Twenty-Nine
C onstance contemplated the sleeping form of Dr. Neil Fairfax in the morning light that streamed into their tomb, a pot full of river water in her hands.
She had found the pot in another rock-cut tomb when she went out to investigate their situation an hour earlier. The neck had been broken off, but enough volume remained for her to scoop up a bit of the Nile and carry it with her to where Neil lay dozing.
She hesitated before executing the rest of her plan. Neil looked better than he had any right to. He was still stripped down to his trousers, allowing Constance a more thorough opportunity to appreciate his torso than she’d had the night before. He really must have been doing more than reading excavation reports these last few years. While he wasn’t quite of the proportions of someone like Adam Bates, he had certainly filled out from the scrawny boy Constance had known as a child.
Not that it mattered. She had quite set aside her notions of taking Neil as her lover. Really, the whole idea had been nonsensical! As he had indelibly proved over the last few days, he might have developed a respectable set of biceps, but he was still Stuffy. He would probably respond to Constance’s amorous attentions by blurting out bits of Latin poetry. He’d fumble his glasses, and the tips of his ears would turn red.
She frowned. The images were less off-putting than she might have liked.
At any rate, it was time matters went back to the way they were supposed to be—with Neil complaining about how unsafe things were and Constance finding creative uses for ropes and fire.
Or river water.
Neil muttered uneasily in his sleep, rolling onto his back. His soft brown hair had dried at odd angles. Little creases tugged at the corners of his mouth, as though he were still worrying about something even while he dreamed.
She could smooth those out with a kiss, Constance thought distractedly.
Instead of kissing, she tipped the broken pot and let a stream of Nile water splash down onto Neil’s face.
He woke up spluttering and flailing. “Who…?! Where…?!”
“It’s time to go,” Constance informed him, setting down the now-empty pot.
Still in her chemise and drawers, she crossed over to pluck her corset from the ground and give it a thorough shaking out. Behind her, Neil fumbled at his pocket for his spectacles.
He slipped them on and blinked at her.
The tips of his ears turned a distinct pink.
Serves him right, Constance thought pertly and fixed her corset into place with a practiced tug at the cords.
Her lawn dress was looking a bit worse for its recent adventures, but she hardly needed to worry about that. No one could see it at the moment but Neil Fairfax.
She pulled it on over her head, popping her arms back into the sleeves.
Neil had scrambled to gather up his own clothes, tugging on his shirt as though it were a hole he could dive into and hide. He was still working on the buttons when his eyes lit on Constance’s broken pot.
He snatched it from the ground and turned it with an air of urgent examination.
“This is Fatamid-era Minis lusterware!” Neil burst out. “Where did you get this? Was there any more of it? Did you see any nearby inscriptions or graffiti?”
“Leave off about the lusterware and finish getting dressed,” Constance retorted. “Unless you’re content to climb over a mile and a half of cliffs as you are. It hardly makes any difference to me.”
Neil looked down at his half-buttoned shirt. He clamped his hand on it, then turned and hurried into his waistcoat.
“Where are we going, anyway?” he asked.
“There’s a bit of farmland on this side of the river at a break in the cliffs to the south,” Constance reported. “We’ll head there and see if we can acquire that boat.”
“Right.” Neil ran a distracted hand through his hair as though to tidy it. The gesture didn’t really help.
Constance gave an impatient huff and batted his hand away, running her fingers through the cropped brown length herself. It was still damp from her wake-up call.
“There,” she concluded, satisfied with the results.
Neil swallowed thickly and pointedly looked past her shoulder. His eyes widened. “Well, there you are! Blessings of Hathor upon Nihkayankh, steward of the nomarch of Ta-Wer !”
“What are you on about?” Constance demanded with a note of exasperation.
Neil pushed past her to the statues by the mouth of the tomb. He pointed to a few lines of hieroglyphs that it had been too dark to see the night before.
“An Eighth Nome official,” he declared proudly, “and his wife.”
Constance narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “That was quite the lucky guess, then,” she noted, remembering his comments about the ancient couple from the night before.
“It wasn’t a guess,” Neil retorted crossly.
“Then how did you know this was an Eighth Nome official before you could read any of the words?” She waved a hand at the hieroglyphs.
Neil crossed his arms. “I just… used a bit of intuition.”
A new and unexpected suspicion popped to life in the back of Constance’s mind. She contemplated it as she studied him.
“What?” Neil frowned at her. “Why are you staring at me?”
“No reason,” Constance replied, filing the bizarre and intriguing thought away for later.
Neil frowned at her skeptically before his gaze was drawn back to the inscription on the wall—and then he was pushing past Constance to kneel down in front of it.
“ Thinis!? ” he exclaimed.
“Sorry?” Constance returned, confused.
Neil jabbed an urgent finger at the hieroglyphs. “Nihkayankh, steward of the nomarch of Ta-Wer, who sealed the royal tombs of Thinis! Do you have any idea how important this is?”
He sprang to his feet, pacing across the entrance to the tomb as he continued. “Thinis is the ancient lost capital of Egypt’s First Dynasty. Maspero theorized that it was located somewhere in the vicinity of Girga, though Brugsch and Mariette have argued for Kom el-Sultan or el-Tineh. But we know it was very likely somewhere in the Eighth Nome, and really when you consider…”
Constance stared at him.
“I’m… I’m rambling. Aren’t I?” he offered awkwardly.
“Yes.” Constance softened. “Though to be fair, I would normally be quite happy to discuss mythical cities, especially if it means there might be clues to undiscovered ancient ruins full of forgotten treasure knocking about. But at the moment, we already have a legendary tomb to find and a bevy of villains whom we must assume are already several hours ahead of us. We cannot rely on the booby traps holding them off forever.”
“Booby traps?” Neil echoed. “What booby traps?”
“The ones in Neferneferuaten’s tomb, of course.”
“But tombs don’t have booby traps,” Neil protested.
“Of course they do,” Constance corrected him.
They paused at the mouth of their rock-cut chamber. Neil contemplated the climb with an expression of tired resignation, then cast Constance an awkward look. “I never thanked you for last night.”
“Which part of it?” Constance asked.
“The part where you broke me out of that study. Herded me through a boat full of criminals.” He nodded at the stone cavern behind them. “Found us a place to hide.”
“You would have done the same thing,” Constance said dismissively.
“Would I?” Neil returned with obvious skepticism.
“Well—maybe not quite the same thing,” Constance allowed. “But you did save both our hides when you threw us off the boat. That was a good bit of quick thinking.”
“But I left them the tablet,” Neil pointed out glumly.
Constance gave his arm a reassuring pat. “You can’t expect to get it all right on the first try.”
Neil’s expression drew into lines of resigned dismay. “How many more tries do you expect we’re going to have?”
Constance flashed him a sympathetic smile and refrained from answering. Why give him the bad news now? He’d only worry over it the rest of the way up the Nile.
Neil took in her expression and groaned.
Constance cast a final look at the age-worn sculptures in the wall—the steward of the nomarch of Ta-Wer and his wife, their features worn away by the millennia. Her gaze dropped to where the fingers of the two statues were still delicately entwined.
“They’re holding hands,” she observed with a pang of surprise.
“Yes.” Neil’s tone was a little solemn and awkward. “They do that sometimes.”
Even though the sculptures were deeply weathered with age, obscuring much of their detail, the time-worn gesture was oddly poignant.
“How long do you think they have been like that?” Constance pressed.
“Around four thousand years.”
Constance’s heart squeezed with a poignant sympathy. “He must have loved her very much,” she said with feeling.
Neil frowned as he adjusted his spectacles.
She grabbed his hand and gave it a tug. “Now come along. We have a boat to steal.”
“Don’t you mean buy? ” Neil pleaded, stumbling after her.
?
Constance tucked up her skirts as she set off along the cliffs. The ragged landscape was not as impenetrable as it had looked from the boat. A little scrambling over the rocks and a shuffle along a few narrow ledges brought them near the top of the escarpment, where a perfectly serviceable goat path wended across the heights. There were only a few places where she had to leap across a small chasm along the way.
Haranguing Neil into following her took rather more effort.
She steered them to the narrow, low-lying band of green farmland that lay at a dip in the ridge to the south. The cotton fields were broken up by a cluster of humble houses and a rickety dock that ran out into the water, where Constance had picked out the shape of a tidy little single-sail felucca.
The boat looked somewhat less tidy as they drew nearer to it. The hull had not been painted in some time, and the sail was patched in places. The craft was also listing a bit to port.
Constance spotted the farmer in a field near the dock, his blue galabeya tucked up around his knees.
“I don’t suppose you speak any Masri?” she asked as Neil joined her.
“A bit?” Neil replied, huffing from the exertion of the climb. “I mean—I’ve picked up a few things, but Sayyid is always telling me that my pronunciation is—”
“It’ll do.” Constance hooked her arm through his elbow and dragged him over to the farmer.
The fellow was only a few years older than Constance, with wide brown eyes and sun-weathered skin. He straightened as they approached, staring at them as though he half suspected they were a mirage.
The way Neil stared back at him was hardly better.
“Say hello.” Constance nudged him with her elbow.
“Right,” Neil squeaked nervously. “Er… salamu 'alaykum!”
“Waleikum as-salam,” the farmer replied skeptically.
“Tell him that he has a very nice farm,” Constance prompted.
“Why?” Neil retorted, clearly bewildered.
“You can’t just start right into bargaining. You have to soften him up first!”
“Bargaining?” Neil echoed with alarm. “Who said anything about bargaining?”
“How else do you think we are going to acquire the boat, if we are not stealing it?” Constance threw up her hands.
“But I’m awful at bargaining!” Neil protested.
“ You aren’t going to do it,” Constance retorted. “ I am. You are merely a necessary instrument. Now say something nice!”
Neil appeared singularly unhappy with her instructions, but he drew in a breath to brace himself and swung into a halting stream of Masri.
The farmer appeared confused, offering a few polite if unenthusiastic answers.
Neil breathed out a sigh. “I have ascertained the well-being of his sons, his cattle, and the likelihood of bad weather between now and the end of the inundation. Is that sufficient?”
“I suppose,” Constance allowed. “Now you may ask him about the boat—but don’t sound too interested yet! If he doesn’t think you’re set on buying it, he won’t try to gouge you.” She hesitated, taking in Neil’s pale complexion, river-stained shirt, and slightly panicked expression. “Maybe,” she amended.
Neil looked miserable but waded back into his negotiations with the farmer.
Constance had only been in Egypt for a few weeks, but she had always had an ear for languages—and Neil’s Masri sounded distinctly off.
The farmer stared at him in shock.
“Hold on,” Constance cut in. “Did you ask him about his felucca—or his falaka ?”
“Aren’t those the same thing?”
“A felucca is a sailboat,” Constance retorted impatiently. “A falaka is…” She reconsidered the word she was about to use as she absorbed Neil’s already rattled sensibilities. “One’s posterior region.”
“ Oh God! ” Neil moaned, his expression falling into lines of abject mortification.
“Best clear that up,” Constance helpfully suggested.
Neil managed to recover from the blunder, but even with the right vocabulary to hand, Constance could sense that it was a frankly pathetic performance. The farmer himself looked a little disappointed by it. After all, one did have to appreciate the opportunity to engage in a bit of skilled haggling—and Stuffy was falling quite short of that.
“He says that the boat belonged to his father and is therefore extremely dear to him, but that he might be willing to part with it for the right price,” Neil finally reported. He was sweating.
“His father’s boat, my left foot,” Constance assessed. “Offer him five ginehs.”
The farmer made an elaborate reply.
“He says he cannot possibly part with it for less than ten ginehs,” Neil translated, “as the boat is actually on loan from his cousin and—”
“Ten ginehs for that floating bathtub?” Constance caught herself and pasted on a polite smile. “Tell him that it is a very fine boat, but you can only possibly offer him six and a half ginehs.”
Neil winced, but trudged back into it.
“He says because it is such a fine boat, he can’t possibly give it to us for six and a half ginehs. The lowest he can go is eight,” Neil pleaded, looking haggard.
“Tell him seven and a half.” Constance kept her gaze on the farmer, who looked back at her with a similar expression of happy competition.
“He accepts.” Neil’s shoulders sagged with relief.
Constance plunged her hand into her corset to pluck out a bundle of cash, which was still a little damp from its plunge into the Nile. She peeled off the notes.
“Here,” she said, holding them out.
Neil stared at the bills as though taking them would be equivalent to rubbing his hands over her bosom.
Constance snapped her fingers. Neil jolted, snatched the money, and shoved it at the farmer.
Another exchange of Masri had him looking decidedly peaked.
“He’s insisting we stay for tea!” Neil protested, near panicking.
“Tell him that is a very kind offer, and we shall certainly return to take him up on it, but right now your mother is expecting you for lunch,” Constance neatly rattled off.
“My mother?” Neil echoed. “But my mother’s in—”
“Just tell him!”
Neil looked queasy as he delivered the message, but the farmer accepted it with a shrug. A great deal of handshaking followed before Neil was freed to follow her to the boat.
Constance stepped inside. The weathered deck wobbled under her boot. It was not a very large boat, but there was no sign that it was actively leaking—which meant it would do.
“I’m so glad that’s over!” Neil burst out.
“Can you sail?” Constance demanded.
Neil stiffened a bit. “I can, as it happens.”
“Good. Then I needn’t do it all myself,” Constance concluded. “Free the lines, would you?”
Neil loosed them from the dock and then hurriedly leapt into the boat before the current could tug it free. The felucca tilted precariously, forcing him to spin his arms to maintain his balance.
“This is a terrible idea!” he exclaimed.
“Hoist the sail,” Constance replied, taking hold of the tiller. “We have villains to catch.”