Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

There wasn’t time.

He drew away. “Well then, we’d best be going,” he said.

“Going?” she said in a dazed voice. “We’re going?”

“Yes. Now. You. Me. The window.” He sat up, silently ordering his privy councilor to settle down. “Where are your clothes? Never mind. A cloak will do. You’ve clothes on the boat.”

“I don’t think —”

“You haven’t time to think,” he said. “We need to leave before the guards begin to sober — or someone smells the hashish and gets suspicious,” he said.

She rubbed her face. “Hashish?”

“Remember your drugged doorkeeper? So cheerfully useless? How else do you think I could climb up the side of the house without setting off an uproar?”

“I can’t leave Miles,” she said.

“I know, but he’s not conveniently situated at the moment,” Rupert said. “I can’t get to his window, and I can’t go through the house. We couldn’t drug everybody, and there are a great lot of people in the way. A maidservant sleeping outside your door. Other servants elsewhere, everywhere, underfoot. And then there are the guards prowling the passages.”

“How do you —”

“Leena’s been spying for us,” he said. “Made friends with a talkative servant girl. Can we go into the details later? We can’t dawdle.”

“I cannot leave Miles,” she said. “If I disappear, he’ll pay.”

“No, he won’t. He’s too valuable for them to harm. We’ll devise a cunning plan to get him out. By tomorrow. I promise.” He rose from the divan. “Where’s your cloak?”

She rose slowly. “He isn’t valuable,” she said.

“You know that and I know that,” he said, “but —”

“Noxley knows my secret,” she said.

THERE WAS A short, taut pause. Then, “Yes, of course,” he said, “I should have known this would be complicated.”

“I told him,” she said. “I had to. Miles could never keep up the pretense, living under the same roof, day in, day out. He started drinking to avoid answering difficult questions, and he has no head for liquor.”

“I understand,” he said. “I assumed it couldn’t be helped. We’ll deal with the problem. In the meantime —”

“Miles believes Noxley’s insane,” she said. “I’m not sure of that. I am very sure he won’t do anything to Miles. Noxley likes to appear noble and kind.” Another fraud, like Virgil. “He has others do the dirty work for him: torturing, maiming, killing people.”

“Daphne —”

“Shhhh.” She laid her fingers over his mouth.

Sounds. Footsteps. Voices. Outside the door.

He looked that way. He heard it, too.

She pushed him toward the window. “Go.”

“Not without you.”

She didn’t want him to go without her, either, but they had no choice. And no time to argue.

She made a fist and hit him backhanded in the chest. “You’re alive,” she said. “Stay alive, or I’ll never get out of this. Go.”

The sounds grew louder.

Daphne hurried back to the divan. Go, she begged silently. Please go.

She felt rather than heard him move away.

There was a quick, impatient rap at the door. A maidservant’s voice called softly: was all well with the lady?

Daphne lay down and drew up her thin blanket. The door flew open.

She sat up hastily and looked about her, in the manner of one abruptly awakened.

A maidservant stood in the doorway, holding an oil lamp. Behind her a tall, bulky figure loomed.

“The guard heard sounds,” the servant said, holding the lamp aloft. “Voices, he says.”

“Did he?” Daphne said. “I must have been talking in my sleep. I had very strange dreams.”

4 May

DAPHNE WENT WITH Noxley and Miles to Karnak again on Friday. It was amazing how glorious the place seemed, now the black weight had lifted from her heart. She soon filled her notebook, and Lord Noxley sent a servant to Luxor for another. She spent the latter part of the day in a small room called the Chamber of Kings. Under the various pharaohs’ sculpted images were their hieroglyphic names, which she copied.

“You will not be bored, I think, if we return tomorrow?” Lord Noxley asked her as they started back to Luxor at sunset.

“I believe I could spend a month and never grow bored,” she said. “But another day will suffice, if you have other plans.”

“We can always return,” Noxley said. “But perhaps if you made a general survey of Thebes, you might then choose the places of greatest use to your studies. I thought we might make a tour of the western bank next week. I do suspect you will find that area even more fascinating, Mrs. Pembroke. There one may study not only temples and palaces but the tombs as well. Equally important, the Tombs of the Nobles will supply you amply with papyri.”

He went on to denounce the inhabitants of western Thebes, the Qurnans, who destroyed the tombs, tore mummies to pieces, and burnt beautifully decorated mummy cases for firewood.

“It was their ancestors who stripped bare the kings’ tombs in the Biban el Muluk, you may be sure,” his lordship said. “The whole greedy, thieving tribe should have been eradicated long ago, but the Turkish authorities will not bestir themselves. The trouble is, no one here considers tomb robbing an important crime. The Turks are diligent only in collecting taxes and bribes and bullying the peasants. They are barbarians who do not understand or care about bygone civilizations. They dismantle ancient temples to build factories.”

“We’re not so different,” Daphne said. “We of supposedly enlightened nations plunder and destroy, too. It cannot be right to violate the dead, to tear mummies to pieces to find jewelry and papyri. But without the papyri, how are we scholars to understand the past? Is it right to leave the monuments here, at risk of destruction? Or is it right to take them away to our palaces and museums and mansions abroad? I don’t know what the answer is. I only know that my papyrus came from one of those tombs — courtesy of the Qurnans.”

Noxley shook his head. “Yours came from no ordinary Theban tomb,” he said. “It came from a king’s tomb, from the Biban el Muluk.”

“That’s what Anaz claimed,” Miles said.

“Now that I’ve had an opportunity to study it closely, and compare it to a host of others, I am more inclined to believe him,” Noxley said. “The cartouches, for instance. I’ve seen any number in royal tombs and on temples and other monuments, but never on a papyrus. Still, most papyri are written in the script, you know, not the picture signs, so I may have seen royal names without realizing.”

Daphne had not seen enough papyri to make any such generalizations. “How many other papyri have you studied?” she said.

“I should never presume to say I’ve studied them, not as you have,” he said. “I’m an explorer, not a scholar. But I’ve seen a great many — and at present I have at least two score.”

“That is a great many,” she said. More than twice as many as she owned.

“You are welcome to make use of them,” he said. “I know your visit to Thebes started off on the wrong foot, but I am determined to make it right. Let me begin fresh by speaking frankly and honestly, as you clearly prefer. I should dearly love to discover a royal tomb. And you, I know, wish to unlock the secrets of the hieroglyphs. Working together, as allies — I shall not presume to speak of anything more, at present — but as allies, as a team, we are more likely to realize our ambitions, do you not think?”

“And Miles?” Daphne asked. “What is his role?”

Noxley turned a sweet smile upon her brother. “Archdale, you deceived me dreadfully. I was furious at first, to think what a fool you’d made of me. But you only did so on this lady’s behalf. And so I forgive you. I am sure you’d rather try to discover a royal tomb than spend your time learning Coptic and solving word puzzles. You had some ideas, I believe, about locating tomb entrances. Perhaps

we might put our heads together?”

“Certainly,” Miles said. “Much more agreeable than having it cut off.”

Lord Noxley laughed, as though it were a joke, and went on to talk about Belzoni’s tomb and the likelihood of there being others even more impressive.

The conversation lagged as they reached Luxor and had to make their way through its narrow byways. Shortly before they reached the house, an old woman accosted Daphne and offered to tell her fortune.

Noxley gave her a coin and told her to come another time: the lady was weary today. The crone took the coin and offered to give the lady a charm for good fortune. Noxley shrugged.

The fortune teller took Daphne’s hand and muttered, too low for anyone but Daphne to hear, “He comes with fire. Be ready.”

THOUGH SHE WAS his sister, Miles had always understood that men turned into drooling idiots on account of Daphne’s figure.

That was natural enough.

What he didn’t understand was why those who managed to get close to her must be queer in the attic.

The poetically handsome Pembroke, with his sweet, gentle ways, had turned out to be a pious hypocrite of a tyrant. He was possessive, madly jealous of other men, and even more madly jealous of Daphne’s superior intellect.

Noxley was another one with a beautiful exterior and charming ways and a black heart. And he was a fine one to speak of Miles’s deceiving him, considering how he had completely taken in Miles.

Like Pembroke, Noxley was possessive to an extreme. This was a man, after all, who thought all of Thebes belonged to him. He was also a torturer and killer by proxy. And when someone presented him with a man’s head in a basket, he lit up like a child who’d got a new hobbyhorse or a set of toy soldiers.

The closest he came to a redeeming quality was his lack of jealousy of Daphne’s mind. But then, he believed her mind would eventually lead him to a great discovery, if not a great treasure. Noxley wanted fame and power, but he wasn’t averse to increasing his wealth, either.

But Daphne said they had to go along, and she was right. They were prisoners in Thebes. They were watched constantly. They couldn’t get away without help, and everyone here was either too corrupted or too terrified to take such a risk.

At the moment, you’d think Noxley was the dearest, sweetest fellow in the world.

They’d had their dinner and as he’d done before when only Miles was here, Noxley brought out the papyrus. This evening, though, he had several others brought in, and he was laying them out carefully on the carpet for her perusal.