Whispers in the Sand

by Barbara Erskine

  She woke about an hour later. The shadows had moved and the burning sunlight on her foot was searing her skin. She drew it away sharply and sat up, staring round. The courtyard was as silent as before. There was no other sign of life. Hassan had gone.

  Aware that her foot was painfully burnt, she wondered where he was. Scrambling up she moved further into the shade. ‘Hassan?’

  The silence was so intense she frowned. It was as though she were the only person in the world. ‘Hassan, where are you?’ Her voice grew sharp.

  Nothing moved. The sky above was white with heat and she couldn’t look at it.

  Her feet still bare, she made her way down the colonnade towards the entrance, gazing this way and that between the columns. ‘Hassan!’ she called louder now. What if Lord Carstairs had found him and sent him away? What if he had gone without her? She must make for the landing stage, make sure the boat was still there.

  At the end of the colonnade the sand was blinding in the direct sunlight. She realised suddenly that she had left her shoes and hesitated. Then she heard a voice behind her. ‘Sitt Louisa?’

  She spun round. ‘Hassan! Oh Hassan, thank God!’ She flung herself at him. ‘I thought you had gone without me.’

  His arms folded round her. For a moment he held her, then she felt a featherlight kiss on her hair. ‘I would not go without you, Sitt Louisa. I would guard you with my life.’ Slowly she raised her face to look at him. ‘Hassan –’

  Her reaction had been instinctive; unthinking.

  ‘Hush. Do not be afraid, Sitt Louisa. You are safe with me.’ For a moment he said nothing more, gazing at her face, then he smiled. ‘We have fought this; I thought it forbidden. But now I believe that it is the will of Allah.’ He raised a finger and touched her mouth. ‘But only if you will it.’

  She stared at him. She ached to touch him; for a moment she could say nothing, then slowly she raised herself up on her toes and she kissed his lips. ‘It is the will of Allah,’ she whispered.

  For Louisa time stood still. It was as though all she had ever dreamed, ever imagined in her wildest fantasies, had coalesced into the next moments of ecstasy in his arms. She never wanted the kiss to end. When at last it did, for a moment she stood, dazed. Was it possible to feel so happy? She glanced up at him and they remained close together staring deep into each other’s eyes.

  It was a long time later that he noticed her bare feet. ‘You must not go without your shoes, my love. There are scorpions in the sand. Come.’ He scooped her up into his arms as though she weighed no more than one of their baskets and carried her back to the rug. Before he allowed her to sit down he picked it up and shook it. Then he grinned. ‘Now it is ready for my lady to sit.’

  Sitting down she drew up her knees and hugged them. The real world was closing in again. ‘Hassan, I am a widow. I am free. But you. You have a wife in your home village. This is not right.’

  He knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘A Christian may not have more than one wife. It is written in the Koran that a man can love more than one woman. I have not seen my wife, Sitt Louisa, for more than two years. I send her money. She is happy with that.’

  ‘Is she?’ Louisa frowned. ‘I wouldn’t be.’

  ‘No, for you are a passionate woman. You wouldn’t understand one who no longer wishes for the pleasures of the bed. We have two sons, for which Allah be praised. Since the birth of my smallest boy she has not loved me as a wife should.’

  ‘I could not love you as a wife, Hassan. When summer comes I have to go home to my own sons.’

  He looked away. There was sadness in his face. ‘Does that mean we should chase away the days of happiness which lie within our grasp?’ He took her hands in his. ‘If heartbreak must come, let it come later. Then there are the days of happiness to remember. Otherwise there is nothing but regret.’

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps it is fitting that we should declare our love in the temple of Isis. Is she not the goddess of love?’ She reached up and kissed him again but he had suddenly grown tense. He pushed her away.

  ‘Hassan, what is it?’ She was hurt.

  ‘Ma feem tish! I do not understand. Lord Carstairs. He is there!’ He waved towards the distant colonnade.

  She caught her breath. ‘Did he see us?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I searched everywhere. I went to look for his boat, but it had gone. It is a small island. There is nowhere he could have been hiding.’ He shook his head in anger. ‘Wait here, my beautiful Louisa. Do not move.’

  In a second he had left her, slipping like a shadow along the colonnade. Louisa held her breath. The silence had returned.

  Anna put down the book and rubbed her eyes. So, Louisa had found herself a lover in Egypt. She smiled. It was the last thing she had expected of her great-great-grandmother. She pictured the face in the photograph Phyllis had shown her. Louisa had been in her sixties at a guess, when the picture was taken. The high-necked blouse, the severe hairstyle with the inevitable bun tightly drawn onto the nape of her neck, the direct dark eyes, the prim mouth. They had given no clue to this passionate exotic romance.

  She glanced at her watch. It was three o’clock in the morning and she was exhausted. She shivered. The story had had the desired effect. It had for a while taken her mind off her own fears and the increasing antagonism between Andy and Toby. She stared round the cabin. There was no scent now of resin and myrrh. Nothing but the smell of cooking drifting through the open window from the busy, noisy town which did not appear to sleep and which stretched out along the bank behind them. With a sigh she stood up. There was something she had to do before she could sleep.

  The piece of paper taped into the back of the diary was so flimsy it was hard to read even the clearer Arabic script. She held the book under the lamp and squinted at the flimsy sheet. Yes. There they were. She hadn’t even noticed the small hieroglyphics in the corner. The Ancient Egyptian characters were so minuscule it was almost impossible to make them out at all.

  So, now she knew the names of the two phantoms who guarded the tiny scent bottle. Anhotep and Hatsek. Priests of Isis and Sekhmet. Biting her lip she shook her head.

  Shutting the diary she slipped it into the drawer and pushed it shut. Louisa had survived to become a famous artist and a somewhat prim-looking old lady. Whatever magic those two evil men had brought with them into the modern age it cannot have been as frightening as all that. After all, she had brought the scent bottle home with her to England.

  7

  What then didst thou do to the flame of fire and the tablet of crystal and the water of life after thou hadst buried them? I uttered words over them. I extinguished the fire and they say unto me, what is thy name?

  Hail … I have not done violence to any man.

  Hail … I have not slain any man or woman.

  All memory of the entrance to the temple tomb is lost once again; the dunes lie beneath the cliff face in a desolate corner of the land. The spirit may roam by day and come forth by night over the earth but the bottle is a prisoner, forgotten, wrapped in its own silence and, without it and the secret it contains, what reason is there to come forth?

  One of us has gone before the gods … that which came forth from his mouth was declared untrue. He hath sinned and he hath done evil and he hath fled from Ammit the devourer.

  When we hide from the gods all time is the same. When the gods bid us sleep they do not say for how long. A further two hundred thousand suns roll over the desert and once more robbers turn their eyes towards these dunes. The priests stir. Perhaps the time has come.

  Anna woke with a start. She lay still, staring up at the ceiling of her cabin where striped shadows from the slatted shutters rippled amongst the bright reflections from the water outside the window. Her head ached and she pressed her fingers against her temples. Her exhaustion was total. She felt too tired even to sit up. It was when she glanced at her wristwatch that the adrenaline kicked in. It was almost ten o’clock.

  The boat was desert
ed. She stood in front of the noticeboard outside the dining room, which had long ago stopped serving breakfast, wondering where they had all gone. The schedule for today had completely slipped her mind. The neatly typed sheet in front of her had the day’s activities carefully listed. This morning there was an optional outing to Aswan and the bazaar followed by a short visit at midday to the Old Cataract Hotel. She frowned. She would like to have gone there. Slowly turning away she wandered up to the lounge. Ibrahim called out to her as she made for the shaded afterdeck. ‘You have missed your breakfast, mademoiselle?’

  She smiled at him, touched that he had noticed. ‘I’m afraid I overslept again.’

  ‘You like me to bring coffee and croissant?’ He hastily stubbed out his cigarette. He had been polishing the bar and now he tucked the duster away on a shelf and came over to her.

  ‘I should love it. Thank you, Ibrahim.’ She smiled at him. ‘Has everyone gone ashore?’

  ‘Nearly everyone. They want to spend lots of money in the bazaar.’ He grinned.

  While he fetched her coffee she made her way to a table at the far end of the shady deck, beneath the awning of white canvas. It was the opposite end of the ship from the row of pots with their profusion of hibiscus and geraniums, bougainvillaea and the small hidden bottle. This was the perfect chance to retrieve it. It could not be left in a flowerpot on a small Nile cruiser indefinitely. But once she had it back in her possession she would have to make a decision. She stared through the rails at the water. She wanted to talk to Serena. She wasn’t sure how she felt now she knew the names of the two priests who followed her bottle. And she needed to know more about the priest of Sekhmet.

  Groping in the shoulder bag which she had dropped on the deck by her chair she brought out her guidebook. There was, she remembered, a brief summary of the Egyptian gods somewhere at the beginning of the book. She flipped open the pages and stared down. There she was, Sekhmet, with her huge lion’s head. ‘The lion goddess unleashes her anger –’ the text commented. Over the figure’s head was a sun disc and the picture of a cobra. She shivered.

  ‘You are cold, mademoiselle?’ Ibrahim was there with his tray. He put her coffee and croissant on the table with a tall glass of fruit juice.

  She shook her head. ‘I was thinking about something I’d read here, about the ancient gods. Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess.’

  ‘These are stories, mademoiselle. They should not make you afraid.’

  ‘She is the goddess of anger. They show her with a cobra.’ She glanced up at him. ‘How do you know so much about snakes, Ibrahim?’

  He smiled at her, tucking the empty tray under his arm. ‘I learnt from my father and he from his father before him.’

  ‘And they never harm you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘When Charley found the snake in her cabin you said it was guarding something of mine. How did you know that?’

  She saw him lick his lips, suddenly nervous. He gave her a quick glance as though trying to decide what to say and she thought she would help him out. ‘Was it a real snake, Ibrahim? Or was it a magic snake? A phantom?’

  He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. ‘Sometimes they are the same, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Do you think it will return?’

  ‘Inshallah.’ He shrugged.

  With a slight bow and that infuriating phrase which had so irritated Louisa, Ibrahim backed away. She did not call him back. What was there she could say?

  It was an hour later that she finally rose to her feet and made for the steps onto the upper deck. The boat was still deserted. She had seen neither passengers nor crew since Ibrahim had left her alone but the river was busy. Tourist cruisers juggled for position along the narrow moorings, launches, feluccas, overloaded rowing boats, ferries, small fishing boats and motor boats plied up and down, some within feet of the boat’s rail. She could hear the bustle of the town, the hooting of cars, the shouts from the Corniche but the deck itself was empty. She had, she realised, been trying to pluck up courage ever since she left her cabin that morning. To tell herself that she should wait for Serena was nonsense. It was an excuse. She must dig up the bottle, take it back to her cabin, put it in a sealed envelope and when Omar returned at lunchtime give it to him to put in the boat’s safe.

  The flowers had been watered early but already the deck was dry. She walked slowly towards them and stood at the rail, looking out across the river towards the sand-coloured hills, already half-shrouded in heat haze. It would only take a second.

  She pictured the little bottle as she had known it for so many years of her life, standing innocently pretty on her dressing table, first at her parents’ home, then in the house she shared with Felix. She had not been afraid of it then. She remembered suddenly the rainy afternoon when, as a child, she had taken a penknife to the stopper, working it into the seal, trying to jiggle it free. What if she had managed it? What if whatever substance was in the bottle had spilt? Why had the guardians of the bottle not appeared to stop her then? Was it the cold English climate, the distance from their native land, that had inhibited them? Or had her innocence saved her, together with the fact that, quickly bored by her lack of success she had tucked her penknife back into her shorts, put the bottle guiltily back where it belonged and run out of the house to play in the rain. It was the last time she had ever tried to open it.

  A felucca swooped by, crewed by two boys. They waved and shouted and she waved back with a smile. All she had to do was turn round, put her hand under the plants and feel around in the soil with her fingers. No more than that. Then she would carry it down, wrap it safely and give it to Omar. It would take five minutes at most.

  She realised suddenly that there was someone watching her. She could feel eyes boring into her back. Almost certainly it was someone on the high deck of the big cruiser against which they were moored. No one else. Just an idle spectator who wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing anyway. It was nothing sinister; if it were, she would know. She would feel the tiptoe of goosepimples across her skin, feel the cold and the fear as something tangible. She took a deep breath and turned, holding tightly to the rail. The deck was deserted. When she glanced up there was no one to be seen.

  Gritting her teeth she moved towards the plant container and stooped over it. The inner leaves were still wet and the soil beneath them was muddy. She raked through the tangle of stems and roots and touched something cold and hard. Closing her eyes she steadied herself sternly and began to work it free of the pot. At last it came loose. Straightening, she lifted it clear of the leaves and began to dust off the clinging streaks of wet earth. It was as she did so that the deck suddenly grew cold.

  She held her breath. Please God, no. Not again. Slowly she forced herself to look up.

  The priest of Sekhmet, transparent, wispy as a breath of mist, was dressed in the skin of a desert lion. She could see it – the tawny pelt, the great paw hanging over his shoulder with its claws outstretched, the gold collar round the man’s neck, the gold chain across his chest to hold the skin in place. She saw his long lean legs, his sandals, his sinewy arms, the single lock of hair across his shoulder and she saw, for a fraction of a second, his face, the burning fury of his eyes, the taut anger of his jaw. He had seen her even as she had seen him. He had registered her presence, she was sure of it. He knew that she was the one who had hidden the sacred bottle amongst the plants and that it was she who had brought it back to Egypt.

  No!

  She doubted that she had spoken the word out loud. Her mouth was dry, her throat constricted with fear. The silence around her was, she realised, total. All the extraneous sound from the river and from the town had ceased.

  In one frantic movement she spun round and lifted her arm to throw the bottle into the Nile.

  As she did so a hand closed round her wrist, and the bottle fell harmlessly onto the bleached calico of the cushions on one of the deckchairs. Suddenly she could hear again: the boats, the cars, the shouts, all the no
ise of the modern day and with them a familiar voice.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ It was Andy. He stood staring at Anna, puzzled. ‘Whatever it’s done it doesn’t deserve that.’ He grinned at her and bent to pick it up.

  There was a moment’s silence as she stared at him, then turned to look at the empty deck behind her. She was hallucinating. Of course she was. Her tiredness, her obsession with the story, even her conversation with Ibrahim. They had all conspired to make her imagine she had seen something.

  Andy squinted carefully at the bottle in his hand. ‘It’s not genuine. But obviously you know that. I wasn’t wrong. These are always fakes. All the genuine stuff is in museums by now.’ He was rubbing off the soil. He took out a handkerchief and gave it a quick polish, seemingly incurious about why it should be covered in wet earth. ‘Do you see this?’ He held it out to her, pointing at the stopper. ‘The glass here has been machined. It’s not even a particularly old fake.’

  She did not put out her hand for it. ‘It has to be over a hundred years old if it belonged to Louisa Shelley.’ She swallowed hard. To her surprise her voice sounded quite normal, even defensive. If he were right, there could be no ghost. How could there be a ghost?

  He looked taken aback at her comment. ‘Of course. I had forgotten it was hers. But are you sure it is the same one? Family legends and stories are famous for getting it wrong. I know about provenance. It’s my job, remember. People swear their grandmother or great grandfather did this or that and often it’s a complete fabrication. They are not deliberately lying, it’s just that memories and stories get confused over the years. Maybe Louisa sold it or lost it. Maybe a son or daughter found this in one of her drawers and thought, this is it. This is the bottle she writes about in her diary. Did she write about it?’