by Anna Butler
Harper glowered and Symington quivered in his seat. Todd gestured to four of the guards to haul the two miscreants to their feet and push them across the courtyard to the store. The guards helped them along with several jabs of a pistol between the shoulder blades.
Hugh was, as ever, at my shoulder. “What now? If they had nothing to do with it—”
“I don’t think they did. They’re petty and spiteful, but I don’t think they’re that vicious.” I rubbed my hands over my face. I would have given anything for a few hours’ sleep. “We’ll have to look elsewhere.”
God alone knew where.
I sat down at one end of the table and rested my head in my hands. I raised it when Hugh pushed a cup of coffee under my nose and its welcome fragrance wafted up. The others had crowded around me, arguing amongst themselves about where to start looking for Harry.
Sam was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s gone to see how Mr. Edward is doing.” Hugh took the seat to my right. “Banger Bill’s set Professor Lansbach’s arm and given him some laudanum. He won’t wake before morning, and I told Professor Baumann to stay with him. I’ve got the cook sorting out more coffee and something to eat.”
Good. Hugh’s practicality was a godsend.
“Of a certainty, there are all too many places around here where the child and Archambault may be hidden.” Fouquet sat at my left. “Searching them all will take a great deal of time. We need to narrow it down.”
We did indeed. I just had no idea how. “I’m open to suggestions.” I offered him my hand. “Thank you for your support against Harper and Symington.”
He shook it firmly. “C’est rien. It shames me that by my actions, I am closer to those two than I like. I would do what I can to make reparation.”
A noise at the open courtyard door distracted us. Beyond the flaring security fence and the dark bulk of two guards, I saw arms waving to catch our attention, a shrill voice calling.
“Mahmoud!” Mr. Bakhoum jumped up.
“Let him through!” I called to the guards.
A moment later Mr. Bakhoum returned, his hand firmly around the arm of old Mahmoud, the date seller. “Mahmoud saw something!”
Mahmoud, encouraged by a hearty shake of his arm by Mr. Bakhoum, poured out a stream of Arabic. Causton translated, with Fouquet and Mr. Bakhoum offering supportive nods and occasional amplification.
In brief, Mahmoud was an old man, who rose several times each night to answer nature’s call. Around an hour earlier, he had seen a darkened motor launch nose its way into the dock near his small house. Dark figures had run toward the expedition house, and a few moments later every alarm had shrilled and every light had flashed. It lasted only an instant before the lights had doused as if a man were blowing out a lucifer. Mahmoud had been anxious and suspicious, afraid of djinns, and too timid to risk being seen. He had watched and waited, and when he saw we were back again at the expedition house and the lights had chased away the darkness of the village streets, he came to tell us what he had seen.
“Did he see the launch leave? Was Harry with them?”
Mahmoud had remained hidden in shadow, watching. The men had returned from the expedition house in mere minutes. One carried something in his arms, possibly Harry, and they were chased by the small brown one—the villagers’ half-affectionate, half-scornful name for Molly. “They kicked her away and got back into the launch. She is still there, howling.”
I’d heard her myself, I realized.
When pressed on which way the launch had gone, the old man was adamant it had gone north. Which was a blessed relief, because if they’d gone upstream to where the canal joined the Nile, they could have been lost amongst half-a-hundred launches and dahabiyas. We’d never have found them.
Whereas to the north….
“The Englishman on the dahabiya at Al Masaid.” I drained my coffee and poured more. I was going to need all the stimulant I could get that night.
I hadn’t realized Sam had rejoined us, until he spoke. “You think it’s him?”
“The Pasha told me…. Good God, was it just this morning? He told us a man called Nazeer Sulayman knifed me at Christmas, and Sulayman had been hired by an Englishman. And lo and behold, we have a mysterious Englishman up at Al Masaid who’s made such a point of avoiding this expedition. That launch went north.”
“No coincidence,” Fouquet said, nodding.
“I’m thankful for fools. Don’t they know the canal peters out into marshes farther north? We have them cornered.” I turned to Mr. Bakhoum. “I’m going to need the fishing boats.”
“You will have to row, Captain. Our boats have no engines, and the wind has died down.”
“I was an Oxford blue. I’ll manage.”
Sam blew out a sharp breath. “I can’t go with you. I can’t leave Ned. Whatever happens, he’s my prime responsibility.”
“I know. You haven’t told him?”
“No. He’s sleeping and very sick and dizzy whenever he wakes up. He’d be beside himself if he knew Harry was missing. He’s too ill to do anything about it.”
“Then don’t tell him yet. If I don’t come back… well, that will be time enough.” I glanced at the circle of quiet, tense faces listening to our every word. “I’ll take Hugh with me.”
“And me.” Todd was beside me in an instant.
“Can I help?” Fouquet asked, and from the expression on his face, he was serious.
“Yes. We will need a diversion.” I glanced up at the sky. It was well after midnight, and the thin sliver of new moon was westering. While a moonless sky was an advantage in that we were going to need a dark night to sneak up on the dahabiya undetected, it would have been handy to have a bit of light. I looked Fouquet up and down. “You’re about Harper’s size. You’ll make an excellent Anubis.”
Under other circumstances it would have been quite satisfying to see him choke. As it was, I found myself patting his shoulder in sympathy.
Chapter 26
HARPER AND Symington had kept the Anubis costume close to the temple rather than drag it two or three miles over the desert every time they wanted to use it, hiding it in an old tomb half-lost in the desert sands. Causton and three guards took Symington to collect it, Harper proving too obdurate to cooperate. Symington wasn’t exactly gushing with enthusiasm either, but he was far more amenable when George Todd unholstered his pistol.
I sent young Adrians and a couple of the students down to the docks to retrieve Molly. I didn’t like the idea of the poor animal howling down there on her own when she might be comforted back with the humans she was used to. I wanted her safe. If we could rescue Molly, it perhaps was a good omen for her little master. He’d need her when I got him back.
So while Causton collected the Dog and Adrians collected the dog, the rest of us tried to come up with a workable plan. At the moment all I had was that we’d sneak up to Al Masaid in three boats. Hugh and me—the boarding party—in one boat, with Fouquet, Causton, a couple of guards, and a dozen large aether flares in the second. Todd would lead half the Gallowglass guards in the third. The boarding party would sneak onto the dahabiya, while Causton and Fouquet readied themselves to provide a diversion and Todd held his men ready to swarm over the Theban Princess in force. We knew stories about the happenings in our village had spread throughout the region. I had no doubt at all that the boatmen were as superstitious as the local residents and that the Dog djinn stalked and barked at the edges of their imaginations. With luck, a flashbang grenade from Sam’s arsenal for noise and the burst of light from aether flares to show Anubis stalking across the desert toward the boat would be enough of a diversion while I grabbed Harry and Archambault and ran for it.
“It is thin.” Fouquet had agreed to impersonate Anubis despite the risk that the men on the boat would shoot first and panic later.
I could only shrug. As a plan, it was damned thin. But it was all we had.
“I’ll call when we need the diversion, but—” I tapped
the Marconi in my ear. “If I get caught, they’ll take this from me. I need an extra one.”
Sam handed me one from the armaments chest. The Marconi was a flexible metal band with a compact telephonic box at one end and an in-ear acoustic speaker at the other. The band curved around the earlobe to hide the tiny power source and then arced down the side of the face to place the telephonic box at the mouth. I forced the band to curl around until speaker and box were almost, but not quite, touching, and used sticking plaster from the first aid supplies to hold it in position. More sticking plaster attached it to the inside of my left wrist, and while we talked about where Causton’s team would place the aether flares for best effect, Hugh covered the hidden Marconi with a light bandage. All I had to do was unobtrusively switch it on, and everyone would be able to listen in and catch my signal.
Young Adrians and the students who’d gone with him to retrieve Molly returned just then. Adrians carried Molly in his arms and handed the dog over to Banger Bill’s care with a relatively cheery “She’s limping, and I think those bastards kicked her, but her teeth are all right.”
A good omen.
“About ready, then?” Hugh asked.
I pulled down my shirtsleeve and fastened the stud on the cuff. The fullness of the cotton covered the bulge under the bandage. “I think so. We’ll leave as soon as Causton’s back.”
Causton returned as I spoke. He’d made Symington carry the Anubis costume, and helped persuade him through the gate by taking a leaf from the Gallowglass guards’ book. Symington moved quite briskly every time Causton jabbed him in the back with a pistol. The costume was dumped onto the table before Causton encouraged Symington back into his prison in the storeroom closet. A good man, Tom Causton.
While Hugh went to the kitchen to clear as much soot as possible out of the flue into a bucket so we could blacken our faces, Fouquet and I examined the costume. It was simple enough: a cartonnage mask that fitted neatly over a man’s head and rested heavy on the shoulders, the cheap and gaudy pectoral, a flail and crook, a long staff, and a linen kilt cleverly fashioned to look like one an ancient may have worn. Harper had fastened blocks to a pair of shoes that reminded me of the pattens a farmer’s wife might use to raise her feet above the dirt. I turned the shoes over. The Dog’s paws had been carved into the blocks, the source of the huge prints we’d seen. Harper had probably used the staff to help him balance on the blocked shoes. He was a clever bastard. A pity he hadn’t used it to further his academic career.
Fouquet lifted up the staff. It had a stylized head and a forked base. “A was scepter. Anubis is often shown in tomb paintings, carrying such a one as this. Harper is a devious but skilled man. He gave much thought to this impersonation.”
“There’s this too.” Causton rejoined us and held out a flutelike instrument like the ones hunters use to imitate birdsong. Causton blew a mournful blast through it, and the jackal howl wove around the courtyard. Molly’s indignant response came from one of the rooms.
“Oh very clever,” I said. “Don’t bother with the shoes, Fouquet. You may need to move quickly, not mince about on high heels. Keep your own boots on. Get changed now, will you?” I indicated the flute. “Tom, can you take the loudspeaker assembly from the static Marconi and use that to amplify the sound?”
Causton’s eyes widened, and then he got it. The noise would wake every mummy from Cairo to the Cataracts. He nodded, grinning. “Right. I just need a portable power source. I’ll use one of the aether light batteries. Only take a couple of minutes.”
“Good. We need to get on our way.”
While Causton collected what he needed and Fouquet stripped to get into costume, I took those two minutes to drum up my second wind. The bathroom was cool and quiet. Plunging my head into a bowl of cold water helped wake me up. I held my face underwater for as long as I could bear it, letting it cool me. One o’clock in the morning, and life was determined to use me for its rugger ball that day, kicking me over the crossbar in lieu of into my bed for some much-needed sleep. But when I returned to the courtyard and Hugh appeared with a bucket of soot, that second wind suddenly appeared. I couldn’t ever face Ned again if I didn’t give it my all and find Harry.
I put a hand into Hugh’s bucket of soot, then smeared it all over my face and shirt until I was filthy. “Get some of this on yourselves, everyone. You’ll be less easy to see, if anyone’s standing on the dahabiya’s deck taking the night air. We leave in five minutes.”
While everyone readied himself for the task ahead, I took a moment to look in on Ned. He slept heavily, sprawled on his back. Banger Bill had roused him only ten minutes earlier to ask him questions—“He’s no worse. He knows who he is and where he is. That’s a good sign, Captain.”—but Ned had drifted off again before I got there. I was glad. I didn’t want him to know yet about Harry. I had time only to hold his hand for a minute, and I hoped to every deity man had ever invented that the next time I saw him, it would be with Harry in my arms, safe and sound.
I released his hand and left without looking back. Time to go and get Harry.
EVEN AT that late hour, the canal at night was a riot of frogs croaking in the reeds. Nothing else stirred.
It was a hard row, even with the faint current in our favor. I had my back to the Princess. She was little more than a dark silhouette against the landscape, but every glance over my shoulder as I rowed north showed her closer, bulking larger against the night sky. She was berthed on the eastern bank beside Al Masaid’s jetty. The hamlet, barely a couple of dozen houses in a cluster of dark shapes, had not one light showing anywhere.
Hugh sat behind me, facing forward and keeping watch on the dahabiya. “I think there are some lights at the back of the boat. It looks like a house at night with the curtains drawn.”
The saloon, most likely, which was usually in the stern. Someone was still awake, then.
We split up our small flotilla a moment later. Todd’s boat angled in to the eastern bank, slipping quietly up a narrow irrigation ditch into the darkness. Todd and the Gallowglass guards would likely have little trouble reaching the dahabiya when the moment came.
Causton’s boat turned to the west. The western shore broke and tumbled into gullies and mounds, giving Causton and his team plenty of cover for moving around. Causton had reckoned he could set up the flares to flood a good-sized space with light, as well as light up the Princess as if it were full day.
I held back my boat and gave them both some time to get into position. It was so dark, the other boats had already faded into shadows. I couldn’t see them move. Given a goodly amount of the Lancaster Luck, we could set up our diversion without alerting the dahabiya’s inhabitants.
Ten minutes and Causton’s voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve landed and are getting the flares into position. It won’t take long.”
Todd reported in an instant later. “Ready. We’re just outside the village.”
“Good. We’ll get closer.”
To lower the chances of our approach being seen or heard by anyone on the Theban Princess, for the final few hundred yards I eschewed even the oars, letting the boat drift downstream. With no moon to light the water, we might just be able to sneak our way in undetected.
The Al Masaid dock comprised one short wharf at the end of the single village street, with the dahabiya anchored up against it side-on. The gangplank was set near the prow, at the lowest level of the ship. I let it be. Not only was that likely to be guarded, but the open part of the lower deck was also the crew’s quarters. Even if by some chance the gangplank was unmanned and we got on board without being seen, we’d then have to tiptoe around the crew in their blanket rolls in order to reach the cabins at the stern. Not a chance I was willing to take.
Instead we let the slow current drift us down the length of the dahabiya, nose to stern. Hugh gently fended us off so we remained ships that pass in the night, so to speak, and didn’t bump into her to warn anyone of our approach.
At the stern, curta
ined windows closed the saloon off from the night. The windows gleamed with lamplight, muted and colored a deep red by the curtains, sharp lines of yellow light down the middle of one window where the curtains didn’t quite meet.
No stern deck, sadly, where the saloon wall met the hull, but bless the dahabiya captain, he’d anchored her to hold her firm against the wharf. A quick, quiet shimmy up the anchor chain would get us to a window ledge, and from there the railing of the upper deck was no more than a stretch of the arms and a careful hoist up. We’d be on the boat, at least, and behind any watchman, whose eyes—if he were awake—should be on the wharf and the hamlet beyond. With luck, we’d be able to sneak down the ornate staircase to the lower deck and get into the cabins without being noticed.
With luck.
I tied the boat to the anchor chain and held it in place while Hugh worked his way up onto the upper deck. I followed after him. When I had my feet on the window ledge at last and my hands reached for the railing, Hugh was there to help me with a vigorous heave. We crossed the upper deck as silently as we could manage it. In a moment we were by the head of the external stair, crouched in shadow and staring down at the open deck below.
“Ten crew. One watchman at the top of the gangplank, two men patrolling the wharf,” Hugh said in my ear.
I nodded. “We’ll have to be quick and quiet.”
We watched the two men on patrol, to gauge the best time to move. They didn’t patrol as a pair, but each walked from one end of the wharf to the other, starting at opposite ends and crossing over near the gangplank. The man at the head of the gangplank sat with his back to us, staring out toward the hamlet.
“All set,” Causton whispered over the Marconi.
“Stand by.” I glanced at Hugh. “Our best moment will be just as they pass each other and start walking on. They’ll both be looking away from the boat. One at a time, keep low. First man down opens the door to the staterooms.”
Hugh went first. He went down the stairs on his bottom, keeping his head below the ornate carved railing, but still managing to move swiftly and silently. He had to wait on the stairs about halfway down for the two guards to pass each other again, but in another moment or two he had vanished, still crouched low, into the shadows at the bottom. The hinges of the door must have been well-oiled. I didn’t hear it open.