Twenty-One
T heir winding path slowly descended through the sprawling hills, and they emerged on a windswept desert plain. The green of the inundation was just visible in the distance. The sprawling, arid landscape closer by was interrupted only by a squat, thick-walled cluster of buildings marked by low arches and an elegant dome. An iron cross over the gate revealed that the structures must belong to a community of Egypt’s Christian minority, the Copts.
The buildings were obviously old. A wooden door set by the gate cracked open as they approached, and a young woman in a black headscarf and robes peered out at them wide-eyed. Her attire was near enough to what one might see in a Catholic convent for Ellie to recognize her as a nun.
“Ya Jemmahor!” Zeinab called impatiently.
“Wait here,” Jemmahor instructed.
As she swung down from her horse, the sleeve of her cloak slipped up, revealing a small blue tattoo of an even-sided cross on the inside of her wrist. The mark identified the young woman as a Copt herself.
Zeinab’s apprentice exchanged a few quick words with the nun at the door, speaking a language that sounded quite different from Masri. The tongue of Egypt’s Copts was thought to be the nearest living language to that of Ancient Egypt, and this was the first time Ellie had the privilege of hearing it spoken aloud.
She was hearing it quite loudly, as Jemmahor was gesticulating enthusiastically while the nun squeaked out replies with obvious surprise and alarm. Zeinab looked on the verge of rolling her eyes.
The exchange apparently reached a satisfactory conclusion, as the nun ducked back inside and the big gate swung slowly open on heavy iron hinges.
The rescue party paraded into a simple packed-earth courtyard framed by the convent buildings and a low stable. Other nuns popped into the narrow doorways set into the thick walls or peered from small windows.
An older woman hurried out to meet them, the lines at the corners of her eyes creased with worry.
“That’s my aunt,” Jemmahor announced cheerfully from beside Ellie and Adam’s horse. “She is abbess here at the convent of St. Hilaria. Don’t worry—she will be very happy to see me.”
The abbess did not look particularly happy. She looked more as though she was wondering where she was going to put an assortment of unexpected guests, including two strange men and a foreign woman.
Jemmahor ran over to her and enthusiastically kissed her cheeks, rattling on in excited Coptic.
Adam slipped down from the saddle in a maneuver that would have had Ellie plummeting backwards over the rear of the horse. He managed it with grace, save for a slight wince as the twist pulled at his bruised ribs, then turned and offered his arms to Ellie.
She hesitated. “Isn’t it going to hurt if you try to catch me?”
Adam raised an eloquent eyebrow.
Ellie frowned back at him with barely concealed frustration. “I ought to be capable of getting down from a horse on my own!”
“You don’t ride,” Adam pointed out.
“I’m from London!” Ellie protested. “Why would I ride when I can take a perfectly docile tram?”
Adam set his hands to her waist and plucked her from the saddle.
She landed with her hands on his shoulders, only a breath from sliding down the front of his body. His exceptionally blue eyes twinkled at her with amusement, and the temptation to haul him down to her for a kiss electrified her nerves.
You are standing in a convent, she reminded herself forcibly. At roughly the same time, Adam cleared his throat and stepped back to put a modest distance between them.
Ellie did the same—and promptly bumped up against the horse.
The horse huffed in protest, and Ellie quickly skipped away.
Zeinab appeared beside them. “We need to talk.” Her gaze drifted from Ellie and Adam to Sayyid, who was standing off to the side, looking forlorn and bewildered. “Follow me.”
Jemmahor detached herself from the abbess to join them as Zeinab led them into the cool, dim interior of the building. Umm Waseem strolled at their heels with her black satchel slung over her shoulder.
They emerged in a quiet chapel lit by narrow windows set in thick walls. Tidy rows of worn wooden pews faced a stone altar, while the dome overhead was decorated with time-worn paintings of colorful saints.
Zeinab dropped into one of the pews. For a moment, her facade of authority fell away, revealing the tired, overwhelmed woman who hid beneath it. “Can we be certain we were not followed?”
“I saw no one on the trail,” Jemmahor reported. “If they did mean to follow us, they would have to see our tracks, and the wind is blowing. The mountains won’t leave any sign that we came through.”
“Then let us get down to business,” Zeinab concluded.
“No!” Sayyid burst out.
He had not taken a seat, but had rather remained standing, pacing uncomfortably across the narrow space between the pews and the steps to the altar. Tension radiated off of him.
“We aren’t doing anything until you tell me what is going on!” he continued. “Why are you ambushing villains? Threatening dangerous people with scalpels? You help people have babies! You don’t maraud around the countryside like some kind of bandit!”
A flash of hurt flickered through Zeinab’s expression. It was quickly swallowed by a cold, simmering anger. “You don’t approve?”
“ Approve?! ” Sayyid echoed with a wild laugh. “Of course I don’t approve! I’m absolutely terrified! What if you had been caught? What if one of those men had shot you?!”
“They could not shoot her,” Jemmahor cheerfully interjected. “One of Umm Waseem’s cousins pinned down that fellow with the big ears, and I stole the other gun.” She lifted her rifle and gave it a little wave. “Not that I would actually shoot anyone with it. I am not a barbarian.”
Her explanation did not seem to relieve Sayyid. “And now your apprentice is stealing guns!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “ Guns , ya habibti! This is… Any one of you might have… Have you no sense of… of…”
The rest of whatever he intended to say was choked off by a rising panic. With a grumbling sigh, Umm Waseem pushed up from her seat and crossed over to him. She shoved him down into a pew.
“ ? ot rasak ben rokbetak,” the older woman ordered authoritatively before pushing his head down over his lap.
Sayyid more or less collapsed under her ministrations, dropping his head onto his arms. “I think I might be sick,” he groaned.
“But why did you come?” Ellie demanded.
“To watch you,” Zeinab returned shortly with an uncomfortable glance at her husband. “To see whether you succeeded in finding the Staff of Musa.”
“And if we did?” Ellie prompted with a thrill of suspicion.
Zeinab’s look was hard. “To take it from you, if it should prove necessary.”
“What would’ve made it necessary?” Adam asked.
He had taken a seat beside Ellie, draping his arm comfortably over the back of the pew as he stretched his crossed legs out in front of him.
“She means if you intended to use it to keep Egypt under your boots,” Jemmahor piped in helpfully, her dark eyes glittering.
“And is that something you do often?” Adam prompted dryly. “Menace bad guys and rescue magic artifacts?”
Zeinab looked to Umm Waseem, who chuckled darkly as she settled herself back into one of the pews.
Jemmahor plastered an innocent expression on her face—which only succeeded in making her seem entirely suspicious. “We are part of an informal ladies’ association devoted to protecting the interests of the Egyptian people. Ostazah Zeinab is our leader, and Umm Waseem is our…”
Jemmahor’s voice trailed off awkwardly as she flashed a guilty look at Sayyid.
“Munitions expert,” Zeinab filled in tiredly from where she sat slumped in her pew.
Sayyid made a choked sound. He lifted his head from his lap, staring at his wife and her friends with dismay.
Ellie shifted her gaze to the wrinkled woman in the back row. “Munitions expert, did you say?” She felt a spark of excited interest at the notion of finding someone with whom she could discuss practical chemistry—and then caught herself. “But why does a ladies’ association need a munitions expert?”
“Pretty sure it’s because they’re revolutionaries,” Adam offered from beside her.
“Nobody notices the women,” Jemmahor explained eagerly, now that it appeared Zeinab had more or less let her off the leash with their secret. “But we are quiet, and we are clever. We can show the British that Egypt will not lie docile while they set their heels to our throats. Er… begging your pardon,” she added with an apologetic look at Ellie.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Ellie assured her, still reeling from the revelations.
“How long?” Sayyid’s question came out in a desperate croak.
Zeinab met his eyes as she answered it. “Since before we were wed.”
“But why didn’t you say anything?” he pleaded.
“It was better that you did not know,” Zeinab replied firmly. “It was safer that way.”
“Safer?!” Sayyid’s agitation snapped back up to the surface as he threw out his arms. “How is any of this safe?! In the last two hours, I have been kidnapped, marched around at gunpoint, nearly stabbed, and then rescued by my wife waving her scalpel at one of the most terrifying men I have ever seen!” He caught himself, pinching the bridge of his nose as he fought to bring his emotions under control. “Did you think that I would stop you?”
“You could not.” Zeinab’s eyes flashed dangerously. “It is in our marriage contract.”
“Marriage contract?” Ellie felt a spark of intrigue at the unfamiliar term.
“When two parties are wed in our faith, they put their terms for the marriage into the contract, so that there can be no misunderstandings in the future.” Zeinab offered the explanation without looking at Ellie, keeping her gaze locked meaningfully on her husband.
Ellie’s suffragist instincts perked up with interest at her description. “Can you put anything you like in there?” she prompted. “And is it legally binding?”
“Half the time such contracts are written by fathers or brothers,” Jemmahor replied wryly. “And the judges are all men.”
“It is binding before Allah,” Zeinab replied fiercely. “And our contract states that my husband will not prohibit me from traveling where I will and associating with whom I choose while in pursuit of my professional endeavors or work of principle.”
“I didn’t know that meant you would be a revolutionary!” Sayyid protested.
“Would it have changed things between us if you had?” Zeinab snapped back.
Sayyid met his wife’s eyes with a look of quiet devastation. “Of course not,” he replied hoarsely.
An exquisite vulnerability flashed across Zeinab’s hard features. The revealing expression was there for only a moment before she drew it away, hiding it as though behind the cloak she had used to disguise herself in the temple.
“Didn’t you trust me?” Hurt and confusion were written plainly on Sayyid’s features.
“You are a scholar, my love.” Zeinab’s eyes softened. “Not a warrior.”
Sayyid closed his mouth, his eyes hollow.
With a deliberate effort, his wife straightened and put a calm authority back into her tone, fixing her attention on Ellie. “Were you able to read any of that tablet before it was taken?”
Ellie hesitated, instinctively glancing at Adam.
He read the question in her eyes as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. “It seems to me that these ladies just saved our hides. For which we’re genuinely grateful.” He deliberately looked at Zeinab, who accepted his words with a regal nod. “I think we can trust them. And frankly, if we’re gonna get Constance, Fairfax, or that damned tablet back, we’ll need help.”
“They just said they meant to take the staff from us!” Ellie pushed back uncomfortably.
“We never wanted it,” Adam countered. “We just don’t want it going to the wrong people.”
The wrong people…
At Adam’s words, memory flooded back to Ellie.
A mirror like a great black eye waiting in the darkness. Visions of blood-splattered victory. A voice that whispered through her dreams.
What do you want?
A wrenching temptation—and a choice.
A different fear gripped her, and Ellie surged to her feet, facing the three revolutionaries. “The Staff of Moses—would you use it?”
Jemmahor cast a wide-eyed look at her teacher. Umm Waseem comfortably folded her hands over her belly.
Zeinab’s green eyes were unreadable.
“You say you are fighting to free Egypt from tyranny,” Ellie pressed, her voice breaking with urgency. “The staff would put untold power in your hands to accomplish those aims. You could darken the skies. Turn the waters of England to blood. Curse us all with pestilence. Kill.” Her hands shook. Ellie clenched them into fists. “ Would you use it? ”
Adam’s face flashed with comprehension. His hand came around her back in a silent gesture of comfort as he rose.
Ellie needed it. She let herself lean against him.
Zeinab paced to the altar. She gripped the rail and bowed her head, her frame tight with a quiet agitation. “You have seen something like this before.”
Ellie remembered the smell of blood and smoke. The fierce gaze of a woman with a scar on her cheek. The war that had raged inside her heart, pitting her dreams against the things that she had known in her deepest heart were right.
“Yes,” she replied hoarsely, watching Zeinab from the steady circle of Adam’s arms.
Zeinab raised her head. “They have bound us in debt. Strangled our livelihoods to turn us into cogs for their own industry.” She looked at the stricken face of her husband, and her eyes flashed with both sympathy and a quiet rage. “They close our schools and force our people into ignorance. Rape our history and carry it off to their museums. We are Egypt. We were the greatest empire on the earth. And we suffocate under the rule of an unelected foreign dictator who holds ultimate power over every aspect of our lives.”
The words were taut with pain and anger. Then her eyes fell closed, a different emotion sweeping over her expression. “But even Musa had to learn of the inscrutability of the will of Allah from His messenger in the desert. Wa kaifa tasbiru ‘alaa maa lam tuhit bihee khubraa— How can you patiently bear with that which you do not understand? He failed three times. And I am not a prophet.”
Sayyid’s expression shifted as he gazed at his wife. An aching compassion and complicated admiration broke through the shock and dismay that he had been feeling since Zeinab’s revelation, though Ellie could still see the hurt in the tight lines around his eyes.
Zeinab pushed back from the altar, her figure straightening as she turned to face them.
“No.” She lifted her chin and met Ellie’s eyes. “I would not use it.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and her hands remained clenched into fists. “I am too angry to trust myself with the power of God.”
At Zeinab’s declaration, the tension twisting inside of Ellie broke like a weight slipping softly from her shoulders.
“The tablet was in Akkadian,” she said quietly, stepping from the shelter of Adam’s arm to drop back down in the pew. “I was only able to decipher a few words before we were interrupted. It spoke of the location of the tomb of a king—one with a name phonetically similar to Neferneferuaten. But…” She cast an uncomfortable glance at Sayyid, knowing he was the only other person in the room likely to recognize the significance of what she was about to reveal. “The verb forms were feminine.”
Sayyid frowned thoughtfully as his attention sharpened. “Which verb?”
“Beloved,” Ellie replied significantly. “The description was beloved of the divine king .”
“The female form? Beloved? ” Sayyid rose to his feet, pacing in the aisle as his mind whirled. “Of course, there could be cultural differences, as Akkadian was used by everyone from Egyptian royal administrators to Mitanni princes…”
“But it seems to imply that Neferneferuaten was a woman ,” Ellie filled in. “A woman beloved by a king.”
“Presumably the king that she succeeded,” Sayyid added with wide-eyed reverence. “And the king who died before Neferneferuaten’s reign was Akhenaten .”
“And his beloved was his queen . That’s what it’s saying, isn’t it?” Ellie pressed, anxious for someone with a true Egyptological mind to confirm the wild theory that had burst into her brain back in the sun chapel. “It’s saying that the pharaoh Neferneferuaten, who took the throne after Akhenaten’s death, was none other than the woman he had married—Nefertiti!”
“A lady pharaoh?” Jemmahor perked with interest.
“It makes perfect sense,” Ellie continued excitedly. “It would have been of the utmost importance to Akhenaten to pass his crown to someone who would uphold the faith of the Aten, and Nefertiti was his partner in that from the beginning.”
“It would not be entirely unheard of,” Sayyid replied thoughtfully. “During the Twelfth Dynasty, Sobekneferu took the throne after the death of her husband, Amenemhat IV. She is included on several of the king lists. And of course, we were at Hatshepsut’s temple today. She claimed the throne for herself after her husband died, instead of ruling as a regent for her stepson.”
“But what about the staff?” Zeinab pressed.
Ellie cast an uneasy glance at Sayyid. “The tablet mentioned a tomb at the Horizon of the Sun.”
“Akhetaten!” Sayyid exclaimed. “The new capital city Akhenaten and Nefertiti built at Tell al-Amarna. That’s what the name means—Horizon of the Aten, the god of the sun. Of course, the cliffs behind Tell al-Amarna are peppered with tombs—those of Akhenaten himself as well as many of his leading courtiers. The necropolis was abandoned along with his capital sometime around the beginning of the reign of Tutankhamun.”
“But has anyone ever found Nefertiti’s tomb?” Jemmahor’s eyes glittered with excitement.
“It has never been discovered,” Sayyid replied meaningfully.
“Did the tablet say anything more about where at Amarna the tomb might be found?” Zeinab demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ellie admitted. “I was only able to pick out part of the first line.”
“Will your brother be able to read the rest of it?” Zeinab pressed.
Ellie glanced from Sayyid to Adam. “His Akkadian isn’t as strong as mine, but he’s familiar enough with it that I think he could manage, if he had a few books on hand.”
“And Dawson travels with a library… and tea sets. Cutlery. Special outfits. What?” Adam protested when everyone turned to look at him. “The guy had a carpet in his tent!”
“Then if the tablet does contain further information about where to find the tomb, your Mr. Forster-Mowbray will go after it,” Zeinab concluded grimly.
A veiled and cloaked woman hurried into the church, escorted by one of the young nuns. She dashed to Umm Waseem and Zeinab, exchanging a few low words in Masri.
“We know where they have taken Dr. Fairfax and Miss Tyrrell,” Zeinab announced as the messenger darted back outside.
“Where?” Ellie felt a sharp prick of worry at the notion of her hapless brother trapped in Julian Forster-Mowbray’s clutches.
“They were loaded onto a great dahabeeyah anchored just north of the city,” Zeinab replied.
Ellie straightened in her seat. “We will have to slip on board and free them. We can hire a smaller craft in Luxor and go in under the cover of darkness.”
“Like pirates?” Jemmahor elaborated hopefully.
Sayyid groaned.
“Absolutely not,” Zeinab retorted crossly. “Do you think that is not the first thing Mr. Forster-Mowbray would expect?”
“We could use a small explosion as a diversion!” Ellie countered with a hopeful look at Umm Waseem.
The old woman had closed her eyes as though deciding to take a nap.
“No explosions,” Adam cut in. “And The Mustache might not expect us to play pirates, but Jacobs sure as hell will. If we’re crazy enough to come, he’ll be waiting for us.”
“But—” Ellie began.
Adam cut her off with a meaningful look. “They took your brother with them for a reason, or they’d have left him to be skewered with the rest of us. Until Fairfax has outlived his usefulness—which I’m guessing means translating the rest of that tablet—he’s probably safer than we are. Maybe he’ll even be smart enough to take his time about the job. It’s not like Dawson’s going to figure it out first—or know what the hell to do with the information once he does. I’ve seen how he reads a map.”
His tone was drier than the arid landscape outside.
“And Julian still thinks he’s going to marry Constance,” Ellie reluctantly allowed.
“Which means she’s safe enough with him, as long as she doesn’t show all her cards,” Adam filled in.
“But she can be terribly impulsive,” Ellie pushed back worriedly. “And Neil is… er…”
“I know,” Adam agreed wryly. “Look, I’d feel better too if I knew there was a way to get them out of there, but from where I’m sitting it looks like they’re safer with Julian—for now—than they would be in some half-cocked rescue scheme. Even assuming we convince the rest of these ladies to put their necks on the line again to help us.”
“Not to give any offense, but we did not come here for you,” Jemmahor pointed out with a slightly apologetic look. “We are here to stop those Englishmen from making off with the Staff of Musa.”
“Or the contents of another tomb.” Zeinab’s green eyes were hard. “They have stolen enough of Egypt’s treasures already.”
“We already know where they’re going to go,” Adam added. “And that’s the tombs at Akhenaten’s capital city. We’ll have a hell of a better chance reaching Neil and Constance while The Mustache is distracted with tomb hunting than we will on a boat in the middle of the Nile.”
“Mr. Bates is right.” Zeinab gave Adam a look of wary respect.
“But do we even know whether the staff can be found in the lady pharaoh’s tomb?” Jemmahor pressed.
“I can’t say for certain,” Ellie admitted. “The only connections we have are the presence of a ring with the name of Moseh in Mutnedjmet’s jewelry box and the inscription’s mention of the Was-Scepter of Khemenu.”
“But would not the staff have left Egypt with Moses?” Jemmahor pressed. “It was with him when he parted the Red Sea and afterward while the people wandered in the desert. Why would it have been returned to Egypt? What would have been left here for Musa or his followers?”
“It does not matter,” Zeinab concluded flatly. “Mr. Forster-Mowbray believes that some object of great power lies in this lost pharaoh’s tomb, and if there is even a chance that he is right, we must intervene.”
The space after her words was thick with the question of whether anyone would object.
Jemmahor’s eyes shone with excitement at the prospect.
Adam’s expression was grim but determined.
Sayyid stared at his wife as though she stood on the far side of a great gulf—and had turned to walk away from him.
“Bismillah,” Umm Waseem concluded without opening her eyes.
Ellie wondered how much of the exchange the older woman had understood, given that so far she hadn’t uttered a word of English. Did she know she was agreeing to stop a cabal of thieves from raiding the tomb of a mysterious pharaoh? Or was she simply on board for whatever trouble Zeinab led them into?
“If we’re hoping to stage an ambush, we’re going to want to get there first,” Adam pointed out.
“They are traveling by boat,” Zeinab said thoughtfully. “If we take the train to Dayrout, we will only need to go a few miles downstream and cross the river. We would certainly outpace them that way.”
“El atr 'atal fe Asyut,” Umm Waseem announced pleasantly.
“What’d she say?” Adam asked.
“She says the train is out at Asyut,” Jemmahor translated with a look of surprised admiration.
“And how does she know that?” Zeinab cast a narrow-eyed glance at the older woman.
“Do you really want to know?” Jemmahor shot back wryly.
Umm Waseem wheezed out a dark, happy chuckle.
“Asyut!” Zeinab bit out the word with frustration.
“From what I remember of the map, that still leaves us about fifty miles short of Tell al-Amarna,” Adam noted.
Zeinab stood. “It doesn’t matter. I can get us there in time.”
“How?” Ellie asked, curious.
“By calling in a favor,” Zeinab replied.
Her tone made it sound like a threat.