by Belinda Grey
‘Our local legend, and much more modern than Amentisis,’ Selina told her.
‘Who is the Hawk?’ Ellen asked. She had clenched her fists and sweat trickled down between her fingers.
‘Nobody knows. He’s a kind of Robin Hood, I suppose, except that he doesn’t steal anything,’ Selina informed her. ‘He’s a supporter of Arabi Pasha and goes about stirring up disaffection. Nobody knows his real name, and he’s reported as having been in so many different places at the same time that I’m inclined to think there may be more than one person who calls himself the Hawk.’
‘Why Hawk?’ Ellen asked.
‘Horus was the falcon god of Egypt,’ Selina said. ‘He was the protector of the land, the one who joined Upper and Lower Egypt under the double crown.’
‘Politics!’ Farida said again, pulling down her veil. ‘Do let us be on our way.’
She sounded a trifle discomposed, Ellen thought, as if something had rippled the placid shallows of her mind.
‘You must take very good care of my dear ward,’ Henry said, embracing Ellen as they prepared to mount up again. ‘I’ll not have her exposed to infection in that clinic of yours!’
‘We’ll deliver her back in excellent condition,’ Dr. Ford promised. ‘Farida, you must come and pay us a visit some time.’
‘One day, when the weather is cooler,’ Farida said, her voice weary behind the enveloping veil. ‘Travel is so fatiguing.’
‘And the last thing we want is to fatigue you,’ Henry said.
His voice and manner were solicitous but Farida evaded his helping hand as she settled herself in the litter. Through the slits in her veil her eyes turned briefly to scan the horizon again and then she moved her head in a little, puzzled gesture.
‘You seemed very interested in what I said about the Hawk,’ Selina remarked, leaning towards Ellen.
‘It sounded intriguing,’ Ellen said.
‘Oh, this is an intriguing country,’ Selina told her. ‘I came out here five years ago to help my father and I am still only scratching the surface of its mysteries. Not that I approve of men like this Hawk, who ferment trouble wherever they go. Mind you, they do command great loyalty from people with any grudge against the Government, and I can understand that. The Khedive is no more than a puppet ruler, and all the best posts are given to English or French officials. If there is a rebellion it will be a savage one.’
‘You are making our guest nervous,’ her father remarked, overhearing. ‘It’s my belief that even if there is trouble the Egyptians will never turn upon their friends. My own people are very grateful for the help I try to give them, and I’m certain my own position is quite secure.’
‘You’re an optimist, father,’ Selina said.
‘A physician has to be an optimist, else he would never be able to endure the scenes among which he passes his working life. There is so much disease here, so little understanding of modern methods of treatment! The infant mortality rate alone is scandalous. We cannot persuade the mothers to come into the clinic to have their babies. They squat in the fields and go back to work within a few hours, thus doing untold damage to their systems.’
‘My father is a man with a mission,’ Selina said, affectionate pride in her voice.
‘A mission, hut no money,’ Dr. Ford said. If I were a rich man I could build a research laboratory and employ the best medical assistants to help me in my work. It’s no more than a dream, though.
But a dream that could be realised, Ellen thought, if he were to discover some ancient and unrifled tomb full of the precious ornaments with which such a tomb would be provided.
Aloud she said, her eyes upon the doctor’s bearded profile, ‘My father might have helped you, I suppose, if he had ever found the tomb of Amentisis.’
‘I had hoped that his quest had borne fruit,’ Dr. Ford said. ‘He was actually out at the diggings when he was taken ill. Some of the local villagers helped him back to Silver Moon, but by the time Selina and I had arrived the infection had reached his lungs and he was in a coma. A premature end to what might have been a brilliant career.’
‘And not even time to write to his daughter?’ Selina said, a question in her voice.
‘I was not even aware that he had remarried,’ Ellen answered carefully.
‘Farida is so anxious to have you like her,’ Dr. Ford said, edging his horse nearer to Hecate. ‘She was reared very strictly in the belief that she must always try to please people. Your father was unfailingly kind to her, but she cannot have been a mentally stimulating companion.’
‘She’s a hothouse orchid,’ Selina said tolerantly. ‘Not meant to be in the real world at all. Ellen, we’re coming to Tel-El-Aton in a few minutes. Look! you can see the walls of the houses under the cliff. There’s a little bit of a river, but the land is arid, and most of the people hereabouts are wretchedly poor.’
A soft purple twilight hung low over the last fiery gleams of the setting sun as they rode towards a long, L-shaped building of reddish stone with a flat roof encircled by a white railing.
‘Selina grows fruit and vegetables in the roof garden,’ Dr. Ford pointed. ‘I had soil carted all the way from the banks of the Nile. Our living quarters are very simple, I fear.’
The house was a single-storey building, with doors, opening off a covered verandah. Two men hurried out to greet the doctor with evident pleasure at his return.
‘I must look in at my patients,’ he said. ‘There are only two resident here at present and both are well on the road to recovery, but they fret if they think themselves neglected. Selina, will you show our visitor to the guest room?’
‘It’s this one.’ Selina opened a door at the end of the building and ushered Ellen into a small, whitewashed room. ‘I’ll have to get the bed made up, and I’ll get a nightgown and a change of clothes for you. Oh, and a toothbrush! We always keep a few spare ones. Excuse me for a few minutes.’
The room was cool and unpretentious, lit by an oil lamp on the broad windowsill. Woven rugs matched the striped window blinds and, apart from the bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe were the only articles of furniture in the room.
Ellen opened one of the drawers with some idea of making space for whatever Selina intended to lend her. The drawer was already half full of a conglomeration of yellowing newspapers, rolls of bandage, a couple of strings of glass beads, some photographs—
‘I’m afraid most of the rubbish finds its way into this room,’ Selina apologised, coming in with a pile of sheets. ‘I’d have cleared it out if I’d known you were coming, but I truly can’t remember the last time we had visitors.’
Ellen made some reply which must have sounded quite normal, for Selina went out again cheerfully announcing, ‘Now from my extensive wardrobe I’ll conjure up a blouse and a skirt for you to wear, and tell Hassan we’ll be three for dinner.’
The photograph at which Ellen was staring was of a couple with arms entwined. A young couple, the boy taller than his companion, his head slightly bent towards her, the girl plumply pretty in a loose gown embroidered all over with tiny crescent moons. There was no mistaking who they were, even though both were much younger. The girl Farida stood within the protecting arm of the one who would become the man called Hawk. There was no doubt about it. There was no doubt about it at all.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Tel-El-Aton was a modest but comfortable house, one wing containing the living quarters, the other containing the clinic with its six bed hospital ward, its dispensary, and its outpatients’ room. Two porters and a woman who doubled as cook and laundress worked for Dr. Ford, and there were generally two or three small boys hanging about in the hope of being taken on for a day or two as casual labour.
‘I make up most of the medicines for my father,’ Selina explained as she showed Ellen round the next morning. ‘There is so much unnecessary sickness here. Nearly everybody we see suffers from some sort of malnutrition, and hookworm is a constant problem. We have many cases of
bilharzia too, and my father can see no end to it until we can persuade people to boil their water.’
‘He spoke of blindness,’ Ellen said.
‘Trachoma,’ Selina nodded. ‘The fellahin women bathe their children’s sore eyes with mud from the river but the mud itself is often infected. He would like to take a group of these children and study them in depth, but for that a man needs a great deal of money.’
Ellen was silent and her companion, glancing at her, said, ‘You see, if your father had discovered the tomb of Amentisis he would have helped my father in his project, but I suppose it was foolish to hope.’
‘It sounds a most worthy scheme,’ Ellen said.
‘And I truly feel privileged to be able to help him,’ Selina said, her blue eyes shining. ‘I would have liked to be a doctor, but there is no possibility of that until more people begin to realise that females have intelligence. That’s why I don’t mind it when Farida teases me about being an old maid. I think I was meant to care for other people’s children, not have any of my own.’
‘You know Farida very well, don’t you?’ Ellen said. She had pushed the photograph back into the drawer but the memory of it had troubled her sleep.
‘Nobody knows Farida very well,’ Selina said. ‘My father was always fond of her, but then he knew her when she was a child, just after he’d come out here. Her father was alive then. El Assur Pasha was a very strict man, a hard one.’
‘And he arranged for her marriage to my father,’ Ellen said thoughtfully.
‘Such marriages are very often successful,’ the other girl said.
But a younger Farida had posed for a photograph with the man who called himself Hawk, and her expression had been the tender, eager look of a girl in love. A dart of what Ellen dimly recognised as jealousy shot through her.
‘We can ride to the bazaar this afternoon,’ Selina remarked. ‘The local people hold it once a month and come in with their goods from all the districts around. It’s quite safe for us to go unchaperoned.’
She could buy something for Aunt Kate Evans, Ellen decided as they set out later that day. Dr. Ford had a longer line of patients than usual because of his brief absence, but he had waved away their offer to stay and help.
‘Go and spend all your money at the bazaar, and be sure to have your fortune told, Miss Ellen. They always cheer you up by promising a brilliant future.’
The bazaar was no more than half an hour’s ride away, and the noise of it assaulted Ellen’s ears before they crested the rise and dropped down to the sandy plateau where brightly coloured tents and rickety stalls had been set up. There were camels flopped comfortably in a row, their heads rising out of their ungainly bodies with as much self-satisfaction as if they were handsome, and horses milled about within a circle of tethered rope.
‘I’ll see to the horses and get what I need,’ Selina announced as they dismounted. ‘Why not stroll about in your own time and we’ll meet up later? That tent over there sells lemonade and coffee. We can meet there.’
‘Fine.’ Ellen nodded amiably and wandered off, pulling down her veil. Although it irritated her to have to look at the world through a gauze, the long stares of the passing men and the mixture of curiosity and disapproval in those stares made her feel conspicuous.
Most of the women here wore the yashmak, which invested even the plainest female with an air of mystery. Many had babies on their backs and Ellen, noting the reddening eyelids of some of the children, remembered Dr. Ford’s words over dinner the previous evening.
‘If the government paid more attention to the health of its citizens and less to the profits they wring out of their trade agreements in Suez, this would be a happier nation!’
The people here seemed happy enough as they bargained shrilly in a mixture of languages for the various goods displayed for sale. Several family groups were here, the women unpacking their wares while the men hailed old friends and the children ran about, getting under everybody’s feet but seldom being scolded.
‘You buy mummy, lady?’ A small boy popped up in front of her waving what looked like a withered black root under her nose.
‘No, thank you!’ She screwed up her nose in disgust, recalling what Mary Faversham had said.
‘The ancient Egyptians used to embalm cats and dogs and lizards, you know, and some of these are sold to tourists. I think they’re quite horrid myself, but some people buy them.’
In a cleared space nearby a turbaned man sat, cross-legged, before a wicker basket out of which a snake reared up swaying to and fro in time to the man’s own swaying as he played his flute, his gnarled fingers rising and falling on the instrument.
Ellen watched in fascinated awe, her own eyes as hypnotised as the snake, her foot unconsciously tapping the sand in time with the rhythm. She had heard of snake charmers but had never really imagined she would ever see one. ‘You have fortune told, pretty lady?’ A tiny, large-eyed child was tugging at her dress.
‘Well, I’m not—oh, very well!’ Ellen allowed him to lead her into the shadow of the canvas.
Aunt Kate Evans would have a fit at such heathenish goings on, but then Aunt Kate Evans was a long way off.
Within the tent her hands were seized in a strong, warm clasp and before she could utter a protest her veil was pushed aside, her mouth silenced by other lips. ‘I saw you wandering like a princess among peasants,’ a voice said in her ear.
‘I came to have my fortune told!’ she gasped, trying to wrench free.
‘Oh, I can give you a pretty fortune,’ the man who called himself Hawk said. ‘You are going to meet a tail, dark man who will tell you how desirable you are and how much he wants to seduce you, and you will tell him to do as he pleases.’
‘Indeed I will not!’ she interrupted.
‘And you will tell him everything he wishes to know about the tomb of Amentisis,’ he continued.
‘If that was all you wanted, she said, cold with disappointment, ‘you need not have bothered to kiss me! I know nothing. Everybody seems to think I’m concealing some knowledge my father passed on to me before he died, but they all have their own reasons for wanting that knowledge!’
‘I want you to be safe. You’ll be in danger for as long as you keep your secret to yourself,’ he warned.
‘In danger from whom? From my guardian or my stepmother? You may want to help me, but you’re more interested in protecting her, aren’t you?’
‘I do not believe that Farida is a willing party to any scheme.’
‘But you fear that she might be? Is that it? Why should you care? What’s Farida to you?’
‘You want to know a great deal,’ he commented mildly. His mildness spurred her own anger.
‘Oh, I’m a strange person,’ she retorted acidly. ‘When unknown women warn me to go home and strange men try to frighten me away by shooting at me and then by abducting me in the middle of the night—’
‘Evening. You’d scarcely finished your dinner.’
‘Don’t split hairs! When all those things happen to me then I want to know the reason for it all.’
‘Your father found the tomb of Amentisis just before he was taken ill,’ he insisted. ‘I’m certain of it. But he didn’t tell Henry Bligh, his friend and partner. Doesn’t that prove he didn’t trust him?’
‘He didn’t tell you either,’ she countered sweetly.
‘I was not there, and in any case you, being his daughter, were much in his mind. He was already sick.’
‘He made Henry Bligh my guardian.’
‘Arrangements made earlier when matters between them were different. Had Hywel lived, he’d have altered them, I’m certain. But he sent you information that other people wanted—’
‘Including yourself!’
‘It was more important that you should be protected from harm.’
‘But you don’t even know me,’ she said in bewilderment. ‘I’m beginning to think you didn’t know my father either.’
‘I met him.’
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br /> ‘At Silver Moon?’
‘No, not at Silver Moon. That’s not important.’
‘Oh, I give up! I don’t understand any of this!’ Ellen exclaimed in despair.
‘And I cannot explain.’
‘For the honour of your house—I know! I really see no point in continuing this conversation as we’ve nothing to say to each other,’ she said stiffly.
‘Poor little Ellen.’ In the gloom of the tent his eyes smiled down at her. ‘I wish that other obligations would permit me to be completely frank with you. There should be honesty between lovers.’
‘We are not lovers!’
‘Not yet, not in literal fact. But there is a bond between us.’
‘Of mutual distrust?’ she asked lightly.
‘Of the desire that can spring between a man and a woman even when they are strangers,’ he said.
‘Enemies,’ she contradicted.
‘I am not your enemy,’ he countered swiftly. ‘Only trust me and you will see how much of a friend I am to you.’
It was all against commonsense, but her instinct begged her to take the ivory pendant from beneath her bodice and the card from the lining in her bag.
‘This much I can tell you,’ he said and his eyes held hers in the dimness. ‘I would net ever cause harm to you or try to rob you of that which is yours. Believe that if you believe nothing else, and when you have learned to believe me then please share with me the knowledge that you have, for your sake and the sake of others.’
He took her hands again, bent to kiss their palms and turned to leave, bowing his head beneath the flap of the tent, leaving her half satisfied and half bemused.
‘You had good fortune, Missy?’ The old man had returned and was grinning at her.
‘The man who was here,’ she asked urgently, ‘who is he? Do you know his name?’
‘Very fine man. Brave,’ the fortune-teller said.
But I want to know his name.’ She fumbled in her bag for some coins and pressed them into his hand. ‘Please, just his name.’
‘Rami.’ The old man dropped his voice as his hand closed over the money. ‘His name is Rami, Missy. You go now. No more questions.’