“We can try,” he said. “But it could take a very long time, and it might be more densely packed farther on. Are you sure you don’t want to turn back?”
“I have the greatest confidence that they’ll be waiting for us,” she said.
They would kill him. Kill the man first, one of the men had said. Once he is dead, she will give us no trouble.
But others said the Englishman was more valuable alive: they could hold him for ransom or make him into a eunuch and sell him as a slave. Someone brought up the difficulties of finding a suitable buyer; another pointed out how much easier it was to dispose of a corpse than to conceal a large, ferocious Englishman. And so on.
They had haggled about Mr. Carsington’s life as they might have haggled over the price of a pipe bowl.
She would not let him fall into their hands.
“If I squeeze up alongside you,” she said, “I can help move the debris out of the way. We’ve a better chance using two pairs of hands.”
And if they were buried alive, she’d be close to him at the end at least.
“Say no more, m’dear,” he said. “You had me convinced the instant you suggested squeezing your magnificent body alongside mine.”
“You’re impossible,” she said. “I’m filthy. And I smell.”
“Me, too,” he said cheerfully. “Yet you offered anyway. I can’t decide whether you’re desperately brave or desperately infatuated. Perhaps both.”
She squeezed up, forcing him to draw aside. “When we get out of this, if we get out of this, I shall box your ears,” she said.
“We’ll get out of it,” he said.
“Stop talking,” she said. “Start digging.”
RUPERT STOPPED THINKING, too, and started pulling rocks out of the way. As in the tomb they’d escaped, the debris was mostly chunks of rubble. It might have been far worse, he told himself. The collapse must have happened fairly recently. It was not packed down. It wasn’t sand. As soon as he shifted some of the rubble out of the way, he saw the tunnel was of wider dimensions here than previously. They must be near the end.
He said nothing of his hopes, though, but worked silently and steadily with her, hip to hip, he tackling one side, she the other. His mind worked, too, reviewing these last hours, this day that seemed to compass a lifetime: the sandstorm, his fear and rage about her, the lovemaking — ah, that was well worth remembering — her passion, her courage.
Daphne.
It was one of those Greek names. A goddess? A nymph?
“Which one was Daphne?” he said.
She paused in her work. He felt rather than saw her rub her face. “Which one what?” she said.
“In the Greek myths. Which one was she?”
“The daughter of the river god. She’s the one who turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo.”
“Ah, yes, now I remember. Those Greek females were always doing that sort of thing. Turning into trees, flowers, echoes. Excessive, I always thought. What’s wrong with ‘I have a headache’? And what sort of missish creature runs away from Apollo, anyway? Wasn’t he one of the good-looking ones?”
“I always thought she was a fool,” Daphne muttered. “Apollo, of all gods. But there’s no rhyme or reason to those myths. You have one woman accepting the attentions of a swan, another of a bull. On the other hand, there’s…Mr. Carsington, what’s that smell?”
“I was Rupert before,” he complained. “Why am I Mr. Carsington now? Is it my fault our escape route’s caved in? In any case, if I smell worse than before, it’s on account of the digging and the fact that this place must be close to ninety degr —” Then he caught it: the distinctive odor of long-dead Egyptian.
It was very strong, stronger than anything he’d encountered before.
He dragged away stones faster now, despite the revulsion and dread.
The smell grew stronger still.
But the way was clear. He reached ahead, into emptiness. He set his hand down. Something cracked under it.
“I think we’re at the end,” he said.
He felt her move beside him, advancing into the space ahead.
“It definitely smells like a tomb,” she said.
“I don’t suppose you have any candle left,” he said. “The floor seems to be…rather crowded.”
He heard rustling. “I’ve a stub in my girdle,” she said. “But I can’t find my tinderbox.”
He found his, and after several failures succeeded in lighting the bit of candle.
It did not produce much light. There was enough, though, to show him they’d entered a sepulchral chamber whose floor was covered with broken mummies.
HE MADE DAPHNE keep the candle lit until they’d found the opening to the shaft.
He didn’t want to step on the mummies, he said.
They were hard not to step on. The sepulchral chamber had housed a large family. They’d been torn apart, limbs and skulls strewn about the floor. The search for treasure must have occurred fairly recently, Daphne guessed. Either that or someone else had tramped through here not long ago, because mummy dust still hung in the air. It clogged the nostrils and scratched the eyes.
But rock dust already coated her nose and eyes, providing a degree of insulation from the mummies’ emanations.
At any rate, they didn’t linger.
Thanks to recent excavations and plundering, the way out was clear, and it was a short way out. This tomb wasn’t as deep as the one they’d left. Once they were away from dismembered mummies and well clear of the shaft, they put out the candle.
Moonlight showed the entrance not many yards distant. They hurried that way, past crudely hewn walls bare of decoration.
At the entrance they paused.
In Egypt the moon seemed to cast a deeper, more illuminating glow than it did in England. They looked out.
They had come out on the part of the mountain overlooking Asyut. The town stood in the middle of the fertile plain, its minarets snow-white in the moonlight. From it an earthen dike, built to contain the annual inundation, wound its way to the Nile, whose own windings were plainly visible over a great distance.
Clearly visible, too, was the little village of El-Hamra, the port of Asyut, crowded with boats. Among these it was impossible to distinguish the Isis.
The dahabeeya wasn’t the first concern at the moment, though. Getting to the harbor alive was.
“Shall we chance going through the town?” she said. “If we go around, that could take hours.”
“If all the gates are locked, we won’t have a choice,” he said. “But I’d rather try the town first. It’s late, and most people will be indoors. With luck, we’ll get through without attracting attention.”
“Those men,” she said. “They might have found the tunnel. Or maybe they know where it comes out.”
“Then we’d better move quickly,” he said.
NO ONE STOPPED them at the southwest gate. The gatekeeper appeared to be asleep, like the rest of the town. The men who wanted Mr. Carsington dead failed to appear. Daphne and he nearly made it through the place with no trouble. But as they approached the main gate, the one nearest the river, a Turkish soldier accosted them.
Luckily, it was only one, and he was drunk. When he started making difficulties, Daphne “accidentally” lost her grip on her veil. It fell away to reveal her almost fully exposed bosom. While the soldier gawked, Mr. Carsington withdrew his pistol from his girdle and struck the man in the back of the head. With a low groan, the soldier went down. She helped drag him into the nearest alley.
Then, “Run,” Mr. Carsington said.
They ran.
They arrived, gasping for breath, at the main gate.
It was locked.
“This,” Mr. Carsington said, “is the last straw.”
He woke up the sleeping gatekeeper and demanded to be let out. The gatekeeper yawned and grumbled at him to go away.
Daphne tried making the request in Arabic.
The gatekeeper waved
her away. They must stop their noise, he said. The gate would be opened at the proper time and not before. If they made trouble, they would go to the guardhouse.
Then from the shadows of the wall, a young, sleepy voice piped up. “Master?”
“Tom?” Mr. Carsington said.
The boy came running. “Oh, sir, oh, sir.” He fell to the ground and commenced hugging his idol’s knees. “I knew you were not dead.” He jumped up. “Oh, lady, I rejoice to see you. The jinn of the sandstorm did not take you away.”
Daphne grabbed the boy and hugged him. “And you are safe as well,” she said in his tongue. “My heart is glad. And Yusef?”
“We hid in the big tomb, the one they call the Stable of Antar. When the sandstorm ended, we looked for you, all the day and into the night.”