The Sycamore Song Page 7

  And now here they were almost at Sakkara, and he hadn’t told her anything at all. She wondered if that had been her fault. She had sat beside him as stiff as a poker, answering everything he had said in monosyllables, but she hadn’t wanted to confide in him that she was afraid of the reception she was going to receive at the excavation, that she was so nervous that her tongue felt like a lump of dry wood in her mouth.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said out of the blue. “I won’t let them eat you, not on your very first day.”

  She started, summoning up a smile. “I know I’ll be all right. If my father thought I could cope, I must be able to, mustn’t I? Besides, I know I can manage as long as Torquil Fletcher doesn’t turn up. I’ve been telling myself that all morning.” She stared out of the window. “I know he’s a friend of yours, but you have to admit that he did make trouble. Everybody says so!”

  “I haven’t said so,” he pointed out. “I agree that the team began to fall apart just about the time he quarrelled with your father, but that was a coincidence. It came at the same time as your father began to suspect that some of the most valuable objects he was finding had disappeared. He wanted to blame Fletcher, but he knew that he hadn’t done anything of the sort. The trouble was, he was so angry that he didn’t care what bricks he threw at him.”

  “Did they quarrel over Juliette?” Victoria asked him.

  “In a way,” he admitted.

  “Was my father - fond of her?”

  “He liked having her around. You mustn’t blame him if he found her attractive. She fell into his hands like a ripe plum and he was absolutely delighted with everything she said and did.”

  “Until Torquil Fletcher upset everything?”

  “He didn’t realise how serious George was about her. If he had, he would have left her alone. As it was, he went all out to have some fun himself, and Juliette wasn’t exactly averse to his advances.” His lips twisted into a wry smile. “I think she rather liked having two strings to her bow. Only George found out, as it was inevitable that he should, and there was a bust-up you could have heard down in Cape Town. It was a bad do.”

  “It was cruel too,” Victoria considered. “My father wasn’t a young man and he had been rejected by my mother too, in a way. I mean, she wouldn’t go anywhere with him. She didn’t like him, let alone love him, and he must have known that. It was obvious even to me as a child. I don’t think I’d like your Torquil Fletcher very much.”

  “I don’t imagine he took your father’s past life into consideration,” Tariq said dryly. “Juliette was there and available. That was all there was to it as far as he was concerned.”

  “Probably not,” she agreed with disapproval. “My father had other reasons for disliking him, though. He said so.”

  “Not really,” Tariq denied. “George wasn’t normally a small-minded man and he would got over the rest quite easily if Juliette hadn’t been sticking in his gullet. Fletcher questioned her judgement too in an article he wrote and she isn’t going to forgive him for that in a hurry!”

  Victoria didn’t mind the thought of the French girl’s discomfiture nearly as much as she had her father’s. “What happened?” she asked, intrigued.

  “Your father and Juliette had decided that their tomb was the tomb of the Pharaoh Kha-Sekhem, because they had found a statue of him in the outer doorway. Fletcher disagreed. Quite a few statues and stelae of Kha-Sekhem have been found in the past, always in the south, and always wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt without the red crown of the northern delta kingdom. When he wrote an article saying so, Juliette went up in smoke, and your father ordered him off the site.”

  “Was he right?” Victoria asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Then how do you explain Kha-Sekhem’s statue being in the tomb?”

  “I don’t. We shan’t know for certain until they get further into the tomb and sort out all the finds. At the moment they’re still arguing about the probable dating of most of the objects, when they’re doing anything at all. It’s been a pretty slack operation from the start. Don’t expect them to like it when you begin to apply the big stick, Victoria. Neither Juliette or Jim Kerr are going to relish being handled by a complete amateur.”

  “But you’ll be there,” she pointed out, trying to sound less anxious than she felt.

  “They won’t relish that either!” He felt her stiffen and put a reassuring hand on hers in a brief contact that made her heart swoop within her. “They can’t get rid of me without your say-so,” he said. “And you’ll have to talk to the Egyptian authorities to persuade them to withdraw me before I’ll go. So it looks as though you’re stuck with me for the time being, come what may!”

  It was a comforting thought, but not one she could afford to indulge if she wanted to impress on him that their relationship was going to be a working one and nothing more. “Are we going to Memphis now?” she asked brightly.

  “If you like.” He looked across at her, his eyes full of mockery. “There’s little enough there for you to dream about.”

  “I told you it would be different in the full light of day,” she retorted. “We both knew it didn’t mean anything!”

  “Does that mean we have to behave like strangers?”

  “We are strangers,” she claimed. “We only met yesterday—”

  “So we did. But you recognised me at once in the shade of the sycamore tree, just as I knew you.”

  “There wasn’t any shade,” Victoria objected. “I don’t believe there’s been so much as a single leaf on that tree for a hundred years!” She waited for him to say something and, when he didn’t, she felt thoroughly cross and ill-used. “What is there at Memphis?” she demanded.

  He parked the car under some palm trees and leaned back, watching her lazily through half-closed eyes. “Put your prickles away, Victoria,” he said. “I don’t like being scratched, and I don’t intend to be by you.”

  She blinked, her lashes showing very black against her milk-white skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she declared.

  “Think about it,” he recommended. “We’ll be seeing a great deal of each other in the next week or so, and if you’re going to be on edge all the time you’ll wear yourself out.”

  “It isn’t only me!” she flashed at him.

  He reached out a hand and brushed a lock of blue-black hair out of her eyes. “But I’ve been here before, and I fancy I’m better able to cope. Make it easy on yourself and leave things to me. All right?”

  She nodded, unable to say a single word. It was something of a relief to have it out in the open, she admitted to herself. For the first time that morning she relaxed her taut muscles and smiled at him. He held out his hand to her and she put her own into it to seal the agreement.

  “There’s a sphinx here too,” he told her. “Come and see if you think it resembles its big brother at Giza.”

  She got out of the car and looked about her. “You haven’t told me why Memphis was important,” she reminded him.

  “It was the first capital city of the united Two Kingdoms,” he said, and he began to tell her about the fabled Menes, or Mena, the first Pharaoh of the First Dynasty, who had united Upper and Lower Egypt into one administrative unit, making it into perhaps the first real state, or country, that the world had ever known, round about the year 3,500 B.C.

  If the sphinx was small and dainty and in no way comparable to its mighty cousin at Giza, the unfinished statue of Rameses II lying on its back in a specially constructed museum was positively huge. Victoria thought he had rather a nice face. The royal wig and the false beard, which all the Pharaohs had worn, set it off well, giving the nose and mouth a clean-cut look that was almost modern in its execution and design.

  “Was he the one who chased after Moses?” she asked Tariq.

  “It was more likely his successor who did that. Rameses had other claims to fame. He was a very great man.” He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful
of blue scarabs, holding them out to her. “I meant to give you these before,” he said. “A charm to watch over you when I’m not close by. They represent the dung beetle which was sacred to the sun-god Ra—”

  “The one you were talking about yesterday at Heliopolis?”

  “Where we met,” he agreed with a faint smile. “You can see these dung beetles sometimes in the desert, shiny, black little things, that roll a great ball of dung in front of them which contains their eggs. It seemed to the ancient Egyptians that they produced new life out of nothing when the young beetles broke out of their eggs, and they imagined a huge, similar beetle rolling up the sun into the sky every morning, bringing new life to the world.”

  Victoria examined the small scarabs with care. “But these aren’t old, are they?” she exclaimed.

  “No, they’re mostly made as souvenirs for the tourists. But this one is old.” He picked out a pale grey one from among its brighter brothers. “This one I found myself. It has beautiful markings underneath.” He put it back into her hand, closing her fingers over it. “It was the first I ever made,” he told her. “Keep it safe for me as an earnest of the trust you have in me. You do trust me, don’t you?”

  “You know I do! But don’t you want to keep it? Why isn’t it in a museum?”

  “They have too many of them already, and so I was allowed to keep it. If you’re afraid of losing it, you could wear it round your neck on a string.”

  “I will,” she promised, pleased. She held it tightly in her hand and smiled back at him. Perhaps the beetle would roll up the sun for her one day and, in the meantime, Tariq must like her a little or he wouldn’t have given it to her. “Does the charm work in the dark?”

  “I’ve never tried it out,” he answered her. “You’ll have to let me know if it does.”

  “I might not know,” she said uncertainly.

  “You’ll know!” he assured her. “You’ll know if you feel as safe by night as you do by day!”

  Victoria smiled. “I’m not afraid of you at any time,” she told him.

  “But it won’t be only me you’ll have to contend with.” His face hardened, a muscle tightening into a hard knot by his jaw. “I wish it were, my dear. I’d feel a whole lot happier about you if I thought that!”

  The demarcation line between the green of the Nile valley and the sand of the desert was as clear as the line that runs between a motorway and the grass verge beside it. On the one side lay black, productive soil; on the other, the crumbly stone of the eternal desert, stretching most of the way across North Africa. It must have been as marked in the old days, when they had carried the dead to the western side of the river, to join the other subjects of Osiris and take up their final residence in his kingdom. But they did not seem to have approached death in a morbid spirit. On the contrary, the tombs of the various notables had been hardly different at all from the houses in which they had lived when they were alive. Some of them had had gardens attached, and one had even had a lavatory put in for the convenience of the great man who had been laid to rest there.

  In the distance Victoria could see the famous Step Pyramid of Zoser, the first edifice in Egypt to be built entirely of stone. Nearer at hand were several other pyramids, so badly ravished by latter-day builders who had taken their stones to save quarrying their own that they looked no more than piles of loose rocks that mattered to no one.

  The road petered out into a track across the sand and they went quite close to one of these pyramids where, to Victoria’s delight, a fox had made his earth amongst the tumbled stones and was peering out at them, not even bothering to move away. A group of camels, chariots, and donkeys waited patiently a little further along the track, waiting patiently for the next group of tourists who would come to see the Serapeum, the underground corridor of tombs of the bulls who in their lifetime had been sacred to Ptah, the creator-god of Memphis.

  Tariq chose another track at the junction by the donkey-boys’ hut, leading away from the Serapeum. Looking back to catch a last glimpse of the colourful group of men and animals, Victoria saw, far down below the level of the other road, a semi-circular area which contained a number of battered busts of Greek poets and philosophers looking so out of place in that setting that a giggle escaped her.

  “Why here?” she asked.

  “The Greeks were lavish in the homage they paid to a civilisation which they recognised as being far more ancient than their own. They recognised the debt they owed to Africa and Asia Minor, a debt which in modern times we more often prefer to ignore.”

  And then, suddenly, they were there. A small mound of sand was all that was visible of the actual dig. To Victoria’s eyes it looked rather dull, but she got out of the car and peered down into the opening that had been dug out into the side of the old tomb. She stood up straight, disappointed, and her heart knocked uncomfortably against her ribs when she realised that Tariq hadn’t waited for her, but had driven on nearer to a group of white canvas tents that had been erected not far from the site.

  A man on a donkey, unshaven and with his shaggy hair full of sand, rode over to her and sat there for a long while looking at her.

  “You must be Victoria Lyle,” he said. “I’m Jim Kerr. Did someone bring you here, or did you materialise out of the desert?”

  “I came with Tariq,” Victoria told him.

  “So he’s back again, is he? That won’t sweeten Juliette’s temper any, or is everything forgiven and forgotten between them?”

  Victoria raised her eyebrows in a haughty expression she had borrowed from Tariq. “How should I know?” she countered. She turned back to the entrance to the mastaba. “May one go down there?” she asked.

  “Who is there to say you nay? I’ll get a light and come down with you, if you like? But you don’t have to prove anything to me, you know. It’s no skin off my nose if you take your responsibilities here seriously or not. Only Juliette cares about that, and her first impression was so unfavourable, you’ll have a job making her believe that you know anything about Egyptology.”

  “I don’t. I can’t pretend I do - not even to please Juliette!”

  “Oh well, as long as the money keeps flowing she’ll forgive you that. She’s a great deal less likely to forgive George Lyle’s daughter for turning out to be a raving beauty. If you take my advice, you’ll stay away from Torquil Fletcher when she’s around. With your father dead, there’s nothing to prevent them getting together now.”

  “Except he isn’t here—”

  “He is, if Tariq brought you here. Didn’t he introduce himself? Tariq is Torquil Fletcher!”

  For a moment Victoria thought she was going to faint. She sat down hurriedly on a pile of stone and sand before her legs gave way under her. “He wouldn’t tell me his name - only Tariq!”

  “Most people call him that,” Jim Kerr admitted. “That weird foster-mother of his called him Tariq as a baby when she couldn’t get her tongue round Torquil.”

  “She isn’t weird,” Victoria defended her. “I like her!”

  “My, my,” said Jim. “He has been busy, hasn’t he, if he took you there?” He scratched some of the sand out of his beard. “Wove you a fine tale about himself, did he? Never mind, girl, you’re not the first female to be hooked on that line of his. He’s quite the lady’s man - as your father would have told you. He knew. Oh, brother, he knew all about it!” To Victoria, that was no comfort at all. She felt betrayed, and not even the feel of the scarab in her pocket did anything to console her. She has trusted Tariq, and not only with her father’s affairs, and it was obvious that he didn’t care at all, or he would have at least prepared her by telling her his real name.

  “I don’t think I want to go inside the tomb now after all,” she said. “I’d rather go to wherever it is I shall be staying.”

  “Right,” Jim approved, “I’ll take you.” He dismounted from his donkey, clapping his hands behind its back to make it go back to the others. “There hasn’t been much doing recently,” he ex
plained the animal away. “There wasn’t enough money in the kitty to keep things ticking over as we’d hoped. Juliette and I stayed on, to be here when you arrived, but we couldn’t persuade any of the men to hang on, especially not with the government breathing down the back of our necks.”

  “Tariq is working for the government—”

  Jim shook his head. “Another tale, my dear. You’d do better to get your father’s licence transferred to Juliette or myself, unless you mean to take it out in your own name?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Victoria said. It didn’t take much thinking, though, to know it wasn’t likely that anyone in their right mind would grant her a licence to take control of an excavation she knew nothing about and wasn’t qualified to direct in the first place. She would have to trust Tariq after all, she thought, or go back to England and admit total defeat. He hadn’t made it easier for her to back him up if he wanted to take charge himself.

  They had almost reached the collection of tents when Jim said suddenly, “You only got the money as long as you came to Egypt, didn’t you? What would have happened to it otherwise?”

  “If I hadn’t come it would have gone to his assistant - I suppose that must be Juliette? - but he didn’t want her bothered with both the finances and the everyday details of the dig. He didn’t leave me anything personally, or her either, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Jim grinned at her. He looked more like a hippie with his wild hair and beard, and not a very clean one at that, than a serious man of study. He should have been likeable, though, yet Victoria found she didn’t care for him at all, and she wondered why not. She liked most people unless they were obviously horrid, and Jim Kerr was certainly not that.

  “I was curious, I guess,” he said. “It’s a bad habit we diggers in the dust are apt to get into. It doesn’t mean I’m any the less glad you’ve come!” He waved across the sand to Juliette who had just emerged from one of the tents. “Hey there, where are we putting our new boss? Shall I show her to her father’s old tent?”

  Juliette gave Victoria an indifferent look. “It’s the largest,” she said languidly. “Are you afraid of being by yourself, Miss Lyle? Your father’s tent is rather far from the others as George didn’t care to be overlooked by anyone. You won’t get lonely, will you?”