by Anna Butler
“A djinn.” Ammar rubbed his hand against the stems, and they fell apart, drifting down to the earth. Ammar hurriedly wiped his hands on his galabeyya, the ubiquitous robe worn by Aegyptian men. “An evil spirit. It did this.”
His wife threw the corner of her chador over her face to hide it, and wailed her grief and fear.
Ned sighed and said djinns had nothing to do with it. He told Ammar to find some replacement vines and he’d pay for them. “Which is what he expected of me all along,” he said as we turned away to head back to work, leaving a gratified and delighted Ammar behind.
“I expect he sprayed them with a miracle fertilizer sold him by some rascally Aegyptian mountebank.” I tucked my arm through Ned’s. “Or, you know, with eau de djinn.”
At least it made Ned laugh. Sadly, the laugh didn’t last long.
Two days later, not long after dawn, I took a detour on my way to the temple, heading to the grove of date palms to look for old Mahmoud. I was leaving for Cairo the next day and would not be back for two or three days. I wanted to arrange for him to keep the expedition house supplied in my absence. He was usually to be found sitting next to a rickety old table laden with bunches of ripe dates. His principal customers were me, his fellow villagers, and the visitors from the dahabiyas.
Mahmoud wouldn’t be selling dates that day.
Instead I found his palms half hacked down, the burgeoning date clusters hauled down to the ground and stamped into a sticky mess, and old Mahmoud sitting in the midst of the devastated palm grove, his face expressionless behind its net of deep wrinkles. His rheumy eyes, as shiny brown as the dates themselves, were wet. He didn’t answer when I stooped to greet him.
Mahmoud spoke very little English other than an ability to ask for shillings in return for his dates, and I had about an equal amount of Arabic. After a moment of mutual incomprehension when I spoke to him, he returned to staring into the middle distance without, apparently, seeing anything, and I turned to Hugh, who hovered behind me.
“Go and find someone who can talk to Mahmoud, can you? Tom Causton or someone. Anyone.”
Hugh nodded and was gone, tugging the donkeys along with him and running to cut across a field to catch up with Ned and the others, who were already almost at the temple. I took a look at the destruction around us. The smaller, thinner palms had been hacked partway through and then snapped off. The older palms, many of which had been twenty or thirty feet high, leaned drunkenly to one side. None of it looked retrievable.
I didn’t see anything, at first, to point to who the vandal may have been. The soil beneath the palms was dry and cracking, not showing much in the way of prints. The dates though… there might be something…. No. Not much. A smudge that may have been a heel print. Evidence the village dogs had sniffed around, probably looking for food.
But those ax cuts…. If someone had handed me an ax and pointed me toward thick-stemmed palm trees, I’d have taken more than one slashing blow to cut my way through. I’d have left multi-edged cleave marks of white heartwood. These trees showed clean cleave marks—narrow, V-shaped channels, not the clumsy, rougher, wider marks I’d expect from a manual ax. The heartwood was browned and charred.
I went back to Mahmoud, squatting down beside him. His gaze sharpened and met mine when I put a hand on his shoulder, but soon slid away again. He seemed beyond comfort.
Hugh came back with M. Archambault. The old Frenchman wasn’t likely that much younger than Mahmoud, but what a difference between them. The ascetic scholar, elegant as a saint from the Book of Kells; the other wrinkled and bent, his hands twisted and warped by a lifetime of hard labor.
It took Archambault a little while to coax Mahmoud to speak. In the meantime the villagers began to gather, mostly women and old men standing around us in silence, their normally cheerful faces drawn and sad, with downturned mouths and brows furrowed with frowns.
“He says it was the djinn,” Archambault said. “An evil spirit destroyed his palms.”
I glanced pointedly at the damage. “A djinn armed with an ax?”
“It is possible that this is a dispute between neighbors.”
“I’ll be more specific. A djinn armed with a photonic discharge ax. I don’t suppose many of his neighbors would be able to afford one of those, or keep it charged, ready for use.” I met Archambault’s troubled gaze, and behind me Hugh drew in a hissing breath. “That’s a very peculiar djinn.”
Mahmoud gabbled out something. The assembled villagers mumbled and more than one pushed their way hurriedly out of the crowd and half walked, half ran back to the village. Not one of them turned to look at us.
“He says it was the dog,” Archambault said and frowned.
“The dog? What does he mean?”
“I do not know. At least… no.” Archambault sat back and took Mahmoud’s hands in his, stilling their restlessness. He sent a thin, unconvincing smile my way. “Superstitions, Captain Lancaster. That is all.”
Far away, right on the edge of hearing, a dog barked. Perhaps the one Mahmoud was talking about, and perhaps not. Who knew? Who knew what the hell was going on?
DINNER AT the courtyard table was somber that night.
Sam had inspected the date grove, his scowl capable of souring sugar. He had agreed that a powered ax had caused the trouble. “It’s not just some local dispute now.” He turned the glare onto Hugh and me. “You two know what to do if there’s trouble.”
We knew. I had let my hand brush the butt of my aether pistol, and Sam nodded, face still like a thundercloud. He had returned to Ned’s side, where he stuck like glue for the rest of the day. Ned complained later that he hadn’t even been allowed to go to the jakes on his own.
But there could be no more pretense, no more telling ourselves that the peculiar nature of the country lent itself to visions and imaginings, that we were oversensitive and seeing threats in nothing but phantasms and dreams. Trouble was looming.
The students sat in a tense, tight group. They talked quietly amongst themselves, shooting many an anxious glance at the senior members of the team. Ned reassured them as best he could and sent them and Harry to their beds early. The senior student took a charged pistol with him and bolted the dormitory door behind him. Harry, of course, had Frank.
Ned gathered everyone else into the small room on the other side of mine on the opposite side of the courtyard to the students’ rooms. We could talk there without being overheard. The room did duty as an office and a storeroom for anything we had dug up. The shelves lining the walls bowed under the weight of potsherds and fragments, each one carefully labeled, recorded and photographed by yours truly. We were rather in one another’s pockets there, human sardines jammed together in the tin, but it meant none of us had to stretch far to pass around the bottle of scotch. We all needed a drink, and even the usually fastidious M. Archambault tipped a dollop into his glass.
“That’s what… five or six incidents now?” Ned grasped the bottle and splashed a good couple of measures into the coffee cup that did duty for him instead of a crystal glass. “If we count the dyke breach as the first.”
“Which it well might be.” Sam stood against the door, his shoulders against the pale wood to put himself between whatever was going on out there and Ned. He refused the whiskey I offered him. “Captain Lancaster said the wood didn’t look too rotten.”
“I’m not an expert, Sam.”
“You said the wood shards were white and clean, not brown and rotten. I’d say that was enough to be suspicious. So yes. I count five incidents we know about, and there may be more that haven’t filtered through to us.”
“Aimed at the villagers here.” Lansbach had forgone his pipe out of consideration for the confined space. He held it in his hands, though, turning it constantly with his fingers. “I have heard nothing of similar incidents in El-Khirba. It is confined to us.”
Ned nodded. “Baumann was right in what he said the other night. If someone is trying to disrupt the dig, then firing up
our workers so we don’t ever get anything done is a pretty effective tactic.”
“I’ve seen it done before,” Causton said. He had joined Archambault and me at Mahmoud’s date grove earlier that day. He’d looked from the distraught old man to the hacked trees and had stood quiet so long, arms held stiffly at his sides, fists clenched, that he might have been carved from stone. He’d been very gentle with old Mahmoud. I’d thought he’d calmed down over the day, but now his voice shook with unmistakable anger. “Archaeologists who should know better, jealous and competitive and totally lacking in honor. Five years ago, in El Faiyûm, I was with a dig near Arsinoe. The imams have always had a strong hold there, and a rival expedition—British, I’m sorry to say—stirred them up against us, using the same sort of superstition about djinns and demons. We were chased halfway back to Cairo. Baumann was with that dig too.”
“Ja. I have never forgotten it.” Baumann searched his pockets, patting each one, then drew out his pipe. He gave us all a shy, sly smile and traced a circle in the air with the pipe stem. “I am not built for running. Too rotund.”
Our laughter was strained. It wasn’t long before we were all blowing out sighing breaths and looking sidelong at one another again.
“So far the villagers do not seem to blame us,” Archambault said.
Ned sighed and scrubbed at his face with the heels of both hands. “It helps that we’ve been generous with compensation, and most of the incidents haven’t led to long-term damage. Except for the destruction of Mahmoud’s dates, that is. It will be years before replanting will bear fruit.”
Ned had, of course, recompensed the old man for his loss and made sure Mahmoud would have enough to live on while new palms were procured for him and planted. In essence, he’d added Mahmoud to Gallowglass House’s pensioners as long as the old man lived. It had coaxed a faint smile out of the old man when Ned had given him that assurance.
“They’re content…. No, that’s the wrong word.” I passed the scotch to Ned in lieu of the more tangible comfort I’d have liked to offer. “Reassured, maybe. Anyhow, while they might be worried about what’s happening, they know they’ll be compensated for their losses. They aren’t facing ruin. That will help to keep a lid on things.”
The cynic who lives beneath my skin wondered if all these incidents were the result of the villagers knowing that a rich man headed up the expedition. What’s more, that rarity of a rich man: one with a conscience. Paying what were relatively small sums to us, but a fortune to the poor villagers, wouldn’t bankrupt Ned and gained us a lot of goodwill. But still, were the villagers playing him?
“I wonder if Fouquet or our young friends from Manchester have seen or heard anything untoward where they are,” Archambault said. “It would help to know if this is a generalized problem.”
“Or just us? Quite right. What are we going to do? I mean, if we’re not sure what’s going on, it’s going to be harder to counter it.” Causton’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Before we have to run for it again.”
We tossed around a few ideas. Sam was all for a military solution: bring as many Gallowglass guards to Abydos as possible and arm them to the teeth. As if they weren’t already.
“I don’t think we’re quite at the stage where we need to reenact the Battle of the Nile, Sam.” Ned softened his words with a grin, but Sam looked mutinous.
“It’s about deterrence, Mr. Edward. That’s all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course it is. It’s a common misconception that the appearance of a House guard is inevitably followed by a pile of corpses so high you can’t see over it standing on a stepladder. You’re really quite peaceable, I dare say.”
“Very peaceable, so long as my gun’s bigger than the enemy’s.” Sam’s grin was wolf-dangerous.
“I’d put them on alert, anyway,” Hugh said from his place beside me. When I’d bundled him into the conference with the rest of us, he’d been a little hesitant on the spurious grounds, so far as I could work out from his whispered protests, that he wasn’t a gentleman nor had he any sort of standing with the expedition. I’d scoffed and pushed him into a seat. So far he’d been quiet and watchful, perhaps a little too diffident to speak until now. “Have them ready to move. And there’s more the villagers can do. They know something’s going on. It’s their stuff being damaged. Time for them to step up and set a few watchmen. A home guard, like.”
We all stared. I know my prevailing emotion was pride, and certainly Ned and Sam were nodding with approval. Hugh glanced at me and grimaced. He relaxed when I grinned.
“Good for you, Hugh,” Ned said. “You’re quite right. I’ll speak to Mr. Bakhoum tomorrow morn—”
His voice was drowned by a terrible, piercing shriek from a siren. Every Cowen’s flash box on the alarm system went off at once, splitting the dark Aegyptian night with the brilliance of a lightning strike. The window blazed white with it, throwing each of us into the harsh relief of startled silhouettes.
Trouble, it seemed, had breached our security net.
Chapter 17
SAM HAD wrenched open the door with his left hand, his pistol ready in his right, before anyone had time to draw breath. The sharp whine of the gun’s aether chamber howled into a brief instant of relative silence as the sirens’ whoop cycled downward. But the sirens were only gathering strength for another assault on the eardrums.
Michael Forde was already in the courtyard, two harquebuses in his hand. He tossed me one as I raced out after Sam. I caught it one-handed—the other was clamped around Ned’s arm. Not that he needed hauling. He was heading for Harry’s room at quite a clip, Hugh on our heels. Behind us, Causton slammed the door closed again. He was armed, I knew, and probably the others were too. They’d manage.
Frank flung open Harry’s door to let Ned and me in before running across the courtyard to join Sam and Forde at the double gate that gave onto the road to the village. It was my job and Hugh’s, as designated by Sam, to keep Ned and Harry as safe as we could. When we burst into the room, Harry was sitting bolt upright in bed, one arm around Molly, eyes so wide they looked black. Molly’s upper lip curled to show her teeth.
Ned caught up his son and lifted him off the bed and onto the floor. He stooped to run his hand over Harry’s hair. His tone was deliberate, calm. “We’ve practiced this, Harry. Under you go! I’ll be right here.”
Molly gave a growling bark, and from the one swift glance I had to spare in her direction, I saw she had Harry by the collar of his nightshirt, tugging to help him scramble under the bed. She went under there with him.
Hugh flattened himself against the wall to the left of the window, his free hand holding the drape aside a fraction, just enough for him to see outside while keeping out of the line of fire. He had contorted himself to squint along the wall of the house toward the corner and should have been able to glimpse the path from the village from that angle. Ned had his own pistol drawn, standing shoulder to shoulder with me at the door. He held the door open a crack, allowing me to stick the business end of the harquebus through the gap to cover approaches to the room. His hand shook a trifle.
“See anything, Hugh?” I asked.
“Group of men, mostly Aegyptian… one European…. No idea who he is…. Doesn’t appear to be armed. Looks like they came through the village. From the canal dock, maybe.”
Sam’s voice could be heard as each siren whoop was on its downward cadence before yammering and squalling its way up to full pitch again. What he was saying was indecipherable. Then the siren was cut off in mid-yowl. One of the Gallowglass guards must have killed the alarm.
I still couldn’t quite make out what Sam was saying. Inching around to peer beyond the doorjamb, all I could see was Sam’s back. He held a pistol in each hand, pointed, unwavering, in the faces of the men who’d arrived at our gate. The Lord alone knew where he’d been hiding the second gun.
“Papa?” came a small voice from under the bed.
“Stay where you are, Harry.” Ned�
��s tone was still calm, even soothing. “Sam has everything under control.”
“It’s just Molly’s a little bit frightened under here where it’s dark,” Harry explained. “I’m all right.”
Ned and I exchanged glances, and my heart ached for the look of anguish and guilt in his eyes. It took me a couple of attempts to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“I know you are, little son,” Ned said. “You look after Molly. Keep her close and she’ll be fine.”
At that moment, Forde opened one of the gates, and the European man walked in. He was greeted with both of Sam’s pistols, but beyond the florid redness of his face, he didn’t appear to be afraid or outraged. Sam pushed the pistol in his left hand through his belt and spoke rapidly to our visitor, who nodded and stood quietly while Frank checked him for weapons.
“Looks like it might be not much of anything,” Hugh said from the window. “His entourage is heading back to the village. They’re all laughing.”
Sam holstered his other pistol. Nothing could have said more clearly or more loudly that the excitement was over.
“A false alarm.” I pulled back the harquebus and opened the door a little wider. “Sam’s let him in. He seems to know him, I think.”
Sam turned, still speaking to the newcomer, and waved an arm toward Harry’s room.