profusion of hibiscus and geraniums, bougainvillaea and the small hidden bottle. This was the perfect chance to retrieve it. It could not be left in a flowerpot on a small Nile cruiser indefinitely. But once she had it back in her possession she would have to make a decision. She stared through the rails at the water. She wanted to talk to Serena. She wasn't sure how she felt now she knew the names of the two priests who followed her bottle. And she needed to know more about the priest of Sekhmet.

Groping in the shoulder bag which she had dropped on the deck by her chair she brought out her guidebook. There was, she remembered, a brief summary of the Egyptian G.o.ds somewhere at the beginning of the book. She flipped open the pages and stared down. There she was, Sekhmet, with her huge lion's head. 'The lion G.o.ddess unleashes her anger -, the text commented. Over the figure's head was a sun disc and the picture of a cobra. She s.h.i.+vered.

'You are cold, mademoiselle?' Ibrahim was there with his tray. He put her coffee and croissant on the table with a tall gla.s.s of fruit juice.

She shook her head. 'I was thinking about something I'd read here, about the ancient G.o.ds. Sekhmet, the lion-headed G.o.ddess.'

'These are stories, mademoiselle. They should not make you afraid.'

'She is the G.o.ddess of anger. They show her with a cobra.' She glanced up at him. 'How do you know so much about snakes, Ibrahim?'

He smiled at her, tucking the empty tray under his arm. 'I learnt from my father and he from his father before him.'

'And they never harm you?'

He shook his head.

'When Charley found the snake in her cabin you said it was guarding something of mine. How did you know that?'

She saw him lick his lips, suddenly nervous. He gave her a quick glance as though trying to decide what to say and she thought she would help him out. 'Was it a real snake, Ibrahim? Or was it a magic snake? A phantom?'

He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. 'Sometimes they are the same, mademoiselle.' 'Do you think it will return?'

176.

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