Part 23 (1/2)

'You're sure?'

Serena nodded. 'Whatever it was, it's gone. I'm fine.' She glanced across at Anna. 'I've decided to go to Abu Simbel tomorrow. I don't want to leave this unfinished, but I need to get off the boat for a bit. Put some s.p.a.ce round me; distance myself from all this. Are you going to go? You should.'

Anna shrugged. 'I suppose so. It's the high point of the trip, isn't it? Driving through the desert, seeing the temple of Rameses.'

Serena grinned. 'Good. No more ghosts. Two days away. Some hard sightseeing to distract us.'

Anna frowned. 'I'm sorry. It's my fault you got into all this.'

'No. It's no one's fault. After all I am interested in Egyptian magic and religion and besides, I off&red.' Serena smiled again. 'It's just got a bit heavy and I want to stand back for a day or two. I am sorry. I don't want you to feel I don't care. It's just that I feel so drained. I've never felt like this before. I'll be there if anything happens on the coach or in the desert or at Abu Simbel. But I hope it won't. Then I thought perhaps when we come back - we have one day to see Philae before the cruise back to Luxor - at Philae maybe we can try something again. Philae is, after all, the temple of Isis.'

'You've been wonderful.' Anna put in. 'You've taught me a lot.' She put her hand on the amulet on the chain around her neck. 'You think he won't follow us to Abu Simbel then?'

There was a short silence. Serena was watching a felucca drifting with the current past them, the steersman sitting dreamily in the stern, his arm over the tiller. The boat was full of large boxes and it occurred to her suddenly what a contrast he made to the equivalent delivery man with his van in a crowded London street. She smiled, then she glanced back at Anna. 'No, I don't think he'll come to Abu Simbel. I hope not,' she said at last. 'I wish we knew what had happened to Louisa Sh.e.l.ley. She came through it. She coped.'

266.

Anna nodded sadly. I don't think I can bear not knowing what happened. I keep thinking about her. But as you say, she coped. She went home and got on with her life.

But what happened to Ha.s.san? The question increasingly echoed in her head. And what about the priests Anhotep and Hatsek? They haunted Louisa, as they haunted her great-great-granddaughter. How had she made them leave her alone? A new wave of frustration and fury shot through her as she thought about the diary. Andy had said he wanted to know what happened next when he had heard the story. It was obvious now that he hadn't meant a word of it. She sighed. They stood in silence, for several minutes lost in thought and it was only as Serena turned to go and look for a chair that Anna realised she had made a decision. She wouldn't go on the coach tomorrow. At the last minute she was going to change her mind and stay alone on the boat. That would give her two days to search with no one there to Interfere.

She could always go to Abu Simbel another time.

Just for a moment she forgot that the priests of Isis and Sekhmet would probably stay with her.

267.Hail to you, O ye divine beings, ye divine lords of things who exist and who lived for ever and whose double periods of an illimitable number of years is eternity . O grant thou unto me a path whereon I may pa.s.s in peace.

The children grow sick. Their strength has ebbed away into the desert wind. They have no inclination now to dig for ancient worlds and seek the treasure of long-dead tombs. Their mother watches and keeps her sorrow hidden in her heart.

The bottle is forgotten - in the dark corner of the peasant hut it reflects no light. Its keepers are invisible without time or s.p.a.ce to define them, without flesh or bone, without tomb or burial goods or names. The younger boy dies first, his soul sucked dry. His body is buried in the sand and watered by tears. Then the elder falls sick for the last time. As he lies on his bed of fever he sees the priests hover over him, feels them gorge on the breath of his life and he knows it was he who brought them to his house.

268.

He tries to whisper a warning, but the words are sucked from him by the dry lips of death. Soon his mother will feel the night-time kiss of the servants of the G.o.ds and she too will give her life to grant them eternity, leaving a sorrowing man in an empty house, who, soon, takes up his belongings and leaves the place to the shadows and the sand. He does not see the bottle on the back of the shelf and it remains behind.The telephone by Anna's bed rang at a few minutes after three- thirty a.m. She sat up with a start, wondering where she was. Her dream hovered for a second, insubstantial and floating. Then it was gone. She didn't even recall the sound of a sandal or the whisper of a linen robe. Disoriented, she stared round, then she remembered. They were getting up to drive across the desert some 280 kilometres southwards from Aswan, to Abu Simbel. The wake up call on the phone was followed by a knock at her door and a cup of tea. She dressed quickly in jeans and a tee-s.h.i.+rt and pulled on a sweater against the cold of the night, then she Set out to find Omar. He merely shrugged when she explained she didn't want to go with them. Inshallah! It was up to her. Tell Ibrahim she would require meals, and enjoy her rest.

Andy was standing near the reception desk where the pa.s.sengers were gathering in sleepy groups ready to go ash.o.r.e. He scowled when he saw her and turned away. Well, it was good that he had seen her. He would a.s.sume she was getting on the coach with the others. When he found she hadn't after all climbed on board with the rest of them it would be too late for him to change his mind and stay behind too.

Finding Serena wearily lifting her overnight bag onto her shoulder she whispered her decision. Serena nodded. Was she, Anna 269.

wondered, even a little relieved? She couldn't see Toby, but already the pa.s.sengers were streaming across the gangplank onto the silent s.h.i.+p alongside them, where they would creep through the deserted lounges and pa.s.sages smelling eerily of cold cigarette smoke and stale beer, towards the second gangplank which would lead to the sh.o.r.e. There, a small charabanc was waiting to take them out to the a.s.sembly point where a convoy of coaches and taxis gathered every morning to leave under escort for the drive south across a desert which was also a military zone.When they had all gone Anna stood still for a moment, listening to the silence, wondering a trifle wistfully if she had done the right thing. It was too late to change her mind. With a shrug she turned back to her cabin.

At the door she hesitated for a moment, afraid of what she might see when she opened it. Taking a deep breath and with one hand clamped firmly on the gold charm around her neck, she gave it a tentative push. The cabin was empty. When she woke she was lying on her bed, fully dressed. She frowned, disoriented for a moment, aware that something on the boat had changed. Then she realised. She could sense the emptiness around her, the deserted cabins, the lack of distant bustle. Omar had told her that only two or three of the crew would be staying on the boat, the others were taking the opportunity to go ash.o.r.e for a couple of days before the return voyage to Luxor. As far as she knew she was the only pa.s.senger who had made the decision to skip the overland trip to Abu Simbel and stay aboard.

Slowly she climbed out of bed. She wasn't sure where she was going to start her search for the diary, but Andy's cabin seemed the obvious place. Either she had missed it the first time, or perhaps, even if it hadn't been there before, it would be there now.

To get in, she would need the help of a key. As she expected the boat was completely deserted. It was a simple matter to run down to the reception desk, duck behind it and lift Andy's key off the hook where Omar had placed them all before they left. Slipping it into her pocket she made her way, for the second time, towards Andy's cabin.

When she reached the door she stopped suddenly. Supposing she was wrong. Supposing for some reason he had changed his 270.

mind and turned back, as she had done, and he was there? She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Then quietly she inserted the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

It was neater this time. Presumably both he and Ben had realised that the packing of an overnight bag was easier if some kind of order prevailed in the cabin.

Bolting the door behind her to make sure that on this occasion she was not interrupted, she went through the place systematically and ruthlessly, checking and double-checking every square inch until at last she had to give up.

Standing still she looked round with an overwhelming sense of defeat. There was no sign of the diary or the bottle and there was nothing for it but to let herself out of the cabin, checking before she left that there was no evidence of her intensive search, and return the key to its hook. Then she wandered back up the stairs, deep in thought. It hadn't occurred to her that he might have taken the diary and scent bottle with him. All she could do was hope that he had hidden them somewhere else on the boat.

Pus.h.i.+ng open the door to the lounge she wandered in. Ibrahim was behind the bar, polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses. He greeted her with a big smile. 'Misr il khir. Good morning, mademoiselle.'

She saw him stare at her closely, and she guessed it was to check that she was wearing the amulet when she saw him nod to himself, obviously pleased that he had glimpsed the gold chain at her throat.

'Good morning, Ibrahim. It looks as though I'm all alone for a while.'

He shook his head. 'Omar says three people for meals, mademoiselle. I cook for you all myself.'

'Three people?' She frowned. 'Do you know who the other two are?'

He shrugged. 'n.o.body is awake yet. I cook lunch soon and leave in dining room on hotplate. Soup. Rice. I am going to grill chicken with roast banana. You like that?'

She smiled. 'It sounds wonderful. I didn't know you were a cook, Ibrahim.'

'The real cook, he's a Nubian, and he goes to see his mother in Sehel. But Ibrahim is a wonderful cook too. Inshallah!' He roared with laughter. 'Would you like a drink now?'

She ordered a beer and wandered out on deck. It was already hot, the air s.h.i.+mmering over the scrubbed planking as she stood 271.

watching yet another huge cruiser manoeuvre its way in towards the bank, its upper deck lined with interested spectators in brightly coloured shorts and s.h.i.+rts. The hill on the far side of the river with its rounded Fatimid chapel was almost hidden in a heat haze and the few feluccas she could see plying their trade on the broad stretch of water were drifting, sails slack, without a breath of wind. Behind her the pot plants blazed with colour, the deck around them long ago dry after their early morning watering.

It was too hot to stay on the top deck. She turned and made her way back downstairs to sit beneath the awning, her gla.s.s on the table in front of her. Whilst Ibrahim was cooking she would take the chance to make a perfunctory search of the lounge area. It was just possible, she supposed, that Andy had tucked the diary away in there somewhere. She sighed. It was also possible of course that it wasn't him at all and that someone else entirely had taken it, that she would never see it again.

'Anna!'

The quiet voice behind her took her completely by surprise. She swung round. Toby was standing in the shade, his sketchbook under his arm.

They stared at each other awkwardly for a moment then he said, 'I thought you would have gone to Abu Simbel with Serena.'

'I couldn't go without knowing what has happened to the diary.' Anna squinted up at him. 'Are you all right? I was worried after the scene in Andy's cabin.'

He shrugged. 'I went on deck to cool off. I might have killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d otherwise.'

She frowned. 'You were standing up for me and I didn't get the chance to thank you.'

Raising his hands he shook his head. 'No need.'

She gave an uncertain smile. 'So, why did you stay? I'd have thought you'd want to see the temple of Rameses.

He shrugged again. 'I thought it better not to be anywhere around Watson for a bit. I can always see the temple another time. I'm coming to Egypt again, don't forget.' He pulled out the chair next to her. 'May I?'

She nodded. 'Ibrahim said we could help ourselves from the bar. Just write it on the pad. He's cooking lunch.'

Toby grinned. 'Great.' He headed towards the door into the lounge, then he stopped. 'I take it you have searched his cabin again?'