Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

She didn’t need to know what these feelings of his were. She knew they were fleeting, because he was not the sort of man whose interest in any woman could last. She knew she could not trust her heart to his feelings, and that was all she really needed to know.

“It’s Egypt,” she said. “It’s the excitement. It’s the narrow escapes from death. These make us feel more than we would do otherwise. That’s what I meant about the Arabian Nights. We’re living a romantic adventure. But it’s only temporary. Once we find Miles —”

“It will be over,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she said.

“What a pity.” He shrugged and unrolled a map. “Your brother is headed to Dendera. Is that near Thebes?”

What a pity. That was all. He accepted her decision. Why should he not? What had she expected him to do: plead with her?

She turned her attention to the map. “There is Qena,” she said, pointing.

“Three or four days from here, it looks like, if the wind holds,” he said.

“There is Dendera, you see, across the river near the site of ancient Tentyris,” she went on. “The famous Temple of Hathor is there. She is the Egyptian goddess of…love.” She added quickly, “Thebes is forty or fifty miles upriver, if I recall aright.”

“Another few days, then,” he said without looking up from the map. “That’s supposedly Noxious’s stronghold at present. What do you wager he’ll head that way rather than turn back to Cairo?”

She stared at the map while possibilities chased one another through her mind.

“You said the papyrus was reputed to describe a Theban tomb,” he said. “Perhaps Noxious would like to help your brother find it.”

IT WAS TYPICAL of Faruq to hide right under his enemy’s nose, in Lord Noxley’s own domain.

The remains of ancient Thebes sprawled over both banks of the Nile. On the west bank, close by the river, lay the ruins of the village of Qurna, destroyed some years earlier by the Mamelukes. Rather than rebuild their huts, the Qurnans decided it was more efficient to live where they worked, in the Theban tombs. They did not, like other Egyptian peasants, get their living from agriculture. They got it from excavating tombs and selling papyri and other “anteekahs” they’d stripped from mummies.

They were reputed to be the most independent people in all of Egypt, with the possible exception of the Bedouins. One army after another had come to subdue the Qurnans…and failed. They did succeed, however, in reducing the population from some three thousand to about three hundred.

The survivors had hidden in the distant Theban hills, which contained thousands of tombs and an intricate network of passages connecting them. Here Faruq had taken refuge.

Unluckily for him, Ghazi had a way with tomb robbers. He set fire to the nearer tombs, where the old women resided, shot their vicious watchdogs, and killed their cows, sheep, and goats. Had he been after one of their own, this method would have failed. But the Qurnans were disinclined to sacrifice their mothers, grandmothers, and livestock to protect a foreigner.

This was how Ghazi located Faruq so quickly, within days of leaving Lord Noxley. The Qurnans, who knew all the best hiding places, also helped him find the dispatch bag under a heap of ransacked mummy parts. Once Ghazi had made sure the objects he wanted were inside, he rewarded the Qurnans generously, as his master would wish. He also rewarded Faruq as the master would wish, by beheading Duval’s chief agent before a large audience of Qurnans.

25 April

WHEN LORD NOXLEY and his friend disembarked from the Memnon at Luxor, they found Ghazi awaiting them. He proudly produced not only the papyrus and the interesting copy with its numerous notes but also — in a basket rather than a dispatch bag — Faruq’s head.

Lord Noxley’s face lit at the sight of these offerings, and he felt as sunny within as he appeared without.

Miles Archdale’s face was ashen.

“You must develop a stronger stomach,” Lord Noxley told him. “These people respect only force, especially the Qurnans. Now they will think twice before harboring any more of Duval’s friends.”

Ghazi had other news, which he conveyed privately to his master as they set out for the house: Archdale’s sister was not waiting quietly in Cairo, as everyone had assumed. Despite Ghazi’s best efforts, the authorities had failed to charge Hargate’s moron son with either the murder of the two men in the pyramid or that of Vanni Anaz. Consequently, Carsington was at large and at present taking Mrs. Pembroke up the Nile in search of her brother.

“By the time these things happened, I was far from Cairo,” Ghazi said. “Even if I had known —”

“You couldn’t turn back then.” Lord Noxley slowed his pace, so they might lag behind the rest of the party. He considered for a time, then his expression brightened. “Perhaps it’s for the best,” he said. “We’re here now. Why should she not be? Do go fetch her. As to Carsington, I should like it very much if you would make him go away.”

SEEING FARUQ’S HEAD gave Miles his first inkling of something being not quite right with Noxley’s.

In Dendera, Noxley had mentioned a “nasty business.” Until it was settled, he told Miles on the way to the boat, Miles would be safer in Thebes, where Noxley could rely upon the loyalty of the Turkish soldiers stationed there. The French kept clear of Thebes at present.

It was not as though Miles had any choice but to go where his friend chose. Once the Memnon set sail, though, Noxley explained the “nasty business.”

By “the French” his lordship meant, it turned out, a man named Duval, whom Miles vaguely recalled meeting at a consulate affair. Noxley said this was the man who’d hired the kidnappers. When they ransacked Miles’s belongings, they were looking for the papyrus. The next day, others of Duval’s henchmen went to the house and took both the papyrus and the copy.

In other words, Duval believed not only the story about the treasure-filled pharaoh’s tomb but also that Miles could read hieroglyphic writing.

So far, to Miles’s relief, no one had discovered the truth about Daphne. He preferred to keep it that way. She was vulnerable enough as it was.

Had she not been out at the time of the theft, she might have been taken, too, as a hostage, to make Miles cooperate with the French lunatic. But she’d been at the consulate, trying to make them do something, which, as everyone knew, they never did, unless the something involved getting ancient artifacts on the cheap. The theft sent her to Noxley, who had promptly set out to recover both Miles and the papyrus.

Clearly his lordship had succeeded on both counts.

Clearly Duval was a dangerous man.

Still, the business of the head…

It was all well and good to say, “When in Rome…” But the English had stopped cutting off people’s heads and displaying them for the edification of the masses some years ago, and Miles saw no reason for recommencing a barbaric practice merely because one was among barbarians.

Preoccupied with making sense of his friend’s behavior, he took little note of his surroundings beyond observing that the present-day Egyptians had built their houses in, around, and on the ancient temple of Luxor. Where the pharaoh and his high priests must have once performed sacred rituals, the peasants had built pigeon towers.

Noxley’s house, which occupied a corner of the southern end of the temple, was not the most imposing structure. No doubt it would easily fit in the entrance hall of his lordship’s ancestral home in Leicestershire. By Luxor standards, though, it was spacious and elegant, boasting upper and lower floors, the former airy and ideal for summer sleeping quarters.

At the house, Noxley suggested locking up the papyrus and the copy in a strongbox. Miles agreed, though he wondered who’d have the temerity to try to steal anything from anybody with Ghazi about.

Miles retired to his assigned chamber, bathed, and collapsed on the divan. He slept until a servant woke him for dinner.

When he rejoined Noxley in the comfortably appointed qa’a, Miles found

he hadn’t any stomach for dinner.

“My poor fellow, pray forgive me,” Noxley said. “You must be sick to death of native fare. Let me tell Cook —”

“It isn’t the food but Faruq,” Miles said. “That head preys on my mind. Are you quite sure it’s wise to encourage persons like Ghazi in these barbaric practices?”

“Why is it any more barbaric than hanging a man at Tyburn?” Noxley said. “I should say it was more merciful. It can take a good while to die on the end of a rope, you know. As to keeping the head for display, this is the only way to make sure the word spreads. We want to leave Duval in no doubt of his chief henchman’s demise. Then he’ll know he’s lost the papyrus as well as you.” Noxley smiled. “He’ll be frothing at the mouth, like the mad dog he is.”

“I only met him the once, and he seemed sane enough to me,” Miles said. “Yet he cannot be, to believe that anyone has deciphered hieroglyphs yet. He must be madder still to act as he has, upon such a delusion.”

“It is a delusion, beyond question?” Noxley looked up from his plate, his expression oddly childlike.

“The papyrus contains royal names,” Miles said. “That’s all any scholar can ascertain at present.”

“You didn’t buy it because you believed it described a royal tomb, as Vanni Anaz claimed?” Noxley said, still watching him with that childlike expression. “Nothing about it told you it might be a treasure map of some kind?”

Miles shook his head. He’d bought it for Daphne. Because it was beautiful, in near-perfect condition. Because she had nothing half so fine in her collection. Because he knew her eyes would light up as they used to do, a long time ago, before she wed Pembroke. Her eyes had lit, and Miles had never seen her happier than when she set to work on it. To him, this made the thing worth ten times what he’d paid.

“I heard the French consul general, Drovetti, offered Belzoni ten thousand pounds for the alabaster sarcophagus he found,” Miles said. “I thought the papyrus, another rare specimen of great artistry, was of proportional value.”

“Perhaps you’ve explained Duval’s problem, then,” said Noxley. He signaled a servant to take away the dinner tray.

When the servant had gone, he said, “Duval has always believed the French ‘discovered’ Egypt, because of the scientific expedition and the Description de l’Egypte. He hates the English partly because we beat them but mostly because we took the Rosetta Stone as spoils of war.”

“Good gad, that was twenty years ago,” Miles said. “It isn’t as though the French never took valuable items from nations they conquered. I haven’t noticed them giving any of it back.”

“Try telling that to Duval,” Noxley said. “Still, he was no worse than any of the other antiquities hunters until recent years.”

Since you came and took men like Ghazi into your employ? Miles wondered. But the recollection of Faruq’s head made him cautious. “Any idea why?” he said.

“Belzoni,” Noxley said. “Duval has been in Egypt for more than twenty years. Belzoni was here for less than five, and now he’s famous around the world. Duval had excavated in the Biban el Muluk, the Valley of the Tombs of Kings. He never found a royal tomb, but Belzoni did — a magnificent one, containing a rare alabaster sarcophagus. Neither Duval nor Drovetti could find the entrance to Chephren’s pyramid, but Belzoni did. The French couldn’t find a way to move the head of Young Memnon, but Belzoni did, and now it’s in England.”