Her first name, widow’s clothes, and reclusive habit all add up to the Winchester woman, but it’s the coffin that clinches my conclusion that it is indeed the eccentric woman. While I’ve never heard of Mrs. Winchester bringing a coffin along during her travels, such an oddity would fit the public image of the woman—and provide me with a new slant on her eccentricities for a story.
Is it the body of her young daughter in the coffin? Or her husband?
The thought of sleeping with the dead in a stateroom gives me goose bumps … a goose walking over my grave, as my mother would say.
I make sure my door is securely locked before I put on my nightgown. I’m about to undress when there is a knock on my door.
Certain it is Lord Warton coming to accuse me of searching Cleveland’s room, I open the door and find Von Reich instead.
“I thought I should check on you and make sure you’re well.”
I lean against the door frame and rub my forehead. “My head has split in two and I’ve lost one of the halves.”
“After what you’ve been through, it’s amazing you have any head left. Tomorrow the Wartons and I are taking another day excursion—”
I shake my head no and even that hurts. “I am going to stay aboard and rest.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. We are going to feast with a sheikh in the desert that will be like nothing you have ever imagined, then we are visiting the ruins of ancient Tanis, the city that once was the capital of Egypt. But since you—”
“I’m coming!”
He grins. “We leave before the dawn. To avoid the sun. And trouble.” He starts to leave and turns back to me. “It’s rather like the Biblical Revelation, isn’t it?”
“The feast?”
“No, no, the story of the Mahdi. The Muslim holy book says he’ll return to Earth amidst a reign of war and destruction much like the Bible says the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will create.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “I told you that you must expect the unexpected in Egypt. It’s an ancient land, one still haunted by thousands of years of intrigues, wars, and hexes.”
“What’s the surprise for tomorrow?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows. “A miracle, dear lady; you shall stand witness to a true miracle.”
Von Reich leaves and I carry his words to bed with me.
Holy war, apocalyptic horsemen of war and death, the intrigues of modern nations and ruins of an ancient one—all mysterious and exotic, and nothing that I expected when I made the impulsive decision to race around the world.
Now I’m to witness a miracle.
I could use one at the moment. So could Mr. Cleveland.
I feel bad that I had mentally ridiculed him for acting so secretive. He had his reasons, though whatever intrigue he was involved in, he hadn’t played it well, not at least good enough to keep from getting himself killed.
The invitation from Von Reich sounded to me as innocent as a pickpocket with his hand in my purse. With the Mahdi on the warpath, I have to wonder if the miracle won’t be that we get back to the ship with our heads still on our shoulders.
I would have passed on the invitation, but it’s just too convenient that we all ended up in the marketplace as murder was coming down. I have to find out if it was a coincidence or something else.
Exhausted from the day, I sit down to take off my shoes. Right after removing one shoe, I stop. A movement from the corner of my eye catches my attention and I look up.
Something—a shadow, a figure—is at my porthole.
Gripping my shoe, I slowly get up to see “what” if anything is there. Just inches away from my porthole a man’s face abruptly appears. Someone might as well have thrown a spider in my face. I drop my shoe, and the face, draped by a gray striped hood, disappears as quickly as it came.
Without any thought, I run for my door, throwing off the other shoe I still had on and barrel out of the doorway, racing down the corridor to the companionway and out to the deck.
Breathless, heart in my mouth, I make myself slow down so as not to draw any attention and cautiously walk down the deck toward my porthole.
Several male passengers are mingling about, enjoying their evening cigars and brandy, none in Egyptian hoods. I look in every direction trying to figure out where the hooded man went.
My feet are wet from the deck’s evening washing and even though it is not cold, my body shivers. Putting my chin and shoulders up, I’m determined to strengthen my resolve. I know there was a face at my porthole with the same hood as Mr. Cleveland’s when he was killed in the marketplace. Whoever is trying to frighten me can go to hell.
I march back down the deck to the companionway, meeting Frederick Selous returning to his cabin.
Staring down at my bare feet and lack of a night coat, he asks, “Is something wrong, Miss Bly?”
“Does it look like something is wrong to you, Mr. Selous?”
I leave him with that until I am past him. He pauses at his cabin door and appears wishing he could say something.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Selous, I don’t frighten easy. In fact, when I get scared, I get mad.”
I strut into my cabin six feet tall and filled with strength.
Once my door is shut behind me I collapse against it and try to get my breathing back into a normal rhythm. Then I lock it and shove the cabin chair under the handle.
What the devil? What insanity is this? Someone’s idea of a bad joke?
No, not a joke, but something much more cruel—an attempt to frighten me, perhaps even send me running to the captain screaming that the ghost of John Cleveland has paid me a visit. If someone wanted to discredit me, that would certainly be grist for the mill.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at the face in the porthole, all I saw was a dark face half hidden in the hood of a cloak, but I have no doubt that it meant to frighten me into believing it was him.
I draw the curtain over the porthole before slipping into bed, still angry and tense from the invasion of my privacy. The face in the window had served a powerful purpose—it brought home the fact that the murderous rage that spilled blood in the marketplace has followed me back to the ship.
The small cabin suddenly makes me feel confined, with an eerie sense of being cornered. I’m no longer certain I’m safe aboard. I feel exposed, even trapped, rather than safe and cozy because I don’t know who I can trust and there’s no place to run and hide.
The key had cost John Cleveland his life. Now it is a magnet bringing the danger and intrigues to me on a ship I should feel safe aboard.
And I lied to Frederick Selous.
I do get scared.
NEW YORK WORLD NOVEMBER 14, 1889
THE DAY NELLIE LEFT ON HER TRIP
TRAVEL CLOTHES AND VEILS OF VICTORIAN WOMEN
PORT SAID
Day 14
THE MIRACLE
LIGHTHOUSE AND ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL
10
Riding in a carriage through Port Said in an early dawn darkened by angry clouds, I no longer see the land of the eternal Nile as an enchanted place created with an artist’s brush to satiate my senses with the strange and exotic. Instead, I feel as if I have been transported back to the malevolent Egypt of the Old Testament, where mighty pharaohs who called themselves living gods ruled with the whip and the God of the Israelites turned the Nile red with His wrath. Only this time, the blood that taints the waters might be my own.
I try to shake off the feeling of gloom and doom and anxiety about whether an angry mob might drag me from the carriage, but the murder of John Cleveland and the deadly rage of the Mahdi has cast a long shadow in my mind, feeding doubts, confusion, and fears that I can’t share with my companions or anyone else on board because I don’t know whom to trust.
I regret I accepted the invitation but struggle to grin and bear it—with clenched teeth—as I sit in a carriage fit for a king en route to a feast given by a Bedouin sheikh at the ruins of a great city of antiquity.
<
br /> Von Reich is pleased with our transportation. “The sheikh sent his own carriage for me. It would not have embarrassed a pharaoh.”
The gilt carriage has ornate carvings of snakes curling up around the poles, black tongues of the reptiles hissing toward the sky as if they are challenging the gods. Fish with vibrant colors of green, yellow, and turquoise that appear ready to leap off the poles are mingled between the snakes; sitting on top of each pole are white doves of peace each holding a bright lime-green leaf in its beak.
A silk canopy made of the most soothing sea-blue turquoise protects us from the sun. Aquamarine, azure, and violet overstuffed pillows with gold tassels are laid out on the seats for us to sit on.
Two fierce-looking Bedouins armed with rifles and swords on camels ride as our escort. So much for the white doves of peace …
From their conversation earlier on the beach road as we waited for the conveyance, it’s obvious my companions are pretending that nothing happened yesterday in the marketplace. Rather than the shocking events and the possibility that we will be attacked by another mob, they chat about the lack of good service and food aboard the ship, the poverty of Egypt, the unusual scenery … anything except that the blood of men had been spilled on the dirt of the marketplace before our eyes.
The pretense leaves me tense and unsettled, with questions and no closure and a sense of distrust, especially of Lord Warton. I have no doubt he’s the instigator of the game. He gives me solemn looks, communicating to others that I am an hysterical female who was so traumatized by the murder—and execution—that bringing up the subject would cause an imbalance in my delicate feminine constitution.
I’ve handled crooked politicians, convicted murderers, burly street toughs, and tough editors who would make mincemeat out of the pompous British lord. I have worked undercover as a madwoman in an asylum to expose the abuse of the mentally ill, walked mean streets as a prostitute to investigate how their male customers treat them, taken employment as a maid to show the abuse of servants, even danced in a chorus line and received shooting lessons from Annie Oakley … all without upsetting my female disposition.
I feel like asking the haughty gentleman exactly what he has done, besides trying to show Moroccans how to grow wheat, a task his employee would be far more qualified to perform. Or I could remind him that yesterday he had proved himself unable to handle the deadly encounter with the assassin when he froze in fear and confusion as a man with a dagger came at us.
Our carriage is rumbling over Port Said potholes when the British peer catches me by surprise by mentioning yesterday’s incident.
“What did the man in the marketplace give you yesterday?”
“Excuse me?”
“Someone told the police he passed something to you.”
“What is he supposed to have passed to me?”
“That is the question, young lady, what did he give you?”
“If someone believes they saw me being passed something, let them tell me to my face. I don’t intend to answer to an anonymous accusation.”
Lady Warton pats her husband’s arm as his cheeks color from what he no doubt considers my impertinence. “Let’s talk about more pleasant things, dear.”
I had avoided an outright denial just in case someone actually did see the man slip the scarab in my pocket. I’d like nothing better than to take the key out of my heel and have a spirited discussion about it, but my instinct is that if I give it to Lord Warton the key will find its way to the bottomless pit of British bureaucracy.
Learning the truth about Mr. Cleveland’s death and carrying his last word to his loved one are a responsibility I have accepted … not to mention Lord Warton made a mistake when he set out to make me look ridiculous.
What other malice he has toward me is still to be decided. At the very least, he has appointed himself protector of whatever involvement his country has in the marketplace incident, a task I sympathize with because I would do it myself if I felt Mr. Cleveland was American. But two thorns are under my claws—the truth needs to be exposed to ensure that there was no skulduggery involved by men or their governments. And, more than anything else, a man was murdered before my eyes, a man who selected me as the recipient of his last wish, to carry an object to his beloved.
Regardless of my feelings, I am an invited guest and it would be rude of me to say anything, especially since the Wartons have a business relationship with Von Reich, who is doing his best to make me feel welcome. But the matter has not dropped with me.
Von Reich points to the two-hundred-foot tall, brick-walled lighthouse near where the canal meets the Mediterranean.
“The Statue of Liberty, that colossal statue the French put up in New York Harbor three years ago, was originally meant to be placed here to commemorate the Suez Canal. The original design was that of a fellah, an Egyptian peasant, with beams of light from a headband and a torch he held.”
“How did it end up in New York?” I ask.
“Money. The khedive of Egypt ran out of it and the Light of Asia peasant turned into the goddess Liberty and became Liberty Enlightening the World in New York Harbor.”
I make a mental note of the Egyptian connection to the Statue of Liberty to include it in a cable back to my editor. Everyone knows that the statue was a gift from the people of France and that Monsieur Eiffel had built the frame in much the same fashion he did his much-criticized tower in Paris, but the fact that the concept made its way from Egypt will be of interest.
As we leave the city, Lady Warton turns the conversation to me. The woman seems slightly bemused—or amused, I’m not sure which—by the fact that I am a working woman who is making a daring trip around the world.
“My dear,” Lady Warton says, “you must tell me so I can advise the ladies I play bridge with … Why would any young woman work in a man’s profession and race around the world to beat a man’s record?”
I smile politely. “It’s a challenge and I believe I am as capable as any man.” Personally I would have liked to ask her if she ever goes outside without asking her husband about the weather.
Lord Warton’s face again contorts with displeasure as if my very existence sours his stomach. “We can all hope that women will stay in their place and not attempt to imitate men.”
“Now, now, dear.” His wife pats his arm again. “We must not pick on our guest. She’s still young, but will someday learn what really matters in life.”
I return a very forced polite smile and resist the urge to be catty. How dare they judge me and the other women who have to work for a living! What keeps me from lashing out besides politeness is that I know these pompous snobs have had so much given to them—and have accomplished little themselves.
Unlike Lady Bluenose, I have had to work for my daily bread and it has never struck me as God’s will that I should labor as hard as a man for less money or opportunity.
My impression of these two is that their noses are blue because they are stuck up so high. Their mannerisms strike me as that of two aristocrats who are mildly amused by the customs of the unwashed masses.
The first time I saw Lady Warton as we passed each other on deck, rather than meeting my eye and my smile, she observed my garments and shoes. Since my entire luggage consists of a single valise that’s capable of holding only the barest necessities for a journey that will take close to three months, I don’t have the luxury to change outfits several times a day like her ladyship and her snooty female friends who waddle down the deck like geese in a pecking order. Each one of these women came aboard followed by a long line of porters shouldering trunks.
* * *
COMING TO THE TOP OF A RIDGE, the desert unfolds before us as a purple-gray carpet in the dull light. The road is a stony dirt track hard enough to support the carriage wheels. Far beyond, like a desert mirage, is a vast expanse of water.
“Lake Manzala,” Von Reich says, “the eastern delta of the Nile. Tanis and our rendezvous with the sheikh are on the other side at a
tributary of the Nile.”
“It looks as big as a sea,” I say.
“It’s quite large. The Suez Canal actually runs through the east edge of it.”
A caravan of camels moves across the sands, their long, slender necks flowing in unison with their rocking gait. They give an exotic air to the desert and I cheer up a bit, reminding myself I am away from murderous mobs and the face in the porthole.
Von Reich purchases dates from a cameleer whose animals are laden with them. It’s my first taste of the oval-shaped desert fruit and I find them sweet and mushy.
A shadow passes over the sands as a falcon gracefully glides above us, blue-gray feathers glistening in the sunlight. He slants his body to the left and dives. Just before he appears certain to crash into the ground, his claws come out and grab something from the sand. When he soars back up into the sky a rodent is struggling in his grip. I’m in awe that the raptor has spotted such a small thing in this vast ocean of sand, yet at the same time I feel pity for the little critter.
The two Bedouins riding as our escort to the rear had also watched the falcon and smiled when it captured its prey. With their head cloths around their faces, leaving only a narrow slit for vision, the men appear unfazed by the cloud of dust kicked up by the carriage.
In their desert robes, mounted on camels that appear clumsy yet seem to move with the grace of the wind itself, these desert warriors are romantic figures to a young woman.
“My brothers and I against my cousins … my brothers, cousins, and I against the world,” Von Reich says.
His comment catches me by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“The Bedouins have a view of the world that is narrowly restricted to their own families, which is the meaning of the phrase. It’s often spoken by them as the code they live by. It’s said that a Bedouin owns only three things—his clothes, his animals, and his women.”
“What do the women own?” pops out before I can control my tongue.
The Illusion of Murder Page 6
