Whispers in the Sand (46 page)

Ben was at the bar thoughtfully drinking some fruit juice when she made her way into the lounge. Outside she could see several people sitting at the shaded tables in the afternoon sun, reading, writing postcards, or just quietly chatting amongst themselves, watching those who had taken to the water for another sail.

“Ready for the early start?” Ben smiled at her. “Four in the morning is a bit of a challenge for most of us, I think!”

Anna nodded. She had forgotten the trip to Abu Simbel.

“I gather there’s been a bit of a barney between Andy and your friend, Toby?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “Do I suspect a touch of the green eye, there?”

Anna frowned. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“Oh, come on. They both fancy you rotten!” Ben grinned. “What power you ladies have!”

Anna shook her head. “I think my diary was more of a temptation than me.” She sighed. “Did you know it was missing? Someone has taken it from my cabin. Andy and Toby were both accusing each other.”

Ben looked shocked. “That’s bad. Have you told Omar?”

She shrugged. “I don’t want to make a great fuss. As long as it is returned. That’s the important thing.”

“I’ll do a bit of subtle sleuthing.” Ben winked. “If Andy has it, he’ll tell me in the end.”

She smiled. “Thanks. It’s valuable, but there’s far more to it than that. Far more.” Like knowing what happened to Louisa and Hassan.

Serena was on the top deck, leaning on the rail, staring down into the river, when Anna eventually joined her. She stood a little way away, hesitating, but Serena glanced at her and smiled. “I’m OK now. Sorry about all that.”

“You’re sure?”

Serena nodded. “Whatever it was, it’s gone. I’m fine.” She glanced across at Anna. “I’ve decided to go to Abu Simbel tomorrow. I don’t want to leave this unfinished, but I need to get off the boat for a bit. Put some space round me; distance myself from all this. Are you going to go? You should.”

Anna shrugged. “I suppose so. It’s the high point of the trip, isn’t it? Driving through the desert, seeing the temple of Rameses.”

Serena grinned. “Good. No more ghosts. Two days away. Some hard sightseeing to distract us.”

Anna frowned. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault you got into all this.”

“No. It’s no one’s fault. After all, I am interested in Egyptian magic and religion, and besides, I offered.” Serena smiled again. “It’s just got a bit heavy, and I want to stand back for a day or two. I am sorry. I don’t want you to feel I don’t care. It’s just that I feel so drained. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ll be there if anything happens on the coach or in the desert or at Abu Simbel. But I hope it won’t. Then I thought perhaps when we come back—we have one day to see Philae before the cruise back to Luxor—at Philae maybe we can try something again. Philae is, after all, the temple of Isis.”

“You’ve been wonderful.” Anna put in. “You’ve taught me a lot.” She put her hand on the amulet on the chain around her neck. “You think he won’t follow us to Abu Simbel then?”

There was a short silence. Serena was watching a felucca drifting with the current past them, the steersman sitting dreamily in the stern, his arm over the tiller. The boat was full of large boxes, and it occurred to her suddenly what a contrast he made to the equivalent delivery man with his van in a crowded London street. She smiled, then she glanced back at Anna. “No, I don’t think he’ll come to Abu Simbel. I hope not,” she said at last. “I wish we knew what had happened to Louisa Shelley. She came through it. She coped.”

Anna nodded sadly. “I don’t think I can bear not knowing what happened. I keep thinking about her. But as you say, she coped. She went home and got on with her life.”

But what happened to Hassan? The question increasingly echoed in her head. And what about the priests Anhotep and Hatsek? They haunted Louisa, as they haunted her great-great-granddaughter. How had she made them leave her alone? A new wave of frustration and fury shot through her as she thought about the diary. Andy had said he wanted to know what happened next when he had heard the story. It was obvious now that he hadn’t meant a word of it. She sighed. They stood in silence, for several minutes lost in thought, and it was only as Serena turned to go and look for a chair that Anna realised she had made a decision. She wouldn’t go on the coach tomorrow. At the last minute, she was going to change her mind and stay alone on the boat. That would give her two days to search with no one there to interfere.

She could always go to Abu Simbel another time.

Just for a moment, she forgot that the priests of Isis and Sekhmet would probably stay with her.

11

Hail to you, O ye divine beings, ye divine lords of things who exist

and who lived for ever and whose double periods

of an illimitable number of years is eternity…

O grant thou unto me a path whereon I may pass in peace.

The children grow sick. Their strength has ebbed away into the desert wind. They have no inclination now to dig for ancient worlds and seek the treasure of long-dead tombs. Their mother watches and keeps her sorrow hidden in her heart.

The bottle is forgotten—in the dark corner of the peasant hut, it reflects no light. Its keepers are invisible, without time or space to define them, without flesh or bone, without tomb or burial goods or names.

The younger boy dies first, his soul sucked dry. His body is buried in the sand and watered by tears. Then the elder falls sick for the last time. As he lies on his bed of fever, he sees the priests hover over him, feels them gorge on the breath of his life, and he knows it was he who brought them to his house. He tries to whisper a warning, but the words are sucked from him by the dry lips of death.

Soon his mother will feel the night-time kiss of the servants of the gods, and she too will give her life to grant them eternity, leaving a sorrowing man in an empty house, who soon takes up his belongings and leaves the place to the shadows and the sand. He does not see the bottle on the back of the shelf, and it remains behind.

The telephone by Anna’s bed rang at a few minutes after three-thirty a.m. She sat up with a start, wondering where she was. Her dream hovered for a second, insubstantial and floating. Then it was gone. She didn’t even recall the sound of a sandal or the whisper of a linen robe. Disoriented, she stared round, then she remembered. They were getting up to drive across the desert some 280 kilometres southwards from Aswan, to Abu Simbel. The wake up call on the phone was followed by a knock at her door and a cup of tea. She dressed quickly in jeans and a tee-shirt and pulled on a sweater against the cold of the night, then she set out to find Omar. He merely shrugged when she explained she didn’t want to go with them.
Inshallah!
It was up to her. Tell Ibrahim she would require meals, and enjoy her rest.

Andy was standing near the reception desk, where the passengers were gathering in sleepy groups, ready to go ashore. He scowled when he saw her and turned away. Well, it was good that he had seen her. He would assume she was getting on the coach with the others. When he found she hadn’t after all climbed on board with the rest of them, it would be too late for him to change his mind and stay behind, too.

Finding Serena wearily lifting her overnight bag onto her shoulder, she whispered her decision. Serena nodded. Was she, Anna wondered, even a little relieved? She couldn’t see Toby, but already the passengers were streaming across the gangplank onto the silent ship alongside them, where they would creep through the deserted lounges and passages smelling eerily of cold cigarette smoke and stale beer, towards the second gangplank which would lead to the shore. There, a small charabanc was waiting to take them out to the assembly point, where a convoy of coaches and taxis gathered every morning to leave under escort for the drive south across a desert which was also a military zone.

When they had all gone, Anna stood still for a moment, listening to the silence, wondering a trifle wistfully if she had done the right thing. It was too late to change her mind. With a shrug, she turned back to her cabin.

At the door, she hesitated for a moment, afraid of what she might see when she opened it. Taking a deep breath, and with one hand clamped firmly on the gold charm around her neck, she gave it a tentative push. The cabin was empty.

When she woke, she was lying on her bed, fully dressed. She frowned, disoriented for a moment, aware that something on the boat had changed. Then she realised. She could sense the emptiness around her, the deserted cabins, the lack of distant bustle. Omar had told her that only two or three of the crew would be staying on the boat, the others were taking the opportunity to go ashore for a couple of days before the return voyage to Luxor. As far as she knew, she was the only passenger who had made the decision to skip the overland trip to Abu Simbel and stay aboard.

Slowly she climbed out of bed. She wasn’t sure where she was going to start her search for the diary, but Andy’s cabin seemed the obvious place. Either she had missed it the first time, or perhaps, even if it hadn’t been there before, it would be there now.