Part 35 (1/2)

'In love with him!' Anna was shocked. 'No, of course I wasn't!'

'I just wanted to make sure.'

There was a long silence. Anna was groping for words, unsure of her ground, aware suddenly of a huge misty gulf in her memory. 'Did Toby not tell you about Andy and me? How he was trying to get hold of my great-great-grandmother's diary?'

Frances nodded. 'He told me. He told me a lot of things, but he left some out as well.'

'Oh?' Anna stared down into her drink.

'Things which are none of my business, such as how you two feel about each other.'

378.

Anna could feel her cheeks colouring. 'I know how I feel about him.'

'You're fond of him?' Frances glanced up and catching Anna's eye she smiled. 'In love with him?' She waved her hand in front of her. the fingers crossed.

'I think I might be.' Anna shrugged. 'But we've had such a short time together and that time was difficult!'

Frances snorted. 'That seems like an understatement! I won't ask any more, my dear. Just know that I'm so pleased Toby met you. She reached across the table and squeezed Anna's hand.

Anna went over that short conversation again and again in her head as she lay in the bath luxuriating in the mixed oils of rose and lavender she had found on the shelf above it and a smile came slowly to her lips. Wrapped in a huge soft towel she climbed back to her attic room and wandered round for a while thinking about the visit to her great-aunt next morning with Toby.

The diary lay on the small table in front of the window. She stood staring down at it, frowning. She had promised that she would give it to Frances to look at tomorrow while they were out, but in the meantime were there not one or two pages left that she still had not read herself?

The last thing she remembered doing on the boat was putting down the diary on the bed in her cabin and lying staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed with fear and a strange, alien rage.

She reached for the book thoughtfully. Had he really gone, the priest who had invaded her head, or was he merely biding his time? She shuddered and moved her head cautiously from side to side as though testing it, then she looked down at the book in her hands. In the last section she had read Louisa was planning to go out to the Valley of the Tombs to bury the scent bottle which had turned out to be a sacred ampulla, at the feet of Isis.

379.It was dawn when Louisa and Mohammed mounted their donkeys and turning their backs on the river, headed westward across the rich, densely planted fields. They rode in silence, unenc.u.mbered by pack animals or companions, watching the dull clear light grow stronger by the minute. As the first shafts of sunlight were throwing long shadows ahead of them across the ground they had already reached the edge of the fertile ground and were heading out into the bright heat of the desert.

'Where will you put the bottle, Sitt Louisa?' Mohammed looked over at her at last. 'Which tomb do you want to go to?'

Louisa shrugged. 'Somewhere quiet and hidden so the bottle can rest in peace. I need to find a picture of the G.o.ddess Isis so it can lie near her.' Her donkey stumbled suddenly and she grabbed at the saddle to steady herself. 'That is all I want to do. Then we can go straight back to the boat and forget it.'

He nodded gravely. The path had narrowed as they reached the mouth of the valley. He glanced round at the dark entrances in the cliffs. He was not a dragoman. He did not have Ha.s.san's knowledge and experience of the valley. Reining in the donkey he shook his head. 'Do you remember where to go?'

She stared round her, hoping that Mohammed would attribute the tears in her eyes to the glare of the early morning sun striking off the glittering rocks. Her memories of this place were so closely tied to Ha.s.san, every rock, every shadow bore the imprint of his face, every echo the sound of his voice.

Finally she urged her donkey on. There were other visitors in the valley this time, groups of travellers with their own dragomans staring round, or emerging into the daylight full of wonder at what they had seen.

They stopped the donkeys near one of the entrances. Mohammed slid from the saddle and helped Louisa to dismount then he reached into his saddle bag for candles. He s.h.i.+vered. 'I do not like these places, Sitt Louisa. There are bad spirits here. And scorpions 380.

And snakes.

The word hovered unspoken between them. Louisa bit her lip and forced herself to move forward, leading the way. 'We won't be here long, Mohammed, I promise. You have the spade?'

They had brought a small spade lashed to the saddle of his mount so she could bury the bottle in the sand. He nodded. Swiftly he moved in front of her and she saw he had his hand on the hilt of the knife tucked into his belt and it gave her some comfort as they climbed the path towards the dark square in the dazzling rock of the cliff, to think that he was armed and prepared to use the knife to protect them.

They reached the entrance, panting. Mohammed peered in. 'Is this the right place?' She saw him make surrept.i.tiously the sign against the evil eye.

She nodded. Somewhere inside she would find a representation of the G.o.ddess with her strange characteristic head-dress of a solar disc and throne, her hands clutching the ankh, symbol of life, and her staff.

She reached into the bag hung around her shoulders for the bottle, still wrapped in the water-stained silk. 'It won't take long,' she repeated. She stepped ahead of him into the darkness, hearing the rasp of a match behind her as he lit the candle in its little lantern, seeing the shadows run up the wall. Here they were, the pictures she remembered so clearly, the bright colours, the dense endless stories told in strange indecipherable hieroglyphics, the ranks of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses stretching into the shadowed darkness.

'Sitt Louisa!' His strangled cry echoed into the silent depths of the tomb.

She spun round.

He was standing at the entrance almost where she had left him, still in the sunlight, flattened against the wall, frozen with terror. In front of him she could see the swaying head of the cobra.

'No!' Her scream tore into the shadows as she hurled herself back towards the cave entrance. 'Leave him alone! No! No! No...'

As the snake struck she threw the bottle at it and then went for it herself, grabbing at it with her bare hands. It thrashed for a moment in her grip - warm, smooth, heavy, and then it had gone. She was staring down at her empty fingers. Mohammed slid to his knees, sobbing. 'Sitt Louisa, you have saved my life!'

381.

'It didn't bite you?' Suddenly she was shaking so violently she too could no longer stand and she found herself on her knees beside him.

'No.' He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'No, Lillah! It did not bite me. See!' He held out the width of the full trouser leg and she saw the mark of the fangs and the long trail of the poison which had run down the cotton below the hole.

There was a rattle of stones below them and they looked down to see two men scrambling up the path. One, dressed in Egyptian robes, had a drawn blade in his hand. The other was a European.

'We heard your screams.' The taller man when he spoke was obviously English. He stared round the tomb entrance as the two Egyptians spoke to one another in quick agitated Arabic.

'It was a snake.' Louisa looked at him gratefully. 'I think it's gone.' She scrambled shakily to her feet.

'Did it bite anyone?'

She shook her head. 'It missed, thank G.o.d!' She closed her eyes.

The bottle had gone. There was no sign of it on the path, in the tomb entrance, on the track down the steep hillside at the base of the cliff. It had vanished with the snake.

She accepted their rescuers' offer of rest and refreshment, then she and Mohammed reclaimed their donkeys and headed back towards the river.

They arrived back hot and dusty to find the boat in turmoil. One of the travellers planning to return north to Cairo had fallen sick and a berth had been found for her on the next day's steamer. There was very little time if she wanted to take it up. She must pack her belongings, say her farewells and allow her trunks to be loaded into the launch and moved over to the larger boat without delay.

Later she was glad it had all happened so quickly. There was no time for retrospection. Barely time for goodbyes. Mohammed and the reis wept as she left the boat for the last time, as did Katherine Fielding who had, to her delight named her baby Louis after her. Venetia offered a cold cheek with barely a smile, David Fielding and Sir John both gave her huge bear hugs. Augusta took her hands and squeezed them. 'Time heals, my dear,' she said gently. 'You'll forget the worst times and remember the good ones.

It was strange, travelling with the constant sound of an engine and the splash of the paddle wheels as a background to her 382.

thoughts. There was no need to be at the command of the fickle wind. The river banks with their moving panorama of palms and lush crops, the shaduf, lifting the water endlessly from the river to the fields as they pa.s.sed, the plodding water buffalo, the donkeys, the fis.h.i.+ng boats. She watched them all from the deck, her reddened eyes hidden by smoked-gla.s.s spectacles, sketched, wrote a line or two in her diary to bring the account of her visit to Egypt to an end and she slept.

She reached London on 24th April. A week later she was reunited with her sons. It wasn't until the 29th July, on a hot afternoon as she worked in the cool tree-shaded room that she used as her studio at the back of their London house, that she opened the first of the boxes of Egyptian canvases and sketchbooks and began to pull them out one by one. Carefully she stacked them round the walls studying them critically, allowing herself for the first time since her return to remember the heat and the dust, the blue waters of the Nile, the dazzling glare of the sand and the temples and monuments with their carvings and paintings and mementoes of a long-dead past. She paused to stare out of the window at the garden square outside her house. Her world, the English world, was predominantly green, even here in London. The desert and the Nile were nothing to her now but memories.

She stooped to pick the last canvases out of the box and frowned. Her old bag was there. She must have used it to wedge the paintings in place. She pulled it out and stared at it ruefully. The bag had accompanied her on all her painting trips. Even now there were brushes and some paints left inside. She put it on the table and rummaged inside to retrieve them.

The scent bottle was still wrapped in the stained silk, tied with ribbon. She stared down at it for a long, long time, then slowly she began to unwrap it.

She had taken the bottle out of the bag. She had thrown it at the snake. Surely she had. She remembered it being in her hand. She remembered looking down at it as she stepped out of the sunlight into the shadow of the tomb.