Shadows on the Nile

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Timothy Kenton,’ Fareed’s voice had to fight against Georgie’s, ‘you and Scott and the treasures of Egypt are all I want. The rest can leave unharmed. I do not wish to harm my own people.’

  Monty heard Tim draw in a sharp breath.

  ‘No, Tim, wait!’

  But Tim was starting to wriggle forward.

  ‘Fareed,’ Monty shouted, ‘Scott is dead.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Shot. By one of us.’

  For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of Georgie’s scream and of the wind flinging hot air and a layer of dust over them.

  ‘Timothy Kenton, let me see you.’

  ‘No, Tim.’

  Before the words were out of his mouth, Tim was rolling out from under the truck. He stood in the blazing sun, his hair gleaming gold, and Monty took aim at the ragged rocks from which Fareed’s voice seemed to come. He breathed out slowly and tightened his finger on the trigger. He waited.

  ‘Tell your friend under the truck to throw out his gun, and the foolish man with the rifle.’

  Tim turned, but he could not see Monty’s face under the truck. ‘Monty,’ he said, ‘you’ll be safe. He only wants me. Please, throw out your gun. It’s the only chance the others have got.’

  ‘How good is his word?’

  ‘Monty, we have no choice.’

  Monty felt acid burning in his throat. Either way Jessie would lose, because either way Tim was doing to die. He dragged the dusty air into his lungs and with a curse, tossed out his gun. It hit the sand ten feet away with a soft thud and immediately the guard did the same with his rifle. Only then did Fareed stand up, followed by ten figures in black robes who all carried rifles.

  Tim walked forward, his back straight and his head held ridiculously high, and only Monty could see the tremor in his hands at his sides. For a long moment Monty closed his eyes, the eerie cry still hammering in his ears, then he slid out from under the truck and went to stand in front of its rear doors. He folded his arms across his chest and watched Fareed in his black robe approach Tim. The Egyptian spat on the ground in front of Tim’s feet.

  ‘You pillage my country’s treasures,’ he said.

  His black eyes burned with a passion that robbed Monty of any last hope that he could be reasoned with. Or bribed. Or bargained with. This was a man who knew what he wanted and only an act of God would deter him from getting it. And what he wanted was Tim’s head on a platter.

  ‘I am not stealing from your country, Fareed,’ Tim said solemnly. ‘I am working with your police to ensnare people like Scott and his organisation of accomplices, so that—’

  Fareed barked an order in Egyptian and repeated it in English. ‘Kneel!’

  Tim knelt on the stony sand.

  ‘You lie,’ Fareed said. ‘Your mouth is full of lies that you expect me to believe because you think you are the educated Englishman and I am the ignorant Egyptian.’

  ‘No, Fareed,’ Monty said and moved closer, until Fareed raised his rifle.

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘Mr Kenton is telling you the truth. He is working with the police. Don’t jeopardise this. There are hundreds of tombs out in these hills, waiting to be found, and you need the co-operation of—’

  Fareed fired a shot into the sand. ‘I need no Englishman’s cooperation.’ His voice was bitter and angry.

  The shot caused Georgie’s cry to rise higher. Without a glance at Fareed, Monty walked over and opened the back of the truck. The noise and the heat billowed out of it with such force that for a moment he jerked back, but when he saw Jessie’s expression and the way she was sitting rigid on the truck floor with Georgie’s head wrapped in a blanket and howling on her lap, he reached in and lifted Georgie down. Then he wrapped his arms around her and brought her to his side. He could smell the sweat on her and feel the tension in her muscles.

  ‘Stay calm,’ he warned, as she blinked in the sudden dazzling sunlight.

  Immediately she caught sight of Tim on his knees. She saw the rifle. But she didn’t move. Just the faintest of moans passed her lips. Georgie had crouched in the dust, wailing more softly now and rocking back and forth. Gently Jessie adjusted the blanket to cover his head and face.

  ‘What is that?’ Fareed demanded.

  ‘He is my brother,’ Tim answered. Tears had started down his cheeks.

  ‘It is a monster.’

  Fareed lifted his rifle and at that exact moment a cheerful voice called out loudly behind him.

  ‘Hello, gents! I hope you’re not thinking of shooting that poor boy.’

  Fareed swung around. Monty’s jaw fell open and Georgie threw off his blanket.

  It was Maisie. She was striding out of the hills with her umbrella aloft and Malak’s small figure trailing uncertainly behind with a camel. She was wearing her sunhat with the bright red peony and looked for all the world as if she were taking a stroll along the Corniche-el-Nil. Except that her stride was long and her energy high, and she covered the distance between the scree slope and the black figures at a speed no one expected.

  ‘Well, what the heck is going on here?’ she asked with an unflustered smile, but the sight of the rifle so ready for use in Fareed’s hand made her lower her umbrella and glance from Tim on his knees to Monty ten paces away.

  ‘Maisie,’ Jessie called in a tight voice, ‘stay out of this.’

  Maisie nodded but remained exactly where she was. ‘Do you intend to kill him?’ she asked in a cold tone.

  ‘Yes.’

  54

  Georgie

  Egypt 1932

  Do you intend to kill him? she asks.

  Yes, he says.

  You turn your head to look over your shoulder at me. At me. Your eyes are huge blue seas of emotion in which I am drowning because for once I know what your expression is. It is sorrow. You are sorry.

  I am sorry.

  ‘Tim!’ I scream your name and hurtle towards you.

  Snick. Snap. Smack.

  Bullets whine past me and kick at the sand, shooting up tiny tornadoes at my feet, but I do not stop. My limbs jerk and jump, pulling me in frantic directions because I cannot control them, the way a fly buzzes on a windowpane, but I reach out for you.

  Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

  I scream.

  But the rifle sweeps up and its black fetid eye points at your head and I know I must die with you.

  I scream your name.

  The finger closes on the trigger. But the Man in Black gives a faint cough and from the middle of his chest protrudes the tip of a long thin blade and I scream again because how can a man grow metal out of his chest?

  He coughs once more and there is blood in the air. He stumbles and falls to the ground, breath escaping from him in a soft hiss that I know now is the voice of death. Behind him stands the Tall Woman with the greyhound’s face and in her hand she holds the handle of a long thin sword. It is sticking in the man’s back. She steps away and vomits something brown and repulsive on to the sand. I grasp the sword-handle and pull at it but it clings to the body, unwilling to leave it, until I yank hard and it comes out in a rush with a wet slurping sound. I wipe it on the man’s robe until it is clean and then I offer it to the woman. That’s when I see that everyone is watching me. I start to shake.

  ‘Thank you, young man,’ the woman says and slides the blade back inside the cane of her umbrella.

  I am impressed by the weapon.

  Only then do I look at you.

  They leave. They take their dead leader and leave, the fluttering men in the black robes go, and the desert feels empty when they have gone, though it is still full of sand. I don’t understand why they go. They do not touch us and they do not touch the treasure in the truck.

  I ask you.

  You say they didn’t want to touch us because they think this place is cursed. That the treasure is cursed and that we are cursed.

  Why?

  You smile at me and say it is because of me. Th
ey think I am the curse.

  Why me?

  You touch my shoulder and say it is because I am different, because I am special. You thank me. There are things I want to say to you, about the pain in my heart when I saw you on your knees in the sand, about how you looked like the great god Ra in the sunlight, about the fact that if you were going to die I wanted to die with you. But there are no words on my tongue, just an ugly moan like oxen in the fields make because they are too stupid to know better.

  ‘I know, Georgie,’ you say. ‘I know.’

  You kiss my cheek. And then you go over and kiss Jessie’s. Proper brothers and sister.

  I have a family.

  55

  ‘Wait, you can’t just rush off.’

  ‘Yes, I can, Tim.’

  ‘Maisie, I owe you my life.’

  ‘You said thank you. That’s enough.’

  Maisie straightened her hat, unfurled her black umbrella and with a little hitch of her shoulders set off back towards Malak who was still patiently holding the camel. Jessie could not let her leave. She fell into step beside her and slid an arm around the woman’s bony waist. ‘It’s not fair on him, Maisie.’

  ‘Who said life was ever fair?’

  ‘You owe him that much anyway.’

  Maisie halted abruptly and looked sharply from under her umbrella at Jessie. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Maisie,’ Jessie said gently, ‘I’m not stupid.’

  Maisie uttered a harsh little sob and shook her head. She glanced back at the truck and at the small group gathered in the shade, and halfway between her and the truck the figure of Tim was standing immobile and hatless in the burning sun, watching her.

  ‘Look at him,’ Maisie murmured, ‘look at what he has achieved. He doesn’t need me poking my big nose in.’

  ‘Too late for that.’

  Jessie guided her back down the slope, aware of her friend’s footsteps slowing as they crossed the sand. ‘Tell them, Maisie. Tell them the truth,’ Jessie urged.

  They stood in the shade, leaning against the side of the truck and sipping water that was warm. Only Georgie had seated himself on the ground.

  Maisie lit herself one of her foul-smelling cigars and looked awkwardly at Tim. ‘Your sister’s a sharp one. She’s guessed my secret and won’t let me keep it.’

  Tim smiled, but was obviously bemused and waiting for more.

  ‘So here it is, smack in your face. I’m your mother, Tim. Your natural mother, that is.’ Her cheeks turned crimson. ‘Well, that’s it, I’ve said my piece and I’ll be off now to …’

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘That’s right, Tim.’

  ‘My mother?’

  Jessie saw her brother struggle with the startling news and so she said softly, ‘That’s why she’s here.’

  Tim stared at the tall rangy woman who stood in front of him with no obvious similarities to himself except perhaps her height, and he suddenly stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her.

  ‘Timothy,’ Maisie murmured and let her hand stroke his curls.

  ‘I didn’t chase your tails all over Egypt just for the good of my health, you know. I had Tim when I was sixteen. An ignorant little tea-leaf I was, a thief. Living on me wits in the East End of London, the youngest of ten kids.’

  She looked at Tim with what was meant to be casual interest but failed to come close.

  ‘I expect you want to know who your pa was. Well, he was a no-good travelling salesman with enough charm to sink a battleship and the eyes of an angel.’ She chuckled at the memory. ‘Anyways, it was the old story. Up the duff before I knew it and forced to give the kid away to an orphanage when it came. But I named you.’ She tapped her son’s strong chest. ‘Timothy, that’s what I called you. I visited you regular as clockwork at the start but then they stopped me. It was bad for you, they said. Bleedin’ fool I was, to believe them.’

  She released a sigh and looked at each of the faces. ‘Has no one got a drink around here?’

  To everyone’s surprise it was Georgie who mumbled without looking up from the ground, ‘There’s a bottle of scotch whisky in the back of the truck.’

  They all had a shot. Maisie kept the bottle in her hand when she continued, ‘Later I met my Alf and we got hitched. He was a brickie – a bricklayer – a good kind man, and he straightened me out. Made me go back to the orphanage for you but you’d gone to a family in Kent.’ She shrugged forlornly. ‘We went down to see you but the house was so bloody posh. They could give you everything we couldn’t.’

  Tim held her hand in his. ‘You should have come in to see me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft. Your new ma would have liked that, I’m sure! But except for Saturday afternoons when me and Alf went dancing down the Palais, I followed you everywhere – got the photographs on my old Brownie to prove it. Saw you grow from a scruffy little nipper into a right smart gentleman, I did. I’m real proud of you.’

  Jessie could feel the tears but she shook her head and asked, ‘How did you know he was in Egypt?’

  Maisie brightened up, grateful to talk of something else. ‘That was easy as pie. When he went missing I got all worked up, so I broke into your flat a number of times, love, and found the travel tickets to Egypt. Tim is an archaeologist. So I just put two and two together …’

  Jessie grinned. ‘Clever.’

  ‘I didn’t have no smart house or anything but I always had it up here.’ Maisie tapped the side of her head. ‘After my Alf died, I took over the business and now I own the second biggest brickworks in England. Not bad for a little tea-leaf, eh?’

  She took a swig from the neck of the whisky bottle. ‘Now, how about me and my son riding up front together and we get this wagon on the road?’

  Georgie stood up suddenly, stumbling over his feet, and looked Maisie straight in the eye.

  ‘Does that make you my mother too?’

  While the workmen were checked for injuries and Tim paid them off from Scott’s briefcase at double-rate, Jessie took another swig of the whisky and handed it over to Monty. On the warm wind she caught the scent of his skin and it stirred something in her, so that she stepped forward and rested a hand on his chest.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Tell me what will happen now that Scott is dead.’

  ‘To Tim?’

  She nipped his chin between her thumb and forefinger. ‘You know I mean to Chamford Estate.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She could feel the heavy beat of his heart and knew that her own had matched itself to his. Softly he kissed her hair.

  ‘You taste of sand,’ he murmured.

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Chamford Estate. What will happen?’

  He sighed, his breath smelling of whisky. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. Scott’s solicitors might call in the loan.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘I would lose Chamford. No, don’t look like that, because they might extend the loan or I might find a new investor or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I might after all sell off some of the estate and try to make it pay for its own upkeep more efficiently. Even if Grandpa Mountjoy Chamford does turn in his very expensive grave.’

  Jessie tipped her head back to stare at him. ‘Is this Sir Montague I’m talking to or an imposter?’

  He laughed. ‘You’ve got me thinking, that’s all. Time to shuffle into the twentieth century, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, it is 1932.’

  ‘Mmm, we could come up with some ideas for it.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, you and me.’

  ‘All right, we can give it a try.’

  But Jessie knew they were not talking about Chamford Estate any more. She rested her cheek against his. ‘One thing,’ she said quietly.

  She felt his hands clasp behind her back as if he thought she migh
t run away.

  ‘The séance,’ he said.

  She waited.

  ‘I didn’t realise what was going on,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I didn’t know that Scott had drugged Tim’s wine before Madame Anastasia arrived. Yes, I helped carry him to the car, but only because I thought he was ill and needed medical attention, and Scott told me that he had received treatment at a hospital and had recovered.’

  ‘You believed him?’

  There was a long pause before he spoke again, and she noticed the shadows of the rocks had started to lengthen.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So why did you lie to me?’

  ‘Because I was unwise. Because I was greedy for Chamford Estate. Because Scott promised me that if I did, he’d give me three months extra to repay the latest instalment on my loan.’ He pulled back his head to look at her. ‘Because I was a fool, Jessie, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered and kissed the pulse that was fluttering in his throat.

  56

  Georgie

  Egypt 1932

  I hear things. People think that because I do not speak, I do not hear. But they are wrong.

  I have learned in Egypt the value of money.

  I hear Malak’s happiness when he is paid by Monty and by the woman who is your mother. He squeals like a pig. I think he is in pain but you tell me it is happiness because now he can buy himself an education. You tell me this and I squeal like a pig to show you I am happy.

  I am in the dark. In the truck. My sister sits near me but not touching. I hear her breathing.

  I want to thank you.

  I want to thank your mother.

  There is a giant ball of warmth in my chest, like when I use my Indian clubs too much, but this time it does not go away. I wrap my arms around myself to hold it in. Is this happiness? Is this what Malak has in his chest too?

  I am going to live with your mother.

  Tears run down my cheeks when I say the words in my head. You will live there too and Jessie will visit often. I stuff my blanket in my mouth to stop my squeals.