“You are unreasonable . . . No, I have never said that . . . Tewfik, I—” Pasha’s voice was very distinct now, although she still couldn’t hear everything being said.
The other man, presumably this Tewfik to whom Pasha referred, had a much higher-pitched voice. “. . . sultan will never allow . . . Orabi says . . . future good of Egypt.”
“Tewfik, what you suggest is foolish . . . If the French . . .
I cannot allow—”
Tewfik shouted even louder. “You cannot betray the sultan!”
Violet wondered whether de Lesseps and Pasha each provided the other rooms in their respective residences. Guilty over eavesdropping and certain that the volume was going to draw servants any moment, Violet slipped away as quietly as she could, finding a servants’ staircase and taking it down into the kitchens. There, she found an Egyptian man who was stacking plates according to size inside a glass cabinet.
After first ensuring that the servant spoke English, Violet made the request for Louise-Hélène’s Turkish sand coffee.
He made an odd clucking noise, shaking his head in disapproval. “All of the time she wants the coffee. And she takes it with too much sugar. I make it sweet enough, it does not need so much sugar. Too much risk of burning with adding so much.” As he complained, he opened another cabinet and removed a brass-handled copper pot with two spouts, a metal spoon, several sealed jars, a metal cylinder with a brass crank at the top of it, a coffee pot, and a half dozen small, nearly square cups and saucers. He added all of the items to a copper tray.
“You will come?” he said before disappearing through a door at the back of the room.
It was more of a command than a question, and Violet obeyed. She found herself in a tiny courtyard, at the center of which was a little sand pit edged in stones. Chunks of coal were centered in the sand pit, and the Egyptian servant crouched down on the other side of the stones, his worn sandals exposing yellowed toenails. His position looked very uncomfortable, and Violet didn’t dare imitate it, lest she not be able to rise again. Instead, she gingerly knelt down on the courtyard tiles, as if she were attending to a corpse.
Violet now realized that the lumps of coal were already heated, glowing red with thin tendrils of smoke rising up from the grains of sand. The servant actually stuck his hand in the sand and stirred up the coals, causing Violet to cringe at the action, but he seemed completely undisturbed by touching the hot chunks.
His first step was to nestle the spouted pot into the hottest part of the pit, so that it was half submerged in sand and coals. He then opened one of the sealed jars and poured in water nearly to the top, then added some sugar from a second jar. As that heated, he removed the crank from the top of the metal cylinder; then, from another of the sealed containers, he poured coffee beans into the cylinder and reattached the crank. Now he operated the crank over the heating pot as finely ground coffee came sprinkling out of the grinder like the coal smuts that forever floated through the London air. When he was satisfied with the amount, he put down the grinder and waited. As the water began to simmer, he stirred the coffee so that the grounds were evenly distributed. As it grew closer to boiling, foam formed on top of the pot, which the servant deftly scooped off with his long-handled spoon. Next he tossed spices in, the fragrant odor suggesting at least clove and cinnamon, plus something aromatic she didn’t recognize.
Then he grabbed the brass handle of the pot, which was surely as hot as the pot itself, and tipped the spout into one of the cups, placed it on a saucer, and handed it to Violet. How kind that he was going to have her try it first. She began to lift the cup, and he said “No!” very sternly, motioning for her to put the cup back down into the saucer.
“You must wait,” he instructed.
“For how long?” she asked.
“Wait,” was all he said, as he poured the remainder of the pot into another cup, then began the process all over again. As he concluded the second grinding of the beans, he said, “You may drink.”
Violet raised the cup to her lips, and was surprised by how thick and flavorful it was, so unlike the overboiled coffee she was used to in London shops. And still hot, even after waiting a few minutes. As she finished the cup, she realized that the waiting was to allow the grounds and spices to settle to the bottom of the cup. By this time, the servant was working on his third pot, and he poured it fresh into her cup.
“I will bring all to the lady’s rooms,” he said.
“No, I can manage it,” Violet told him, rising and dusting off her skirts. She allowed him to hand her the tray, from which he removed all of his supplies, just leaving the fragrant cups of coffee. “Thank you,” she said, and received a grunt in return, as he was already concentrating on stoking the smoldering embers to keep them lit.
As she walked back in through the kitchens and into the passageway that led upstairs, Violet observed that the tray itself was beautiful. She decided she would take the main staircase when she reached the ground floor, as she was certainly not going to attempt some narrow, winding set of steps to reach Louise-Hélène’s rooms and risk tripping over her skirts while carrying these steaming cups.
As Violet reached the bottom of the staircase, she noticed that the coffee cups were decorated with gilded handles and were painted in the bright, bold fashion that she had already become accustomed to here in Egypt. They reminded her of—
She was no longer sure what the painted cups reminded her of, as all she was cognizant of was the loud crack that preceded an intense pain in the back of her head, so acute that she felt both dizzy and numb at the same time. Her last conscious thought was of the tray full of beautiful cups flying out of her hands and up the staircase, the coffee sluicing out of the fragile cups as they smashed against the treads. She crashed against the stairs herself, her forehead receiving the same profound blow as her crown, and she knew nothing else.
Chapter 21
Violet awoke slowly, her first sense being that of overwhelming pain. Her head hurt so badly it was difficult to even open her eyes. Wherever she was, it was quiet. Utterly silent, in fact. She strained to listen for any noise: the distant braying of a camel, the bellow of a steamship, or even the wailing of Egyptian singers. Anything that Violet had become accustomed to over the past few days.
Nothing.
She attempted once more to open her eyes and take a deep breath, and was rewarded with more blackness and the feeling of something soft against her face, flattening against her lips as she drew air in.
Heavens, how her head throbbed, as though her brain were pushing and pulsing in an attempt to escape through her skull. She was lying on her back, and struggled to lift an arm to press it against her forehead in an attempt to contain the pain, but found that she couldn’t move it. Was she paralyzed? No, she could feel her arm and hand straining. In fact—
She moved her hand around and felt sand beneath it. Where was she? This was Egypt, so lying on sand could mean that she was anywhere in the country. A horrific thought struck her: She was still in Egypt, wasn’t she?
Gradually her senses were coming back, and with them came increased thirst. She licked her parched lips, and tasted both blood and gritty sand as her tongue found the gauzy fabric that seemed to be lightly draped over her face. It was almost as if she were in a . . . a . . . shroud.
The thought stilled her feeble movements. Was she dead? Was she passing into the afterlife? Was this sense of confusion what preceded the great meeting with the Almighty?
Get hold of your senses, Violet Harper, she told herself sternly. The dead do not have violently clanging headaches, nor are they thirsty.
No, she definitely was not dead.
But where was she? Was she lying along the canal bank somewhere? If so, why weren’t there any stars above her?
Violet wriggled a little, and then she realized that she wasn’t just lying on top of sand, but was loosely buried in it. The realization of what must have happened set her heart to pounding, and she stopped moving once
more as she fit together the random puzzle pieces.
Someone had struck her while she carried the tray and, believing she was dead, had carried her off and buried her. And that awareness gave rise to the certainty of exactly where she was.
She continued her slow but steady squirming, shaking the sand off of her body, until she was finally freed enough to remove the cloth that had been tossed on top of her before some shovelfuls of sand had been added. The effort left her exhausted and panting, but at least she no longer had fabric impairing her breathing.
After a few more minutes, Violet was finally able to rise to one elbow, propping herself up and slowly easing into a seated position. Once upright, she spent a few moments gathering herself together, willing her head to cease its incessant drumbeat. She knew she had to confirm what she believed to be true, so she put out an arm in the inky blackness and began feeling her way around.
As expected, Violet’s arm connected with a stiff form. Absentmindedly apologizing to it, she crawled over to it and ran both hands over it. It was the form of a woman.
Violet laughed, the sound reverberating in the silent tomb and piercing back into her ears. She knew she sounded deranged, and it wasn’t far from the truth to think that she might be entering a state of hysteria.
Better to laugh, though, than to focus on her predicament. She was a living corpse, stuck in a mausoleum, and no one knew where she was. Including herself.
Another bubble of delirious laughter caught in her throat as she realized something new. Had she actually died, she would have simply been labeled an unfortunate disappearance. There would have been no hearse ride for Violet Harper. No offer of prayers by the minister, no offer of condolences to Sam.
Ah, Sam. The thought of what her vanishing into thin air would do to Sam was overwhelming and a little nauseating.
As it was, she had no idea what time it was, nor even what day it was.
Violet Harper, you must rescue yourself.
But how? She had toured a mausoleum. She knew that she was now underground, and that even if she could reach the upstairs, there were no windows and the door would be locked from the outside. And if the criminal were clever enough, she was in some mausoleum miles from Ismailia to ensure that no one would ever find her, much less hear her cries for help. That thought caused panic to well up in her chest.
Calm yourself. Solve one problem at a time.
Violet crawled around in the pitch-blackness until she found the edge of the wall. From there, she arose and, using her hand on the wall as a guide, she followed it until she reached the opening of the women’s burial room. She was sickened by having to drag her skirts over bodies attempting to rest in peace, and she apologized to every woman upon whom she trod, making a promise to find whoever had desecrated their sacred spot by burying a living person in it, particularly a living person who did not belong to whatever family owned the mausoleum.
She finally reached the entry, and made a wholly inelegant job of climbing out, simply lying on the floor for several minutes to recover now that she was out of the sand pit. Mercifully, her head no longer felt as if it were about to explode like a catapulting firework, and the pain was receding to a dull roar. Once more, she crawled along the passage, feeling her way until she reached the end and her hand grasped the bottom of an angled ladder. Not as easy as the staircase of the previous mausoleum, but at least a way out.
Praise the Almighty.
It took every bit of Violet’s will and strength to make it up the ladder without losing consciousness and falling. She accomplished it by pausing at every step, clinging to the rail with both hands, and pressing her cheek against the next tread in front of her. It was an inexorable climb; it must have been like this for the poor ancient Egyptian slaves to climb up the pyramids during their construction.
But Violet was determined to reach her destination. She was thwarted again, though, by the door at the top of the steps, which wouldn’t budge as she pressed against it. She remembered that it would be covered above by dirt and sand. Once again her heart began to pound with dread.
She took deep breaths to calm herself. Do not panic. Think of something else.
As Violet stood perched at the top of the steps, her thoughts wandered back to the last moments she remembered. Louise-Hélène had requested Violet seek out some Turkish sand coffee, and the surly servant had made it at Violet’s request. The servant was going to take it to his mistress, but Violet had insisted that she do it, and she had been carrying the tray of coffee up the staircase when she was struck from behind.
Carrying the tray. Like a servant.
No, it was quite impossible to think that anyone would mistake Violet for a servant. She had obviously been part of the delegation, and she wasn’t wearing a servant’s uniform.
But lady’s maids frequently wore the cast-off clothing of their mistresses, and they could be fine dresses only a season old. With a tray in hand, was it possible that Violet looked like a maid?
But she had witnessed nothing that she considered nefarious. Why was someone attempting to kill her?
She decided that she was through speculating on her attempted murder for the moment. It was time to determine how to at least get to the ground floor of the mausoleum, where hopefully there might be slivers of light getting through, and then she could take the next step of freeing herself.
When Samir Basara had opened the panel that led to the lower staircase of his family’s mausoleum, hadn’t he pulled on a large iron ring? Would there perhaps be a corresponding ring below? Violet felt around on the solid piece of wood, hoping to avoid splinters. Ah, there it was. Now she prayed silently that it would give her the leverage she needed.
With a click that was deafening inside the confines of the mausoleum’s silence, the door’s latch released. Violet sobbed quietly in relief. Pushing it against the earth she knew was piled atop her was difficult, but with short bursts up and down she was able to shake off enough of it that eventually she opened the door completely. Once more she found herself crawling inelegantly out of an opening.
Twilight poked through tiny slits in the upper walls of the mausoleum. Whatever day it was, the sun had not yet gone completely down. Violet went to the entry door and banged on it, crying out for help. Her pounding was feeble, though, and she doubted it could be heard very much past the exterior of the thick wood door.
Had she come this far only to be thwarted by a door?
She turned her back to the door and sank down to the ground against it, thinking idly that her dress was completely ruined. Even without a mirror, she knew that no one would think she was a servant now, but they might consider her to be deranged. She even laughed out loud at the thought, a little too hysterically, which made her think that perhaps she was going mad in this dark place.
Then another thought struck her. Perhaps the door mechanism was the same as the one leading down into the crypt, and she could simply open it from inside. With renewed hope, she clambered back up again, trying the iron handle. It refused to open. However, it did make a great creaking noise as she twisted it back and forth, piercing the air as her cries could not do. Violet determined that she would maneuver the door handle until someone, anyone, heard it and realized that someone was trapped behind it.
After several minutes of this exhausting work, her shoulders were now shrieking torturously in pain and her head had resumed its previous internal cacophony. But at last Violet was greeted with a muffled “Excusez-moi, is there someone in there?”
It was a familiar voice, French and male.
“Yes, please help me,” she gasped.
“Who are you?” The voice was curious, not realizing there was a nearly stark-raving mad woman inches away, pining for release.
Violet took a deep breath. “I am Violet Harper, a member of the British delegation to the Suez Canal.”
Silence. Then, “Ah, Madame Harper the undertaker. It is I, Auguste Mariette. How did you manage to get yourself locked inside a mausoleum?�
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This was not a moment for explanation of all that had happened to her. “Can you help me?”
From outside came the sound of the man attempting to work the handle from the other side. “It is locked,” he said.
“Yes, of course it is,” she said impatiently. “Have you ever picked one before?” Not that Violet herself had, but perhaps a renowned Egyptologist would have had occasion to do so on ancient artifacts.
“Hmm.” His voice came from below, as though he were kneeling before the handle. “This is a Chubb & Son’s lock, the Detector model.”
“How in the world do you know that?”
“I visited your country’s Great Exhibition back in ’51, and witnessed that American—Hobbs, I believe was his name?—pick this very lock, which was deemed impenetrable until that time. Caused quite a stir. Were you there? A very interesting fair, but of course no match for France’s Expositions Universelles, which are much larger and more impressive.”
Was she now to discuss which country held the best world’s fairs? Violet put her hand to the door for balance, as she was beginning to feel dizzy again. “Monsieur, do you remember how Mr. Hobbs was able to break into the lock?”
“I think perhaps I do. Madame, have you any hairpins?”
Violet reached up. Her hair was in such disarray that even Louise-Hélène’s coiffure would look like a smooth length of silk by comparison. She did have pins, though, many of them hanging on for their very lives.
“Yes.” She found a tiny crevice beneath the door and pushed several pins through it.
“I’m afraid I will destroy them and won’t be able to return them to you,” Mariette said.
“I don’t think hairpins would help my appearance at the moment anyway, monsieur,” she said, attempting to be lighthearted about it.
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