Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Daphne wondered where her mount had got to, and whether the poor thing was alive. She looked for it without much hope. Visibility was uncertain at best. The sun was either a hellish red behind a veil of sand or disappeared altogether. Not that one could look in any direction for long. Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth filled with grit. One could scarcely breathe for the sand. Simply trying to protect herself from it exhausted her. Yet what she experienced at present, she now knew, was hardly the worst of the punishment the hot wind could bestow.

She made herself stop looking back at the deadly yellow thing racing toward them, and focused on her companion.

She recalled her moment of panic when her donkey had fallen, and she’d seen the monstrous sand tide rolling toward her. For an instant, blinded by the blowing sand, she’d felt alone, abandoned. But it was only for an instant, because in the next he was there.

As long as he was by, she could face anything. She’d followed him through the absolute darkness of the pyramid, squeezing past corpses on the way. She’d been arrested, and locked up in jail, like a common felon. She’d burst into a room filled with cutthroats, and attacked them. She’d knelt by the dying rug merchant and tried to comfort him as the last drops of blood trickled from his slit throat. She’d shot a pistol and a rifle, though firearms had always terrified her.

Even now she wasn’t sure how she’d done any of these things. Perhaps she didn’t really know herself after all. Perhaps, somehow, Mr. Carsington knew her better.

She’d survive this, she told herself. All she had to do was stick close, not let him get killed, and this difficulty, too, would soon be behind them.

He hauled her into the first tomb they reached. The donkey balked. It pulled back abruptly, tearing the bridle from his hand. Then it stood stock still in the doorway, braying.

“Hermione, get in here,” he snapped.

The donkey brayed and pawed at the ground.

“Hermione, don’t make me come after you,” he said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Daphne said. “This is an Egyptian donkey. Ta’ala heneh,” she called sharply to the agitated animal. “Ta’ala.”

The donkey snorted, and tossed its head.

“Ta’ala,” Mr. Carsington said.

The donkey trotted inside and went directly to him and nuzzled his arm.

Naturally.

“She’s afraid,” Mr. Carsington said, stroking the creature’s muzzle. “The smell, I daresay.”

It was a smell Daphne was growing accustomed to: death. Not ordinary death but mummy death, the thousands-of-years-shriveled-and-petrified smell distinctive to Egypt.

“It’s better than the sandstorm,” Daphne said. “Can we move further inside?” Now that she was out of immediate danger, she was trembling. “I should like to sit down. But out of reach of the wind and sand.” Without waiting for him, she started down the entrance passage.

It was much wider than the typical pyramid entrance. She could make out figures on the walls and what appeared to be a block of hieroglyphs further on. It quickly grew too dark to see, though, and she moved more slowly and cautiously, keeping close to one wall, testing the way ahead with her foot, to avoid tripping over or into something.

“This is far enough, Mrs. Pembroke,” his deep voice came from behind her. “We’re well out of reach of the sand, and Hermione is shaking like a leaf. Let’s wait out the storm in a quiet, restful manner, shall we?”

REST, YES.

Rupert needed to catch his breath, collect his wits. He might have lost her in the sandstorm. He needed a moment to calm down, that was all.

He never meant to fall asleep.

He’d seen them all settled inside: the donkey’s saddlebags and — most important — the leather water bottle, stowed safely, a space cleared in the rubble, and Mrs. Pembroke seated on a mat. Then Rupert simply leant against the wall to rest and collect himself.

The next he knew he was waking up to utter darkness.

And to heat, of course, the heat that continued to surprise him, though by now he ought to be used to it.

In England, deep inside a cave like this would be cold and damp. But not here. It was like the pyramids. One expected, going down so deep under so many thousands of tons of rock, it would be cool.

But in Egypt, the rocks and mountains stored thousands of years of hot desert sun.

Along with thousands of bodies.

Whether it had been the long-dead Egyptians troubling Hermione, or some donkey superstition, she’d settled down. He could hear her steady breathing. If anyone else in the vicinity was breathing, Hermione drowned it out.

“Mrs. Pembroke,” Rupert said. He reached toward where she’d been last time, on the mat he’d dug out from his saddlebag and laid on the ground for her. The mat was there. Her cloak was there. She wasn’t there.

“Mrs. Pembroke,” he said, a little louder.

Nothing.

“Mrs. Pembroke.”

Hermione snorted, but no human voice responded.

“Confound it.” Still groggy, Rupert stood. It took him a moment to recall which way was out and which way was in. He went toward the entrance first, recalling how she’d slowed there, captivated, as you’d expect, by the pictures on the walls.

The hot wind still blew, whirling sand and bits of rock within the passageway. A dull light penetrated, but not far. It was hard to guess what time of day it was. He could see, though, that she was nowhere in the outer passage of the tomb. He turned and made his way back.

“Mrs. Pembroke,” he called. Not a trace of sleep clung to him now. He was acutely, painfully awake, his heart beating fast, heavy strokes. “Mrs. Pembroke.”

Hermione said something in donkey talk as he went by, but that was the only sound he heard apart from his boots scraping along the tomb floor.

Rupert knew he couldn’t run blindly into the interior. He might easily collide with a wall or trip over something, get concussed, and then be no good to anybody. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face or the ground beneath him. The tomb floor abounded in obstacles and pitfalls: gaps and cracks, chunks of stone, animal skeletons, and other debris he preferred not to think about.

He thought only of staying upright and finding her.

Alone, in the dark, she might kill herself in a hundred different ways. She might stumble into a burial shaft, and fall a hundred feet to end up unconscious — or dead — at the bottom.

“Mrs. Pembroke!” he roared.

A sound. A voice, at last. Distant, muffled.

“Mrs. Pembroke, where the devil are you?”

“Oh, the most wonderful place,” she called. “Do come see.”

He stumbled on, groping along the tomb walls, endlessly it seemed. He walked into dead ends and had to grope his way back out. He felt his way along the sides of a room until he found the doorway. He edged through a long passageway.

Then at last he saw the light flickering, and the outlines of a chamber.

THE BACK WALL of the chamber had three recesses. She was in the central one. On the rear wall, an ancient Egyptian fellow followed three women carrying flowers. The man appeared again elsewhere, presiding over a lot of people and performing what looked like rituals.

Rupert took all of this in without really seeing it. His attention was on her, alive and unhurt, occupied with her ancient men and women and never thinking of him, while he’d been half-mad with fear for her.

“Candles,” he said tautly. “You didn’t tell me you had candles.”

“In my hezam — my girdle,” she said, leaning in to study one of the figures. “That time when we were abandoned in Chephren’s pyramid taught me to carry a tinderbox and some wax candles. Is it not beautiful?”