The Sycamore Song Read online

  Victoria led the way down the slope towards the camp. “What makes you say that?” She carefully side-stepped a large, rounded stone that had recently been dislodged from higher up. “Didn’t he listen to your opinions enough?”

  “How well you read me, Miss Lyle,” he bowed. “Actually, he didn’t listen to anyone and I was rather less upset by this characteristic than the others. Find that difficult to believe? But then I have always lacked ambition. It’s the simple life for me - as you can see. That offends you, doesn’t it? It offended your father too. I offended his nostrils, he said.”

  “But you didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Why should I? He didn’t do anything for me either! Now his daughter is quite another matter! Do you still want to see inside the tomb? I’ll show you round after breakfast, if you like. You may as well come with me, as I flatter myself I’ll make a better guide than Juliette because I won’t expect you to know it all already. I know you’d love to have our Mr. Fletcher for your guide, but I happen to know he has other plans for his morning.”

  “Thank you,” said Victoria, “I’d like to see the tomb.”

  Jim shot her a swift look, pulling on his beard. “Aren’t you curious as to what Fletcher will be doing?”

  “Not particularly,” Victoria said with commendable calm.

  “Then I don’t need to tell you that he and Juliette have arranged to catch up on old times in Alexandria. It didn’t take them long to get back on the old footing.”

  “I don’t think that’s any of our business, do you?”

  “If you say not,” he grumbled.

  Victoria opened her eyes very wide. “I do!” She wished he hadn’t told her. She didn’t want to have to live with that knowledge all morning and, as Tariq seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her mind, she despaired of being able to forget it. It was a good thing she would have to stretch her mind by concentrating on her father’s mastaba, and would have to listen to Jim’s explanations about the articles they had found there. But her spirits refused to lift at the thought. The inner core of her wanted only Tariq, and the thought of him with Juliette was scarcely to be borne.

  If possible, she found the communal tent where the various members of the expedition met for meals and recreation even more beautiful than the one she had inherited from her father. The embroidery was finer and the calligraphy of the texts from the Koran even better executed. Abdul, the cook-suffragi, was pleased by her interest.

  “Very fine tent this one,” he agreed with her. “There is no finer in the Western Desert!”

  Victoria chuckled. “What about the Eastern Desert?”

  “It is a very little desert on the eastern side of the Nile. I am not knowing about the tents there. I have lived in Sakkara all my life. In the German-English War I was mess-boy with the Scottish Regiment. Very fine men! But their tents were not beautiful like this one!”

  “Is that when you learned to serve at table?” she asked him.

  “Yes, madame. I learn many things. I learn English language and English cooking. Many things. I serve you very well, just like I serve your father. Now I bring your breakfast.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled at him. “Where did these tents come from?”

  “Your father bought them when he first came to Egypt. That was a great many years ago.” He grinned back at her. “You very little girl, madame, but sometimes he would speak of you.”

  Nobody else came in to breakfast, not even Jim. Victoria ate her solitary meal and then went outside to look for him. She found him nonchalantly leaning on a heavy walking- stick.

  “Don’t you want any breakfast?” she accosted him.

  “Never touch it,” he answered. “Not at this time of year. I find dinner quite enough to keep me going. Are you ready for your tour of inspection?”

  She found him a much better guide than she had expected. The entrance to the mastaba was not particularly deep. The original building had been rectangular in shape, but one corner of it had fallen in many centuries before. So far, only the first courtyard had been dug out and the sand neatly piled up outside the opening. The main part of the tomb, containing the sarcophagus and the mummified body of the Second Dynasty Pharaoh they expected to find there, had still to be cleared out and the objects found meticulously recorded and appraised by experts to find out what light, if any, they could throw on this most ancient period in the history of the Two Lands of Ancient Egypt.

  “We’ve been lucky here,” Jim told her. “Most of the contemporary tombs in Sakkara were nearer to the Pyramid of Unas over there. There was a bit of trouble, dynastic jealousy, you know the sort of thing, and the winning side tried to set fire to all the tombs of the defeated dynasty. This one seems to have escaped. That’s why the gold covering on the walls is particularly fine. D’you see how it’s been moulded to look like rush mats? There was a whole lot more of it on this side when we got here, but it was one of the things that mysteriously disappeared and caused the bother with the Department of Antiquities. The rest of the stuff that went were some rather fine spoons and some gold platters, and a whole lot of other, lesser stuff. The best of the stuff is yet to be uncovered, though, that’s my bet. It will be inside there.” He jerked his head towards the inner chambers of the mastaba.

  “Where was the statue of Kha-sekhem found?” Victoria enquired, trying to restrain herself from fingering the ancient patterns on the walls.

  “Over there by the entrance. That was one of the things George and Fletcher quarrelled about. George claimed the inscription on the statue read that Kha-sekhem Came to Lower Egypt in answer to some Libyan invasion and took seven thousand prisoners. That would fit it with what is already known about him. But Fletcher maintains that he didn’t stay long enough to consolidate his gains—”

  “Because he didn’t wear the red crown of the North?” Victoria finished for him, glad to show off her own knowledge for once.

  Jim clicked his tongue approvingly. “So you do know something about it!” he congratulated her.

  “That’s the sum of my knowledge.” she confessed. “But at least I know I have a lot to learn.”

  Jim came right up close to her. “You’re pretty enough for it not to matter, Vicky. Look, lass, I’m going to stay on here for a while and do a bit of housework to earn my keep. D’you think you can find your own way back to camp?” Victoria was sorry to have her explorations curtailed, but she went without a word. It was quite hot outside, without a cloud in the sky. She took off her sweater and tied it round her waist by the sleeves to save carrying it, walking very slowly back to camp. She saw Tariq in the distance, and waved to him. His brow cleared at the sight of her and he came running over the sand towards her.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he bit out at her. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you. I wish you’d leave word with Abdul whenever you go out, saying where you’re going and how long you’re likely to be. You could get lost in the desert going off on your own!”

  Victoria was incredulous. “How could I?” she demanded. “I only have to look round until I see the Step Pyramid, or even the Bent Pyramid, come to that, to know exactly where I am!”

  Tariq merely looked cross. “I’d like you to leave word with Abdul, all the same. I hear you’re going to Cairo this afternoon? Juliette said you were taking the car.”

  She nodded. “I’m going to see my father’s lawyers.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  Victoria thought of where he had been all morning and sniffed. “I shouldn’t dream of depriving Juliette of your company,” she said.

  He jerked her round to face him. “And what does that mean?” he asked her.

  Her lips puckered, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of reading her thoughts. “Let me go! You know I don’t like being manhandled!”

  He released her at once, running an impatient hand through his hair. “Do you want me to come with you, or not?”

&nbs
p; “Juliette—”

  “Juliette has gone to Alexandria on her own!”

  “And I want to go to Cairo on my own! I have to see them by myself. If you came with me, they’d only try to get you sacked by the Department for overstepping your sphere of influence.”

  His golden eyes looked into her earnest blue ones.

  “All right,” he said. “What have they been saying about me?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing much. But I had a hideous time yesterday persuading them that the money was for the excavation only, and not for anyone’s personal use.”

  “I see,” he said. “Well, take care, Victoria. Juliette’s car is a potential death-trap. They don’t have roadworthy tests in Egypt!”

  She would have liked to have changed her mind then, and to have asked him to come with her after all. “I’m quite good at looking after myself,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, “you’re as stubborn as ever your father was! Will you call in and see Omm Beshir?”

  “If you think she’d like to see me.”

  His eyes glinted in the sunlight. “You can give her a little something from me!” He cupped her chin in his hand and touched his mouth to her lips. “Her hair is black, blacker than the night, blacker than sloes,” he quoted softly, punctuating each phrase with another gentle caress on her mouth. “Red are her lips, redder than beads of red jasper, redder than ripe dates. Lovely are her twin breasts—”

  “Tariq!”

  His hands let, her go, but the light in his eyes held her fast. “Oh, Victoria,” he mocked her.

  “Was that an ancient Egyptian poem?” she asked stiffly.

  “The way a man describes his beloved doesn’t change. Not when she’s the love of his life.”

  She raised startled eyes to his. “Will there ever be a time when you have only one beloved?” she asked him dryly.

  He traced the line of her lips with his finger. “You’ll have to find the answer to that for yourself,” he said.

  Victoria dressed with enormous care to go to Cairo. Several times during lunch she had been on the point of asking Tariq’s advice over what she should say to her father’s solicitors, but Jim Kerr’s presence had made her reluctant to discuss her father’s affairs in case the fragile harmony of the meal came to an abrupt end. More than once, she felt Tariq’s eyes on her as she ate, and she wondered what he would say if he could read her thoughts about him.

  When they had finished their coffee, he walked with her to where Juliette habitually parked the car.

  “Do either Jim or Juliette know the details of what you’re going to talk to the solicitors about?” he asked her, as he opened the door for her and helped her into the driving seat.

  She looked up at him, a worried crease between her brows. “They know I’m going, but not the details. Should I have talked it over with you first? It’s partly that I can’t get the figures to add up—”

  “Tell me what they say when you get back,” he cut her off. His eyes lit with sudden laughter. “And don’t forget to embrace Omm Beshir for me! You’ll be able to have a nice gossip with her about my misspent past.”

  “Was it very bad?”

  “It was vivid. I don’t do things by halves.” He straightened his back, a muscle jerking in his cheek. “She’s fond of me, and not many people around here are. I think you’ll find it reassuring to have a cosy chat with her.”

  She had no answer to that. She drove off down the track across the sand, leaving a rather wobbly trail behind her. The steering was slack and the stony ground was unstable and made the car slide helplessly from side to side. She was more than glad when she reached the made-up road alongside the irrigation canal.

  The nearer she got to Cairo, the more traffic there was on the road, hooting and edging in and out of the lines of shabby lorries, huge American taxis, the vast multitude of Fiats that were made in Egypt under licence, and the horse-drawn wagons that carried both people and produce in and out from the surrounding villages. Large bundles of sugar-cane, huge cabbages and cauliflowers, bigger than Victoria had ever seen before, caught her attention, and several times she would have liked to have stopped and taken a closer look at the extraordinarily cheap oranges piled up at the side of the road, perhaps even to buy.

  She was fortunate to find a place to park in a square not far from the famous bazaar, or souk, where the shops huddled together in narrow streets, grouped as to their differing wares. The street in which the solicitors’ offices were was close at hand and she walked along it, congratulating herself on her bump of location that had brought her there with such expeditious ease.

  The offices were announced in English as well as Arabic and, with increasing confidence, Victoria mounted the stairs and walked into the reception room. Two pretty young women, both of them typing letters on strangely marked Arabic typewriters, looked up at her entry. One of them rose to her feet and smiled enthusiastically in Victoria’s direction. “Yes?” she said in fairly good English. “Is it that you are Miss Lyle?”

  In a matter of seconds Victoria found herself in the rather plushy office beyond, seated opposite a grey-faced, grey-haired man, with tired, droopy eyes and a languid manner.

  “I fail to see what more we can do for you, Miss Lyle,” he said after they had talked for a while. He sat back in his chair, a faint glimmer of interest in the back of his eyes. “The only way out of this tangle for you would be to find a suitable husband, one the Egyptian authorities would approve as a suitable director for this excavation.”

  Victoria managed a faint laugh. “I don’t think I want to get married,” she said.

  “No, but from our point of view that is a pity. You see,” he went on, “my country is no longer dependent on foreign amateurs to dig up her history, no matter how enthusiastic. Your father could not be persuaded to accept this fact and resented everything that the Department of Antiquities tried to do to help him. As a concession the Department appointed an Englishman to work with your father—”

  “Torquil Fletcher?”

  The solicitor nodded. “We sometimes forget he is not one of us and the arrangement should have worked very well. But there were difficulties, and George Lyle would not allow him to continue at Sakkara on any terms. If your father had lived, there is no doubt the Department would have withdrawn his licence. As it is, there is absolutely no chance of your obtaining their consent to continue unless Mr. Fletcher has complete control of the excavations. But, and here is the rub, under the terms of your father’s will, he can only do this if he is your husband. Otherwise every penny must go to Madame Juliette Mercer.”

  “But my father wanted the excavation to continue more than anything!” She shrugged helplessly. “What am I to do?”

  The lawyer looked rather less languid. “A beautiful woman like yourself will always be welcome in Egypt. If you wish to see our city, I shall be happy to show you myself all it has to offer. You will have a happy time to remember when you go back to England. You will have to leave us to worry about our own past, unless you can persuade Mr. Fletcher to change the Department’s mind for them, which frankly I don’t believe even he can do. And you have to remember that your father didn’t either like or trust him, and it will be his money Tariq will be handling.”

  Victoria felt herself blushing. “He may not want to accept my father’s money on those terms.”

  The lawyer smiled, revealing several gold-capped teeth. “If anyone can persuade him to do so I’m sure it will be you. Tariq has always found it hard to resist a pretty woman, and you have the advantage that he is already very interested in the mastaba in question.”

  “Will you write to him, confirming that my father’s estate will be put at his disposal if he can get a licence from the Department to go on working?” she asked.

  The gold teeth flashed once more. “You realise that if I do this you will have no further interest in the money?” The tired, droopy eyes met hers for a long, tho
ughtful moment. “But I imagine that will be something of a relief to you. Let’s hope we don’t receive any objections from Madame Mercer either. You may find yourself having to persuade her also, but you can always send her to me. As for you, it is better for a woman to have a man to deal with her affairs. Let’s hope you need worry no longer, Miss Lyle, and Tariq accepts your solution.”

  He couldn’t have hoped it more devoutly than did Victoria. If only he didn’t send her straight back to England, but, somehow, she didn’t think he would do that, not immediately, not until she was good and ready to go.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Victoria sipped her mint tea with satisfaction. She had been half afraid that Omm Beshir would expect her to drink more of the prickly-pear drink, and she didn’t think that even the politeness expected of a guest would induce her stomach to accept it.

  “What are you doing in Cairo by yourself?” Omm Beshir asked her, settling herself more comfortably on the rug.

  “I came in to see my father’s lawyers.”

  Omm Beshir looked complacent. “When I go out I like to have some member of my family with me. When one is old, one needs to be able to prove that one is still a valued member of one’s family. Why didn’t Tariq come with you?”

  Victoria wished she didn’t look so conscious every time his name was mentioned. “I thought it better to see them by myself,” she said.

  Omm Beshir searched her face anxiously. “Did Tariq know that?” she demanded, with such obvious disapproval that Victoria was hard put to it not to laugh.

  “Yes, he knew,” she answered. “I didn’t come behind his back. It was he who told me to call in and see you, and—” she took a deep breath - “to embrace you for him. He’s very fond of you.”

  “Of course.” Omm Beshir looked a good deal happier. “I should have known you would not come without his consent, but I worry about him still like a silly old woman. Tariq is as dear to me as my own sons, and I knew when he brought you here to see me that you were the one to ease his heart, and I was glad.”