by Wilbur Smith
The truck ground down the hill and slowed as it reached the bottom, pulling in to the verge to let a green Range Rover pass. As the two vehicles drew level, Royan turned her head and looked down into the open driver’s window of the expensive estate car, and into the eyes of Nicholas Quenton-Harper at the wheel.
This was the first time she had been close enough to him to see his features. She was surprised at how young he was. She had expected him to be a man of Duraid’s age. She saw now that he was no older than forty, for there were only the first strands of silver in the wings of his thick, rumpled hair. His features were tanned and weatherbeaten, those of an outdoors man. His eyes were green and penetrating under dark, beetling brows. His mouth was wide and expressive, and he was smiling now at some witticism that the driver of the truck called to him in a thick Yorkshire accent, but there was a sense of sadness and tragedy in the eyes. Royan remembered what the Prof had told her of his recent bereavement, and she felt her heart go out to him. She was not alone in her loss and her mourning.
He looked directly into her eyes and she saw his expression change. She was an attractive woman, and she could tell when a man recognized that. She had made an impression on him, but she did not enjoy the fact. Her sorrow for Duraid was still too raw and painful. She looked away and the Range Rover drove on.
* * *
Her lecture at the university went off extremely well. Royan was a good speaker and she knew her subject intimately. She held them fascinated with her account of the opening of the tomb of Queen Lostris and of the subsequent discovery of the scrolls. Many of her audience had read the book, and during question time they pestered her to know how much of it was the truth. She had to tread very carefully here, so as not to deal too harshly with the author.
Afterwards Prof Dixon took Royan and Georgina to dinner. He was delighted with her success, and ordered the most expensive bottle of claret on the wine list to celebrate. He was only mildly disconcerted when she refused a glass of it.
“Oh, dear me, I forgot that you were a Moslem,” he apologized.
“A Copt,” she corrected him, “and it’s not on religious grounds. I just don’t like the taste.”
“Don’t worry,” Georgina counselled him, “I don’t have the same odd compulsion to masochism as my daughter. She must get it from her father’s side. I’ll give you a hand to finish the good stuff.”
Under the benign influence of the claret the Prof became expansive, and entertained them with the accounts of the archaeological digs he had been on over the decades. It was only over the coffee that he turned to Royan.
“Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you. I have arranged for you to visit the museum at Quenton Park any afternoon this week. Just ring Mrs.. Street the day before, and she will be waiting to let you in. She is Nicholas’s PA.”
* * *
Royan remembered the way to Quenton Park from when Georgina had driven them to the shoot, but now she was alone in the Land Rover. The massive main gates to the estate were made of ornate cast iron. A little further on, the road divided and a cluster of road signs pointed the way to the various destinations: “Quenton Hall. Private,” “Estate Office” and “Museum.”
The road to the museum curved through the deer park where herds of fallow deer grazed under the winter-bare oaks. Through the misty landscape she had glimpses of the big house. According to the guidebook that the Prof had given her, Sir Christopher Wren had designed the house in 1693, and the master landscapist, Capability Brown, had created the gardens sixty years later. The results were perfection.
The museum was set in a grove of copper beech trees half a mile beyond the house. It was a sprawling building that had obviously been added to more than once over the years. Mrs. Street was waiting for her at the side door, and introduced herself as she let Royan in. She was middle-aged, grey-haired and self-assured. “I was at your lecture on Monday evening. Fascinating! I have a guidebook for you, but you will find the exhibits well catalogued and described. I have spent almost twenty years at the job. There are no other visitors today. You will have the place to yourself. You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until five this evening, so you have all afternoon. If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage. Please don’t hesitate.”
From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African mammals she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete collection of every single species of ape and monkey from that continent: from the great silver-backed male gorilla to the delicate colobus in his long flowing mantle of black and white fur, they were all represented.
Although some of the exhibits were over a hundred years old, they were beautifully preserved and presented, set in painted dioramas of their natural habitat. It was obvious that the museum must employ a staff of skilled artists and taxidermists. She could guess what this must have cost. Wryly she decided that the five million dollars from the sale of the plundered frieze had been well spent.
She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at the magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a family group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan variety, Hippotragus niger variani. While she admired the jet black and snowy-chested bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his death at the hand of one of the Quenton-Harper family. Then she checked herself. Without the strange dedication and passion of the hunter-collector who had killed him, future generations might never have been able to look upon this regal presence.
She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of ivory tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been carried by a living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of some Hellenic temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase. She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:
Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana. Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left tusk 289 lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11′ 4″. Girth 32″. The largest pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.
They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick again as her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room she marvelled at the size and strength of the creature that had carried them.
She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the room. It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Ramesses II, depicted as the god Osiris in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on muscular legs, wearing only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his left hand he carried the remains of a war-bow, with both the upper and lower limbs of the weapon broken off. This was the only damage that the statue had suffered in all those thousands of years. The rest of it was perfect—the plinth even bore the marks of the mason’s chisel. In his right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed with his royal cartouche. Upon his majestic head he wore the tall double crown of the upper and lower kingdoms. His expression was calm and enigmatic.
Royan recognized the statue instantly, for its twin stood in the grand hall of the Cairo museum. She passed it every day on her way to her office.
She felt anger rising in her. This was one of the major treasures of her very Egypt. It had been plundered and stolen from one of her country’s sacred sites. It did not belong here. It belonged on the banks of the great river Nile. She felt herself shaking with the strength of her emotion as she went forward to examine the statue more closely and to read the hieroglyphic inscription on the base.
The royal cartouche stood out in the centre of the arrogant warning: “I am the divine Ramesses, master of ten thousand chariots. Fear me, O ye enemies of Egypt.”
Royan had not read the translation aloud; it was a soft, deep voice close behind her that spoke, startling her. She had not heard anyone approaching. She spun round to find him standing close enough to touch.
His hands were thrust into the pockets of a sha
peless blue cardigan. There was a hole in one elbow. He wore faded denim jeans over well-worn but monogrammed velvet carpet slippers—the type of genteel shabbiness that certain Englishmen often cultivate, for it would never do to seem too concerned with one’s appearance.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He smiled a lazy smile of apology, and his teeth were very white but slightly crooked. Suddenly his expression changed as he recognized her.
“Oh, it’s you.” She should have been flattered that he remembered her from so fleeting a contact, but there was that flash of something in his eyes again that offended her. Nevertheless, she could not refuse the hand he offered her. “Nick Quenton-Harper,” he introduced himself. “You must be Percival Dixon’s old student. I think I saw you at the shoot last Thursday. Weren’t you beating for us?”
His manner was friendly and forthright, so she felt her hackles subsiding as she responded, “Yes. I am Royan Al Simma. I think you knew my husband, Duraid Al Simma.”
“Duraid! Of course, I know him. Grand old fellow. We spent a lot of time in the desert together. One of the very best. How is he?”
“He’s dead.” She had not meant it to sound so bald and heartless, but then there was no other reply she could think of.
“I am so terribly sorry. I didn’t know. When and how did it happen?”
“Very recently, three weeks ago. He was murdered.”
“Oh, my God.” She saw the sympathy in his eyes, and she remembered that he also had suffered. “I telephoned him in Cairo not more than four months ago. He was his old charming self. Have they found the person who did it?”
She shook her head and looked around the hall to avoid having to face him and let him see that her eyes were wet. “You have an extraordinary collection here.”
He accepted the change of subject at once. “Thanks mostly to my grandfather. He was on the staff of Evelyn Baring—Over Bearing, as his numerous enemies called him. He was the British man in Cairo during—”
She cut him short. “Yes, I have heard of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl of Cromer, British Consul-General of Egypt from 1883 to 1907. With his plenipotentiary powers he was the unchallenged dictator of my country for all that period. Numerous enemies, as you say.”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Percival warned me you were one of his best students. He didn’t, however, warn me of your strong nationalistic feelings. It is clear that you didn’t need me to translate the Ramesses inscription for you.”
“My own father was on the staff of Gamal Abdel Nasser,” she murmured. Nasser was the man who had toppled the puppet King Farouk and finally broken the British power in Egypt. As president he had nationalized the Suez Canal in the face of British outrage.
“Ha!” he chuckled. “Different sides of the track. But things have changed. I hope we don’t have to be enemies?”
“Not at all,” she agreed. “Duraid held you in the highest esteem.”
“As I did him.” He changed the subject again. “We are very proud of our collection of royal ushabti. Examples from the tomb of every pharaoh from the old Kingdom onwards, right up to the last of the Ptolemys. Please let me show it to you.” She followed him to the huge display case that occupied one complete wall of the hall. It was lined with shelf after shelf of the doll-like figures which had been placed in the tombs to act as servants and slaves for the dead kings in the shadow world.
With his own key Nicholas opened the glazed doors of the case and reached up to bring down the most interesting of the exhibits. “This is the ushabti of Maya who served under three pharaohs, Tutankhamen, Ay and Horemheb. It is from the tomb of Ay who died in 1343 BC.”
He handed the doll to her and she read aloud the three thousand-year-old hieroglyphics as easily as though they had been the headlines of that morning’s newspaper. “I am Maya, Treasurer of the two Kingdoms. I will answer for the divine Pharaoh Ay. May he live for ever!” She spoke in Arabic to test him, and his reply in the same language was fluent and colloquial.
“It seems that Percival Dixon told me the truth. You must have been an exceptional student.”
Engrossed now in their common interest, speaking alternately Arabic and English, the initial sharp prickles of antagonism between them were dulled. They moved slowly round the hall, lingering before each display case to handle and examine minutely each object that it contained.
It was as though they were transported back over the millennia. Hours and days seemed of no consequence in the face of such antiquity, and so it startled both of them when Mrs. Street returned to interrupt them. “I am off now, Sir Nicholas. Can I leave it to you to lock up and set the alarm? The security guards are on duty already.”
“What time is it?” Nicholas answered his own question by glancing at the stainless steel Rolex Submariner on his wrist. “Five-forty already, what on earth happened to the day?” He sighed theatrically. “Off you go, Mrs. Street. Sorry we kept you so long.”
“Don’t forget to set the alarm,” she warned him, and then to Royan, “He can be so absent-minded when he is off on one of his hobby-horses.” Her fondness towards her employer was obviously that of an indulgent aunt.
“You’ve given me enough orders for one day. Off you go,” Nicholas grinned, as he turned back to Royan. “Can’t let you go without showing you something that Duraid was in on with me. Can you stay for a few minutes longer?” She nodded and he reached out as if to take her arm, and then dropped his hand. In the Arab world it is insulting to touch a woman, even in such a casual manner. She was aware of the courtesy, and she warmed to his good manners and easy style a little more.
He led her out of the exhibition halls through a door marked “Private. Staff Only,” and down a long corridor to the room at the end.
“The inner sanctum.” He ushered her in. “Excuse the mess. I must really get around to tidying up in here one of these years. My wife used to—” He broke off abruptly, and he glanced at the silver-framed photograph of a family group on his desk. Nicholas and a beautiful dark-haired woman sat on a picnic rug under the spreading branches of an oak. There were two little girls with them and the family resemblance to the mother was strong in both of them. The youngest child sat on Nicholas’s lap while the elder girl stood behind them, holding the reins of her Shetland pony. Royan glanced sideways at him and saw the devastating sorrow in his eyes.
So as not to embarrass him she looked around the rest of the room, which was obviously his study and workshop. It was spacious and comfortable, a man’s room, but it illustrated the contradictions of his character—the bookish scholar set against the man of action. Amongst the muddle of books and museum specimens lay fishing reels and a Hardy split cane salmon rod. On a row of wall hooks hung a Barbour jacket, a canvas shotgun slip and a leather cartridge bag embossed with the initials N. Q.-H.
She recognized some of the framed pictures on the walls. They were original nineteenth-century watercolours by the Scottish traveller David Roberts, and others by Vivant Denon who had accompanied Napoleon’s L’armée de l’Orient to Egypt. They were fascinating views of the monuments drawn before the excavations and restorations of more modern times.
Nicholas went to the fireplace and threw a log on the fading coals. He kicked it until it flared up brightly and then beckoned her to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling curtains that covered half of one wall. With a conjuror’s flourish he pulled the tasselled cord that opened the curtains and exclaimed with satisfaction, “What do you make of that, then?”
She studied the magnificent bas-relief frieze that was mounted on the wall. The detail was beautiful and the rendition magnificent, but she did not let her admiration show. Instead she gave her opinion in offhand tones.
“Sixth King of the Amorite dynasty, Hammurabi, about 1780 BC,” she said, pretending to study the finely chiselled features of the ancient monarch before she went on, “Yes, probably from his palace site south-west of the ziggurat at Ashur. There should have been a pair of these friezes. They are wor
th in the region of five million US dollars each. My guess is that they were stolen from the saintly ruler of modern Mesopotamia, Saddam Hussein, by two unprincipled rogues. I hear that the other one of the pair is at present in the collection of a certain Mr. Peter Walsh in Texas.”
He stared at her in astonishment, and then burst out laughing. “Damn it! I swore Duraid to secrecy but he must have told you about our naughty little escapade.” It was the first time she had heard him laugh. It seemed to come naturally to his lips and she liked the sound of it, hearty and unaffected.
“You are right about the present owner of the second frieze,” he told her, still laughing. “But the price was six million, not five.”
“Duraid also told me about your visit to the Tibesti Massif in Chad and southern Libya,” she remarked, and he shook his head in mock contrition.
“It seems I have no secrets from you.” He went to a tall armoire against the opposite wall. It was a magnificent piece of marquetry furniture, probably seventeenth-century French. He opened the double doors and said, “This is what Duraid and I brought back from Libya, without the consent of Colonel Muammar al Gadaffi.” He took down one of the exquisite little bronzes and handed it to her. It was the figure of a mother nursing her infant, and it had a green patina of age.
“Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca,” he said, “about 203 BC. These were found by a band of Tuareg at one of his old camps on the Bagradas river in North Africa. Hannibal must have cached them there before his defeat by the Roman general Scipio. There were over two hundred bronzes in the hoard, and I still have fifty of the best of them.”
“You sold the rest of them?” she asked, as she admired the statuette. There was disapproval in her tone as she went on, “How could you bear to part with something so beautiful?”
He sighed unhappily. “Had to, I am afraid. Very sad, but the expedition to retrieve them cost me a fortune. Had to cover expenses by selling some of the booty.”