The Alexandria Affair

by Ashley Gardner

As soon as I recovered my balance, however, I brought up my walking stick and placed it against his side. “Do let go, Brewster,” I said, looking him in the eye.

  He scowled at me. I had not touched him on the side where he’d been shot—that would have been unsporting. But I firmed the pressure, letting him know I would fight free of him if I had to.

  I knew that all Brewster had to do was ball up his giant fist and hit me, and I’d go down. I saw that thought flicker through his eyes and a muscle move in his jaw.

  Brewster kept his hand at rest, though I saw his fingers curl. “I’m to bring you home unhurt,” he said evenly. “Tangling with the Ottomans is not what his nibs wants you to do.”

  “I do not intend to tangle with them, only to report the dead soldier,” I said. “I promise, the authorities can do as they like after that.”

  Brewster eyed me with suspicion. I was apt to investigate crimes on my own, no matter who was in charge, even when I was told not to.

  The debate was settled for us. There was a clatter of hooves, and a female voice rang out. “Ah, there you are, Grenville. I thought I spied you. I knew you’d be in Alexandria soon. Good heavens, what have we here?”

  “Lady Mary,” Grenville said, trying to disguise the note of weariness in his voice. “May I present my friend Captain Gabriel Lacey? Lacey, allow me to introduce you to the dowager Marchioness of Carmarthen. Lady Mary and I are old acquaintances and fellow travelers.”

  I had heard of the dowager Marchioness of Carmarthen. Her husband’s title—now her son’s—was Welsh, but Lady Mary was thoroughly English, the daughter of a duke; hence Grenville addressed her with the honorific.

  I bowed to her, the rigid politeness that had been drilled into me since boyhood allowing me to do no less. “Lady Mary,” I said, as though a dead man did not lie five feet away.

  “Good Lord, Grenville.” Lady Mary remained on her donkey, the man she traveled with holding a parasol over her. “Fancy introducing me to your chums across a corpse. It is the sort of thing you would do. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Lacey. I am always happy to meet a friend of Grenville’s, no matter what the circumstance.”

  Lady Mary was about forty, had a round face, shrewd blue eyes that were highly penetrating, a small mouth, and hair of a midnight shade. In her first youth, she might have been quite beautiful, but her looks were fading with time, and her receding chin had not helped her retain her attractiveness. Her eyes sparkled, however, as though she knew what had happened to her face and defied anyone to speak of it.

  “Grenville calls us old acquaintances, which is very rude of him,” Lady Mary said. “However, I will overlook his impertinence in the joy of seeing him again. Now, Miguel, you must summon the authorities about this dead soldier. Killed fighting one of his own, no doubt.”

  That would be the simplest explanation. Two Turkish soldiers had fought each other, and fought hard. We had already witnessed how easily they turned to violence.

  Lady Mary’s strident tones and the gathering crowd had made it unnecessary for Miguel to summon anyone. Men in the uniforms of Turkish soldiers came pouring around the corner, followed by Egyptians in long galabiyas. The soldiers saw the corpse, drew their swords, and pointed their blades at us.

  Grenville raised his hands. “We only found the poor man,” he said to the Turkish soldier who strode to stand in front of the others. “He’s one of your men, I believe.”

  The lead man, likely their lieutenant, began speaking quickly to us in the Turkish language, which I knew not a word of. Grenville, who knew only a smattering, answered in English.

  “I assure you, we had nothing to do with his death.” Grenville showed his empty palms. “We are travelers, with no reason to harm him.”

  “Best keep your gob shut, Mr. Grenville,” Brewster said in a low voice. “When you talk to the law, they’ll twist anything you say around against you. Don’t matter if that law’s English, Turkish, or Egyptian.”

  “What utter nonsense,” Lady Mary said. She nudged her donkey forward, turned the full force of her gaze to the lieutenant, and began speaking in rapid, and seemingly perfect, Turkish.

  I had no idea what she said, but it was effective. The lieutenant’s belligerence died into amazement at this female foreigner who deigned to command him in his own language. Even I admitted some bewilderment at hearing the tongue of the Ottomans spoken with such force and ease by a very English Englishwoman.

  The Egyptians behind the soldiers, whom I took for the local patrollers, continued to scowl. I had the feeling that they did not much understand what Lady Mary said either. While Egypt had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, the natives, from the little I’d observed and what Grenville recounted to me, still lived much as their ancient ancestors had and spoke Egyptian Arabic.

  The lieutenant snapped orders at his men—one with the bearing of a sergeant turned and repeated the orders to the Egyptian men. The Egyptians began arguing until the sergeant half drew his sword. In disgust, one Egyptian gestured with his fingers at a few of his men, who came forward and began to remove sand and rubble from the body.

  We foreigners drew together in a knot while the Egyptians worked. One of the Turkish soldiers broke from behind his lieutenant, and I recognized the young man I’d fought yesterday.

  He paid no attention to me. He walked with quick steps to the body, his dark eyes widening as the Egyptian men flipped the dead soldier onto his back.

  The young soldier let out a wail. A string of rapid and distressed-sounding words poured from his mouth, then he abruptly turned on me and drew his sword.

  Tears poured down the young man’s cheeks. He waved the tip of the sword and shouted at me, his mouth and tongue moving swiftly. While I couldn’t understand his words, I understood the gist—he believed I had killed the man.

  Brewster shoved himself directly in front of me and lifted a long, fat knife. “Put that sword away, lad, or I’ll be feeding it to you.”

  The Turkish lieutenant rushed over, snarling at the young soldier and at me. Lady Mary tried to cut into the conversation, voice rising as she attempted to reestablish her authority. The Egyptians ceased their task with the dead man and watched with interest.

  The young man then swung away from Brewster and pointed his curved sword at Lady Mary. His rage was evident—that a woman, a foreign one no less, should presume to give orders was clearly anathema. His lieutenant did nothing to stop him, and also began to berate Lady Mary. I inserted myself between them, and Brewster put himself in front of me.

  Into this madness strode the tall, turbaned figure of Karem, Haluk’s majordomo.

  At the sight of him, the Turkish soldiers edged away from the confrontation in the middle of the clearing, staying quietly off to the side. The Egyptians backed from the corpse but looked upon Karem in a respectful manner.

  Karem began speaking rapidly with the Turkish lieutenant. The lieutenant listened, his expression darkening, but at last he barked an order and made an abrupt gesture. The soldiers relaxed a little and then turned and made their way back down the street toward the Turkish area of town.

  That left the lieutenant and the young soldier, who hadn’t moved. The young man continued to weep but in silence, his face wet, his eyes holding anguish. I hadn’t forgiven him for his attempt to hurt Haluk’s defenseless daughter, but I began to feel sorry for him. The dead man had obviously been a friend.

  The lieutenant spoke sharply to him. The young soldier swung back to glare at me, but he sheathed his sword, uttering a grunt of anger as he did so. With one last enraged look, he pivoted on his heel and stamped out of the clearing.

  The lieutenant remained. He snapped another order at the Egyptian men who, taking their time, went back to unearthing the dead soldier.

  Karem turned to Grenville. “My most profound apologies,” he said in French. “That you should be threatened and spoken to so makes my heart grieve. My master, he sent me to look after you, and I am devastated I di
d not reach you in time to prevent this calamity.”

  Grenville listened to his flowery apology with equanimity. “Not at all, my dear man,” he answered, also in French. “You are not to blame. Whoever caused this man’s death is the culpable party.”

  Karem did not look convinced, but he bowed to Grenville, and stepped over to the body. His expression, when he looked down at it, became still more mournful.

  “He is Ibrahim, the unwanted suitor,” he announced. “The one who courted my master’s daughter and was turned away.”

  “Is he?” Ignoring Brewster, who was still trying to herd me away from the scene, I hobbled to where Karem stood over the body.

  The man had been young, not quite as young as his friend, but only in his twenties, I thought. He’d been handsome, with dark skin, a well-defined face, and thick lashes around his closed eyes. That handsomeness had been marred by the crushing blow—dried, black blood caked his hair and the back of his neck.

  I had heard that the Turkish soldier’s turban could deflect a weapon, but this man’s turban was nowhere in evidence. He had either lost it somewhere, or it had been taken away after he was dead.

  “Poor man.” A shadow loomed next to me, the outline of a woman with a parasol firmly over her head. “No doubt the blow killed him.”

  “Indeed,” I said to Lady Mary. “The weapon is not hard to guess. It is all around us.”

  The ground was strewn with stones and bricks from centuries of ruin. One stone must have blood on it, unless it too had been taken away.

  My instinct to shield one of the fairer sex from such a gruesome sight was checked as Lady Mary leaned down and brushed the hair from the man’s face.

  “So young,” she said. “What a tragedy. And yet, these soldiers are so eager to fight, to conquer. They are why the Ottomans prevail. Sad that he met his end in what looks like a petty squabble.”

  “Not with his young friend,” I said with conviction. “He was stunned and devastated to find him.”

  “Yes, these lads do form great attachments to one another,” Lady Mary said. “Probably because all the women are hidden away from them. Everyone needs companionship.”

  Lady Mary looked me over as though wondering whether I needed such a thing. I was beginning to understand why Grenville had tried to avoid her when we saw her earlier.

  “Come, come.” Karem waved his hands at us, shooing us away from the body. “We will give him back to the army.”

  The lieutenant shouted again at the Egyptians, who calmly returned to their task. The dead man was fully cleared of sand and we saw his long legs in full trousers and black boots, and his sword still in its sheath.

  “Why didn’t he draw it?” I asked, pointing to the sword. “He must not have expected the attack.”

  “Very good question, Captain,” Lady Mary said. “What do you think, Grenville? I have heard of your antics in London, helping the Runners bring murderers to trial.”

  Grenville flushed deeply, the shade of his hat brim unable to hide his color. “You give me too much credit, Mary. But Captain Lacey has the right of it. This young man was not facing an enemy, or else not someone he thought could best him. Likely didn’t know he was in any danger.”

  “And why was he here at all?” I asked. “Karem, will you ask the lieutenant or captain, or whoever he is, whether this soldier—Ibrahim—went missing, and when? I wonder if this happened last night or earlier.”

  Karem gazed at me with mournful brown eyes. “It is not the business of Englishmen,” he said, switching to English. “The soldiers will take care of their own.”

  “I know,” I said, curbing my impatience. “But I am curious.”

  “The captain is always curious,” Brewster put in disparagingly. “Best answer his question, mate.”

  Karem sighed and began speaking to the lieutenant, who answered in irritation. They argued for a time in Turkish.

  Lady Mary frowned at Brewster. “Your servant is impertinent,” she said to me.

  Brewster gave her a level stare, which made Lady Mary blink, then he stalked to the body, turning his back on us.

  Karem swung away from the lieutenant, who continued to speak loudly after him, gesticulating to make his point.

  “Ibrahim was missed this morning when he did not rise with the others,” Karem told us. “The other soldier, the one from whom you so well protected Haluk’s best-loved daughter, was questioned, but he knew nothing. In fact, Ibrahim was to have been punished for his disobedience when he was found. None of the other soldiers left their quarters all night.”

  So, for what reason had Ibrahim left his billet to wander about the town? To meet someone? He had not drawn his sword, or been afraid.

  For what reason would a man sneak away from his quarters and stand in an empty spot in the dark? A rendezvous of some kind was the first explanation and probably the correct one.

  With a woman? If we’d been in London, I’d have suspected that immediately. But the Turks and Egyptians guarded their daughters, sisters, and wives with great fervor. Most weren’t allowed outside without a horde of retainers or a male member of the family. The penalty for disobedience was harsh, even death.

  Likewise, I could not believe a soldier would be allowed to wander the streets when he was supposed to be in his bunk. The British army would flog a soldier for such a thing—I could not believe that the Turkish army would be more lenient.

  “A woman is behind it,” Lady Mary said. “Mark my words, Captain. Where there is a young man in trouble, a woman causes it.”

  She spoke with so much conviction I stared at her. “Have you reason to believe so?” I asked.

  Lady Mary eyed me shrewdly. “If you are about to say that the fairer sex is gentle and innocent, I can assure you, we are not. I caused much furor in my youth. There is a woman in this—the young man either fought another over her, or he was lured here with the promise of seeing her. Perhaps someone in her family tricked Ibrahim into meeting him, so that the brother or father could end Ibrahim’s unwanted attentions forever.”

  Her speculation was dramatic, but I felt a qualm. Haluk had been quite contemptuous of young Ibrahim and his presumption of trying to court his daughter. I had trouble imagining the erudite and generous Haluk coming up behind the young man and smacking him over the head, but I had to admit that I barely knew Haluk at all.

  I turned back to Karem. He was very tall, broad of chest, strong, a man who could easily knock a man down with a rock. Karem returned my gaze stolidly, showing only sorrow for the incident, not guilt or remorse. His dark eyes were honest, not menacing. But again, I had to acknowledge that I barely knew him.

  “The lieutenant wants us gone,” Karem told me. “He and his men will find the culprit and turn him over to the magistrates.”

  Studying the enraged stance of the lieutenant, I hoped he’d find the real culprit, and not simply someone to take the blame.

  Even as I had this thought, the lieutenant shouted down the street where his men had retreated. More shouting came back to us, and then four of the soldiers returned, carrying Ibrahim’s friend between them.

  The young man protested loudly, and another cuffed him to silence. The lieutenant drew his sword.

  “No!” I cried. I ran at the lieutenant as quickly as my injured leg would let me and thrust myself between him and the young soldier. “He did not do it. Leave him be.”

  I’d moved so abruptly that I’d given no one, not even Brewster, time to stop me. The lieutenant glared at me in outrage, but I stood my ground.

  “Tell him, Karem,” I ordered. “He is not to touch that young man. He is innocent. I know it.”

  Chapter 6

  Brewster came forward, rumbling with fury. “Leave it, Captain.”

  I remained solidly in place. “I will not stand by and watch a man be killed for another’s convenience,” I said hotly. “The lad obviously did not murder his friend. Look at him.”

  The young soldier was still weeping but at the same tim
e regarded me in stunned amazement. He was not guiltless in trying to harm Haluk’s daughter—I had not forgiven him for that—but the lieutenant had no business running him through only so he could report that he’d taken care of the problem.

  My voice took on the tone I’d used with reluctant men in my command. “Karem, tell him, now.”

  Karem was spared the anguish of obeying by Lady Mary. She strode forward, her Spanish lackey hurrying after her, and spoke to the lieutenant in strident tones.

  The lieutenant looked as though he’d had enough of Lady Mary. His face was set with fury, and both Lady Mary and I were within easy reach of his deadly sword. I tried to step in front of Lady Mary to shield her from any blow, but she ignored me and halted inches from the lieutenant, her voice as loud and hard as any man’s.

  The lieutenant scowled at her as she went on, then he snarled something, shoved his sword into its sheath with a snap, and swung away, his boots dislodging curls of sand. He gave a curt order to his men, who released the young soldier but herded him down the lane with them.

  The lieutenant glared at me and Lady Mary, then the rest of our party. He snapped something at Karem, then turned and stamped after his men.

  “Well,” Lady Mary said, looking pleased. “That told him.”

  “What did he say to you, Karem?” I asked the tall man.

  Karem heaved another sigh. “That I must now explain to the authorities what we have found here. You will go away now, sir. You are foreigners, and might be blamed.”

  “Blamed for what?” Lady Mary bristled. “Being concerned? But I understand your caution, my good man. We might be detained unnecessarily. I suggest we withdraw to my villa and take a morning repast. Captain? Grenville?”

  She glanced uncertainly at the Porters, clearly not certain what to do with them, but Porter gave her a bow. “Thank you all the same, ma’am, but we need to be off to the digging before it’s too hot,” he said jovially. “Good day to you.”

  He doffed his cap, and Mrs. Porter curtsied. Lady Mary gave them both a gracious nod, a lady dismissing her inferiors. Porter offered his arm to his wife, and they strode off together, heading west and south through the streets.