The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  His left brow quirked up, a too painful reminder of David’s baby wit. I looked down at my ringed hands.

  “It’s a pleasure,” he said, “for once to be informed that certain things aren’t managed with celestial perfection by your compatriots.”

  A thrill shot through me, banishing my lethargy, and I jumped to my feet. “Are they from the United States?”

  “The servant’s a Coptic Christian from Alexandria. The master—as you so aptly noted he’s a camelsack—is American.”

  “He is?” I cried. “Pasha, truly?”

  “Yes. Of the highest rank and title.” The Pasha’s interest was obvious. “He bore himself well, and he spoke, even to me, Naksh, in a tone used to command. Quiet, yet most definite. He’s a seafaring man, or so he says, and I’m trying to build a navy, so I’m interested in boats and shipping. I believe he is called Commodore Delaplane.”

  “Commodore Delaplane?” I clutched his arm. “The commodore’s here? In the middle of Egypt? And he’s interested in archaeology?” I caught my breath as I thought of the idol of my girlhood. And with a sickening lurch of homesickness I could see, actually see, the pine-framed engraving of an impossibly handsome young officer leaping with a torch between two ships. “The commodore was the youngest man in our Navy ever to bear the rank of captain.”

  “Oh?” the Pasha asked. “Why?”

  “For his heroism in firing the corsair fleet at Tripoli. Lord Nelson himself called it the most courageous act of our age.”

  The Pasha was chuckling.

  I sat back down. “You know about him, don’t you?” I said quietly.

  “Naksh, your eyes are alive. And you let me bait you. You haven’t since the Nile Festival.” He sat cross-legged on the rug next to me. “I didn’t realize your interest in naval warfare. If I had I would have mentioned that, right after your arrival in my harem, the commodore played the hero again. He sailed into the harbors of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers. Using cannon-mouth diplomacy, he secured treaties that ended the pirate trade. A trifle late for you, alas. But he is a hero. Why don’t you look into the pavilion tonight?”

  The Pasha had come to tell me the news so that my evening would be cheerful—but he was as infuriating as ever about his generosity.

  “I will, Pasha. And thank you.”

  He pushed to his feet. “Do try to control your admiration, though. I’ll be embarrassed in front of my guests if they hear giggling and squawking outside.” And in a brisk gait, the Pasha left the tent, chuckling.

  Never again after the night of the funeral had the Pasha inflicted his grief on me. He had done his best to draw me out of my melancholia, but his kindnesses were always done in an offhand, aggravating manner. Whenever I tried to thank him, he would make a joke. Yet sometimes I would catch him looking at me in that odd, waiting way, as though he were expecting something.

  I assumed he wanted me. Since David’s death, though, the Emerald Embrace had not exerted its carnal pull. I remained the ice heiress. The Pasha didn’t seem to care. And both Syrian kadines were pregnant and delighted—in a way that boggled my Western mind—to be bearing a child to the same man at the same time.

  After supper, while Uisha helped me into my voluminous robes and veil, I thought of my old self, of that bookish blond girl who’d had a crush on the country’s handsome young hero. Later, I was to realize how strange it was that though my mind was filled with daring naval exploits, I never once thought of Stephen, of my love.

  Nine

  Outside, a pair of meshals cast resinous, smoky light. A guard pulled one from the earth and, wordlessly, lit my way between tents. A moonless night, galaxies shimmered and stars glowed in curling strands, a night so beautiful that I was able to forget the ignominy of having to peer through a slit in the pavilion.

  Men’s voices were louder. The guard held the torch at a discreet distance and I pressed my eye to the narrow gleam.

  Brass lamps lit the richly carpeted interior. Low tables were covered with round silver trays of pink watermelon slices, honey-drenched baclava, slabs of date loaf. The Pasha’s guests, some in shabby robes, others gaudily attired, all with their napkins in their laps and their right sleeves pulled up for eating, were darting awed glances at their ruler.

  The Pasha stood chatting with Commodore Delaplane.

  The commodore had his back to me. His dark-haired head rose proudly from the high, gold-laced collar, his glittering gold-fringed epaulets made his broad shoulders seem yet wider and his hips more narrow in their tight nankeen breeches tucked into shining black boots. His back was lithe, graceful—and vaguely familiar. Of course he was familiar, I told myself. Why shouldn’t he be? He resembles the figure in my engraving.

  Beside him, the spare, dun-clad Pasha seemed yet more ordinary.

  “Commodore,” the Pasha inquired, “when did you first become interested in our antiquities?” Though the Pasha’s voice was serious, I could tell the words were spoken with an inner irony, for the Pasha questioned his guest on my behalf.

  The commodore turned.

  I never heard his reply.

  My heart began pounding so wildly that I nearly fainted and had to clutch at the thick tent rope. The roar of masculine voices became as far away as the croak of Nile frogs. I was conscious only of the American.

  The beautiful face, the once-broken nose, the warm brown eyes, the firm mouth.… The last time I had seen him he was wearing a loose white shirt aboard the Hassam.

  I stood grasping the rough hemp, blood drumming inside my ears, foolishly unable to believe the evidence before me. It took me over a minute to accept that Commodore Stephen Delaplane, known to me only by his first name, was the man I loved.

  Thoughts jumped and popped inside my head. It made sense for him to have been with his flotilla in Washington. But why had he joined with the corsairs? Still, the Pasha had just told me that the commodore had defeated the corsairs right after my capture. What was he doing here? Did he remember me?

  Stephen was glancing around the tent, his eyes alert. His gaze reached the damask where I stood. I was positive that the blaze in my heart must make the thick, lustrous cotton transparent, but he turned back to the Pasha, saying, “Yes, Pasha, I am looking forward to the great temple at Karnak, and the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes. But it’s the Valley of the Kings that intrigues me most.”

  “My scholars insist robbers despoiled all the tombs there centuries ago,” the Pasha retorted. “But I intend to see for myself. I prefer the evidence of my own eyes.”

  “I agree,” Stephen said. “Before any naval encounter I do my own scouting.”

  My mind twinged as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. So that was what he was doing aboard a corsair vessel. He had acted as Rais Guzman’s first mate in order to discover firsthand the pirate maneuvers.

  I stayed under the huge desert stars for almost an hour gazing avidly at Stephen. I, who had been numb for six months, was overflowing with emotion. I love him, I thought. I love him from the top of his proudly held head to the tips of his narrow, polished boots. I love his execrable Arabic accent, love the clumsy way he rides a camel.

  I always had believed he would search for me. It was quite conceivable, therefore, that he had heard somehow that the Pasha had an American kadine.

  The future rushed at me. I would let Stephen know my identity and together we would plan my escape. With every beat of my newly awakened heart I knew that on this slow journey up-Nile we would find an opportunity to meet.

  Uisha finished brushing my hair and bowed her silent goodnight. As I lay down on the sleeping mat, I began sobbing with joy.

  “Why, Naksh,” said the Pasha, dropping the inner tent flap behind him, “what’s this?”

  I stared up at him through a surprised blur. My mind had been so filled with Stephen that I’d actually forgotten the Pasha shared my tent.

  “Nothing,” I managed to mumble.

  “We aren’t exactly strangers. I know you. You’re not a weeper.”


  Sitting up, I blinked the happy tears from my eyes. “I’m not crying.”

  “Oh? Then the shine on your cheeks must be a trick of the lamplight. Naksh, did it hurt, seeing your countryman?”

  His voice was gentle, yet I began to shake. My love-drenched haze had evaporated. Reality struck me. I remembered the Pasha’s savage revenge in the Ceremonial Alcove. What if he ever came to learn that Stephen—Commodore Delaplane, his guest—was the man who first made love to me?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Hearing an American voice made me homesick,” I lied feverishly. “I’m homesick, that’s all.”

  His brow arched and he gave me an inscrutable look, then moved away. He hadn’t brought along his body servant. He began readying himself for bed, setting his brown turban on its special low chair, undressing, cleaning his strong teeth with a pointed acacia twig.

  Finally he stretched on the mattress next to me.

  “Naksh,” he said. “Our son lies in this earth. This land is where you belong. Egypt is your destiny.”

  My skin prickled but I managed a light tone. “Is that your remedy for homesickness, Pasha?”

  A smile twitched at his mouth before he blew out the lamp flame. “It seems to work,” he said into the darkness. “You’re quite your argumentative self again.” And he kissed my mouth.

  It was a kiss of consolation, tender not passionate.

  They lay entwined, still awake as the sun brightened the sky above the three eastern hills. This day he must leave to quell a rebellion in the captured kingdom of the Hittites. She feared for him in his battle chariot. He feared for her in the Golden House without his protection. They spoke quietly, and then again clung together, as if their love could halt the flow of drops in the water clock, as if by their love they could remain forever clasped in the safety of this dawn.

  I, who had on this night seen the only man I truly loved, returned the Pasha’s kiss, pressing ardently against him.

  “Beloved,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “How I’ve waited.”

  My desire was more shatteringly passionate than ever before. I knelt above him, straddling him, moving my hips, incoherently begging that it never end, then gasping as waves of ecstasy throbbed through me, shifting until I lay under him to plead wordlessly with my body, caressing him, covering him with fierce kisses, as if I could never have enough of him.

  And my heart wept.

  When, finally, we were both exhausted and the Pasha slept with his arms tight around me, I let the tears come.

  The love I bore Stephen was impossible. Because of the Pasha. Because of me. My own desires had been amputated and the uninhibited passion of the other woman had returned. On the trip up the Nile my interest in every ancient monument had made me aware of her—but why this vision of her, why this ardor, why now?

  I stared into the pale dawn light that seeped into the tent and thought: I truly am a ghost.

  Ten

  On the third day after Stephen joined our party, we camped near the village of Abu Dubeh, where the Pasha intended planting sugar. A mile or so away was a huge, toppled statue. In the morning the scholars clambered over it, Stephen and his servant with them.

  In the afternoon, when the men had returned to camp, Uisha and I set out. By the time we reached the enormous fallen figure, sweat trickled profusely below my robe. I sank down, grateful for the cool shadows between the mighty broken-off legs and ankles. In a crack I saw whiteness. At first I thought it one of those flowers that bloom miraculously in the desert, but then I realized it was paper. I unfolded the sheet and read:

  Are you Liberty Moore?

  Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the firm, masculine hand. Joy so exquisite that it hurt my chest forced a cry from my lips.

  I had never confided in Uisha that I knew Stephen. Her head tilted in bewilderment.

  I explained, “It’s a note from Commodore Delaplane. I knew him before.…” My voice shook. “Oh, Uisha, he’s the one I expected would save me from the slave souk.”

  Above the veil her eyes darkened with the memory of that awful Sunday.

  “I think he’s come now to rescue me,” I whispered, and the pleasure of talking about him overwhelmed me. “I love him.”

  Uisha shook her head violently.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I know it’s hopeless, Uisha. I won’t answer in any way to this. But, oh, how sweet it is to know he has come here on my account.”

  Pushing aside my face veil, I kissed the scrap of paper a hundred foolish times before kneeling to scratch out a hole next to the giant sandal in order to bury Stephen’s note where only the scorpions would see.

  Uisha was a mute. But her eyes spoke a volume of compassionate warnings.

  That evening the Pasha told me of his aspirations for this journey. Though he spoke in his casual jesting way, his words struck terror into me.

  Each evening he would flick through my day’s sketches. I had assumed these perfunctory glances were to humor me, part of his attempt to cure my melancholia. But tonight, to take my mind from Stephen’s note, I set out the sketches from the entire trip, laying them on a lovely Feraghan carpet.

  The Pasha selected a drawing of a cartouche. “You did this today.”

  “I copied it from the fallen colossus,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “It’s different from the others. Naksh, the Pharaoh here was of another religion.”

  “No he wasn’t. The statue of Abu Dubeh is of the same period as the temples downriver. So they must have worshiped the same gods. All the books say so, too.”

  “Ah, yes, the scholars must be correct,” he said with mock humility. “One detail bothers me, though.” His thumb jerked down at my earlier drawings of cartouches. “Your copies of hieroglyphs from other temples don’t have the rayed sun disc.”

  Irritated by his tone, I said, “Well?”

  “It’s a holy symbol,” he said.

  While nobody had deciphered the hieroglyphs, in any culture, ancient or modern, the rayed sun disc has always symbolized a godhead. “All right,” I conceded. “But what’s a rayed disc got to do with a Pharaoh?”

  “It’s inside this cartouche, and anything enclosed by the loop of a cartouche is the name of a Pharaoh.”

  “How can you know that?” I cried. “None of the scholars, not even Monsieur Champollion, can read the old writing.”

  “Scholars study. Rulers rule.” He held up his right little finger, displaying the silver and carnelian signet ring. “I’ve pressed this into enough proclamations, I’ve looked at enough missives from other rulers. I’m telling you, I can smell an official signature, whatever the age. That’s what a cartouche is. A ruler’s official signature.”

  As soon as he said it, I knew it was possible. A cartouche’s loop might have been used to set apart the royal name.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. The Pasha had given my daily sketches only the most perfunctory glances—yet how quick were his powers of observation and deduction. And this was what threw me into a panic. He knows I’m alive again, I thought. How soon before he guesses the reason? Stephen, I thought. Abruptly bending over the drawings, I began to restack them.

  “Naksh, what is it?”

  Praying I wasn’t ablush, I said, “I didn’t realize my sketches meant anything to you.”

  “They mean a great deal,” he said, sitting near me. “I intend to uncover the treasure trove in the Valley of the Kings.”

  His confession shocked me out of my fear. He had joked about our retinue of scholars so much that I had never considered him the least bit serious about the tomb excavations.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “I have two perfectly logical reasons to want to find it. First, money. I need money to experiment with new crops, like cotton and sugarcane. I need money to set up manufactories so we can compete in Europe. But it’s more than gold.”

  “More?”

  “For centuries the Ottoman sultanate taught Egyptians that they were inf
erior. I need to give my people a pride in their heritage. Seeing the glories of their past would do that.”

  “A splendid discovery would give them back self-esteem,” I agreed. “Pasha, whatever made you think of it? You dislike putting on a show. Normally you go about in drab clothes.”

  “My people understand me,” he replied curtly. “But obviously, Naksh, we Oriental despots are too contradictory for the Western mind to grasp.”

  His eyes held mine until I blushed. I was thinking of the other Westerner in our party, of Stephen. How much did the Pasha guess? Frantically I cast about for a means of getting the conversation on another track.

  “Pasha, you know the digging’s hopeless. Oh, we’ll find a few stray bits of jewelry and plenty of mummies. But we won’t uncover any great tomb. There are none left undespoiled—or so everybody says.”

  “By everybody you mean those bearded old women there who call themselves scholars? And the English or French writers who’ve never been near the Nile?”

  “They’ve spent their lives studying ancient Egypt.”

  “And their wasted lives should make me ignore the evidence of my own eyes?” He fingered the Emerald Embrace. “This came from an unplundered tomb.”

  “Desecrated yet not plundered,” I murmured.

  “What?”

  I shook my head, baffled. “The words just came.”

  “The necklace does have powers over you, doesn’t it?”

  I went hot to my hairline. He was referring to my intimate demands on him that now came each night.

  “I promised never to taunt you about that,” he said quietly as he rose to leave. “But I intend finding out where our amulet came from.” As he left the tent, he paused. “Naksh, your father trained you well. You’re more of a scholar than any man with us. And I may tease you, but I appreciate it. Finding the tomb is very important to me.”

  The double flaps of the tent rustled closed behind him. I was too trapped by my own fears to have really heard him. It wasn’t until much later, on another continent, that I recalled the substance of our conversation had centered around discovering the unplundered resting place of a Pharaoh. That night all I could think of was that the Pasha, illiterate until forty, had developed more than natural skill of observation. My hands shook as I replaced the sketches in their box.