by Belinda Grey
‘I would like to go down into the village, to Wadi Amarna,’ she said.
Abdul will escort you wherever you wish to go, Farida offered. ‘His family has served mine loyally for three generations?
‘I thought he was your servant? Ellen said to Henry
‘Abdul serves the master of the house. Since your father’s death Henry has been virtual master here,’ Christopher said.
There was an undercurrent of some deep emotion in his voice, but before Ellen could decide what it was Farida said, ‘None of us could manage without you, Henry. I am such a fool about business!’
‘My father—’ Ellen began.
‘Was too immersed in his researches to have leisure for the affairs of ordinary life,’ Henry said.
‘I would like to pay my respects.’
‘He is buried in the family mausoleum,’ Christopher said. ‘It seemed fitting that a man who spent his life delving into Egyptian tombs should finally rest in one.’
Again there was an odd note in his voice which Ellen couldn’t identify.
‘You must excuse me if I don’t come with you,’ Farida said. ‘It would distress me far too much.’
She didn’t look particularly distressed, Ellen thought, but then it was now about three months since Hywel Parry had died, and presumably the grief felt in the household was dissipating.
‘We must try not to dwell upon sad events,’ Henry said. ‘Your father would have wanted you to enjoy your visit. You know, in recent months he often spoke of writing to you, of making himself known to his daughter. You never did hear from him, I suppose?’
A queer little silence fell upon the room. Ellen had the impression that the three of them were waiting for her to say something.
‘I never had a letter from my father,’ she said at last. ‘Goodnight, and thank you for a delicious meal.’
‘But you’ve scarcely touched a mouthful!’ Farida exclaimed. ‘There are figs to follow.’
‘Ellen is enviably slender,’ Christopher said, ‘but in Egypt a fuller figure is more fashionable. You don’t object to my calling you “Ellen”, do you? Out here we English usually get together on first-name terms.’
‘No, of course I don’t mind, though I do happen to be Welsh,’ Ellen said.
‘You sound somewhat nationalistic, my dear,’ Henry commented, raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s a disease that seems to be spreading. Even out here, where British and French influence is so strong, there are malcontents who declare that Egypt is capable of governing herself without European help. An impossible and impracticable dream, of course. We cannot afford to lose our controlling interest in the Suez.’
‘Here is Ellen dropping to sleep on her feet, and you begin to lecture her on political affairs!’ Farida exclaimed.
‘My dear, I humbly apologise. There is nothing so boring to ladies as politics,’ Henry said. ‘We will find more entertaining topics of conversation tomorrow.’
Ellen smiled, murmured a final goodnight and made her way back into the wide lobby out of which two narrow staircases spiralled to the upper storey. This was certainly a lovely house with its cool, spacious rooms, its rugs and woven hangings and low couches, so different from the ornate clutter of houses at home.
It was quite dark outside and oil lamps cast a soft glow over the polished floors and white walls. The doors leading to the central courtyard were still open and she could hear the soft plash-plash of the water as it sprayed from the mouths of the dolphins into the pool.
It would have been pleasant to have inherited all this, Ellen thought wistfully. But it was Farida’s home and it was only fair that it should revert back to her when her husband died. Farida’s husband. Ellen’s father. Both the same man, with his life divided neatly into two parts, and she had known him in neither sphere. The clever young man whom Lord Buckleigh had helped, the ardent husband fleeing in angry grief from the death of his wife, the ambitious scholar hoping to make some important discovery, the man who had married the beautiful Farida and called her house Silver Moon because of the gown she wore—all aspects of the same man, and Ellen had known none of them.
‘May I help you, Miss Ellen?’
She started slightly at Abdul’s voice. He must have followed her out of the dining-room and came now from the shadows, his face lit briefly by the glow of the lantern.
‘I wondered how the porter was—the one who was shot?’
‘Ali, Miss Ellen. Oh, it was no more than a slight flesh wound. He will be up and about in a few days. It is kind of you to enquire.’
‘It was most alarming, but fortunate that you happened to be armed.’
‘It is usual to carry a gun if one is going any distance, Miss Ellen,’ Abdul said.
‘Because of the Berbers?’
‘This is not a rich country,’ Abdul answered. ‘There are many thieves, many bandits coming from the south, but on the whole attacks are very rare.’
‘Abdul, you knew my father,’ she said abruptly. ‘He did intend me to come here, didn’t he?’
‘As far as I know, Miss Ellen. I’ve heard of him speak of it often.’
‘I see. Thank you, Abdul.’
‘Goodnight, Miss Ellen. Did you require tea or coffee in your room?’
‘Not tonight.’ She smiled and began to mount the staircase, aware of his eyes following her as she ascended.
In her room the bed had been turned down and her suitcases unpacked. In sudden misgiving Ellen went over to her sewing box and lifted the top compartment. To her relief the box containing the heart and the poem was still in the space below. It looked as if the best way to hide something was by putting it right under people’s noses. But it would be foolish to leave them here any longer. Ellen looked round, wondering what would serve as a good hiding place. The room was evidently cleaned regularly, and there was always the chance that an inquisitive maid might find them and recognise their value. She had no doubt that the ivory heart was ancient, and that in the words of the poem lay the answer to a question that she had not even begun to ask.
Eventually, not happy with her solution but lacking a better one, she put the box at the bottom of a carved chest in which her undergarments had been laid. The dresses she had bought under Mary Faversham’s guidance hung in the tall wardrobe, with her hats on a shelf above. They were the smartest clothes she had ever owned, and she had been well aware of the admiring glances cast at her by the two men. Her guardian and his secretary had certainly welcomed her warmly and Farida had gone out of her way to make her feel at home, but it was impossible to forget the warnings whispered to her first by the woman with the emerald ring and then by the boy during the display of horse-riding. And there had been the odd little silence when Henry Bligh had enquired if her father had written to her.
Despite her bodily fatigue Ellen’s mind was crowded with ideas. She wanted to find out if her father had posted the parcel to her or entrusted it to someone else. She wanted to find out more about the Berber tribesmen and why they had attacked, and why the man on the white horse had followed her. Most of all she wanted to find out about the man on the white horse.
Slowly she took off the rose-coloured dress, unlaced the corsets which Mary Faversham had insisted upon her wearing, and slipped on the woollen robe she had chosen as a protection against the evening chill. The long window leading on to the balcony was open and a faintly scented breeze blew up from the courtyard below.
Night air was exceedingly bad for the health, so Aunt Kate Evans had always assured her. Ellen pulled the window shut and drew the heavy curtain across. Two oil lamps stood on the dressing table, but the rest of the apartment was in shadow. Ellen sat down to take the pins out of her hair. Its black braids framing her face gave her a mysterious remote quality. She had never looked at herself before as if she were another person, and the sensation was a strange one. Her eyes, dreaming into the dark glass, were wistful.
Somewhere beyond this luscious room, away from the mysteries that were thickening about her, a
man was waiting who would fall in love with her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name, as surely as she knew that she would love him with all the passion of her unawakened nature. For a moment her confused thoughts were stilled, and as she closed her eyes briefly imagining what she had never experienced, a man’s hands touching her hair and breasts, a man’s voice whispering to her in words that slurred into kisses.
Ellen opened her eyes, shaking her head violently in reproof at her own foolishness. This land was casting a spell over her, robbing her of her commonsense. She would have to remind herself firmly that she was here simply on a visit, and that it was highly unlikely she would meet a lover when she had already existed for eighteen years without falling in love with anybody at all.
The narrow windows in the outer wall that looked out over the surrounding countryside were still unshuttered. She went over and stood by one of them, looking out into the darkness. At the end of the drive the moon glinted on wrought-iron gates, closed now, and beyond the gates the high pass reared into the sky. There was a loneliness in the landscape that matched her own mood, and the harsh cry of some night hunting bird was like Nature’s comment on the isolation of men. No figure on a white horse watched her from the ridge. It was silly to expect it, but she stood at the narrow window for a long time while the moon rose higher.
CHAPTER
FIVE
‘If you wish to pay respects to your father, Abdul will escort you,’ Henry Bligh said the next morning after breakfast.
Ellen had eaten with the two men for company. Farida, it seemed, never rose until noon. ‘Is he buried a long distance off?’ she asked in puzzlement.
‘At the other side of the village,’ Henry explained. ‘There is a memorial there for families of importance in this district, and most of them have tombs there. No more than an hour’s ride.’
‘Then I would like to go.’ She would have liked also to take flowers, but the gesture might have seemed sentimental. It was not as if she felt any real personal grief for her father.
‘If you ride a little further on,’ Christopher Tyrrell said, ‘you will be able to see some recent excavations. Your father was working out there just before he was taken sick.’
‘Looking for what?’
‘Oh, he had a crazy theory that the tomb of some great priestess was in the area,’ Henry told her. It was a kind of bee in his bonnet, if you’ll excuse the expression. The place has already been thoroughly investigated and some interesting discoveries made, but the tomb simply doesn’t exist.’
‘What made him think that it did?’ she enquired.
‘There’s a legend,’ Christopher said, ‘handed down for generations by the people of Wadi Amarna. They say that long ago in the reign of the heretic Pharaoh, Akhnaton—you’ve heard of him?’
Ellen shook her head.
‘Akhnaton tried to establish a new state religion,’ Christopher explained. ‘It was based on the worship of the Sun, one central Deity instead of many gods and goddesses. On a political level it would also have meant centralisation of government, and that didn’t please the priests, who were drawing substantial revenues from their own temples and holding sway over the people through fear and corruption. Akhnaton broke with the priests, moved his court to a new city built in honour of the Sun, and established a kind of benevolent dictatorship. That much is history.’
‘And the legend?’
‘Egypt used to be divided into small provinces called nomes, ruled by the local Nomarch who was responsible to the Pharaoh for his management. According to the story the Nomarch of this region was a man called Ayet. He was an intelligent man who realised that he stood to gain prestige and royal favour if he supported the new Sun worship. But Ayet had a wife who was barren, and the wife had prayed to Isis, chief among the goddesses, to ask for a child. A daughter was born and named Amentisis—that means beloved of Isis. And Ayet and his wife were in a quandary. They didn’t want to offend Akhnaton and they didn’t want to offend Isis either!’
‘What did they do?’ Ellen asked with interest.
‘According to the story, Ayet went off to join the heretic Court, but a secret temple in honour of the goddess was built and the child, Amentisis, was dedicated to the goddess and trained as a priestess. She was said to be very beautiful and to have magical powers, but she died young. Nobody seems to know what exactly happened, but according to the fragments of evidence we have, Akhnaton discovered Ayet’s treachery and the Nomarch was disgraced.’
‘What evidence is there?’
‘Not much,’ Henry observed wryly. ‘There was certainly a Nomarch called Ayet. A letter on papyrus was found in which he assured Akhnaton that the temples to lesser deities had been closed and their priests driven out so that the Sun Religion could be encouraged. And there is also a note among official scrolls to the effect that the Nomarch Ayet has been relieved of office and exiled from the Court for ‘secret worship of false gods’. His tomb and that of his wife was found about ten years ago. It had already been stripped by tomb robbers and many of the inscriptions defaced, perhaps on Pharaoh’s orders. The two mummies were there, but there was no sign of their daughter. Her tomb has never been found, though part of a small temple to Isis was unearthed. However, that too had already been robbed. The ancient Egyptians had a great fondness for grave-robbing.’
‘How long ago did all this happen?’ Ellen wanted to know.
‘Nearly two thousand years before Christ,’ Henry said, and smiled at her expression.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ asked Christopher. ‘At a time when we were running around with wood smeared all over us, these people enjoyed a very high level of civilisation. The Golden Age of Egypt.’
‘Which, after all, was the cradle of civilisation,’ Henry pointed out.
‘Cradle,’ Ellen repeated thoughtfully. The lines of the poem had leapt into her mind, ‘Lost is the cradle that rocked her to slumber’.
‘What about “cradle”?’ Henry asked.
‘Nothing. It’s an interesting phrase, that’s all.’
If Amentisis had died young then, in a sense, her cradle had been her grave, and her tomb had never been found.
‘If you come over to the stables I’ll introduce you to Hecate,’ her guardian said. ‘Her name is no indication of her nature. She’s the most placid of mounts. You’ll excuse us, Christopher?’
‘Yes, of course. Have a pleasant day, Ellen.’ The secretary raised his hand cheerfully as they went out.
‘It must be hard for him to be confined to a wheelchair,’ Ellen remarked when they were out of earshot.
‘His situation could be worse,’ Henry said. ‘As it is, he’s comfortably settled in an undemanding job.’
‘It was kind of you to employ him,’ she said.
‘Your father and I both agreed that we required a secretary. Hywel was compiling notes for a book he hoped to write, and there is quite a lot of paper work connected with the upkeep of the estate. Farida’s father owned considerable property and most of the people at Wadi Amarna are employed at Silver Moon in one capacity or another.’
The stables were away from the main buildings, and Ellen felt a qualm of alarm when she saw the handsome horses in their stalls. Hecate, however, was a small mare with a kindly expression which seemed to promise that she had no intention of bucking off a novice rider.
‘Abdul will take good care of you,’ Henry said. ‘I would come with you myself, but I do have matters to attend here.’
‘I’ll see you later, then.’ She smiled at Abdul who, in his usual dignified fashion, was waiting to help her mount. Strictly speaking, the pale green skirt and ruffled white bodice she had chosen to wear were not riding kit, but once mounted on Hecate’s broad back she felt very much at ease, and after only a little instruction from Abdul she was able to guide the mare at a walking pace.
‘Are we likely to run into those Berbers?’ she asked, as they circled away from the walls of Silver Moon.
‘Indeed no, Miss Ellen,’
he replied earnestly. ‘They would certainly never venture into Wadi Amarna.’
‘Yet you still go armed?’ She nodded towards the holster at his belt.
‘It is always wise to take precautions,’ the servant said. ‘These are troubled times, Miss Ellen. Rumours of riot and disaffection.’
They rode sedately out into fields. They were rich with ripening corn, their borders marked by deep, narrow ditches along which water was pumped.
‘Feisal Pasha who was owner here, farmed the land,’ Abdul pointed, ‘and irrigated it.’
‘Was that Farida’s father?’
‘Yes, Miss Ellen. My grandfather and father both worked for him and for his father. Pasha Feisal El Assur was a very fine man who wished to improve the conditions of his people.’
‘A kind of Nomarch,’ Ellen said.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss?’
‘Nothing, just an old word for a kind of local ruler. Is this the village?’
‘As you see, Miss Ellen, it’s a quiet place,’ he apologised, ‘but on market days, when the traders come in, then it becomes quite crowded.’
‘I like it as it is,’ Ellen said, looking from side to side as they rode down the street with its sunbaked buildings. The flat roofed dwellings with their tiny shuttered windows fascinated her, and she would have liked to stop and talk to one of the women who drew her yashmak more closely across her face as they approached.
But they were riding on towards a railed enclosure in which several carved tombs and monuments were clustered.
‘The family of El Assur have their vault on the south side,’ Abdul said. ‘I will wait here with the horses, Miss Ellen.’