Mr Impossible (25 page)

Her bedtime attire
was plain and severe, the very antithesis of provocative.

So naturally he
wanted to get her naked. Naturally his privy councilor swelled with
hope.

“
You should
not have crept out onto the deck to investigate,” she said,
plying the tweezers again. “You should have made a stir. If I
had not happened to be awake, I should never have heard—”

“
You had a
sleepless night?” Was he keeping her awake, then, the way she
did him? What a tragic waste of nighttime! “I’m sorry to
hear it. That is, I would be if you hadn’t turned up at a
crucial moment.”

He couldn’t
believe he’d allowed a sullen oaf of a villain to take him by
surprise. This was what came of too little sleep and too much
celibacy: bodily humors horribly out of balance.

“
I was not
sleepless,” she said. “I woke from a bad dream. That was
when I heard the noise. Splashing. And other sounds that didn’t
seem right. Then I saw your door ajar, and guessed there was
trouble.”

She’d come to
help him—to save him, darling girl. It was touching, really.
And terrifying. She might have been raped, murdered.

“
You should
not have crept out onto the deck to investigate,” he said,
mimicking her. “You should have cried out and woken everybody.
If I’d been an instant slower to recover my wits, the villain
would have had you.”

“
In future, I
shall keep a knife under my pillow,” she said. “It hadn’t
occurred to me before to go to bed armed. Even now I can hardly
believe a lone prowler tried to sneak onto a vessel containing so
many people.” She frowned. “But it would have been worse
had several ruffians come. You had better teach me how to use a gun.”

“
Mrs.
Pembroke, I’m not at all certain I want you shooting firearms
in the dark. A pistol isn’t like a boot. If you’d struck
me, thinking I was the intruder—”

“
Oh, I knew
it was not you,” she said. “He was too short and square,
and the smell was completely wrong.”

“
The smell?”

“
Dirty and
wet. From the river.”

She smelled
wonderful. So clean… with a ghost of a fragrance hovering
about her: smoke and herbs, like incense. Rupert leant in a
hairsbreadth closer.

“
I could have
been wet,” he said. “I might have had a whim for a
midnight swim.” Now he thought about it, a vigorous swim before
bedtime would probably help calm him. Until he found a dancing girl,
that is.

“
You wouldn’t
be so idiotish as to go for a swim in the dead of night without
warning anybody,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to
throw the crew into an uproar.”

“
In case you
hadn’t noticed, we’ve manned our vessel with some of the
world’s soundest sleepers,” he said.

“
All the more
reason for me to be better prepared for attack,” she said. She
gave him back his hand.

“
A heavy
candlestick would do,” he said. “You might easily
incapacitate an attacker while still giving him a chance of surviving
the blow. On the other hand, if you put a ball through a man, he’s
likely to die. And the trouble with this is, you might put the ball
through the wrong man.”

“
All the more
reason,” she said, “for you to teach me how to do it
properly.”

THE SECOND LOT of
villains had proved more civilized than the first. Miles hadn’t
been sure, in fact, that they were villains. They came peaceably
enough to the cave, weapons tucked into their girdles instead of in
their hands.

Still, the leader
Ghazi knew his name, and this put Miles on guard—for all the
good it did, when he was outnumbered a dozen to one, and none of the
others appeared to be convalescing from a bout of fever.

“
This is not
a fit abode for you, my learned friend,” Ghazi said. “I
have a fine tent and food and drink. You must accept my hospitality.”

“
Must I?”
Miles said, uneasy at the “learned.” Butrus had believed
him “learned” enough to read papyri… and had
spoken with happy anticipation of using torture to encourage Miles’s
brain.

Ghazi smiled. “I
hold no knife to your throat, no rifle to your head. But in the
village is the young widow who told us where to find you. If you
refuse our hospitality, perhaps one of my men will take this as an
insult. Perhaps he will kill the woman for sending us to be insulted.
Then her baby will be an orphan. Perhaps it would be a mercy to kill
the child as well. What is your opinion?”

“
I believe
I’d better do as I’m told,” Miles said.

Ghazi smiled his
approval. Unlike Butrus, he had all his teeth.

They traveled to an
encampment a few miles distant. There they fed Miles a good meal and
gave him fresh clothing. This was at least more kindly treatment than
he’d received from Butrus’s lot, who’d ransacked
his belongings. What they’d expected to find he had no idea,
but then-grim expressions told him they hadn’t found it. They’d
left him only one shirt in addition to what he’d worn when they
kidnapped him. Both shirts were filthy and ragged, and the one not on
his back remained deep in the cave, with the incriminating remnants
of his chains.

This new batch of
cutthroats most politely invited him to mount a camel the following
morning. He decided it was best to follow instructions lest one of
Ghazi’s sensitive minions be offended and avenge the insult on
innocent bystanders.

They didn’t
tell Miles what their destination was. He only knew they traveled
south, and he’d as soon have done so on a mode of
transportation other than the camel.

The creatures bore
heavy inanimate burdens calmly enough. But his showed a marked
aversion to being ridden. The camel made insulting noises as Miles
circled it, looking for a place to get on. The animal complained
loudly and cursed him bitterly in camel language when he was finally
seated. It snarled and growled and turned around to give him venomous
looks. Then, as you’d expect, it flatly refused to obey him.
When Miles tried to turn its head, it tried to bite his feet. When he
snapped at the animal to behave, it promptly lay down. When at last
the humor seized it to get up, it made sure to throw Miles back and
forth violently in the process.

The journey was
excruciating, though Miles’s captors made allowances for his
inexperience, traveling no more than eight hours at a stretch. Yet
even at this pace, with long stops between for rest and refreshment,
they left Minya farther behind more quickly than they could have done
by water. Instead of following the bends of the Nile, they rode
straight across the desert. Furthermore, they could and did travel by
night, without worrying about colliding with boats, sandbanks, or
rocks. The only concerns, as Ghazi explained on the first night when
they stopped to eat, were bandits and sandstorms. The sandstorms were
God’s will. The bandits would quickly learn their mistake, he
said cheerfully.

“
I believe
you,” Miles said. “I only wonder what the great hurry is
and where exactly we’re going.”

“
I sent men
to take you from the boat,” Ghazi said. “They failed.
This is why I had to come for you myself. But I have other matters to
settle, to the south, and must go quickly to make up for the time I
have lost.”

“
And if you
don’t?”

Ghazi laughed. “If
I don’t—” He drew a line across his throat with his
index finger. “Like that, or maybe not so fast, and with more
suffering, ha ha. The man who fails, my learned friend, is the man
who dies.”

Zawyet el Amwat,
Monday 16 April

THE DAY FOLLOWING
their arrival found Daphne on the opposite side of the Nile from
Minya. A ways to the north behind her, a small cluster of hovels
signified a village. Nearer at hand a larger and more extensive
cluster of chapels and domed tombs signified the district’s
burial ground.

She stood at a
respectful distance from the cemetery proper, staring at a
complicated arrangement of metal pieces whose operation Mr.
Carsington was explaining.

He had one of the
coveted Manton pistols in his hand and was telling her about breeches
and priming pans and flints and cocks and such. She was beginning to
understand how he felt when she talked about Coptic.

They had an
audience. Nearby stood Udail/Tom, several crew members, and a pair of
guards the
kashef
—the pasha’s local representative—had sent to
accompany them. As usual, the Egyptians were all talking excitedly.
She couldn’t follow their conversation. She had all she could
do to follow Mr. Carsington’s explanation.

“
Do I need to
know how it works?” she said finally. “Can’t I just
shoot it?”

“
If you
understand how it works, you’re less likely to make mistakes,”
he said patiently. “If danger threatens, you will not have the
leisure for trial and error or even for thinking.”

Daphne became aware
of laughter behind her.

She turned that
way. Udail/Tom was pointing at the gun, at Mr. Carsington, and at
her, and talking too low for her to understand. The men were shaking
their heads and chuckling.

She must have
looked as slow-witted as she felt.

She turned back to
Mr. Carsington.

She told herself
that if she could learn Coptic, she could learn this. But it was hard
to concentrate. He stood so near, and spoke so earnestly and
enthusiastically—nay,
lovingly
— of the wood and metal thing in his hand. He even took out a
handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints from the polished handle.

“
I’ll
load it for you the first time,” he said.

“
Please let
me do it,” she said. “I shall learn more quickly that
way.” She would have the weapon in her hand and be forced to
pay attention to what she was doing, instead of to the angle of his
jaw and the arch of his dark eyebrows and the delicacy with which
those large, clever hands caressed the pistol.

He shrugged and
gave her the pistol and the cartridge.

“
Where is the
powder you spoke of?” she said.

He briefly gazed
heavenwards, then reverted to her. “In the cartridge,” he
said. “You have to open it first.”

The cartridge was
made of paper, with the metal ball at one end. She needed two hands
to open it. She tried to hand him the pistol, but he shook his head.

“
You tear it
open with your teeth,” he said. ‘Try not to swallow too
much gunpowder in the process.“

“
Why? Is it
poisonous?” Would she explode? But no. The gunpowder needed a
spark. He had just explained all that. What was the matter with her?

“
I daresay
it’s toxic,” he said. “But the point is, if you
swallow too much, you won’t have enough left to fire the
weapon.”

She used her teeth,
as he insisted, and definitely tasted powder, which was horrid. She
spat it out, but the taste lingered.

Then she simply
followed his directions, carefully tipping powder into the priming
pan, closing the pan, tipping into the barrel the remaining powder,
then the paper cartridge containing the ball. Then she rammed it all
home, using the tool he gave her.

She became aware of
silence behind her.

She glanced that
way.

The men were gaping
at her. An instant later, they turned and ran back to the cemetery.
She watched them take shelter behind one of the domed structures.
Udail/Tom grinned and waved, then trotted after them.

“
You were
right, after all,” Mr. Carsington said.

She turned back to
meet his deep brown gaze, serious now. “About what?”

“
About
learning to take care of yourself,” he said. “The
Egyptians have been beaten down cruelly time and again. What reason
have they to stand and fight to protect us—a lot of foreign
invaders? It makes more sense to run away. You and I shall have to
rely upon each other.”

She could hardly
believe her ears. He had been so reluctant to teach her how to shoot.
But these were words used between equals, words of trust—in her
judgment, her skill—from a
man
. Her heart leapt—with
pleasure or fear, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps both.