On the western bank of the Nile, across from the mighty ruins of the ancient capital, Thebes, lay the desolate Valley of the Kings.
On the day we pitched our tents, a boat from Cairo brought the Pasha trunks of official dispatches, and he remained in the green damask pavilion, working with his scribes and viziers.
The scholars had decided that if a tomb did, indeed, remain undiscovered, it would be in the cliffs. There the greatest number of royal burial places were honeycombed. I kept as far as possible from these limestone cliffs, not wishing to offer Stephen the temptation of seeking me out.
Each morning I left the encampment with Uisha. Logic never entered into my explorations. I wandered around the barren hills and wadis in the random way a puppy does, sniffing after a tantalizingly unknown scent.
Late one afternoon, about two weeks after we had arrived in the Valley of the Kings, I came upon a hidden canyon. The steep hills turned in such a way as to make the narrow gulch invisible until you were within its confines. The hot, silent place was sunk in shadows. Shade in the Valley of the Kings had a peculiar quality that didn’t refresh but made one clammy, as if even the lowering of temperature sought to repel life.
With Uisha at my side, I walked along the wadi bed, looking about. At first cursory glance there was nothing to keep me. To our left, the bluff had eroded into a slide of rocks.
Glancing up, I saw a ledge covered with pale objects. In the dusk the objects appeared to be a trove of the kind of pots the ancients used to fill with food and water and set in tombs. They were not valuable at all, so robbers usually left them scattered about. Because the tomb pots were often decorated with scenes of everyday life thousands of years ago, I never could pass one by. I kept hoping to find a picture of a large ship, which would help prove my father’s theory.
“Uisha,” I said. “There’s some pottery up there.”
She gestured to the setting sun, then toward the encampment.
“We’ll start back as soon as I take a quick look,” I promised.
I clambered up the rockslide. There were no pots. The little plateau, maybe thirty feet by ten, was white with droppings. Innumerable generations of some kind of bird had roosted there. But the shadowed cliff seemed to be carved. Was that a sail? I hurried to look.
And suddenly the rocks gave way under me.
Hands scrabbling, stomach lurching, I gave a shout of surprise and fell about nine or ten feet into a crevasse.
A swirl of dust engulfed me, causing me to cough. It took me a couple of minutes to recover from the coughing seizure, but other than a little blood oozing from my scraped left palm, I was uninjured.
Uisha’s veiled face appeared above the cave-in, outlined by the red glow of sunset.
“I’m all right,” I reassured her.
She frowned anxiously down at me, and with her thumb pointed toward the camp. She would go for help.
“I’ll be fine until you get back,” I said.
Rocks and pebbles clattered as she hastened down the rocky slide, and then her footsteps were muffled by the sandy bed of the wadi.
Eleven
Uisha would take at least a half hour to get help and return. The crevasse that trapped me was narrow, and stiflingly hot, but I noticed rocks jutting in a way that made climbing possible.
Squirming out of my hampering robe and pulling off the veil, I rolled them into a tight ball and tossed them over the top. Then I began inching up, first resting my buttocks against the smooth side of the cliff until my foothold on the rocks was secure, then cautiously raising my weight upward to again rest against the solid limestone. Utterly involved, I didn’t hear the footsteps.
A pair of strong, hard hands grasped mine.
I looked up into Stephen’s face.
For a long minute we remained like that with him kneeling over me as we stared at one another. His warm hands enclosed mine, his face was so near that I could feel his breath come and go.
I couldn’t speak.
He, too, was silent.
Then he gripped my hands yet tighter. His jaw tensed as he pulled me from the narrow space. He rose to stand, carrying me as easily as he once had carried me across boarding nets from the Ithaca to the Hassam. Carefully he set me on the safe part of the ledge.
Still stunned, I stared at him.
Appearing to be as dumbstruck as I, he fetched my robes and veil, then stood in front of me, clasping my garments in his hands.
“So it is you,” he said finally.
“Stephen …” I cleared my throat. “Stephen. You … you’re Commodore Delaplane.”
A flush touched his cheeks. “I wanted to tell you in Washington … and on the Hassam … there it risked too many lives.… But that night I should have told you.” He faltered over the words and fell silent, staring at me.
“How did you know who I was …?” My voice, too, faded. Was it possible to bridge the gap of years? My heart continued to race, pounding in my ears. “How did you know I needed help?”
“Your servant pointed in this direction, then she raced toward the camp. I’ve been following you at a distance whenever I can, Liberty.”
At that, the first time I’d heard my name spoken aloud in more than four years, I recalled his peril. “We can’t be together,” I said, forcing remote dignity into my voice. “I’m no longer Liberty Moore.”
“I forgot myself,” he said, brushing dust from my robe with sharp, tense little strokes. “You’re the Pasha’s kadine. I should never have addressed you in so familiar a manner.”
I couldn’t bear his embarrassed misery. “It’s not that. You mustn’t be near me. Stephen, I’m so afraid for you.”
“Then you don’t … despise me? You don’t mind talking to me?”
“It’s too dangerous,” I said, glancing in the direction of the camp.
“They can’t be here for maybe a half hour. Liberty, I’ve searched for you too long and hard not to take advantage of this chance. I must explain what happened.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Your hand’s bleeding,” he said, pulling out a large, clean handkerchief. “Here, take this. While I talk, you can bandage it.”
“In Islam, if a woman lets a man see her naked face, it’s the same as commiting adultery in our—”
“Do you think I’d compromise you?” he interrupted. Then, wincing, he looked away. “Let me explain, Liberty. Please?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I do. I’d give my life to have that Sunday back,” he said, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the robe fiercely. “I’d arranged to rendezvous with the Guerriere, my flagship, in a hidden cove north of Tripoli. I was positive that I’d return to find you safe in the Dutch consulate.” His eyes closed briefly. “Leaving you seemed my only course—I’d spend a month learning from Rais Guzman about the latest corsair tactics and the deposition of corsair ships.” He sighed. “Do you know how much I’ve hated myself for meeting the Guerriere?”
“What else could you have done? You were in command of our fleet.”
“That’s the crux right there,” he said bitterly.
“Stephen, there’s no point berating yourself,” I said softly. “Go on.”
“In a month the battles were over. When I got back to Tripoli, Mijnheer Van Leyden told me he had no knowledge of your landing. I was frantic. That first day I was everywhere, searching for signs of you. I found them soon enough. In the slave souk, men were still talking of the beautiful blond girl who had brought ten times the highest price ever paid. Beyond the souk, though, there was nothing. Nothing. No matter who I spoke to, there was nothing. Your traces had been carefully sponged. But the British consul, Mr. Salt, had ransomed Lady Arabella Vaughan. I sailed to England to question her.”
“So she got home,” I said with relief.
Stephen’s face was troubled. “On her voyage she was captured again.”
“Oh no,” I whispered, recalling Lady Arabella’s tear-streaked, frightened little
face when I’d left her aboard the Hassam.
“Her father, the Duke of Eastmoreland, ransomed her again.”
At that moment the sun dropped behind the hills and eerie maroon shadows bathed the desolate canyon. “She was always so shy and timid. It must have been terrible for her,” I said. “How was she?”
“I never saw her. I went down to the family seat in Sussex, Vaughan Hall, and though the duke and duchess both told me she was recovering from her rigors, they wouldn’t let me talk to her. I believe, well, she was not in her right mind.”
Saddened by the fragile Lady Arabella’s fate, I barely heard Stephen as he recounted the steps of his search. He had returned to London and back to the East. He had spent the better part of a year on wild-goose chases around the Mediterranean, picking up rumors about a lovely blond American, slave to a wealthy Turk. Then his duties had forced him to return home.
“In Washington,” he said, “I visited your godmother.”
“Mrs. Yarby? How is she?”
“She keeps busy with her boardinghouse,” he said, and now he was smiling. “She has several new grandchildren. She misses the captain, but she talks about him in a way that doesn’t ask for sympathy. She misses you, too, and was positive that someday you’d return.”
My smile trembled close to tears. I was filled with a vast nostalgic yearning to see that dear, square-jawed face under the matron’s cap, to hear that commonsense voice. “She was a mother to me,” I murmured. Glancing into the darkening sky, I said more loudly, “Stephen, we’ve so little time.”
“I requested a leave from my naval duties and sailed back to the Orient. Egypt’s now open to foreigners, you know, and there were persistent rumors that had come about because the Pasha had taken an American kadine. A blonde so ravishingly lovely that she’s named the Beautiful One. When I landed in Alexandria I learned the Pasha was sailing up-Nile to the Valley of the Kings, and I remembered your interest in antiquity. Hoping—no, praying—that you were this kadine, and that you’d be with him, I boned up on history. Yacub, my servant, and I joined your party. And ever since I’ve been leaving notes hidden, hoping you’d find one.”
“I found one. I buried it.”
“It was stupid of me,” Stephen said quietly, adding, “I’m years too late.”
With my bandaged hand, I reached for my habarah.
Stephen held on to it. “Let me look at you one more minute,” he said. And I realized how he must see me, clad in gauzes, jewelry glinting in the dusk. “You are Naksh.” He mispronounced it sweetly. “The Beautiful One.”
“Stephen.…” My voice went rusty and I had to cough. “There is no Liberty Moore.”
“I search to rescue you, and find you married to the most powerful man alive, wearing a necklace worth a king’s ransom.” He gazed deep into my eyes. “I should have taken you ashore with me that night, and never let you go. I love you.”
His declaration was like sweet balm, soothing the painful years of exile. Prudence and fear for his safety told me to ignore it. Yet I couldn’t. “And I love you,” I whispered.
He stared at me in surprise. “You do?”
“More than ever.”
And his mouth curved with such tenderness that, fearing he would kiss me, I backed away. For a heartbeat, I wondered if he did embrace me, would I feel anything? Oh God, God.
Stephen peered through the remaining light at me. “Sweetheart, you’re afraid. Does the Pasha … abuse you?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m so afraid for you. When our little boy—”
“You have a child?”
“We had one. The Pasha loved our David, and David adored him. Oh Stephen, he was the sweetest, funniest, bravest little boy. But he was—killed. And the men responsible were hung in chains above the Citadel gates to die in torment. That’s the legal punishment for harming a member of the Pasha’s family. It’s also the punishment for approaching one of his harem.”
“You said you love me.”
“He himself told me if it weren’t the law, he would have punished them yet more harshly.”
“You still love me,” Stephen persisted.
In the twilight we heard faraway shouts. Hastily I pulled on my habarah. “Stephen, you risk too much. Even if it were the Pasha’s nature to show mercy, he couldn’t. The legal code’s an enormous advance in Egypt. And in his own way the Pasha’s a very great man. He’s vowed that all, including himself, obey it.”
“But it’s me you love?”
I was adjusting my veil, and my assent drifted through the muslin. “Yes.…”
Stephen said with quiet determination, “Meet me in this wadi tomorrow. I have a plan.”
Rocks clattered. We moved well apart.
The Pasha scrambled onto the ledge. “Naksh?” he called, looking around. It was too dark for him to see me near the cliff.
“I’m all right,” I said, not moving, hoping I sounded normal.
“Thank God you’re safe.” He peered toward me, letting out a breath, and the passionate anxiety left his voice. “The others are following with ropes and ladders. I expected to find you buried alive from the grim signs Uisha was making.”
“The servant saw me first and, naturally, I hastened to rescue the lady.” Stephen moved from the blackness to the Pasha’s side.
For a moment I saw the shadows of both men thrown against the dark gray sky. Stephen, tall and lithe, the Pasha older and shorter. Clothed in the garments of East and West, their outlines couldn’t have been less alike—save that each held himself as if in the habit of command.
“Thank you, Commodore,” the Pasha said with deep sincerity. “You have me in your debt. I hope the future will bring a chance to repay you.”
“That’s quite unnecessary, sir.” Stephen’s voice was a bit awkward—or guilty. “It seems the kadine and I are both from America.”
“Commodore,” the Pasha retorted. “You must have noticed that in the East our ladies keep their secrets within their family circle. We cater to this whim.” He spoke with amusement rather than reproof.
“The kadine thanked me, and her accent told me her origin, that was all.” Stephen bowed farewell in my general direction. “I’ll join you later, sir,” he said to the Pasha. He jogged down the steep, rubble-strewn incline with the same easy grace I had seen him skim down a mast.
The Pasha waited for Stephen’s footsteps to fade. Then he inquired, “Naksh, what in God’s name brought you to this desolate ledge?”
What had? In the moment before I recalled, a bubble of fear expanded within me, not for myself but for Stephen.
“I thought I saw a heap of pots, the kind that held burial food, and you know me. I hoped to find one decorated with, a ship.”
He glanced around the dim ledge with its gaping hole near the cliff. “Pottery?”
At this the fear within me burst, and I began to weep. “I was wrong.…” I sobbed. “Turned out to be … bird droppings on the rocks.…”
He put his arms around my bulky robes, clasping me to him. “Naksh, Naksh, you’re too reckless. I have to protect you more.”
He spoke with a tenderness foreign to him, yet in my fear I found ambivalence in the remark. What did he mean, protect me more? I pressed my wet face against his shoulder, telling myself that meeting Stephen in the wadi was impossible.
Twelve
The Pasha intended to have my wanderings guarded, but that night, after wild and exhausting lovemaking, I dissuaded him. I remained firm in my own resolve, however, not to go near the wadi. And for a day I managed to keep away. But on the second morning, as Uisha and I left the outskirts of the camp, a vision of the rockslide and ledge insinuated itself into my mind: I found myself curving along the wadi to the hidden canyon.
Stephen sat in the shade, the breeze ruffling his dark hair. Uisha put her hand on my arm, giving me a worried glance.
“It’s all right,” I murmured.
She shook her head.
“I’ll only talk to the commodore a minute.”
Her eyes filled with anxiety and she went back to the canyon entry, staring in the direction of the encampment, as I went toward Stephen.
After our greetings, I said, “Uisha’s worried that we might have been followed.”
His smile faded and the lines at his eyes creased in concern. “I didn’t mean to endanger you.”
My danger as a faithless wife drowning in the Nile seemed as nothing to the grisly torment of hanging in chains. “It’s you who are in peril.”
“I left too much unsaid. Liberty, sit down and let me finish.” He dusted off his large satchel, not speaking until I sat on the firm-packed canvas. “When I joined your expedition—when I had only the breath of hope that there was an American kadine, much less she might be you—I worked out a rescue plan.”
“Rescue?” I cried. “Stephen, that’s mad.”
He looked into my eyes. “Don’t you want to leave?”
“It’s far too risky.”
“That’s it? You’re afraid?” The gentleness in his brown eyes was like a caress.
“You’re hundreds of miles inside Egypt,” I said. “Alone except for one servant. And I’m the Pasha’s wife.”
“I’ve never been one to hide from hazards,” he said. “But I won’t keep it from you that my plan is dangerous. That’s why before you decide to come you must consider how much you love me.”
Love? I clasped my fingers until the nails turned white. My love, amputated of desire, was a poor thing. Worse, I was the pawn of another woman’s unfettered desires.
Stephen was looking at me, hurt in his eyes.
“I can’t love anyone,” I mumbled.
Hearing my embarrassment, he got my meaning. He reddened. “Of all the women in the world, you’re born for love.”
“I don’t feel things as I once did.”
“With a man you cared for, you would.”
The Emerald Embrace Page 22
