The Buried Pyramid

by Jane Lindskold

  “Nothing I can’t get for myself,” Jenny assured her. “Go rest.”

  Emily turned to go, then turned impulsively back.

  “Your uncle’s a good man, Miss Benet.”

  “He is indeed,” Jenny agreed with a smile. “I could have done far worse for a guardian.”

  It seemed for a moment Emily might say something more, but she grew suddenly shy, bobbed a curtsey, and hurried away.

  The evening meal was magnificent, prepared by Papa Antonio himself with the assistance of two young Copts, twins of about thirteen whom he insisted on referring to as Castor and Pollux, though apparently they possessed perfectly normal Christian names. Afterwards the group retired to the central courtyard, which was every bit as pleasant as their host had promised.

  Date palms taller than the second story roof granted both shade and privacy. Water trickled from a vase cradled in the arms of an Italian Renaissance cupid into a basin tiled a delicate rose pink. Honeyed dates and enormous golden sultanas were set out on a gauze-covered tray for those with an inclination to nibble. More of Papa Antonio’s family vino —this a sweeter, dessert vintage with a faint undertone of oranges—had been offered as an alternative to dark, almost muddy coffee.

  Neville and Jenny accepted small cut-crystal goblets of the wine, while Stephen happily indulged in the coffee, sweetening it almost to syrup and adding thick cream.

  Papa Antonio held his wine up to the candlelight to admire its delicate color.

  “Like amber, no? Or translucent gold, perhaps.” He sipped and sighed happily. “Beauty is everywhere if you know where to look for it, I think. In memory or in color or in a dream about to be realized. How long do you plan to remain in Cairo, Leonardo?”

  Sir Neville stretched lazily. He had discarded his formal English clothing and sat in his shirt and a loose pair of trousers, rather as if he were in his private quarters at home. Jenny made a mental note that formal etiquette was apparently dispensed with at least here within the walls of Papa Antonio’s inn.

  Tomorrow she would have Emily help her unpack some of her lighter dresses, including those with the shorter skirts. She was certain that Uncle Neville would agree with her that ankle length made more sense when one was going to be trailing about on dirty pavement. Trousers would be out of line, at least until they entered the desert and there was no one to be scandalized but gerbils and camels.

  “I need to contact Eddie Bryce,” Neville said in response to Papa Antonio’s question. “Do you know where we could reach him these days?”

  “Write to Ibrahim Alhadj ben Josef on the Street of Potters,” came the reply.

  “Gone completely native then, has he?” Neville said. “I thought as much. My letters reached him though, under his other name.”

  “They would,” Papa Antonio agreed, “for he continues to do a great deal of work for the English. Many scorn him for his choice, but cannot quite give up the usefulness of one who speaks both Arabic and English fluently, and has such good contacts within the Arab community.

  “I’ll send the letter out this evening,” Neville said, “if one of your servants would deliver it.”

  He did so, and a reply was waiting for them when they came out into the courtyard to breakfast. The waiting letter was addressed in a sloppy masculine hand on rough paper of local manufacture.

  Delighted to learn you have arrived safely. I have a job that will take up the better part of today. If I do not hear otherwise, I will call this evening after dinner.

  Edward Bryce

  “That’s fine, then,” Neville said, folding the note away. “Stephen, before the day gets too hot, why don’t you and I go out to the bazaars and see about a few supplies?”

  “Can’t I go, too, Uncle Neville?” Jenny asked.

  “It would probably be best if you did not,” Neville replied. “The bazaar I have in mind is not one usually frequented by the tourists. Even we Englishmen may find ourselves treated coolly, but I expect our knowledge of the local languages to get us through. If we took a young woman with us—especially one who went unveiled—the Arabs would consider it an insult. Tomorrow when we have spoken with Eddie, I will arrange for you to see something of Cairo. Perhaps you can look up Mary Travers and go visiting.”

  Had Jenny not already resolved that appearing tractable would be her best way of achieving the greater goal of accompanying the expedition when it left Cairo, her temper would have boiled over at this casual dismissal. Go look up Mary Travers, indeed!

  As it was, she kept her opinions to herself, and when the men had left without her she trailed after Papa Antonio as he tended the plants in the courtyard. Holding the basket into which he dropped the dead flowers, she couldn’t help but feel a bit like a discarded blossom herself. The image made her smile. The men might see her as some delicate flower, but she knew different.

  Papa Antonio glanced sharply at her, but asked nothing, only handed her a sprig of some exotic flower, glowing white and strongly perfumed.

  “Put it in your hair, Jenny,” he coaxed. “You are a pretty young woman. You should take more pleasure in your beauty.”

  Jenny sighed, rolling the stem between her palms and sniffing the blossom’s fragrance.

  “There are times that I get so tired of being a woman, Papa Antonio. It seems that there are so many things a woman—especially a young, unmarried woman—should not do, and all of them are more interesting than what I am supposed to like doing.”

  “I think, in time, you will learn that there are things a woman may do that a man may not,” Papa Antonio said, placidly clipping off a few dead leaves. “Remember this and be patient.”

  Jenny shifted. Even her ankle-length skirts felt awkward, the gown’s bodice clinging and the stays stifling.

  “I don’t much like being patient,” she admitted. “Right now I’m wondering if I should have stayed in America. Uncle Neville would have made sure some banker gave me a proper allowance, and Madame turned a blind eye on my ‘frontier’ eccentricities. I didn’t need to dress for company so often, and when I reached my majority I could have convinced Uncle Neville to let me go back West. I know I could. He’s a decent sort.”

  Papa Antonio smiled at this compliment to his friend, but he hadn’t missed her restless impatience with her costume.

  “A lady’s dress is like a cage, no?” he said. “They wall in the ribs with something tight. These days they give you a fat tail of heavy cloth that drags behind. Not so long ago, I recall that the ladies surrounded themselves with great hoops of whalebone and wire—very real cages, indeed, that made their skirts stand out like sails on a ship. I think you don’t like these cages at all, no?”

  “Not one bit!” Jenny replied firmly. “They’re stuffy and they’re uncomfortable. I can’t see how making a woman into some sort of funny shape makes her prettier, either. A man gets to be shaped like a man. Why can’t a woman be shaped like a woman?”

  Papa Antonio chuckled comfortably.

  “Perhaps because not all women have such a pretty shape as you do,” he said gallantly, “and they are happy to hide under petticoats and layers of skirts.”

  Jenny snorted, but she couldn’t help but share his laughter, imagining some stout matron wearing trousers that exposed the breadth of her backside for all to see.

  Papa Antonio grew serious. “Perhaps it is that men fear that if a woman was shaped like a woman he could not trust himself to behave as less than an animal.”

  Jenny had seen too much on the frontier to dismiss this, much as she would have liked to believe finer ideals. She was struggling to find an appropriate retort when Papa Antonio continued,

  “In all sincerity, Jenny, while I understand many of your complaints—how could I not? I, who have given over my European clothing for the pleasures of an Arab robe? While I understand this, I cannot understand why a woman like yourself who is wise enough to resent the cage of a gown would want to put herself into a much more permanent cage.”

  Jenny stared at him
, open-mouthed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why just a moment ago you were wondering whether you should have stayed in America. You were speaking of going to the West where you think you could make rules for yourself, no?”

  Jenny nodded, uncertain what the correct response would be.

  “I know that the American West is a great, vast place, bigger than much of Europe, but even so compared to all the world it is a very small place indeed. If you go back, certain you can live nowhere else, you will have put yourself into a cage of your own making.”

  Jenny sank down on the edge of the fountain. Trailing her fingers in the water, she considered what the old man had said.

  Papa Antonio poured them both lemonade from a thick stoneware pitcher placed ready by one of his attentive Copts. Then he stood, listening to the sounds of his household going about its duties, and waiting for her to speak. His silence was so unusual that Jenny bit back a hasty retort about the frontier being plenty big enough for her and spoke more carefully.

  “It would be a cage, wouldn’t it? My mama was a nurse during the War Between the States, helping my papa. Later she encouraged me when I wanted to be a doctor. She always said that a woman should know more than the kind of chatter that fills the spaces between the fashion plates in Godey’s Lady’s Book . Papa agreed with her. I guess they spoiled me some, even though they tried not to. They even made sure I went back East for a proper education, though I couldn’t see the need. Maybe Madame was the one who was right after all.”

  Papa Antonio patted her on one shoulder.

  “No need to go so far the other way, Jenny. Be happy being Jenny Benet, with all the sides she has. What I do not want you to do is to put yourself into any cage, just because you are hoping to make life simple. One thing this old man has learned is that life is never simple.”

  “I promise I’ll try,” Jenny said.

  “Now I must ask you to try another thing,” Papa Antonio said, and if anything he looked more serious than before. “I think I must ask you to protect your uncle.”

  “Uncle Neville?” Jenny restrained an impulse to jump to her feet like a dog hearing an intruder. “What’s wrong? Is it the people who nearly killed him before? Have you learned something?”

  “I have learned many things,” Papa Antonio replied, and there was that in his tone that made Jenny unwilling to challenge his evasion. “The danger to which I refer is not from without. It is from within. You say Leonardo has told you about what happened those many years ago.”

  Jenny glanced around the courtyard, confirmed they were alone, and nodded.

  “He told us about going after the tomb that he’d learned about from the German archeologist, about how they were chased off and the German fellow went home. And he told us about how he planned to go back, and how he thinks that his ‘accident’ was no accident, but a deliberate attempt to stop him.”

  “I am just a little surprised he told so much to a young lady,” Papa Antonio said, “but then I know he thinks highly of you.”

  “He told me because he knew I was nosey,” Jenny said, “and that if he didn’t I’d snoop around until I found something out. I think Uncle Neville hoped to scare me off, too.”

  Papa Antonio smiled sadly. “That, at least, has not worked, I think. Well, Jenny, we will not argue that point. I wish to tell you of my fears for your uncle.”

  He settled himself next to her on the fountain’s edge, refilled their glasses, and looked down into the water with such intensity that it seemed to Jenny that the old man must be seeing more than bubbles and froth.

  “I think that Leonardo really believes that what he wants is to find this tomb and make himself some name for a great discovery. He has written to me about that other German, the one who has found Troy, or so they say. I think Leonardo would be another like that one.

  “But I think there is something else driving him as well. I think that he felt great shame when the Bedouin forced him to retreat short of his goal. The German left for Europe. Eddie found his love, Miriam, but Leonardo, he only finds disgrace. I think it was to wash clean this disgrace as much as for anything else that he always plans to go back.”

  Jenny sipped her lemonade and listened, sure there would be more.

  “Once when we were discussing a battle, Leonardo says to me, ‘There is no shame in strategic retreat if it lets you remain strong enough to go after the enemy later.’ I think that until he returns to the desert, he will feel he ran rather than retreated.

  “But there is more. After his second attempt, when he is beaten so terribly and nearly dies, then I think this becomes more than a matter of transforming flight into strategic retreat. From his letters I realize that my lion is very angry, that he wants more than to find this tomb, he wants revenge on those who hurt him. Sometimes he may still say he is unconvinced that the two events are connected…”

  “He connected them for me and Stephen,” Jenny interjected.

  “He was trying to be honest with you, and as you yourself say, to scare you. To me he has said one and the other, but I think that in his deepest heart he is certain, and that even deeper than that certainty he is very, very angry. I think that now he not so much hunt for this old king of Egypt. I think he hunts for these Arabs who so greatly harmed him. He wishes to fight them again, this time prepared, and this time to win and so wash himself clean of the bitterness of two losses.”

  Jenny frowned. “I don’t know. He asked us to be very careful, not to say anything to anyone but you and Mr. Bryce.”

  “And yet the first thing he does when coming here is to go out into the bazaar? Not a bazaar where Europeans go, but to an Arab bazaar? If he had taken you where tourists go, or to one of the archeological finds, I would not worry as I do, but though Eduardo could make all arrangements while Leonardo remains safe under my roof, the first thing Leonardo does is go out and be seen. I am greatly troubled by this.”

  “Me, too,” Jenny said, “now that you put it that way. I’m real scared. Are you going to talk to Uncle Neville? You’re pretty sharp at making someone see when they’re fooling themselves.”

  Papa Antonio surprised her by slowly shaking his head.

  “I have tried, directly and indirectly. I have made no more headway than a sea gull into a tempest. So I warn you, who are his niece, and who truly cares for him.”

  “What good can I do,” Jenny said, bitter once more, “stuck back here in Cairo while the others go off after Neferankhotep?”

  “Two things you can do,” Papa Antonio said, undaunted. “One, by your very presence you may convince your uncle to change his mind, to reach after the new, good things life offers.”

  “I don’t know if that will work,” Jenny said. “Uncle Neville was so set on this trip that he almost missed meeting the ship that brought me from America. Even after he remembered, he didn’t change his plans, just gave me the choice of staying in London or coming with him. What’s your second plan?”

  “It is not, I think, unsuited to your own desires,” Papa Antonio said, and though he smiled his impish smile, Jenny thought that something sad remained around the edges. “You wish to go with him. Very well. I will help you to go—not because I think it is wise, but because I think that short of locking you in your room there is no way to discourage you. While I will be your host, I will not serve as Leonardo’s jailer.”

  “And then you want me to stop him?” Jenny asked in disbelief.

  “Rather I want you to force him—by the need he will feel to keep you safe, if no other way—to think carefully, and listen to the counsel of others. He will still be in danger, yes, and so will you all, but at least the danger will be from those he has somehow made his enemies and not from himself.”

  Jenny swallowed hard. Contemplating murderous assassins was one thing when safely in London or even on shipboard, but hearing this sane old man speak so calmly of them made her realize that they were a real threat, not some fancy of her adventurous uncle. Papa Antonio b
elieved in them—but then he’d seen his friend beaten, had his home robbed. He had reason to believe.

  For a moment Jenny toyed with the idea of letting Uncle Neville persuade her to stay behind. Then she realized that she’d never forgive herself if anything happened to him, anything she might have prevented. She hadn’t been there when the Indians killed her parents. She’d be there when whoever it was came for Uncle Neville.

  “I’ll go,” Jenny said, making her voice as firm as possible. “If you can’t convince him to give it up, I’ll go.”

  8

  Bazaar

  That evening, as members of Papa Antonio’s apparently innumerable family of attentive Copts were clearing away dinner and the guests were adjourning to the courtyard, Eddie Bryce arrived.

  Neville was startled by how much his old friend had come to resemble an Arab. Always lean, now Eddie was spare, his flesh sapped of any excess by constant exertion in the heat. His skin had browned to the color of dark toast. Brown hair and beard were worn long, neatly trimmed around the edges. Like Papa Antonio, Eddie wore the long, loose cotton robes of the Arab, but he also wore a turban that made him look oddly, instantly, exotic.

  At closer inspection, Eddie’s English heritage was still evident. His nose was short, his weathered skin—where it was not covered by beard—showed a faint patterning of freckles beneath the tan. His hair had bleached slightly from exposure to the sun, giving the effect of greying, and thereby added dignity to the man’s overall presence.

  The stiff bow with which Eddie greeted the company mingled the oriental and the occidental in style, but when Papa Antonio gave his newly arrived guest a chiding look, Eddie grinned and embraced the old man. Introductions followed, and soon their party was settled in the courtyard, where the plashing of the fountain waters would assure that they not be overheard by the other residents.

  The father of the Copt family, serving in the capacity of butler, brought coffee, sweet wine, and desserts, then withdrew. Neville suspected that the butler’s frequent forays over to the two or three other clusters of guests spread about the courtyard were as much to assure that they were not in a position to overhear this conference as to assure their comfort.