“How do you feel?”
“About how I look, I imagine. If it’s any consolation, Julia, I could feel him trying not to hurt me too bad.”
“I’m so sorry, Ella. When he found out you were gone, he just went insane.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Julia shook her head. “No. But I was afraid.”
“Julia, you have to help me.”
“Of course, Ella, anything. Do you want more water? Gita gave me a salve that I put on the cuts. It smells awful, but I…”
“You have to help me escape, Julia.”
“Ella, no! He’ll kill you next time! You can’t do this again.”
“I have to,” Ella said. “My baby.” She raised up on one elbow. “I need to get back to my own time,” she said. “My own world. I can’t have him born out here.”
“America isn’t the only place with modern hospitals,” Julia said. “Besides, Gita has delivered lots of babies. And I’ll be here to help. You’ll be fine.”
“Rowan’s looking for me,” Ella said. “I know he is now. I can feel it.”
Howard Carter’s Camp, the Valley of the Kings
Rowan stood next to Howard Carter and surveyed the dig site from the wooden hut Carter called his headquarters. Before him was a vista of sweeping sand across which scurried thousands of workers. As Rowan watched, he thought to himself that even with sophisticated animation and reenactments the Discovery Channel hadn’t been able to capture the reality of the massive operation. This was history all right and it was happening right in front of him. In front of him, hell—he was in it.
“Pretty impressive, eh?” Carter said to him.
Rowan turned to him. “It’s amazing. To see it all happening like this…” He was at a loss for words.
“It’s been a long haul,” Carter said, almost to himself. “In fact, too long. George has asked that this be our last season.”
“I know,” Rowan said, without thinking.
Carter looked at him and narrowed his eyes. “Last night you hinted that you might be able to give me a more exact date.”
“Maybe the wine was talking,” Rowan said uncomfortably, still not looking at him.
Carter said nothing then looked away. “Too right,” he said.
“George?” Rowan said.
“Lord Carnarvon. You know, of course, that he is my sponsor.”
“I do,” Rowan said. “I also know that in five years of searching you’ve found a cup, a piece of gold foil and some funeral items with the name Nebkheperura on them. Better known to the rest of the world as King Tutankhamun.”
Carter motioned for Rowan to sit down at the rickety wooden table in the hut out of the heat of the day. A young Egyptian boy arrived carrying a heavy tray with a teapot and teacups which he set down on the table between the men, and then poured the tea.
“Those finds were in the papers,” Carter said.
“But they are the reason you’re digging in this spot in the valley.”
“Common knowledge,” Carter said sipping from a teacup, the steam wafting off it.
“I can tell you that your method of excavation will be taught for decades to come.”
“Don’t flatter me, Pierce.”
Rowan looked at him. “You’re off by about twenty yards,” he said finally.
“Off?”
“As in, the wrong spot. Depending on where you direct your systematic digging from the point you are now it could be next year before you find it.”
Carter glared at Rowan over his teacup. “And your suggestion?”
Rowan pointed to the base of the western cliffs where a series of black cavernous cave openings dimpled the rock.
“There, at the base of the western cliffs. Why have you not dug below the exposed tomb entrances?”
Carter put his teacup down with a clatter and jumped to his feet to see where Rowan was pointing. “We excavated there,” he said.
Rowan sipped his tea and waited.
“I say, Pierce,” Carter said, turning to frown at Rowan. “We did search there. It’s where we found the workmen’s huts. We dug them all the way to the bedrock.”
“I know,” Rowan said. “You need to go below it.”
“Below the bedrock?” Carter looked back at the place where his workers were digging and then to the area where the recently found workmen’s huts had been uncovered.
Rowan watched him as Carter stood staring out over the work site. He guessed Carter was thinking of all the years he had spent looking at this valley and all the hopes and dreams he had invested. His career and his reputation, all of it was on the line for one more season.
Finally, Carter sat back down and picked up his teacup. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think we’ll continue on as we started. No offense, old chap.”
Rowan shrugged. “None taken,” he said. Do I have to go out and find the damn thing myself?
“But I would care to hear more about this x-ray approach you were talking about yesterday. They are really using it in the States?”
“Oh, yes,” Rowan lied. “It’s a less invasive way to see what’s behind stone without destroying the centuries old container.”
“Yes, yes, I can see that,” Carter said. “But is it possible? I mean at the size necessary, I can’t see how it can be done.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the details of how they’re doing it,” Rowan admitted.
“Quite so.”
“I was hoping to talk with you about me continuing to search for my wife and Lady Digby.”
“Spenser assures me all that can be done is being done on that score,” Carter said. He squinted into the horizon, looking very much like he was scanning the site Rowan had just pointed out to him.
“Yes, well, as she is my wife, I would like to be a part of that effort, Mr. Carter.”
Carter looked at him coolly. “And the little matter of the stolen faience cup found in your bedroll?”
“It was placed there to prevent me from going out to search for them.”
Carter sighed as if very tired. “I’m sorry, Pierce. But I have hired some extremely competent people and I find I must trust their advice in these matters.” He spread his hands out before him. “I am but a simple journeyman. A scholar of the dead, incompetent to understand or assess the often twisted motives of the living.”
Rowan said nothing. It was clearly going to take longer to win the man over. He thought of Ella and the child growing inside her. It was all he could do not to grab Carter’s gun from his belt and demand men and horses to continue the search. Instead, he looked westward at the desert stretching endlessly to Libya and beyond. Stay safe, my love, he thought, his heart heavy. Just a little bit longer.
“Meanwhile, if you’d like to accompany me down to the tombs?” Carter said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to show you.”
Bedouin Camp, Somewhere in the Sahara
Julia tended Ella in her tent for two full days. On the third day, the nomads broke camp to move further south. Julia rode the pony from Carter’s camp and Ella walked at her side. Ella’s right hand was tied to Julia’s stirrup to prevent Ella from escaping. Ella figured that Ammon had given orders for her to walk because he knew she wasn’t in any condition to ride after the beating he’d given her. As far as Ella was concerned, it was precisely because he believed her presently incapable of riding any distance that made her believe that now was her best chance to escape again.
She had never in her life looked at a map of Egypt and had no idea how the Nile might twist and turn in its path south to the Sudan. In the long run it didn’t really matter. She knew she needed to go east and sooner or later she would hit the river. While it was true there wasn’t a dock with a fleet of dahabiyas at every point on the river, she knew exactly how to get to Luxor and that was a leg up on everything else she didn’t know.
The morning was pleasant when they started out but turned hot within a few
hours. Not long after leaving, Ella noted that she was using the stirrup to support herself. Just before lunch—and obviously irritated at how many times Julia was stopping to allow Ella to rest—Ammon roared up on his Arabian pony, leaned down and jerked free the leather tie that bound Ella to Julia’s saddle. He reached down, grabbed Ella around the waist and plopped her unceremoniously across his saddle before wheeling back to the front of the line.
The indignity of her position combined with serious discomfort, made the next hour a misery for Ella. If she lifted her head she was likely to get a face full of sand or tiny pebbles from whatever Ammon’s horse kicked up. At one point, she thought she saw a palm tree—a sure sign that they were getting near water—and twisted around to confirm it. Ammon corrected the move with a solid—and agonizing—swat across her bottom. When they stopped for lunch, he dragged her from his saddle and deposited her on the ground as if she were a sack of feed.
The midday meal was a quick one, just long enough to rest and water the camels, horses, and goats. Ella and Julia ate the tough goat jerky, which had been the main staple of their diet since they joined the Bedouins. When it was time to remount, Ammon made it clear that Julia and Ella would take turns riding Julia’s pony. Ella saw him give Julia a meaningful look and was amazed to see that their relationship had graduated to such depth. The look, of course, was a warning one.
Ella’s portion of the trip where she rode the pony was arduous and uncomfortable. Because of the stirrups, she was able to ride the animal in a two-point riding position which kept her bottom mostly out of contact with the saddle although her knees, which took the brunt of the gait, began to shake within ten minutes. When it was time to switch places with Julia and walk again next to the pony, Ella found she was rested enough to do so without holding up the group.
After a while Ammon came by on his horse and looked at the two of them with satisfaction. The look he gave Ella was, amazingly, almost friendly. It read as clearly as if he’d said out loud: Beats riding across my saddle, doesn’t it?
It occurred to Ella as she watched him ride away that he might not be a complete bastard. In his own way, he seemed to care for Julia. And because he was indisputably the leader of this tribe and therefore forced to be judge and executioner for sins great and small, he had to be firm. She knew he had held back when he whipped her. Looking at him in his world, shaped by his culture—even after everything that had happened—she could see how he might not be the most despicable man on earth.
She also knew that if she escaped again and was caught he would almost certainly kill her.
Chapter Seventeen
Howard Carter’s Camp, the Valley of the Kings
It was taking forever.
After four days of walking the dig site with Carter every day, dining with him and playing chess with him, the only benefits Rowan had managed to gain were being allowed to ride the perimeter of the camp and sometimes into the neighboring village. He was always accompanied and while his companion was not armed it didn’t mean he wasn’t his guard. Rowan guessed Carter’s benign custodianship of Rowan was rooted in his vision of how civilized men behave. He likewise assumed that the guard was Spenser’s idea.
This morning, after a fruitless conversation with a village elder by way of his recalcitrant guard and sometime translator, Rowan rode back to camp. Never much of a rider, he astonished himself with how much he enjoyed it. Instead of the ubiquitous hijab, he wore a pith helmet against the sun’s onslaught. The back of his neck burned to leather within a day of starting these rides. Every time he returned from the village or from the dig site he would look in the direction of the road that led directly to the Nile. He always tried to imagine Ella pointed in that direction. He played over and over in his head a moving image of her riding, just as he was, seeing the same scenery, feeling the same sensations from her horse that he was feeling, and he tried to imagine what she had been thinking.
“Effendi.” His guard pointed in the direction that Rowan had been looking but not seeing. He could see two riders coming down the main road toward him. His heart gave a lurch for one mad moment thinking it must be Ella returning before he saw that the two were riders were male.
He turned his horse back toward the camp. Today had been a day for disappointments, he thought, as he recognized the tall form of Abdullah riding next to Digby. Rowan watched Digby go to his tent. Rowan wasn’t hopeful he would be told the truth about what Digby had discovered in Cairo, but he had to at least try. Digby was tossing down his jacket onto his camp bed when Rowan darkened the tent opening.
“Well, well,” Digby said. “Up and about without your shackles, I see.”
“What did you find out in Cairo?” Rowan asked bluntly.
Digby’s face was pinched and worn. “If you don’t mind, I am in the process of dressing for dinner. I will make a full report at that time.”
Rowan toyed with the idea of beating the crap out of the little turd but decided against it. Likely Digby had no news at all, he reminded himself. He turned on his heel and left.
Digby watched him go and worked to force down his anger. The nerve of the blackguard! Demanding his report the moment he stepped back in camp. It was indescribably rude even by American standards.
He looked for Abdullah, cursing Julia again for talking him into forgoing the valet. Abdullah wouldn’t be able to dress him but he could at least fetch a basin of damn water with which he might bathe. In frustration, he threw his belt across the tent and realized he was shaking.
He wouldn’t have come back this early if the wire hadn’t forced him to. The Lady Duchess had made it clear she would entertain his courting her if it could be done in such a way as to retain propriety for the public observations of their separate losses. While she hadn’t gone so far as to approve his attentions, she had not completely rebuffed them and as far as Digby was concerned, that was all he needed. The Shepheards ball next week would have been the perfect time to advance that particular part of his plan if it hadn’t been for the receipt early yesterday morning of the damnable wire from London. It was incredible really. Did the old bastard not believe him when he reported his beloved daughter was dead? The wire was succinct: No proof of death. No money. Lord Haversham.
Was he supposed to dig up a body? Perhaps one of those precious mummified numbers he could pass off as Julia to her skinflint of a father? What kind of a monster was Haversham?
Digby had been in a fury from the moment he had received the wire. His account at Shepheards was already painfully past due and he had had to slip past that intensely objectionable hotel clerk this morning in order that he might make passage on the boat to Luxor. Even then he had the humiliating task ahead of him of asking Carter for a small loan to pay the blasted boat captain who had the effrontery to say he would send a man out tomorrow to collect!
They would all pay for these indignities, Digby thought, in mounting fury, his face mottled with crimson blotches. Every last man of them. Would pay.
That night at dinner, Digby fortified himself with several glasses of wine in order to appear to be what he considered his usual phlegmatic self. He saw that, in his absence, Pierce had laid claim to the seat opposite Carter at the other end of the dinner table. Inwardly seething, Digby sat down between the two and reached for another glass of wine.
“How did you get on in Cairo?” Carter asked, as he tore a roll apart. “Did you hear anything?”
“No, unfortunately,” Digby said. “Not a sausage, I’m afraid.”
“So sorry, old man,” Carter said. “What is your next recourse?” Rowan saw Carter glance at him as he spoke.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Digby said. “The authorities are prepared to have Julia declared legally dead. So I imagine I’ll start there.”
Carter frowned. “Surely that’s a little soon?”
“It is the view of the Egyptian authorities that being lost in the desert a day can be enough,” Digby said. “They’ve been gone nearly two weeks.”
&nbs
p; “Perhaps they were found by desert people,” Rowan said. If he had expected any real investigation on Digby’s part while he was in Cairo, he would probably be more frustrated with the lack of information—or disinformation. But since he had held out no real hope that Digby was actually trying to find the women, Rowan found himself relatively unaffected by the man’s words.
“Then we would all wish they were dead,” Digby said wryly. “As would they—or rather,” he said pointedly to Rowan, “as any moral, God-fearing woman would.”
Rowan did not respond.
“How’s the work been coming here?” Digby continued. “Any new finds?”
“Nothing to report,” Carter said.
Rowan looked up in surprise. The funeral vase would qualify as a significant find since it corroborated Carter’s belief that they were digging in the right area for Tut’s tomb. For whatever reason, it appeared that Carter didn’t trust Digby any longer. Not that Rowan could blame him. Still, it was good to know.
“And I see we have worked out our differences with Mr. Pierce, here, while I was gone. I assume he had unassailable evidence in his defense?”
“Not quite sure that’s any of your business, Digby,” Carter said, finishing off his glass of wine and pushing away from the table, “since it was my property in question. Goodnight, gentlemen. Pierce, great game as usual. I thank you. Find your own way to the site, tomorrow, can you? I’m leaving before dawn.”
Rowan nodded. “Goodnight, Carter,” he said. He and Digby watched Carter disappear into his tent before Digby threw down his napkin and turned on Rowan.
“How dare you, sir,” he snarled. “Calling him Carter as if he were one of your pals. You don’t know your place.”
“Yeah,” Rowan said tossing down his own napkin. “But I know yours.” He left the table.
Digby watched him go. He took a sip of his wine and signaled the server to bring another bottle. He smiled and felt the tension go out of his shoulders. True, it had been a terrible day, but there had been one bright spot. An idea had occurred to him a few hours earlier which would effectively rid him of the American nuisance—and by doing so the obvious wedge he had planted between Carter and himself. And best of all, Digby didn’t need anyone’s help in order to make it happen. This was one little chore he could handle all on his own. He leaned back into his chair to more fully enjoy the scattering of bright stars scattered across the dark blue Egyptian night.
Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Page 18
