There was no anger now, and he focused on its absence. There was calm and there was peace, and strangely, the wolf inside lifted its head, its eyes questioning.
Mary, hold my hand, for I cannot do this alone.
Virgil began to run. Mindful of the vendors and people in profusion, he headed for the end of the street where it branched in two directions. He stripped his jacket off, giving the wolf rein the way he had in the chapel. It was almost like opening his hand and offering it to the creature, inviting it to dance.
The wolf leapt at the opportunity, literally, and as Virgil rounded a corner into a more deserted stretch of street, his feet found new purchase. Claws clattered against the stones; he felt the sunlight through his fur, and a bevy of new scents exploded in his nose. Somewhere there was roasting meat, and bird droppings splattered the stones below him. Camels smelled like prey, and the people smelled like creatures he wanted to avoid.
Ahead there lay a ruined temple, and Virgil angled his way toward it, tongue lolling out of his mouth. The air was so hot, and he wished for water, but saw none when he reached the temple. There was little rain here, a distant part of his mind told him; nothing to collect in the small depressions in the ground. Still, he found shade and took comfort in that, not so much lying down as flopping upon the hard ground. A cloud of dust rose around him, then drifted away in the cooling breeze that rolled in from the Nile.
He let the afternoon pass in this fashion: running when he wanted to, giving chase to birds if they strayed too close. He captured and devoured a rodent within the temple, but never dozed. Thus, he was awake when Auberon picked his way through the stones and perched on a tall, worn block. Auberon set his pack down, surveying the space around him, until he spied the wolf. Virgil loped to his side.
The change, when he allowed it to come, was still painful, but felt less awkward. He felt more in control this time, perhaps because he had called to the wolf without the anger consuming him. He had never felt such a thing would be possible, but here it was. He was calm and he drew back into himself because he already was himself, in either form.
“I didn’t smoke,” Virgil said when at last he could. He felt it was vital for Auberon to know that, considering the last time his friend had found him in a den.
Auberon opened the pack at his feet and withdrew a neatly folded stack of fresh clothing. He set these upon the stone he occupied. Socks and shoes waited in the bag. He reached for the towel first, to wipe himself reasonably clean before he started to dress.
“I did not believe you had,” Auberon said quietly. “You appeared calm, but not addled, when you emerged from the den. And this . . . ” He spread his hands to the temple around them, but Virgil felt the motion encompassed the afternoon Auberon had witnessed rather than the location. “You have changed. For the better.”
Virgil’s fingers fumbled with trousers and belt. Fingers were strange after willingly not having them all afternoon. “That remains to be seen,” he said, then looked more closely at his friend. “What troubles you? Is it the wolf?”
Though Auberon smiled, Virgil felt a confession of sorts was rising toward them.
“Not that, no. If you can embrace that part of yourself at last, I can only be thankful.” Auberon’s large hands slid together, palms slightly lighter than the backs; it made it look as though he cupped a fragment of the sunset there, rounding it into a ball.
Virgil reached for the jacket and pulled it on before joining Auberon on the stone block he occupied. “Is it something better discussed over drinks? Has something happened with Eleanor or Cleo?”
“They are fine,” Auberon assured him, though Virgil was on edge now. With Irving and Hubert both nearby, their odds weren’t good. He thought back to the lapis ring Auberon had presented in Cairo, the look that weighted his eyes then. It was the same weight within Auberon’s eyes now. Confessions to come.
“Would you consider us friends, Virgil?” Auberon asked. “We share a partnership, but I have always hoped—” He broke off, teeth worrying at his lower lip as he considered his next words. “My life has been a curious one. I never envisioned myself being allowed to do this work and yet here I am, traveling the world as a free man, respected by those I work with, but . . . ”
Virgil didn’t bother to look for a tie in the pack that Auberon had brought; he knew there wouldn’t be one. Instead, he reached for Auberon’s hands, covering them with one of his own.
“You are my friend, as surely as you are my partner,” Virgil said. “I never hoped for that, to be frank with you. After Joel died . . . ” Virgil thought of the days that had followed his death, a blur of pain. Opium had been escape even then. “I told myself it wouldn’t happen again, that I wouldn’t establish a friendship with a partner because there was too much to lose.” He squeezed Auberon’s hands, then withdrew. “You have known and accepted the truth of me since our earliest days. You have encouraged me to do the same, and I can only be thankful that God saw fit to pair you with me.”
“You have done the same for me,” Auberon said in a low tone, and then came the words that Virgil did not want to hear, but the words he knew he must. “Director Irving gave me the lapis ring, Virgil. Placed the box in my hand and told me to find the last one, so that our work could be finished.”
Virgil’s eyes did not waver from his friend and partner; he pictured the scene, Irving with another small box—the same one he had once entrusted to Caroline or another? What was Irving playing at?
“He doesn’t know where the fourth ring is, but has been looking everywhere he can reach,” Auberon continued. “He believes he has enlisted my assistance—believes he can trust me, since I knew about the agents who were sent to the Gallery of Machines to encourage Miss Folley’s assistance.”
Was this what it had been like for Eleanor to see her mother’s photograph case, what it was like to learn the Lady was her own grandmother? Virgil felt not like the world had dropped out from beneath him, but that he had finally realized there had been no world at all. Only air—thin and capricious.
“He isn’t going to destroy the rings,” Virgil said.
“I cannot imagine that he would.” Auberon unclasped his hands now, fingers rubbing lightly together. “It was better to accept the ring than to refuse it, but I realize what an awkward position this places me in. You take the instance at the Exposition, where I knew more than I said. You take my recent meeting with Irving—at his insistence, I should add. He tracked me down two nights ago. All taken together, I realize how this may reflect on me—”
“Nonsense.”
Virgil wanted to leave it there and say no more, but from the sound of Auberon’s voice, the man needed something more, something Virgil had never said to him before.
“Auberon—Michael.” Virgil sat a little straighter on the stone block, resting his sweaty hands against his thighs. “I trust you. I find you a remarkable person—beyond your position and the color of your skin. These things don’t matter, not to me. You have only ever shown me kindness and trust in return. Had Irving offered me the ring, I would have taken it as well. Had you not taken it, this conversation likely would have come to blows. I trust you. With my secrets, with my life.” His smile vanished. “With Eleanor’s life.”
Auberon rocked back on the stone a little, as if he had been struck. He said nothing, only looking steadily at Virgil until at last he nodded. “And that is something remarkable indeed.”
Virgil looked across the temple. Shadow had begun to douse its outer limits as the sun slipped lower in the sky. “Irving knows precisely what we’re doing, then.” It was a dreadful realization, that.
“Precise is a difficult word, Virgil,” Auberon said. “I believe he knows we now possess two rings, that Hubert has the third, but as to the fourth . . . Not even we can say precisely what we’re doing, can we?”
A low laugh escaped Virgil. “No, we can’t. Point taken.” Virgil slid from the stone block, brushed his trousers off, and looked around again, as if
expecting spies among the stones. “Irving gave you that ring, and Caroline . . . ” He trailed off, realizing there were things Auberon didn’t yet know on that front. “My eel-eating friend, let us go back to the townhouse and meet with the others. There are things you should know about fair Caroline.”
Auberon grabbed the pack and headed out of the temple at Virgil’s side. “Are you going to tell me she resembled her snake of a father more than I would have previously thought?”
Virgil clapped Auberon on the arm. “Among other things.”
Sirocco’s base in Luxor was much like that in Cairo: an older hotel, its marigold stucco walls blending seamlessly into the surrounding city. Whereas in Cairo they had lodged in small, separate rooms, here they were accorded a suite of rooms, four bedrooms fanning out from a common sitting room. The rooms were each painted with bright frescoes: four towering colossi peering out of an afternoon sky, the columns of the hypostyle hall bleeding with sunset, the hundred sphinxes lining the road to Karnak.
In the common room, a lavish spread of food spanned the tiled table between two sets of brightly colored floor cushions. Virgil thought the display looked more like a museum presentation than something to be consumed, sunflower yellow bowls overflowing with roasted vegetables and golden couscous, sky-blue plates laden with charred kebabs. Green glass platters were spread with fruit arranged in wheels of colors, cut oranges spiraling into wheels of pineapple and figs. Pottery pitchers foamed with Egyptian beer, whereas glass pitchers held water and fruit juices. Candles floated in wide bowls of water, gilding everything with more gold. The fragrant lotus on the table reminded Virgil of Cleo and that she had not joined them on this journey.
“Someone is trying to seduce us,” Eleanor said in a low tone as they discovered the display. She padded in stocking feet toward the table, where she sat upon a blue cushion and studied the spread. “Still, it is a pretty gift horse, isn’t it?”
Virgil followed her at a slower, more cautious pace. Gift horse was right, because Virgil couldn’t erase the foolish idea that the table would burst apart—not with thirty Trojans, but something more sinister. A single Irving would do. Gin flitted from door to window and back again, looking for anything out of place, while Auberon joined Eleanor and poured a tall glass of beer for her.
“One guess,” Virgil said. He chose the cushion beside Eleanor’s, a deep yellow that reminded him of Irish butter.
“Got to be Irving,” Gin said as he pulled a window shut and latched it. He drew the draperies across, then peered between the gap in them. “Makes a bad kind of sense. All bad.”
“I feel again that I should apologize,” Auberon said, shaking his head and refusing the platter of kebabs Eleanor offered. “Had I not taken the ring, we might have yet moved in secrecy.”
Eleanor shook her head as Virgil made to reject that theory, too. “No,” Eleanor said. “Irving came back here, Auberon. He knew well before he got here what he would find—he’s not the kind to move without knowing, and there’s no telling how long he’s watched us. Maybe he even had a hand in the stunt at the Exposition.” She offered the kebabs to Virgil, who took them with a grin.
“She’s right,” Virgil said. He helped himself to three kebabs, then counted those that remained on the platter. He took another two, then passed the platter on to Gin. He was ravenous and felt he could consume the entire table of food on his own. “We were foolish to presume ourselves so lucky, him being in another country. Who knows where he actually was—if he was in the Dominion of Canada, he surely made the return in a shorter time than any living man before him.”
Auberon grunted, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility Irving hadn’t left Egypt at all.
“At least now,” Eleanor offered as consolation, “Irving believes he has an in.” She nodded toward Auberon as she tore a piece of flatbread in two. “If he believes you are working for him, that buys us time and hopefully keeps him off our backs. Although, if we presume Caroline was involved, Irving may have the jump on that, too. Did he know his daughter better than you did, Virgil?”
Virgil was certain he didn’t like the answer he was about to give. “They were always close—I don’t think she ever trusted me the way she did him. Let us presume this: that if Irving gave the lapis ring to Auberon, the lapis is also the ring he once gifted to Caroline. When she died, it came back to him—he may well have reclaimed it himself. It is unlikely Caroline had the ring with her in Russia. Her father received word of her death before I could complete the journey back to Paris. If the ring was in our home, it could have gone unnoticed by me for, well, ever. Whereas he most likely knew exactly where to look.” Despite the warm of the evening, that idea chilled him. What else might she have brought into their home, if she’d been in possession of such a ring?
“So, the lady Caroline was . . . ” Gin trailed off, dipping a serving spoon into a bowl filled with fire-roasted tomatoes. “Searching for the final ring all along? The Egyptian museum had the carnelian. Caroline gave Hubert the scarab in Morocco—which Eleanor later took. Irving had the lapis, and the fourth . . . ”
Eleanor took a long drink of her beer, then set the glass aside. “If we presume Irving and Caroline had the lapis, and know that Caroline had another ring in Morocco, can we also presume that they, if anyone else, had access to the fourth ring?”
“It is the easiest course,” Auberon said.
“Unless no one has ever known,” Virgil said. “But that makes little sense. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be such a fuss over these rings at all. If one were well and truly lost, the Glass could not be opened, correct?” When everyone agreed, he continued. “So it’s not lost. We just don’t know where it is.” He grinned—then realized that situation was not necessarily an improvement. He exhaled. “Let’s go back to what Eleanor just said—the Irvings may have had access to it.”
“Mmm.” Eleanor touched Virgil’s arm. “Let me revise that. Director Irving told Auberon he does not know where the ring is—which may or may not be true, but let’s presume it is, since it’s easiest. So he may not know. But what if Caroline did?”
Virgil consumed his kebabs in silence, pulling the tender lamb off the skewer and chewing thoughtfully. “If anything, I’m coming to learn Caroline was more devious than even I knew. Our line of work requires some subterfuge, and early on, I thought that was all it was. Now, however . . . ” He tossed the wooden skewer into the pile that was forming in the middle of the table. “Perhaps her father believed he had a willing accomplice, much as he does Auberon here. But could Caroline have played even her father? She knew where that last ring was, but told no one—thinking she would gain the others, and . . . ” Virgil scowled. “Then why give a ring to Hubert?”
Eleanor shifted on her cushion and folded her bread in half to scoop balls of fried falafel from the bowl “Christian has . . . a reputation.”
Gin laughed into his beer, sending bubbles into his nose. After he finished coughing and Auberon ceased pounding on his back, he waved his arms, still laughing. “A reputation when it comes to his career and the ladies,” he added. “Would Caroline have been charmed by Christian?”
Once again, Virgil felt himself at a loss. Admitting that he hadn’t known his wife or what would charm her was difficult. He knew then that Caroline had never truly been his wife, his partner. In all the ways that one person could cleave to another, they never had, and he felt himself in mourning all over again for a belief he cherished, but had not actually possessed.
He looked to Eleanor, thinking he should have been reluctant to meet her gaze, but there was only patience in her eyes. “You saw them together,” he said.
Eleanor didn’t hesitate to shake her head, preventing Virgil’s mind from running down paths he wished to avoid. “Only for one night, but even then her interest in Christian appeared manufactured. At the time, I thought Caroline was absurd, and presumed she had an interest in Christian, but it was all pretense. I think she believed his reputation, in terms o
f his career, could help her. She played the innocent, and part of him was likely flattered by the attention. She may have given him a ring to secure his trust.”
“Did she find Christian on her own?” Auberon asked. He rested his elbows against the table, loosely clasping his hands before him. “Consider that for Mistral, the Lady has always been tied to the Folleys. It’s possible Irving looked into Eleanor and found Christian. Depending on his relationship with his daughter—Virgil, you said she trusted him—it may be that Irving set Caroline in Christian’s way.”
Virgil finished the last of his beer and set his glass to the side. While the evening’s conversation hadn’t eased his mind about Caroline or her activities, it was almost comforting to put the pieces of her life together with others who could rein him in before he could contemplate paths that would have had him reaching for an opium pipe.
As it stood, he was far from drunk, but the beer had dropped a layer of gauze over everything around him. Eleanor was by his side, the candles and lotus both polluting the air with a pleasing fragrance.
Then Gin cleared his throat. “Do you think Caroline’s father knew she was working for another agency?”
Silence drifted over the table, as thick as spring snow. No one was comfortable in answering; then Eleanor did.
“But was she?”
This question also went unanswered, and Eleanor sat a little straighter, resting her hand on Virgil’s arm. If it was in an effort to calm him or herself, he didn’t know.
Eleanor continued. “We haven’t established that Caroline had agency ties outside Mistral. One of Mistral’s own directors, her father, has been there at every turn, whether gifting her with a ring or possibly placing her in contact with Christian.”
Virgil could only nod at the idea that Caroline acted within Mistral’s circles alone. Perhaps the addition of another agency only muddied the waters; had it been Mistral all along, Caroline’s actions approved and consented to by Irving himself?
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 28
