Seventeen
E llie woke to daylight streaming through the open window and a pillow thumping her in the face.
“Get up, you slug!” Constance called out cheerfully. “We have a temple to raid!”
Constance tossed the pillow aside and popped back over to the vanity to check on her hair, which was twisted into a perfectly tousled Gibson, every strand gleaming.
Ellie forced herself upright. Every movement took effort. It had taken her hours to fall back asleep after she’d returned to her room in the middle of the night, tossed between worry about Adam and thoughts of what use they might have made of that shadowed patio table.
She winced against the glare of the sun and forced herself to remember why she had come to Luxor in the first place.
That the true story be known… seek behind the sun disk in the Holy of Holies of Maat-ka-re Khnemet Amun Hatshepsut.
Ellie was wildly intrigued by the mention of Neferneferuaten in the inscription in Mutnedjmet’s jewelry box. That mysterious figure had captured her imagination ever since Neil had started rattling on to her about it years before. But how did the identity of Akhenaten’s obscure successor connect to the story of the Exodus—if at all? And did the inscription’s reference of a was-scepter—a staff the Ancient Egyptians believed imbued with magical power—have any connection to the Staff of Moses?
As she readied herself, Ellie wondered how many of those questions might be answered by today’s endeavor.
A maid had dropped off their laundered clothes earlier. Constance was already in her lawn dress, which had survived its ordeal at Saqqara with aplomb. She leaned toward the mirror as she set a new hat in place. It was significantly less ostentatious than the last one, but Constance set it at just the right angle to make it look eminently fashionable.
Ellie had been furnished with another perfectly serviceable straw boater. She pinned it on after Constance had vacated the mirror, only to find herself staring at the dark circles that shadowed her eyes.
Constance popped into the frame of the glass beside her. “You need cucumbers,” she declared authoritatively. “But we haven’t any time for them now. Come on!”
She hurried Ellie out of the room. As they headed for the stairs to the lobby, Ellie’s brain finally stuttered back to life.
“We’ll need a ferry to cross the river. Animals for transportation to the ruins,” she recited. “Some sort of hamper for lunch.”
“Yes, yes,” Constance said dismissively. “I told you. The hotel has taken care of all of that. Deir al-Bahari is one of their regular excursions.”
“ Excursions? ” The word set off a low note of alarm in Ellie’s mind.
Constance tugged Ellie into the lobby, and the nightmare of her situation became instantly clear.
The space in front of the welcome desk was packed with practically every other guest who was staying at the hotel. A morose Welsh painter juggled a bundle of canvases and an easel. A pair of German brothers were picking through a wicker case stuffed with provisions.
“But there ought to be at least two types of pickles!” the first complained.
“Wo ist die Wurst?” exclaimed the other.
“I can’t eat wurst in this climate,” complained an American woman with pearls as she fanned herself. “I need cold chicken. Can’t somebody bring an icebox? Dick, tell Chester to stop stabbing the florals.”
The boy in question—Chester—was still in short pants. With a flat, blank look at his parents, he drew back the fountain pen he had been using to poke holes in the potted tropical shrubbery.
Ellie stared aghast at the scene. “This is a disaster.”
“What—you mean the sausages?” Constance asked.
Ellie yanked Constance partially behind a leafy palm. “This!” she replied with an urgent wave at the crowd. “How are we supposed to find the sign of the sun disk somewhere in the funerary temple of Hatshepsut while we are on a tourist expedition?”
“We’ll just sneak off,” Constance returned easily. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to go make sure they packed some dates.”
She abandoned Ellie to take a peek into the lunch basket.
Adam stepped into the lobby. His eyes found Ellie from the other side of the complaining crowd, and he crossed to her side.
His shoulders were broad under his white shirt and suspenders. After a moment, Ellie realized that instead of speaking to him, she was staring up at him like a drowning woman looking at land. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to act like a reasonable person. “No jacket?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s an outdoor excursion.”
“That’s just an excuse,” Ellie pointed out.
“Complaining?” He flashed her a grin. “At least I haven’t lost my shirt yet.”
Ellie flushed at the memory of precisely what lay beneath Adam’s shirt. “You might do with a hat.”
“Forgot to put it on the shopping list,” Adam replied.
“What if you get a sunburn?”
“I gave up worrying about sunburns a long time ago.”
“That is because you still have all of your hair.” Sayyid sighed as he joined them, his dashing red fez perched on top of his close-cropped curls. “If you were starting to look like a monk on the top of your head, you might feel differently.”
“I think bald men can be very dashing,” Constance asserted as she came back over and slipped her hand gallantly through Sayyid’s arm.
Neil stepped into the lobby, his jaw dropping as he looked over the tourist-cluttered scene. “Who are all these people?”
Constance’s mouth widened into a dangerous smile as her eyes locked onto Neil’s figure. “Were you hoping for something more intimate? ”
Ellie blanched with horror as she recalled Constance’s illicit designs on her brother. She opened her mouth to protest, but only a strangled noise came out.
Adam frowned down at her with a flash of concern.
“Oh, there’s the horn for the ferry!” Constance innocently blinked her long, thick lashes. “We’d best load up.”
She blithely strolled away, tugging Sayyid along with her. Neil morosely followed, blinking with dismay at the noisy crowd.
“Did I miss something just then?” Adam asked, lingering behind.
Ellie closed her eyes. “I would really, really rather not talk about it.”
Adam raised an eyebrow, and Ellie forced herself to follow after their friends.
?
The heat of the day was already beginning to rise as they walked to the nearby quay, and for the first time since her arrival in Egypt, Ellie found herself actually standing on the banks of the Nile. The river was broad at Luxor and busy with boats, from quickly darting single-sail feluccas to an elegantly appointed sixty-foot dahabeeyah that lay at anchor a little way off the shore. The columns of the Luxor Temple rose beside her, and beyond that, she could see the modern, Western-style facades of the American, French, and English consulate buildings, flying their colorful respective flags.
The hotel’s ferry was a brightly painted steam launch. Ellie found herself comparing it to the much smaller and more rugged Mary Lee … which she had last seen plummeting over a waterfall.
She and Constance boarded just ahead of the American family.
“I sure am excited to see another one of those pagan tombs,” the gentleman drawled as he walked up the gangplank, his pearl-wearing wife trailing in his wake. “I bought a real nice little statue off some kid at the last one.”
“Is that right, Mr. Swingley?” Constance cast a nervous look at Ellie, whose knuckles whitened where she gripped the railing.
Adam joined them as the Swingleys moved on. “Pretty hot,” he noted.
Though it was still morning, the desert sun already beat down mercilessly from above.
“Might need to go for a swim later,” he added with just a hint of a smirk as he deliberately glanced over at Ellie.
Ellie felt the air get a little warmer. “You are incorrigible.”
“Who, me?”
“Just do try to keep your shirt on,” Ellie ordered in a slightly hopeless whisper.
Adam grinned at her before stepping back to make way for another passenger.
“Your cheeks are pink,” Constance observed.
“It’s the heat,” Ellie grumbled back.
“Sure it is,” Constance returned dryly.
On the far side of the Nile, an assortment of donkeys awaited them. There was a great deal of shuffling and complaining as the Swingleys and the Habenschuss brothers wrangled for the best mount.
“But I need one for my canvases!” complained Mr. Beddoe, the Welsh artist.
“Why is this taking so long?” Neil demanded desperately.
“I was hoping for camels,” Adam noted a little sadly.
Finally, they were all mounted. Ellie’s ride lurched forward at the shouts of the donkey boy and trotted quickly up the road.
They passed through verdant cotton fields dotted with simple farmhouses as they headed north along the Nile. Women walked the tracks along the canals balancing urns of water on their heads. Farmers drove their oxen through the newly plowed rows.
A pair of odd, dark shapes emerged from the haze ahead of them where the fertile land gave way to desert. As Ellie drew closer, they resolved themselves into the sun-gilded forms of two enormous statues.
The monuments towered over the landscape, utterly out of proportion with the rows of cucumbers and the little stone ring of an old well. They were weathered and wind-scoured, leaving only the rough shape of crowned forms seated on giant thrones.
History called them the Colossi of Memnon. The faces were entirely gone, chipped and scoured away by time, but Ellie already knew whose features she would have seen a few thousand years before—those of Amenhotep III, the father of Akhenaten.
She stopped her donkey just before the twin figures, craning back her neck to gaze at a feat of engineering that would have challenged even modern builders.
“Awe-inspiring, aren’t they?” Sayyid said from beside her.
Ellie flashed him an apologetic smile. “I must be gawking at them like the worst sort of tourist.”
“The worst sort of tourist stops to take a Kodak and then rides past without another thought,” Sayyid replied.
Ellie took his comment as permission to gape up at the massive statues for a little longer, thrumming with excitement at their sheer, time-weathered splendor. The impact was so great, she barely found herself thinking about how they compared to other monumental sculptures of the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty.
When she finally pulled her eyes away, she was startled to realize that the rest of the party had ridden some distance ahead. Adam turned in his saddle to look back at her. Ellie gave him a quick, reassuring wave and nudged her donkey back into motion as Sayyid fell into place beside her.
“Have you spent much time in Luxor?” Ellie asked.
“I have.” He flashed her a smile tinged with nostalgia. “It will always remind me of my father. He served as a foreman on a number of excavations here and often talked my mother into letting me join him, even when I really ought to have been in school.”
“That must have been wonderful,” Ellie said meaningfully, feeling a little pang of envy. “And more than worth making up a bit of missed study.”
“Oh, that wasn’t necessary,” Sayyid countered. “My father was more than capable of tutoring me in whatever I missed. He was university educated himself.”
“He was?” Ellie frowned. “But if he had a degree, why was he working as a foreman?”
Sayyid cast Ellie a careful look. “You know what a concession is?”
“An official permit granting the right to excavate at a particular site here in Egypt,” she replied automatically. “They’re acquired by applying to the Antiquities Service.”
“Unless one is an Egyptian,” Sayyid added with a tired smile.
Ellie stilled as the import of Sayyid’s words sunk into her brain.
She had been reading about Ancient Egypt for ages. She had soaked up piles of excavation reports written by the likes of Flinders Petrie and Mariette… and she had never once stopped to wonder why none of the names on those reports had been Egyptian.
Her donkey stopped beneath her as her cheeks flushed with humiliation. Hadn’t she dreamed of acquiring just such a concession for herself? Had it never occurred to her that if by some miracle she had received one, it might have been granted to her at the expense of an equally qualified Egyptian?
Dismay washed over her. “I feel like such a wretched fool!”
“It is not as though you would have found it printed in a book,” Sayyid offered with a note of sympathy. “It is not an official policy.”
“I still ought to have noticed before now,” Ellie returned forcefully. “As someone who is routinely excluded from opportunities for professional and academic advancement myself, I might have paid better attention to who else was being left out! There is no excuse for it, and I can only offer a most sincere apology.”
“You needn’t apologize to me,” Sayyid returned quickly, his cheeks flushing.
“To Egypt, then,” Ellie determined firmly. “I will not allow myself to be so self-absorbed in the future. One cannot claim to be committed to righting injustice and then abandon that principle when it is not a matter that impacts one personally.”
“You can hardly expect yourself to know of every injustice in the world.” Sayyid looked a little alarmed at the notion.
“Perhaps not,” Ellie agreed a little reluctantly. “But I must certainly do a better job than I have been. Tell me, then—is it simple prejudice that lies behind the denial of excavation rights to Egyptians, or are the gentlemen at the Antiquities Service perhaps afraid that if you begin digging up your own history, you might question why you need the rest of us outsiders at all? You might even start to wonder whether it is right that half your heritage is routinely carted off to foreign museums and collectors!”
She added that last point with an extra note of fervor. Ellie’s opinions about the distribution of archaeological finds to Europe and America had changed the moment she stepped into a cave in British Honduras and saw the devastation wreaked by looters searching for artifacts they could sell on the black market. She could still vividly recall the resigned, hollow look in Adam’s eyes as he had taken in the scene.
I’m lying about what’s out there. And the worst part is, I’m not even sure it matters.
“I am not entirely certain,” Sayyid replied awkwardly. “I have never applied.”
“But if you were to even try, they would look at you as though you were mad,” Ellie filled in with feeling. “And your request would be turned down for some reason or another, if they even bothered to respond at all!”
Sayyid’s eyes flashed with an unnameable emotion—and Ellie knew that she had found the nub of it. And why wouldn’t she? She knew precisely how these things went.
Adam threw another worried look back at her. The rest of the party had ridden even further ahead. Ellie forced her donkey to trot along after them before she and Sayyid fell too conspicuously behind.
“Where did your father go to school?” she asked, searching for a less infuriating and painful topic of conversation.
“The English name for it would be ‘The School of the Ancient Egyptian Tongue.’”
There was something a little careful in how Sayyid said it.
Ellie’s interest perked at the intriguing name. “Is it here in Egypt?”
“Was,” Sayyid replied shortly.
“What happened?” Ellie felt another quick flash of anger, already anticipating Sayyid’s answer.
“The British Consul General closed it down. It was not just my father’s school,” Sayyid continued hurriedly. “Lord Cromer is suspicious of all higher education for Egyptians.” He held back for a moment, but then burst out with the rest of his thought, which came in a distinctly wry tone. “He thinks it turns us into revolutionaries.”
Ellie decided to keep her resulting thoughts about Lord Cromer to herself, lest the sound of her ranting reach the others and send Adam back to check on her.
“That must have been terribly hard for your father,” she said instead. “To know that he was just as well educated as the men he worked for but could only ever play a supporting role.”
“He had a reputation for being an extremely knowledgeable and capable foreman—the best, really,” Sayyid replied carefully. “And the foreign archaeologists all wanted the best. There was never any shortage of work.”
“But it was not the work he deserved,” Ellie declared firmly.
“No.” Sayyid met her eyes. “It was not.”
They had left the fields behind for an arid path through rubble-strewn desert. The Colossi of Memnon receded behind them. The ruins of an empire sprawled across the dry ground to either side in little more than tumbled piles of rubble.
Ellie’s chest still seethed with a tight mix of conflicted feeling. It prompted her to be more frank than she might normally have been with a relatively new acquaintance.
“Are you ever so angry that you feel like you could just… explode? ”
Sayyid’s smile was both sympathetic and a little sad. “You sound like my wife.”
Ellie tapped her donkey back into motion, conscious once more of their distance from the rest of the party. “I like your wife.”
Sayyid burst out with a laugh. He looked a little surprised by it, and shook his head as he rode beside her.
They rejoined the party just as the rugged track turned onto a wide, well-paved road.
Not a road, Ellie corrected herself with a sense of wonder. She was looking at a processional way built thousands of years ago for the enormous structure nestled at the foot of the soaring cliffs—the funerary temple of the pharaoh Hatshepsut.
A soaring tribute to a woman who had turned herself into a king, the temple was partially ruined but still impressive, rising like an elaborate wedding cake in three grand tiers that framed a broad central staircase. Shadowy enclaves to either side of the steps were fronted by surviving rows of elegant columns.
“Does anyone have any perfume?” Mrs. Swingley complained. “My donkey smells absolutely awful.”
“I don’t want to hire one of those grifters to talk about the art again,” her husband complained. “Half of them don’t speak English properly, and I bet they’re just making up who all the animal-headed people are.”
Ellie realized her teeth were grinding together.
“Heeeey.” Adam deliberately let his donkey fall back beside her. “Those big statues back there were pretty great. Want to tell me all the things you know about them?”
Ellie shot him a grateful look as her burst of temper diffused.
Constance slowed to join them. “We only have to put up with them until we reach the temple,” she whispered loudly.
The structure grew in scale and impressiveness the nearer they came to it. Once they reached the base of the steps, the tourists drifted over to a makeshift souvenir shop nearby. It was more or less a rug thrown down by the stairs, which was covered with an assortment of cheap trinkets. A group of women sat beside it, gossiping with each other as they ignored the foreigners. They wore the black cloaks and headscarves that Ellie had seen all over Egypt, along with niqab veils that covered the lower half of their faces.
It looked like she and the others were the first visitors to reach the temple that day, but Ellie could see a closed carriage approaching on the processional way behind them, likely carrying another batch of sightseers.
She supposed she should be grateful there weren’t more of them. During the peak of Egypt’s tourist season in the winter, the temple would have been crawling with tourists, making her mission far more complicated.
Adam studied the three enormous levels of the building a little ruefully. “Looks a lot bigger up close than it does from a distance.”
“Should we expect to run into any official forces ?” Constance asked.
“She means archaeologists,” Ellie clarified at Sayyid’s confused look.
“édouard Naville has been leading the work here for the last several years,” Sayyid offered. “But his season ended in April. I shouldn’t expect to see any of his people about.”
Ellie glanced at Neil, who stood a little apart from the rest of them. He had been unusually quiet all morning—or since they had left Saqqara, really. Not that she could blame him. Neil hadn’t asked for any of this—not losing his job and being railroaded into a trip to Luxor… or learning that his sister was involved with his trouble-making best friend.
Adam might have talked things through with Neil back at Saqqara—for better or worse—but Ellie knew her own reckoning with her brother still awaited her. She’d frankly been avoiding it because Neil was sure to have questions that she had no idea how to answer.
“We should split up,” Constance declared authoritatively, “so that we can cover the temple more efficiently. Ellie, why don’t you and Adam examine the lower level? Sayyid could take the center while Stuffy and I manage the top. That way, we are maximizing our Egyptologists.”
The lower level of the temple was lined with colonnades framing shadowy, intimate recesses. Ellie’s thoughts snapped irresistibly to just what she and Adam might get up to while searching those hidden alcoves for clues.
No, she thought quickly, suppressing a groan. She couldn’t explore any shadowy recesses with Adam—not when he remained so conflicted about the liberties they had already taken with each other.
If Ellie had given any outward sign of her confusion, Constance didn’t notice. Her gaze had locked onto Ellie’s brother, darkening with a special—and deeply alarming—glint of interest.
There were plenty of shadowy recesses at the top of the temple as well.
“Wait!” Ellie blurted out in protest as she searched frantically for a reasonable excuse to overturn Constance’s plan.
Before she could manage it, Sayyid danced back from the steps, biting out an alarmed yelp.
“Is something wrong?” Constance pressed.
“Beetle!” Sayyid managed, his voice strangled. “Shoe!”
Neil rolled his eyes. “It’s just a bug!”
“A bug intent on climbing the leg of my trousers!” Sayyid whipped out a handkerchief, wiping his forehead with it nervously.
“Goodness! It is rather large.” Constance bent over to study the insect with gruesome interest. It was an inch or so long with big black pincers and an iridescent sheen to its carapace.
“It had nearly reached my laces.” Sayyid barely repressed a shudder.
“But it’s a scarab!” Ellie said, recognizing the distinct form of the insect. “I should think an Egyptologist would be fond of them, considering how sacred they were to the ancient people here.”
“They can be perfectly sacred, and one can still prefer that they remain very far away,” Sayyid retorted.
Constance cast another interested look at Neil, who had turned away to gaze at the temple with a slightly mournful air. “Well!” she said brightly. “Now that’s settled…”
Ellie hurried to cut her off before she could cement her plan. “I believe both Sayyid and my brother are already familiar with the temple structure. Clearly, it makes the most sense for the rest of us to form teams around them.”
Constance shot Ellie a dangerous glare. “Oh, really?”
“I can explore the upper level with Neil,” Ellie continued deliberately. “You, Adam, and Sayyid can check these lower colonnades.”
“Or I can explore the upper level,” Constance returned evenly, knives flashing behind her eyes. “And you may do the colonnades.”
“Why are they arguing about this?” Sayyid asked, clearly bewildered.
“Think I’m starting to have an idea,” Adam replied, “and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to know.”
He cast a sympathetic glance at Neil, who was obliviously polishing his spectacles on a handkerchief.
In the end, Ellie was saved by the American, Mr. Swingley, who strolled over to join them.
“Does your Egyptian fellow speak English?” he demanded.
It took Ellie a moment to realize that he was talking about Sayyid, who stared back at the man with blank astonishment.
“Not a word,” Adam cut in. He looped his arm through Sayyid’s elbow, hauling him toward the colonnade. “Come on, Connie,” he called back.
Constance shot Ellie a glare ripe with the threat of revenge before stalking after him.
Ellie made her way over to Neil. “Shall we, then?”
“Shall we what?” Neil blinked at her with confusion behind his spectacles.
“Explore the upper level,” Ellie explained tiredly. “Or weren’t you listening to any of that?”
“I… That is… my mind might’ve been wandering a bit,” Neil replied uncomfortably.
Ellie wondered if she should be frustrated or grateful for that.
“Goodness!” Constance exclaimed as she peered past Adam and Sayyid at the recessed wall behind one of the nearby colonnades. “That’s a remarkably large—”
“—ithyphallic representation of the god Amun,” Sayyid quickly and awkwardly finished for her, patting his forehead with his handkerchief once more. “Perhaps we should move on to the next one?”
Ellie barely suppressed a snort. Adam glanced over at her with a wryly raised eyebrow, and their gazes locked.
Ithyphallic representations. Shadowy alcoves.
A flush of heat that had nothing to do with the rising ambient temperature rose into her cheeks.
No , she thought forcefully. She had to stop letting her unruly thoughts run wild when it came to Adam Bates—not until they had sorted things out between them like reasonable, rational people.
Adam cleared his throat and turned his eyes deliberately to the ceiling of the colonnade. Ellie pivoted back to her oblivious brother, hooking her hand through his arm. “Come on,” she ordered and hauled him toward the stairs.