Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Not long after Mr. Carsington left, Leena and Nafisah hurried in with the happy news. Nafisah had agreed to have Yusef. She was very pleased. She wished to have more babies. Yusef was young and strong and would give her many children. He was handsome, too, and kind. She kissed Daphne’s hand repeatedly, thanking her.

“What have I to do with it?” Daphne said. “It was you who stole his heart.”

“If you had left me in my village,” the girl said, “my Sabah would be dead, and I would be the fourth wife of an ill-tempered man.”

Like Virgil, Daphne thought. He’d looked so saintly and serene, but it was a mask, and it had fooled her. She’d thought she was at fault and hadn’t realized she was at the mercy of a moody, discontented man.

But she’d been so young then, older than Nafisah in years, but much younger in experience. She’d no experience of the outside world. Girls, even very clever girls, didn’t go to public school. They didn’t go to university. She’d studied at home, with her father. She’d lived a quiet, cloistered existence.

Were her feelings never to be trusted simply because they’d fooled her all that long time ago?

Was her judgment about men fatally flawed, or had she simply made a youthful error?

She was not sure, and she hadn’t time this day to work out the riddle. Though the wedding was a simple affair, it ought to be a festive occasion. She busied herself with arranging it. By the time the boat moored for the night, the meal was in preparation and the bride dressed in a set of Daphne’s Arab garments.

The bride-to-be was applying kohl to the baby’s eyes when the mongoose raced into the room, chittering excitedly.

“What on earth is the matter with…” Daphne trailed off as she became aware of unfamiliar voices outside.

Leena peered through the shutters. “Officials, from the town,” she grumbled. “They will steal all our food, and call it a boat tax.”

Marigold dashed out again. Daphne nudged Leena away from the shuttered window. The mongoose ran out onto the deck and instantly went up on her hind legs, fur bristling as though she’d spotted a cobra.

Daphne went to the chest where she kept the pistols, took them out, and loaded them, her hands shaking.

The voices outside sounded calm, but she didn’t trust the calm. If she’d had fur, it would have bristled, too. She didn’t know what was wrong, only that she was absolutely certain something was.

“Find knives, whatever weapons you can,” she whispered to the women. “If anyone tries to get in here, attack first, ask questions after.”

For once, Leena did not launch into a prophecy of calamities to come. She only nodded.

Daphne quickly wrapped a shawl about her waist and tucked one pistol into it. The other she carried in her hand. She went out into the passage. At the door that opened onto the deck, she paused and listened.

The matter was quite simple, one of the strangers was saying. The Englishman was invited to accompany them to the house of the local sheik.

Rupert answered that he was honored by the invitation, but he had made other plans for the evening.

The man said he feared that the sheik would be deeply offended. In this case, every member of the crew must be bastinadoed, to soothe the sheik’s wounded feelings.

“I must invite you to leave,” Rupert said. “We’re having a wedding, you see. We’ve just cleaned the boat, and you don’t want to be spilling a lot of blood on it, do you?”

The man muttered something to somebody nearby. The second man grabbed the nearest sailor and started beating him with a stick.

Then several things happened very quickly.

The mongoose leapt at the leader and sank her sharp teeth into his leg. He shrieked. A rifle went off. Rupert had an oar in his hands and was swinging it at the two men rushing at him. A man fell overboard. A lantern fell onto the deck. Daphne cocked the pistol, opened the door a little wider, aimed, and fired at one of Rupert’s attackers. The villain screamed and went down, clutching his leg.

After that it was hard to sort anything out. The crew had picked up oars and tools and cookware and were using them to fight. She was pulling out the second pistol and cocking it when a hand closed round her wrist like a vise, forcing her to drop the weapon. Her assailant dragged her away from the door. She kicked it closed behind her, then kicked out at him. Her boot connected with a limb. He swore but didn’t let go. He was dragging her to the back of the boat, away from the fray at the front. She swung the first pistol at his head. He knocked it away, grabbed both her hands, and pinned them behind her.

“Rupert!” she cried. “Tom! Yusef! Somebody!”

She thought she heard Rupert shout back. She looked toward the sound of his voice. There was a flash that lit his face in the instant before he clutched his chest and stumbled backward…and over the side.

“Rupert!” she screamed.

“You come, your people live,” said the man who held her. “You fight, they die. All.”

She went.

Chapter 19

28 April

MONSIEUR DUVAL WAS IN ABYDOS, SOME SIXTY miles downriver from Dendera. The site lay well inland, in the Libyan Desert at the edge of the mountain range.

With him were several of his countrymen and local allies, who’d hastily retreated from Dendera when word reached them that the Memnon was headed that way. Their numbers being small and Lord Noxley’s feelings about the zodiac ceiling being well known, they decided to play least in sight until he’d moved on to Thebes.

When the man Jabbar arrived, Duval was inside an immense edifice that Strabo and Pliny had called the Memnonium. While his companions made the best of matters by trying to dig the building out from under centuries of accumulated sand and rubble, Duval spent his time staring at a wall in a small inner apartment. Carved into the wall were three long rows of cartouches, a list of kings.

There should have been twenty-six ovals in each row, but the wall was damaged, and a number of names were lost. None of those remaining resembled the one he remembered from the papyrus, the simpler of the two cartouches it had contained.

Now the papyrus was in Noxley’s hands.

The news had come late last night: Faruq was dead. Noxley had both Archdale and the papyrus, and they were in Thebes, beyond Duval’s reach, thanks to the Golden Devil’s reign of terror.

Still, all was not lost, Duval had thought.

He’d sent a large party downriver to intercept the Isis and capture Archdale’s sister. He planned to trade her for the papyrus and Archdale’s key to deciphering the hieroglyphs.

Then Jean-Claude Duval might still achieve the triumph he’d dreamt of: he would discover an untouched royal tomb, filled with treasure. The discovery would make him famous, more famous than Belzoni. The bulk of the treasure would go to the Louvre, not the British Museum. He would win honors. Medals would be struck in his name. And at last France would be avenged for the theft of the Rosetta Stone.

That was the dream, the ideal. He knew matters might not turn out quite that way. The papyrus might lead him to a royal tomb as empty of treasure as the others found so far. He knew it might take many years to find the tomb. He knew it was possible he’d never find it.

Still, even in the worst of cases, he would have the papyrus, which would go to the Louvre. And he — and therefore France — would have the key to decipherment, which was far more valuable, for it was a key to unlocking the secrets of the ancients.

No, all was not lost, he’d thought…until now.

Heart sinking, he gazed at Jabbar’s haggard face and said, “What has happened?”

“A slaughter,” Jabbar said. “The Golden Devil’s men were waiting for us. Most of our men are dead. A few escaped into the hills. Ghazi has the woman.”

“What, again we lose her?” Duval said. “First, the men in Asyut let her slip through their hands when she was unguarded, practically alone.”

“Drunken fools,” Jabbar said bitterly. “We took care, but our enemy had wo

rd of our doings. Sometimes I think even the jackals and snakes and vultures spy for the Golden Devil, for he knows everything.”

Lost, Duval thought. His last chance lost.

What now?

He didn’t know. Yet. But he would find a way.

He could not let the English fiend win.

DAPHNE’S CAPTORS HAD kept their word. They’d stopped fighting her people. As soon as she was aboard their boat, they cut the Isis’s mooring ropes and let the swift current carry the dahabeeya downstream.

It would be a while, probably, before her crew had the boat under control. Meanwhile, the Isis might collide with a sandbank or another boat. Still, those aboard were far more likely to survive such mishaps than a battle with these villains. With Rupert dead, who could stop them from slaughtering everyone aboard and sinking the dahabeeya?

Rupert dead.

She ought to feel something, but she was numb.

After a short time on the river, her captors took her overland on horseback. Wherever they were going, they were going swiftly, with only the shortest possible pauses to rest and refresh the animals and themselves. Still, they treated her well enough, allowing her privacy to deal with nature’s needs and a small tent of her own to rest in. She didn’t know if she rested or not or ate or not. Food didn’t matter. Sleep didn’t matter.

She didn’t care how they treated her or what would become of her.