by Louise Allen
Cleo ducked into the cabin and pulled on her habera and fastened the burko so the long strip of fabric fell from nose to knees. When she came out Quin was fastening a bundle of cloth to the mast. He dropped it when he saw her.
‘Get that off and put on European clothes.’
‘No, it is safer if—’
‘Do as I say or I will dress you myself.’ He turned and tugged on a rope and the cloth stirred and rose up the mast. The breeze caught it and it flapped open, a pattern of crosses, red and white on a blue ground. On the other felucca one of the men was hoisting an identical flag.
‘What are you doing?’ Cleo stopped, the burko in her hand, and stared at the crudely sewn design. ‘That’s the British Union Flag.’
‘Do you want to be fired on by the British?’
She stared at the shore, at the unfamiliar red uniforms, the mass of men and camels and tents on the bank, the flags. ‘That is the British army?’
Quin pushed her towards the cabin. ‘Do as I say, get changed. I want them to see there is a European woman on board.’
‘But...the British? How did you know? Laurent didn’t.’
‘I have known all along,’ Quin said as he scanned the shore. ‘I landed with them in March.’
‘You knew? You betrayed us!’
‘How?’ he demanded, turning a bleak face to her. ‘You are English, your father is English. Why should you regard being brought out of hostile territory to our own army as betrayal?’
She realised she had no answer for that, other than the fact he had kept it secret. ‘But Laurent—’
‘Laurent is a soldier and this is war. Now, are you going to get changed or do I have to undress you?’
‘No!’ Cleo dived into the cabin and sat huddled on the bed, trying to make sense of it all. Why hadn’t Quin told her that the British were besieging Cairo? And then his words struck her. Our own army. He was not American. He was British and he had lied to her from the start.
She dragged off the tob sebleh and lifted the hangings to give herself enough light to find the creased muslin gown and lawn petticoats that she had not worn since her wedding day. She dressed, her fingers clumsy on the unfamiliar tapes and seams, then strapped her little knife in its sheath around her leg, just below the knee. It felt strange to wear such thin clothes and to have her hair uncovered, but she resisted the instinct to put on a robe or a scarf. She did not want to give Quin any excuse to touch her and perhaps discover the knife.
They were almost past the wharfs of Cairo when she came back on deck, but the soldiers were still lining the banks. Behind them there was a sudden burst of gunfire.
‘Laurent!’ She craned to see, but Quin pulled her back and swung up on the gunwale.
‘Damn fool.’ He shaded his eyes. ‘He can’t hope to turn those barges or run the gauntlet of so many troops. Ah, now he has seen sense, they’re surrendering, someone’s hoisted a shirt.’
‘He was doing his duty,’ Cleo said. ‘What will they do to them?’
‘They will be prisoners. And much safer out here than in a plague-ridden city under siege, believe me.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘No, I never did, except about my profession. I am not an engineer. I deceived you, yes. Played with words, yes. I asked you if you would believe me if I said I was an American, but I never told you I was.’
‘I suspected you were a spy,’ Cleo said bitterly and sat down where she could see his face, try to read the lies he would doubtless tell her now. ‘I thought I should tell Laurent.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ The look he gave her was oddly intent.
‘He would have tortured you. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.’
‘Thank you for that. I am not a spy. An agent would be a better description, a courier sent to collect two individuals.’ He turned to call instructions in Arabic to the boatmen. ‘There’s Elkatta. Moor there on the west bank.’
‘Collect us? Father and me? But why?’
‘You don’t know?’ Quin raised one eyebrow quizzically. ‘No, I really believe you do not.’
‘I saved your life.’
‘Yes,’ Quin agreed. ‘Twice, if we count not throwing me to Laurent’s tender mercies. And I am grateful for that, but it is not only soldiers who must do their duty.’
‘What the blazes is going on! Turn back to Cairo this instant!’
‘Keep calm, Sir Philip,’ Quin called back in such soothing tones that Cleo itched to push him overboard. ‘We are going downstream as far as the main British base at Elkatta. Much safer there.’
‘British! What’s happened to the French?’ her father demanded. ‘What’s happened to my correspondence?’
‘Give me strength,’ Quin muttered, then raised his voice to shout to the other felucca. ‘We are in the middle of a war, sir. I suggest there are more important considerations than a few letters. The safety of your daughter, for one.’
‘Much you care for that,’ Cleo said and found herself ignored as Quin began to help the men drop the sail. They were heading into shore, towards a landing stage and beyond it, rows of orderly tents and a bustle of activity around some mud-brick houses.
‘Hold off,’ Quin called to the steersmen as half-a-dozen soldiers, muskets at the ready, formed up on the landing stage. He cupped his hands and hailed them. ‘Lord Quintus Deverall and party. Sir James Houghton is expecting us.’
Lord Quintus? He is a lord? Cleo stared at the tall figure, dressed like a sailor off some small coastal trader, who sounded so authoritative and so, damn him, in control. I thought him the bastard son of an American landowner and here he is with a title. How much can I believe of anything he has told me?
A non-commissioned officer strode on to the dock. ‘My lord! Sir James sends his compliments and asks that you tie up alongside and come ashore.’
‘You had better pack your things away,’ Quin said. ‘I imagine you don’t want the soldiers doing it for you.’
‘How considerate.’ He did not so much as wince at the bitterness in her voice.
It was the work of a few minutes to stuff the items that were loose back into their bags. It took rather longer to fight the tears of anger and, she had to admit it to herself, fear. Quin had told her to trust him and she had. He had given her hope and now she was caught up in something she did not understand and had no control over.
Such a fool to trust. Surely she had learned by now that men could be relied on to do only one thing and that was seek their own advantage and their own desires? She had liked Quin, wanted him, come perilously close to... Close to liking him too well. Cleo scrubbed at her eyes. She had not wept when she had realised how little concern Thierry had for her, she had never wept however tired and trapped she had felt after her mother died, and she was not going to start now.
The boat bumped against the quayside as she emerged from the cabin, bags in hand, a loose scarf over her hair. Quin raised an eyebrow at the combination, but she ignored him and allowed the very young officer who arrived at a run to hand her ashore. After months of dressing like the village women she felt positively indecent with a bare head and short sleeves.
‘Miss Woodward. Welcome to Elkatta. We have a—’
‘Madame Valsac,’ Cleo interrupted him.
‘Oh. Yes, right... If you would like to come this way, there is a room.’ He peered behind her. ‘And your woman, ma’am?’
‘I have no one with me,’ Cleo said. ‘Please take me to my accommodation.’ She dumped her bags at his feet and showed her teeth in a smile that made him take a step back.
‘Jenkins! Take madam’s bags. This way, ma’am.’
She followed him without a glance back. The back of his neck was scarlet with heat and embarrassment.
The rooms he showed her to were simple but clean. A chamber with a bed, a chair, a small table and a lamp and beyond it a room with a wash stand and a covered pail. The windows in both rooms were tiny, a protection against the heat, and the door opened on to a shaded
area where a sentry stood at ease.
‘I’m sure it’s not what you’re used to, ma’am,’ the young man apologised as the soldier brought in her bags.
Cleo relented. It wasn’t his fault, any of this. ‘I will be very comfortable—?’
‘Ensign Lloyd, ma’am. I’ll find one of the camp women to look after you, ma’am. One of the respectable ones.’ He had gone vermilion now.
‘Thank you.’ Cleo walked out on to the veranda. ‘Now, I will join my father.’
‘You’ll be better off here, ma’am.’ He might be embarrassed, but his jaw was set and he looked determined.
Cleo took an experimental pace towards the edge of the shade. The sentry came to attention. ‘Am I a prisoner, Ensign Lloyd?’ What the devil is going on? I am English, they are English.
‘For your own protection, ma’am. Best if you stay here. This is an army camp, no place for a lady.’
‘I am an officer’s widow, Ensign. I am used to army camps.’
‘I have my orders, ma’am.’ He snapped off a salute and marched away, radiating relief at escaping her.
Cleo turned to the guard. ‘And you are?’
‘Private Minton, ma’am.’
‘I have been cooped up on a boat for days, Private. I am going to take a walk.’ Where is Father? Where is that lying, scheming, traitorous Quin Bredon or whatever his name is?
‘No, ma’am.’ He was tough, battered and about as unconcerned about being confronted by an irritated woman as the ensign had been embarrassed.
‘Just what will you do to stop me, Private? Shoot me?’
‘Pick you up, bring you back and lock you in, begging your pardon, ma’am.’
He is only obeying orders, she told herself. You cannot lose your temper with him. Save that for his lordship.
Cleo went inside and sat on the bed. How long was she going to be here? She supposed she might as well unpack her things and make herself as comfortable as possible. She had three bags. Two containing clothes and the third for her sewing kit, medical equipment, toiletries, two books and a notebook, her wedding certificate, her few pieces of jewellery. All the small possessions of a simple life.
Almost as soon as she began to lift items out she knew it had been searched. So had her clothes’ bags. Cleo was nothing if not tidy and methodical after years of camp life. She always folded away her clean clothing just so, rolled her scarves a certain way, coiled ribbons and belts, placed shoes toe to heel. The disturbance was subtle and the repacking almost perfect, but she could tell someone had been through her things. Her books were stacked with the spines together, while she always put them with the spines opposing each together, because that way they lay flatter. Her notebook had a crease on the page where she had listed the ingredients for bamiyeh and a smudge under the weight of hibiscus pods needed—the page had been pristine when she had put the book away.
It had not been a thief. Mama’s locket, the pearl earrings Thierry had given her as a wedding gift and the Greek gold bangle she had received for her fourteenth birthday were all there. No, it was another kind of robber, one who stole trust. But what had he been looking for?
She shook out the clothes and hung them on the pegs hammered into the walls, then organised the small things in one of the empty bags. The lining was loose: whatever Quin—Lord Quintus—had been searching for it was small enough to slip between the layers of leather and cotton. Papers? But I have nothing.
Cleo closed her eyes and conjured up the memory of him standing by the donkey that day in the French camp, his head bent as though resting. Or reading. The slight disarray of her father’s letters as though someone had riffled through them... Yes, he was looking for papers, which meant he had not stumbled into their camp by accident. The encounter with Bedouin raiders was true enough, she was certain. No one was stupid enough to wound themselves and then get into that dangerous state of dehydration and heat-stroke, just as a ruse.
What was his original plan? To appear on his camel, perhaps with some surveying instruments, no doubt. He would have been welcomed, for no one turned away a stranger in the desert, and then he would have found an excuse to stay and eventually lure them down river into his trap.
‘You cunning devil. You lucky, cunning devil,’ Cleo muttered. But why, why did an English lord, for goodness’ sake, put himself to the danger and discomfort and sheer inconvenience of travelling the length of the country to entrap a scholar and his unimportant daughter?
You are not going to like the answer when you find it, Cleo Woodward. You have no clue and you cannot arm yourself against an invisible threat. I wish I had left you there where you fell outside my tent, Lord Quintus. If I knew then what I know now I would have dug a grave and rolled you in when you died and then stamped the sand down over you. In a thousand years some scholar would have dug up your bones and brittle skin and tried to understand what had led you to this fate. Perhaps I should have buried a plaque with you. Liar, betrayer, oath-breaker. Heartbreaker.
Chapter Eleven
‘Mrs Valsac, mam?’
The young woman standing in the doorway was English, Cleo only had to look at the pale skin freckled from the sun.
‘Yes, I am Madame Valsac. Did Ensign Lloyd send you?’ She made an effort and smiled and the other woman grinned back.
‘Aye, he did that. Lord, but that boy does blush!’ She looked round the room and then back at Cleo and her few possessions spread across the bed. ‘He said you didn’t have a maid with you, mam?’
‘No.’ She had never had a maid, had no idea, to be honest, what one did, although this cheerful young woman was a far cry from what she imagined a lady’s maid might be like. ‘I’m afraid I do not have any money to pay you.’
‘That’s all right, Sir James is paying, so Mr Lloyd said.’
‘Come in. What is your name?’
‘Maggie Tomkins, mam. Is it true you were married to a Frenchie?’
It occurred to Cleo that a British soldier’s wife might not take too kindly to being asked to serve the wife of an enemy officer. ‘Yes. Do you mind? Perhaps your husband wouldn’t like it.’
‘No skin off my nose who you were wed to. Besides, my man died three months back on the transport ship, bless him.’
‘Oh, I am so sorry, Mrs Tomkins. Had you been married long?’
‘Call me Maggie, mam, everyone does. Couple of months we was wed. He was my third.’
She seemed alarmingly matter of fact about it. Obviously married life amongst the rank and file was not always a matter of passionate affection. ‘Thank you, I would welcome your help. Can you tell me, who is Sir James?’
Maggie shrugged. ‘He’s not military, so he must be diplomatic. No uniform, but they all jump when he wants something. The men reckon he’s here to do the talking when the Frenchies surrender. Wish the buggers would get on with it, too much sitting around in the dust for my liking.’
‘Have you got any children?’ Cleo asked, feeling a strong sense of sympathy for another woman who was being dragged around at the whims of men, having to make the best of things in a dusty campsite.
‘Got a boy by my first husband.’ Maggie’s face grew soft. ‘He’s home in Chatham with his pa’s parents, learning to be a shoemaker like his grandpa. That’ll keep him out of the army, praise be.’ She got up. ‘I’ll bring you some hot water and some dinner from the officers’ mess in a while when it’s dinner time.’
Cleo smiled her thanks and sank back on the bed when Maggie went out. There was nothing to do, nothing to look at beyond a patch of bare sand, stamped flat by drilling soldiers, the back edge of the tent line and a fringe of palm trees. Faintly, in the distance, she could hear gunshots. Closer to hand there were shouted orders, the clash of pans from the kitchens, the grit of coarse sand under her guard’s boots.
That left her with composing exactly what she was going to say to Lord Quintus Whatever-his-name-was when he had the nerve to show himself. Cleo fingered the little knife in its hidden scabbard. Private Min
ton was only doing his duty, keeping her here, he certainly didn’t deserve a knife in the back. But she could imagine sticking it between Quin’s broad shoulders.
* * *
But Quin didn’t come. Maggie had brought hot water, towels and soap after about half an hour, just in time to stop Cleo getting up and pacing back and forth outside the hut in sheer boredom.
Now, an hour later, she sat outside with a dinner tray on the table Private Drury, Minton’s relief, carried out for her. She lifted the cover and the tantalising scents rising from the food made her realise she was starving hungry. Half a small chicken, golden and roasted, nestled on a bed of rice, vegetables swam in a thick, spice-fragrant sauce and another dish held a custard studded with sliced fruits.
Bliss. This was better food than she had seen in years and she hadn’t had to prepare it, or cook it and she wouldn’t have to clear up afterwards. Cleo ate until her hunger disappeared and then kept eating until her stomach ached and every grain of rice and scrape of custard was gone.
I will kill Quin Bredon in the morning, she thought hazily as she plaited her hair for bed, already more than half asleep. Just now I haven’t the energy to be angry with a scorpion, let alone a worthless man.
* * *
It was Maggie who woke her with the luxury of more hot water and then fresh rolls, crisp outside and fluffy white inside, and a pot of coffee and fresh eggs and a bowl of yoghurt studied with pomegranate seeds.
‘I will grow fat on all this luxury and no work,’ Cleo said as Maggie laid out the last of the dishes. ‘There is too much—share it with me, please.’
Maggie needed little persuasion. ‘Oh, this is good,’ she said, grinning through a moustache of yoghurt, then using the back of her hand in lieu of a napkin. ‘Sorry, mam, I’m not used to this fine dining.’
‘Nor am I,’ Cleo confessed. Although this would not count as even a picnic for the likes of Lord Quintus, she was sure.
* * *
Ensign Lloyd came marching across as they were finishing, very formal. ‘Sir James requests the pleasure of your company in half an hour, ma’am.’
