The Alexandria Affair

by Jennifer Ashley

  Grenville and I spent the remainder of the day out in the desert. To Bartholomew’s despair, I wore the turban, though not the galabiya. The turban kept the sun from my face and head wonderfully, and I highly recommended it to Brewster and Grenville. Brewster ignored me, but Grenville said he would consider it.

  With Bartholomew and Matthias to help, we continued to measure the distance from the hole Grenville had explored to where we thought an entrance to the tomb might be. We walked a long way, searching a wide area before I suggested a rough patch of ground at the base of a bluff.

  All five of us took up spades and began.

  It was hard work, but my eagerness drove me on. I had a firman and I was searching for antiquities, just as I’d longed to do when I’d looked at the buried temple outside Alexandria.

  The afternoon waned, the sun lowered, and we’d found nothing. I hoped I wouldn’t have to admit we’d simply been digging in the dirt only to uncover more dirt.

  As the disk of the sun slipped below the horizon, I drove my spade in one more time, and swore I struck solid stone.

  “Here!” I yelled, my words ringing in the sudden twilight.

  The others gathered, propelled by my excitement, but darkness gathered, and we could see nothing. I could feel what I thought was stone, but realized, in frustration, that we couldn’t investigate it properly until morning.

  We covered up our work the best we could to hide it and trudged back to the pyramids to find our ferryman to take us home. My thoughts were at the digging site all the way—I chafed that I’d have to wait to discovered whether I’d found anything at all.

  That night as Grenville and I dined, Brewster marched into the room unannounced and without asking leave. He simply halted beside my chair and thrust a piece of paper at me.

  “One of the coves what gave me a thumping brought this,” he said. “You’ve been summoned.”

  I took the paper, a plain folded sheet, and opened it. Inside was a note whose brevity was worthy of Mr. Denis, though with none of Denis’s eloquence.

  I have your twin. For his life, bring me the Greek book. Tonight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sharkey hadn’t signed the note, but I knew he’d written it.

  I handed it to Grenville. He read the words, eyes widening.

  “That is enough, Lacey,” Grenville said, flinging the paper to the tablecloth. “Send for the magistrates.”

  “Not if he has them in his pocket, as Brewster speculates.” I calmly ate another bite of rice and stew, though my muscles tightened, my anger stirring. “Sharkey does not have the book, obviously.”

  Grenville stared at me. “You seem to be taking this well. Are you going to leave Marcus to his fate then?”

  “No.” Burning rage was rising inside me, and also joy, because I could focus that rage on a target. “I do not have the book, so I cannot bargain for Marcus’s life. I could fake the book, I suppose, but that would take time and resources. If Marcus has it, he hid it somewhere Sharkey can’t find it. Perhaps Marcus told him I could put my hands on it.”

  “Why would he?” Grenville asked. “He must know you don’t have it.”

  “Unless they’re working together,” Brewster said. “In league, sort of thing.”

  “We won’t know until we ask him.” I laid down my fork and wiped my lips with my napkin. “We will not be keeping Sharkey’s appointment, gentlemen.”

  “No?” Grenville gave me an astonished look. “What about Marcus?”

  “We will rescue him, instead,” I said, and took a sip of Grenville’s fine wine.

  * * *

  I suppose Sharkey meant me to turn up, fearful and trembling, on his doorstep, the Greek scroll in hand.

  Even if I’d had the thing, I knew a man like Sharkey wouldn’t simply take it and docilely release Marcus. He’d have his men surround and waylay us, killing us in some quiet street, making it look as though we’d died at the hands of robbers. The pasha would have some Egyptians rounded up and executed to prove he could keep the peace and the incident would be forgotten.

  To my surprise, my friends didn’t argue about rescuing Marcus. At least Grenville did not. Brewster only took me aside while Grenville was upstairs changing his clothes and pointed out a few facts.

  “You know, guv, if you let Sharkey kill this Marcus bloke, there’ll be no dispute about who inherited your land.”

  I gave Brewster an impatient look. “I care nothing for my inheritance at this moment.”

  Donata’s father would be horrified, as would Grenville. Every English gentleman was proud of his lineage. But perhaps Donata would understand. She had a canny perception about my opinions on the matter.

  Marcus was a Lacey. I knew it from his looks, his temperament, his rashness, his determination. I’d be damned if I’d let someone like Sharkey murder him. If anyone would kill Marcus, it would be me.

  The note said nothing about when Sharkey expected us tonight. Likely he reasoned we’d rush over immediately.

  Therefore I took my time. Make him worry a bit.

  I certainly worried. I was perspiring as we made our plans in the courtyard, trying to cool ourselves in the evening air.

  I recalled how Sharkey’s house lay at the end of a narrow lane, only one way in and out. Brewster, as he’d tramped about Cairo these past few days, had found the streets that backed the house. Leave it to a professional thief to scout the many routes into a building.

  “A bakery is behind it,” Brewster told us. “Top floor of that building is for storage, which backs onto the women’s quarters of Sharkey’s house.”

  “The women’s quarters?” Grenville repeated. “Do not tell me Sharkey keeps a harem.”

  Brewster huffed a laugh. “Never saw a woman coming in or out. Not even peeking through the lattice. He probably don’t trust any woman enough to let them stay. I wager the rooms are empty, or he’s stashed the other Mr. Lacey there.”

  “Are you willing to lead the way?” I asked.

  Brewster nodded without hesitation. “Only makes sense, don’t it?”

  I’d briefly considered asking my Turkish cavalry friends to join me in the raid, but let the thought go. Though they’d be handy in a fight, I did not wish them to come to harm from men with no honor. And, if they did kill Englishmen, the pasha might not be happy with them. Better to involve no one but ourselves.

  I was no stranger to fighting and neither were Grenville and Brewster. We were armed with pistols and knives, plus I had the sword in my walking stick.

  Just before midnight, Brewster led us through the streets, skirting the more crowded areas. Bartholomew and Matthias broke off from us—they would watch the front of the house and summon help if necessary.

  The lanes behind Sharkey’s house were quiet. The people here worked hard and likely slept every moment they could.

  The bakery was closed, but I could smell the banked fires, the lingering odor of cooked flatbread and pastries. My stomach, even knotted with nerves, rumbled.

  We reached the top of the house by climbing the crumbling side of the adjacent building, our way tucked into deep shadow. Brewster led us swiftly and confidently, surefooted in the dark, and pulled me up without comment.

  He opened a shutter that moved silently, and motioned us to step down into the room inside.

  The wooden floor was gritty with sand and gravel. I steadied Grenville as he came in after me, and he gave my arm a squeeze to tell me he was all right. We couldn’t see each other—or anything else—in the absolute darkness.

  “Put your hand on my shoulder,” Brewster whispered to me. “And Mr. Grenville on yours. Don’t step nowhere but where I do.”

  I wondered if some of the boards on which we trod were rotten. Brewster led us in a straight line—obviously, he’d scouted the route.

  Another shuttered window, again opening noiselessly, led us to a narrow ledge between this house and the one behind it. The space allowed us to walk along a few feet of wall to windows that opened to
Sharkey’s top floor.

  These windows were shuttered, and behind them were finely latticed screens. The ladies who’d lived here wouldn’t have had much to look at outside their prison, but the openings would at least let air into the rooms.

  We heard nothing from inside. Brewster withdrew a small chisel from his pocket, inserted it into the crack between shutter and wall, and pried the shutter loose. He then worked off the lattice, the dryness of old wood making his task easier.

  Brewster then moved quietly into the room and signaled us to follow. I stepped down, part of me curious to see the inside of a harem.

  The first chamber was deserted. I could discern little from what moonlight filtered in behind us, but the floors and walls were bare, any comforts for its inhabitants long gone. Sharkey certainly wasn’t keeping any female company here.

  Brewster tested the door, which proved to be unlocked. It opened into yet another lattice-windowed room, this one in the front of the house. More moonlight trickled inside, showing that this chamber was as plain as the one behind it. In this poorer section of town, the women must have lived in cramped misery.

  Another door yielded to a tiny hall with a staircase. We went slowly down these stairs, letting Brewster test each step before we trod upon it.

  We reached the next floor down, the third from the ground in this building. Brewster pressed his hand to my chest, halting me. A flicker of candlelight showed under the door nearest the staircase.

  Brewster stepped to that door, bending to listen to the muffled voices inside.

  Brewster suddenly straightened up and shoved me back to the staircase. “Mr. Lacey is in there,” he whispered. “But there’s a problem.”

  “He has guards?” I asked.

  Brewster’s mouth brushed my ear. “Sharkey’s wiv’ ’im.”

  “We wait then,” I said, my heart beating swiftly.

  I passed this information to Grenville, who nodded. We retreated into the staircase, pressing ourselves into the shadows.

  Voices rose from inside the room.

  “Your brother ain’t coming,” Sharkey snapped. “Stop pretending you’re addled-pated and tell me where you hid the book.”

  “He isn’t my brother, you ignorant dolt.” Marcus’s cool voice rang out. “He won’t care whether you shoot me or not. And I told you, I don’t have the bloody book.”

  “You hid it,” Sharkey growled. “He’ll find it for me, and I’ll consider letting you go. Though you’ve given me a powerful lot of trouble already, so maybe I won’t.”

  “If I had the damned book, I’d have fled Cairo at once, not walked tamely around waiting for you to nab me,” Marcus said, no meekness in him. “You’ve had me here two days, and he’s not come beating down your door. Get it through your pate that he’s not rushing to save me.”

  “Family changes everything.” Sharkey gave a grating laugh. “Trust me. I’ve seen it time and again. A man can be hard as nails until someone in their family is under threat. He’ll come. I think I’ll shoot him, just to show him he should respect me.”

  “He can’t learn a lesson if he’s dead,” Marcus pointed out. “You know, Mr. Sharkey, I’ve hated him all my life, but at the moment, I think I like him much better than I do you.”

  There was the sound of a fist hitting flesh and a grunt and moan. I started forward before I could stop myself, to be caught by the slim but very strong hand of Grenville. I subsided, seething rage and impatience.

  After a time, we heard another groan, then a long breath. “He’s not stupid enough to come here for my sake.” Marcus’s voice was weaker but no less defiant. “I hope he has the book and is rushing back to England with it, far out of your reach.”

  “If he is, you’re a dead man.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” Marcus said with finality. “You might as well get it over with.”

  Sharkey’s voice filled with iron coldness. “You’re right, guv. On your knees.”

  “The hell I’ll kneel to the likes of you.”

  Another grunt, and the fall of a body. “I’m weary of hearing your voice,” Sharkey said. “Pick him up.”

  A third person was in the room with them. Marcus cursed as the other man jerked him, and I heard the precise sound of a pistol being cocked.

  I was past Brewster even before I realized he was also making for the closed door. I landed on it with all my weight, breaking it open.

  Sharkey snapped his head around, his pistol ready. He turned it from Marcus, aimed it straight at me, and opened fire.

  CHAPTER 23

  T he pistol’s ball went nowhere near me. Grenville, with an athleticism his languid dandy persona hid, spun me out of the way and onto the floor. The bullet thunked into the wall and stayed there.

  Brewster, with a bellow of rage, went for Sharkey.

  The third man in the room, one of Sharkey’s thugs, met Brewster with his fists. Brewster shoved him out of the way, but not before the man brought up a knife and slashed down at Brewster.

  Two flickering lamps—greasy rags in candle holders—were knocked over in the fight. One hit the floor and extinguished. The other fell to the bare bunk and caught in the straw mattress.

  I climbed off the floor in time to tackle Sharkey, who was heading for the door. We both went down, Sharkey’s spent pistol coming up to toward my temple.

  A broad, tanned hand yanked the gun from Sharkey’s grip before it touched me. By the light of the bed, which was fully ablaze now, I saw Marcus, ropes stretched between his wrists, lift the pistol and bring its butt down at Sharkey’s head.

  Sharkey twisted away, avoiding the blow. He kicked my knee as he got to his feet, sending fiery pain through my leg. Brewster was still fighting the other thug, and more men pounded up the stairs. The room filled with pungent, choking smoke.

  Grenville had already darted out the door—where he was going, I had no idea. I hoped he prudently had decided to quit the place before it burned to the ground.

  Marcus pulled me to my feet. He stared at me a brief moment, amazement mixed with anger, then we both had to turn and fight Sharkey and the men who’d come to help him.

  Sharkey rained rapid blows down on me. Brewster had told me Sharkey had been a pugilist, and while his punches lacked the elegance they might have had in a boxing exhibition, they were effective. I raised my fists to fend him off, while the room burned merrily around us.

  Marcus was kicking and fighting in grand style, but his hands were still bound, and he couldn’t make much headway. More men were coming. They’d trap us in the burning room.

  I coughed, air squeezing from my lungs. Marcus fell. Brewster, a giant lit by the halo of fire, barreled into me, his bulk propelling me through the two men in the doorway and out into the hall.

  “Marcus,” I croaked. “Don’t leave him.”

  Brewster’s look told me what he thought of my sanity, but he turned and disappeared back into the inferno.

  That left me to fight Sharkey’s men on the stairs by myself. Sharkey was leaping for the upper floor—he must know of the escape route through the bakery, or perhaps he meant to take to the rooftops.

  I wrested myself from the thugs and followed him. Below me, I heard Grenville calling my name, but I continued after Sharkey.

  I caught up to Sharkey in the second of the harem rooms, before he could leap from the window Brewster had opened. I seized the man around his waist and hauled him back inside.

  Like Brewster, Sharkey carried many weapons about his person. He had a slim knife in his hand, swinging it at me. But I had prepared as well, and a curved dagger Grenville had bought at the market in Alexandria helped me fend off the strike.

  Sharkey got in a few slashes, cutting my coat and opening a gash on my cheek. He’d nearly hit my eye—he was skilled with a knife.

  Why I didn’t simply let him run off into the streets and be rid of him, I didn’t know. My anger at him for waylaying me and having me beaten, then kidnapping Marcus in order to coerce me int
o a confrontation had risen to red fury. I slashed at him, trying to stay out of his reach, and punched him in the face when I had the opportunity.

  Sharkey came back at me with his knife, plunging it straight at my heart. I danced out of the way, and he spun after me, catching me with a punch on the ribs and one in the head. My legs collapsed as he kicked my knee again, and I fell heavily to the floor.

  “Damn you,” I yelled at him, blood spattering with my words.

  He came at me, knife held low, ready to kill me with efficiency, but he halted when a pistol appeared next to his head, pointed at his eye.

  “Say your prayers, Sharkey,” Marcus Lacey said.

  He pulled the trigger, but Sharkey had already ducked with the reflexes of long experience. The bullet struck the lattice Brewster had leaned against the wall, splinters of dry wood exploding from it. Sharkey slammed himself out the window and scrambled up onto the roof opposite.

  Marcus held the smoking pistol at his side and thrust out a hand to me. Somewhere, he’d gotten rid of the rope that had bound him, raw marks around his wrists.

  I took his hand and let him haul me to my feet. I had no idea whether Marcus meant to kill me as well, but I didn’t waste breath asking.

  “The lower floors are ablaze,” he told me. “No way out down the stairs.”

  “Then follow me,” I said.

  I darted a brief glance out the window Sharkey had used for his exit, but found no sign of him. He must have decided to take to his heels instead of lying in wait to finish us off.

  I led Marcus through the open window, across the ledge, and into to the storage room of the bakery. People filled the street below, the fire having attracted attention. The baker and his family poured out of the ground floor of their house.

  Brewster had climbed the walls deftly when he’d brought us up. With my injuries and hurried pace, I descended not nearly as skillfully, though Marcus kept up with ease. Amid the growing chaos in the street, no one noticed us.

  When we reached the packed earth of the lane below, Marcus made to duck into a side street through the crowd, but I seized him by the arm.