The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  I’d circled over the city before landing, taking us on a route to the southwest and banking the Brunel as we came over Giza and the edge of the Western Desert. The Pyramids looked perfectly square from the air, flattened and foreshortened by our height, and almost lost against the yellow-buff sands. Over to the east lay the bright green strip of land marking the Nile Valley.

  Hugh, who had been acting as unofficial copilot and manning the communications for the entire flight, pursed his lips as we coasted over the ancient monuments and, a moment later, flew over the modern city. “Well, I suppose there’s no backing out now.”

  “’Fraid not.”

  He sighed.

  Ten minutes later we landed against a stiff breeze ghosting its hot breath toward us from the Western Desert. The skies were a pure, cloudless blue, with the sun almost overhead, burning brighter than a blacksmith’s brazier. The heat smote down against the dry-baked earth. After the dank cold of Londinium the previous day, it was refreshing to lead the way down the access stair with my collar undone and my jacket slung over one shoulder. Ned followed, with Sam and Harry close by, and his archaeologists streamed down behind. Hugh brought up the rear.

  “Blimey,” Hugh said when he joined me. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Don’t these places have a winter?”

  “It’s only in the seventies. Not that hot really. It’s just the contrast with home.” I fiddled with fitting shaded lenses over my spectacles. The sunshine glittered off every possible surface, stabbing into my eyes. “It will be hotter in Abydos.”

  “Looking forward to it, sir.”

  I grinned. Poor Hugh was most definitely a lover of more temperate climes.

  We were met on the runway by a gaggle of House Gallowglass guards, a small fleet of autocars for us, and old-fashioned donkey carts for our luggage. The excavation equipment would stay on board, ready for transport upriver to the dig at Abydos. I would fly the ship back to Cairo for storage as soon as she was unloaded, then return to Abydos in the small two-seater and leave the Brunel in the care of the Gallowglass guards. They’d arrived in Cairo the week before to secure the landing site and hangar. Another veteran of the summer’s adventure at the Britannic Imperium Museum commanded them. George Todd had taken a knife to the side in the fracas at the museum in the summer. When he met us at the foot of the access stairs, he appeared to be in perfect health again.

  “Mr. Edward.” He greeted Ned with a respectful bow. “Master Harry.”

  Ned returned the greeting with a smile. Harry, chased by Frank Sutton, was too busy to respond, being hauled around the runway by Molly, who apparently had a pressing call of nature to answer. Rather there than in my aeroship was all I could say. We exchanged pleasantries with Todd and his guards, who would be watching the Brunel round the clock while in Cairo. A boring winter for them, although there were enough of them to ensure their duty roster would allow time off to sample Cairo’s fleshpots. They were, Todd assured us, all enthusiastic at that prospect.

  The westerly breeze blew across us just then, and Ned bounded up to me. He wore the linen suit he’d traveled in. It had been desperately unsuitable for grubby, foggy old Londinium in November, but was just the ticket for Cairo. His particular sartorial affectation was a broad-brimmed, low-crowned felt hat, jammed any-old-how onto the back of his thick, fair hair. He looked delectable in it. Schoolboyish. He gave me the special smile that made me weak at the knees and caused ever such manly spasms below the waist, and grasped my hand.

  “Can you smell it, Rafe? Can you smell Aegypt?”

  I turned my face into the breeze in the hope of catching some of the secrets it had gathered as it gusted in from the ancient Houses of Eternity. The cemeteries on the Nile’s west bank made up more of Aegypt than was strictly seemly, and that wind must have sampled a dozen or so. But no scent or taste of unguents or spices or mummy dust came to me. “I can smell warm sand.”

  He shook his head. “Never mind, my most prosaic of Rafes, it will come to you, I promise.” He took a deep breath through his nose, nostrils flaring. His eyes glittered in the shade of the hat brim. “It smells of age and dust and all the things I’ll find here.” His smile glittered as brightly as his eyes, and he squeezed my hand tight. “You’ll understand soon. Harry! Harry, come and look here. There’s the tip of the Great Pyramid on the horizon. Can you see it?”

  He darted off to catch up Harry and spin him round before lifting him high onto his shoulder. Grinning, I watched him pointing at the pale ghost of Cheops’s tomb, barely to be seen, and listened to Harry’s attempts to see what Ned was pointing to, until Hugh claimed my attention with a dig in the ribs.

  “Are those things safe?” He nodded at the autocars.

  A different design to home, the carriage bodies—these enameled in a burgundy-and-gold livery; the Shepheard’s Hotel colors according to Ned—had been slung inside a curving cage of metal arms. Instead of four wheels, the autocars had two wheels at the back and a single spherical ball-wheel at the front.

  This novel design did not find favor with Hugh. “I can’t see that going around corners without tipping over.”

  “They’re quite safe. Very safe. Unparalleled in their lack of danger.” Ned was back, chivvying us into the cars, an overeager sheepdog in rumpled linen.

  Hugh snorted, forehead wrinkling, although he forbore to express his incredulity in words.

  Hugh and I traveled with Ned, Harry, Sam, and Frank. And Molly, of course, who sat on the seat beside Harry with her tongue lolling out as she panted against the heat. The rest of the team and the students distributed themselves between the remaining two autocars. The cabin interior was all shining brass, polished wood, and comfortable burgundy velvet seats. The car set off with a lurch that had everyone grasping at the leather straps hanging from the ceiling, except for Harry, who couldn’t reach them. He squealed and clutched at his papa instead, both of them laughing. Hugh gave Ned what I can only describe as a speaking look.

  “I didn’t say anything about the drivers, Hugh! But we’ve given them lots of baksheesh to see us safely to the hotel.” Ned, still laughing, twisted in his seat to face me. “There are nowhere near as many auto vehicles here as you’d see back home. Indeed, they’re some years behind us when it comes to that sort of thing, and only the very rich or the big hotels have autocars at all. We’ll probably do a lot of donkey and camel riding here.”

  Hugh’s mouth pulled down. “Donkeys? My legs are too long for donkeys! And I don’t hold with camels.”

  Ned’s smile warmed like the sun. “You’ll manage, Hugh. We’ll have to, or walk. There’s very little in the way of progress in Aegypt. No mills, few manufactories, little power generation. They work many things here in the same way they did in the time of the pharaohs. You’ll still see the villagers using a shadoof to raise water from the river for their crops, and it’s a common sight to see the women filling reed baskets with river mud to take back to enrich their gardens.”

  That had a faint air of romanticism about it, the weight of history almost a palpable thing.

  “Nothing much changes, you mean,” I said. “Even in two millennia.”

  Ned sobered. “Not for the peasants, certainly. I suspect things for them are much as they’ve ever been, just laboring to survive.”

  “Just like back home, then,” Hugh muttered.

  Thinking of the workers on our family estates, I couldn’t argue with him. “The poor have the same sad lot all over the globe. At least these days they aren’t press-ganged into building pyramids.”

  “No,” Ned agreed. “One boon.”

  Sam struck in then. “Cairo’s pretty modern, though. Lots of big public buildings and proper roads. More civilized-like.”

  “Too civilized. The place gets overrun every winter with visitors from Europe and America. Hotels are springing up all over the place. Shepheard’s has a rival now out at Giza, the Mena House. It’s even more select, but I have a fondness for Shepheard’s.” Ned grinned at me. “W
e’ll have a few days to wait while I sort out our concessions and permits with Maspero at the Antiquities Service. It’s mostly a matter of form, but he’ll keep me dangling for a day or two, just because he can. So with time to kill, you really should see something of Giza and Sakkara. Come with me to the Pyramids tomorrow morning?”

  I was delighted to accept. In fact I was so delighted I forgot to be irritated by the distraction of everyone talking while I was trying to drink up the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. There was so much to take in, from the camels loaded with huge fans of greenery that bulked them out to three or four times their width, to donkeys laboring patiently under heavy loads of firewood, to the people themselves.

  “Your first camels, Harry. Look!” Ned physically lifted Harry and twirled him around to face the window on Ned’s side of the seat. A camel had come to a halt beside us at a bottleneck, turning its head to stare into the carriage. “See how big they are. You’ll get to ride on one tomorrow at the Pyramids.”

  Harry’s bottom lip pushed forward at this promise of the treat to come, and most unusually, his father was the recipient of the hard stare. “I don’t think Molly likes camels, Papa.”

  True enough, Molly and the camel were trading glares, and the dog had a martial glint in her eyes. The camel blew out a green frothy mess, sneering down its long, thin nose. Molly growled.

  Ned laughed aloud, a bright, untrammeled sound. “Oh, I don’t think Molly will mind you riding on my camel with me, to help me hold on tight. What do you say?”

  Harry considered the offer and nodded.

  “Good. You’ll just love the Pyramids!”

  “I quite share Molly’s misgivings when it comes to Camelus dromedarius,” I hinted as the autocar lurched forward and left the unfriendly camel behind.

  That earned me a raised eyebrow and a grin. “I’m sure you do, Rafe, but I don’t think I could fit you onto the saddle along with Harry. I’ll give other forms of reassurance some thought.” Ned gave Harry a squeeze and returned him to his seat. “We’re entering the city now.”

  “Everyone looks funny.” Harry’s mouth turned down with uncertainty.

  “That’s just their clothes. Look over there! See that group of men with the funny flower-pot shaped hats? They’re whirling dervishes. I’ll take you to see them dance while we’re here.”

  I looked as eagerly as did Harry. Londinium, even in Bloomsbury, had been in the grip of winter fogs and rains, dark and lowering, full of stinks and twisty black smokes. Of course, most of the manufactories and steam foundries, the brick works, forges, and mills, are built on the edges of our great metropolis, particularly in the east where the land has been reclaimed from the marshlands of Hackney and the Lea river valley. I don’t like to think what an unpleasant November evening consists of in the streets of Whitechapel, say, or Poplar, where the very air is brown and thick, leaves the taste of cordite and smoke on the tongue, and coats the skin and clothes with a greasy film. The poor breathe gaseous tar there, I suspect. But even in the very center of the city, the chimneys belch out smoke, smog, and a constant glittering of sparks that dance in the atmosphere just above the rooftops. The miasma that hangs in the air is thinner and fainter than in the east, but still a man breathes lightly in Londinium. It doesn’t do to pull the air too deep into the lungs.

  But Cairo, now…. Cairo was different. The air was clear, and a man could see a long way, his gaze unthwarted by hulking black buildings and dense, fumy fogs. The low houses, painted a pleasing yellowy ochre, were unscorched by smokes and steams, and where chimneys vented into the air, it was with thin, hazy wood smoke, barely to be seen against the blue skies. Everything about Cairo’s denizens was different too, from their darker skins and eyes to the clothes they wore. When Sam wound down the window, the noise and smells of Cairo poured in: the aforementioned woodsmoke, the harsh barking bray of a camel, wafts of the odor of animal dung, the shouts and cries of street hawkers, and the wavering voice of a muezzin as he called the faithful to prayer.

  “There’s a cow on that roof,” Hugh said.

  “Where? Oh there. Look, Harry!” And once again Ned twirled Harry around to see the strange sight, pointing at the cow. It stood on a flat roof about fifteen feet above our heads, looking over a low parapet, placidly chewing the cud. Harry and Ned went into a fit of giggles.

  Hugh, though, frowned. “I don’t hold with that. It looks untidy.”

  The autocar slowed as the press of other traffic—camels, overladen donkeys, people—bottlenecked again.

  “We’re crossing Kobri el Gezira Bridge,” Ned said. “It’s always a bit crowded here. Shepheard’s isn’t far now.”

  The autocar never actually stopped, but it slowed to walking pace as it approached the two pillars at the end of the bridge, each with a carved seated lion on guard. The cousins of the camel from our earlier encounter stalked beside us, broad feet splaying against the road with every long-legged step. Leather harnesses, dyed a deep red, bounced with tassels made from frayed cotton and silk, all yellow, blue, and green against their brown necks. Their drover—a tall, thin Berber in dark robes—glanced at us. His face, under an immaculate white turban, showed nothing. We were, it seemed, barely worth his indifference. Beyond him, squeezing between the camels and the bridge parapet, ran a dozen small boys only a little older than Harry. “Water carriers,” Ned said, pointing to the yoke the biggest of them carried, with two clay amphora dangling from it.

  “I wouldn’t recommend you drink it,” he added, tone dry as the desert sand. “Not unless you want an intestinal disturbance of the most violent kind. Oh look, Harry! Over there.”

  Ned pointed to a queer little alcove in the bridge, a spot where it widened briefly to give pedestrians a respite from the pushing, shoving crowd trying to cross the river. A young boy stood there, a few feet back from the melee, his hand tight around the nose halter of a small black donkey. Unlike many other donkeys we passed, this one looked well-fed and well cared for. The burden it bore on its narrow back was light and untaxing: a monkey, its golden fur brushed into a flaring fringe of silk around its small old-man’s face, wearing spotless white pantaloons, with a neat red fez on its head. It chittered and chattered at us as we passed.

  Harry’s mouth was a perfect circle of delight and wonder.

  “No,” Ned said before Harry could do more than turn an imploring face to his father. “Monkeys do not belong in Belgravia.”

  Harry’s bottom lip jutted out.

  “Besides, Molly wouldn’t like it.”

  “Hmmphf,” Harry said, but he twisted his hand into Molly’s collar, and no more was said about monkeys.

  Cairo was enchanting. Different. A touch exotic. I was charmed by it all and remained so even when faced with Shepheard’s Hotel. The exterior wasn’t the least Aegyptian in style but so solidly Imperium in form and substance that it wouldn’t look out of place on Piccadilly or Park Lane. I couldn’t quite see Ned’s fondness for the place until we got inside. The decor was spectacular, the roof of the massive ground-floor space held up with painted columns imitating the ancient temples. It was rather romantic.

  Our rooms were more than comfortable, and they were very clean. The service was as good as anything in Londinium or Paris. Better, since the servants were genuinely eager to please and their uniforms of sharp military-style red jackets over billowing white trousers gathered in at the ankle were rather fetching.

  I would look fetching too, dressed like that. I’d be sure to seek Ned’s opinion later. Perhaps while he reassured me about camel rides. I was certain I could come up with an imaginative use for the saddle.

  NED DESERTED me after lunch to pay duty calls.

  First on the list was Gaston Maspero at the Giza museum, so Ned could extract the written permissions needed to carry out an archaeological dig. Maspero apparently relished making archaeologists dance to his tune, making them wait for the necessary permits.

  “This is the part of Aegypt that’s most frustrating.”
Ned was changing out of his travel-stained linen suit. He had his arms above his head, tugging off his shirt without undoing the buttons, and his voice was muffled. “We’re ready to start, and yet here we are, having to wait on Maspero’s whims. He’s not a bad little man, but like all French bureaucrats, he grinds exceedingly slowly. I’ve had the permit promised since last year, but will it be ready? I’d wager the Imperium’s entire coffers on him telling me to call back tomorrow. Or the day after. It’ll be a week before we get out of here. A whole week wasted! Enough to turn a man to drink.”

  I went to help, giving the recalcitrant garment a sharp yank upward. His head popped out from the encumbrance, his hair on end. Very… toothsome, that’s the word. I could nibble on him forever. I pulled away from the nibbling with some reluctance because, damn it, Sam reappeared and startled us both with a stern cough and a “Give over, do!”

  Ned sighed. “I have to get dressed anyway.”

  I gave Sam a look I hoped conveyed my opinion of his timing. Sam merely grinned back. “But it’s worth it?” I said. “Kowtowing to Maspero and his ilk, I mean.”

  “Oh, very much worth it.” Ned made a gesture toward the window, where the noises of Cairo were jostling and scrambling their way in through the narrow space. “If only I could get away, if there wasn’t duty and responsibility, I’d live here permanently, I think. Excavate all winter, prospect all summer for new sites to explore. Free. It’s… it’s home.”

  I could understand that. I relished the freedom I had from my own House, and I wasn’t nearly so trammeled and beset as Ned.

  Ned shrugged into the jacket of an identical, but less wrinkled, linen ensemble. “Irritating that I’ll have to change again when I return and get into House dress. I must pay my respects to the Khedive. I have some correspondence to deliver, but over and above that, he’s being very good about my stashing half of House Gallowglass’s guards here for the winter. He’s always been quite friendly. I owe him a formal visit of thanks.”