Children of the Storm (48 page)

Evelyn was the first to burst out of the house. She flung her arms around me. “Thank God you are safe, Amelia.”

“I was never in danger, my dear,” I replied, putting her gently away. “There is no time for that sort of thing now. We must have . . . Ramses, where are you going?”

“I won’t be long.”

I watched him move away with long, measured strides, and had not the heart to call him back. No assurances are as convincing as the evidence of one’s own eyes. He was going to the children.

The others were in the sitting room. Cyrus and Katherine and Bertie, Walter and Lia, Gargery, Daoud and Kadija and Fatima, and . . .

“Selim!” I cried. “Go back to bed at once.”

His brown face was a little paler than usual, but he was fully dressed and his neatly wound turban concealed the bandages. “Lie in bed while Emerson and Nur Misur are in danger? My honored father would rise up from his tomb.”

“It is true.” Daoud nodded. “Now you are here, Sitt Hakim, God be thanked. You will tell us what to do.”

The hard knot in my interior softened a little as I looked round the room. No woman could have had more valiant allies than these. I did not protest, for I knew I would have to have Selim tied to his bed to keep him there. He had a knife at his belt and so did Daoud. Cyrus, too, was armed, with a holstered pistol. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw that Evelyn was gripping my sword parasol. They would obey my slightest command. If only I knew what command to give! I had preserved my outward calm, but inwardly I was in such a confusion of rage and worry I couldn’t think sensibly.

Stalling for time, I took a chair and asked, “Where is Sethos?”

“Somewhere around,” Cyrus replied. “Said he couldn’t sit still, and durned if I blame him.”

Ramses and Sethos must have met outside, for they came in together. “Ah, there you are,” said the latter, nodding at me. “Hasn’t anyone offered you a whiskey and soda?”

Cyrus let out a multisyllabled American exclamation. “Jumping Jehoshaphat, I should have thought of it. How about you, Ramses?”

Ramses shook his head. “What we need is one of Mother’s famous councils of war.”

Everyone looked expectantly at me. “First,” I said, taking the glass from Cyrus, “tell us what steps you have taken. You telegraphed, Bertie?”

Bertie nodded. He looked absolutely miserable.

Sethos had helped himself to a whiskey. I suspected it was not his first. “That step was necessary, but it may not be of much use. I have taken the liberty of dispatching a number of your fellows to alert the villages between here and Nag Hammadi, and upstream, as far as Esna, in case she changes course. The word will be passed on.”

“A regular Pony Express,” Cyrus said, with an approving nod.

“Donkey express,” Sethos corrected. “And a few camels.”

“That’s all very well and good,” said Walter peevishly. “But I do not understand why we are sitting round drinking whiskey and not acting!”

“What else can we do?” I asked.

Walter banged his fist on the table. His mild countenance was no longer mild; his eyes glittered. “Go in pursuit! We have the Amelia, have we not?”

Sethos put his empty glass on the table and the rest of us gaped at Walter. “I wondered if you would think of that.”

“You had, I suppose?” Walter demanded.

“Selim had. That’s why he’s here. We will need him. There’s only a skeleton crew on board, and it would take too long to get Reis Hassan and his engineer back.”

“Hmph,” said Walter, only slightly appeased and sounding as warlike as Emerson. “Then why haven’t we started?”

“Because,” said Sethos, in his most irritating drawl, “we cannot start before morning. Aside from the danger of navigation at night, we could go right past the Isis in the dark. And because we were waiting for Amelia and Ramses. And, most importantly, because we need to gather all the facts and plan our strategy before we charge ahead. Suppose we do catch her up, then what? Board her, swords in hand?”

Walter jumped to his feet. He looked twice the man he had been when he arrived in Cairo, and for the first time I saw the resemblance between him and the man he confronted. He snatched his eyeglasses off and threw them across the room. “Damn you, er—Sethos, are you making fun of me? If swords are required, I will use one!”

Sethos said in quite a different tone, “I beg your pardon . . . brother. I know you would. We had better pray it won’t come to that. Sit down, I beg, and let us discuss the situation calmly. Amelia, would you like to take charge of the discussion?”

Before I could begin, Selim rose carefully to his feet. “I am going to the Amelia to begin overhauling the engines. I will have her ready to sail at daybreak.”

“I will go with you,” Walter declared. “What the devil did I do with my glasses?”

“Here.” Evelyn handed them to him. “Walter, dear—”

He knew what she was about to say. Adjusting the eyeglasses, he took her by the shoulders and smiled at her. “Perhaps I can be Selim’s hands or run errands for him, if I can do nothing more.”

“I too,” said Bertie. “I know a little something about engines.”

“Selim, I strictly forbid you to let that horse gallop,” I called after them. “Walter, make sure he obeys.”

“Losing control of your subalterns?” Sethos inquired. “I am your willing slave, as always. What orders have you for me? Another whiskey, perhaps?”

“I am in no mood for humor,” I informed him.

“Only trying to relieve the tension, my dear. The fact is, I believe we have matters under control here. The children are all in the main house, and it is surrounded—men every ten feet, all aroused and looking for trouble. The women and children will be safe—”

A united outcry from every female in the room silenced him. “If you think I am staying here,” Lia began.

“Or me!” Evelyn cried, brandishing the parasol.

“You will both do what you are told,” I said. “By me. We must decide how our forces can best be employed. Someone must remain to deal with M. Lacau. He is due tomorrow.”

“He’s here,” Cyrus said. “Got in this evening. How can you worry about him at such a time as this?”

“For one thing, he may be persuaded to join in the hunt for Isis.”

“Not very likely,” Cyrus said. “He’ll be too worried about his consarned treasure. What about the other tourist boats?”

“I could not in conscience ask a party of innocents to take an active part. We could ask the cruise boats to keep an eye out for the Isis, but I expect by morning she will have altered her appearance. Since our enemies have departed en masse, I doubt there is danger to anyone here—”

“An assumption we dare not make,” said Sethos. “We believed the immediate family had not been targeted. That is what we were meant to believe. Now they have taken Nefret. They didn’t plan on Emerson, but now they’ve got him they aren’t likely to let him go. We know the motive now. It applies equally strongly to the rest of you—and to me.”

He went to the sideboard again and splashed whiskey into his glass. I could have used another myself. We had skirted round the subject, but it could no longer be avoided.

“I am sorry,” I said haltingly. “I had hoped she was innocent.”

Sethos swung round to face me. “She looks so innocent, doesn’t she? Those childish freckles and wide hazel eyes . . . She took me in, too, Amelia, if that is any consolation.”

I saw the pain his controlled countenance endeavored to conceal, and so did my dear Evelyn. Going to him, she embraced him like a sister. “She may be a prisoner, dear—er—”

The tenderness of her manner, and the stumble over his name, were too much for him. Affection and laughter choked his voice. “Dear Evelyn. Would you like me to tell you my real name?”

“You need not tell me if you would rather not.”

“Seth.”

“What?” I cried. “Not Gawaine, or George, or Milton, or—”

Visibly amused, Sethos lifted his glass to me. “What an imagination you have, Amelia. Where do you suppose I got my nom de guerre? My parents gave me a perfectly respectable biblical name, but when I realized how close it was to that of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh I couldn’t resist. And how appropriate! Sethos, the follower of Set, god of storm and chaos, deadly enemy of his noble brother—” He broke off with a snap of his teeth. “Ramses, will you for God’s sake have a drink, or say something, or at least sit down? You make me nervous planted there like a bloody granite statue. We’ll get her back.”

It might have been the thought of the other young woman, the loving daughter Sethos would never get back, that broke Ramses’s stony control.

“I’m sorry,” he began.

Sethos snarled at him. “I don’t want your pity. I want information. There is nothing we can do for several more hours, so we may as well talk. I don’t suppose anyone intends to sleep. Is there any longer the slightest doubt as to what has motivated this string of extraordinary occurrences?”

“No,” I said. “Once I realized that revenge for Bertha’s death was the motive, every incident fit snugly into the pattern. The first, which I flat-out missed until recently, was the death of Hassan—or rather, his sudden turn to religion. What had he done that he should feel the need of forgiveness?”

Ramses nodded. “That’s what Selim said, in almost those precise words. I missed it too. Hassan was one of the men who was with us that day at Gurneh, when Abdullah died and Bertha . . . Are you suggesting that it was Hassan who struck the blow that killed her?”

“I think that if he did not, he believed he had, or claimed the credit—for creditable it would have seemed to those who revered Abdullah and held the old tribal beliefs—an eye for an eye, a death for a death. Do you remember the letter Ramses read us, from a man to his deceased wife? I would not be surprised if Hassan did not hold the same view about ill fortune—that it must be due to a malevolent spirit. Hassan had lost his own wife, and he had begun to suffer the effects of old age. Guilt and the hope of forgiveness made him seek the protection of a holy man—even if he had to invent one himself! Most of the other men are dead, except for—”

“Selim and Daoud,” David breathed. “Good God. She would have no trouble murdering Hassan—poison in one of the dishes of food he was brought—but I can’t believe—”

“Selim and Daoud,” Sethos said, in a hard flat voice, “were next. She played with them like a cat with a mouse. None of the incidents proved to be fatal, but any one of them might have been. She staged her own misadventures to allay your suspicions. Martinelli would seem to be an aberration. I don’t know why she went after him. To the best of my knowledge, she never met him.”

“There are a number of things you do not know,” I said. El-Gharbi’s revelations had been overshadowed by the magnitude of the catastrophe that had befallen us, but they were vital to the case. Evelyn and David had voiced a hope, a doubt, which must be present in the minds of the others. It was hard to picture that fresh-faced girl as capable of murder.

“It is important that all of us understand precisely what we are up against,” I went on. “It is not a—er—disturbed young woman with a crew of venal cutthroats. There is at least one other individual involved, a hardened criminal with the same motive as Maryam’s. Maryam is not Bertha’s only child.”

For almost the first time since I had known him, Sethos lost his composure. His face went white. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No. Not another of my . . . Who told you that?”

“El-Gharbi,” Ramses said. “That was where we went today, to his village, where he had been exiled. Mother remembered something he had said—about the young serpent also having poisoned fangs. Why she didn’t see fit to mention this to anyone else—”

“I forgot,” I admitted. “It was so vague, like one of those Nostradamus predictions that can be interpreted in many different ways. We were at that time involved with that vicious boy Jamil, who could certainly have been described in those terms. Emerson also knew, but like myself he forgot or dismissed the warning. Not until last night, when I finally began to see the pattern we had been seeking, did I realize el-Gharbi might have information we did not.”

“You ought to have told us,” Evelyn said accusingly.

“It is easy to see what one ought to have done after the event,” David said quietly. “I want to know more about this second child.”

Lia let out a cry. “Justin. Is it Justin? But he’s even younger than Maryam, he cannot be more than fourteen. He—”

“He,” I said, “is a young woman. The short stature, the beardless face, the high-pitched voice should have alerted us. She was in her late teens when el-Gharbi knew her in Cairo. One of the more—er—exclusive, I suppose I should say—houses of prostitution was owned by an older woman, a European, who also had a hand in various illegal operations. She and el-Gharbi were never in competition; they operated, so to speak, on different levels, but he was familiar with her activities. Her customers included the highest officials and the wealthiest, most fastidious tourists. Justin was her protégé, and her able assistant in every criminal activity, from drugs to murder.”

“Not mine, then,” Sethos said in a ragged whisper. “Not mine.”

I understood his feelings. If the information gave him any comfort, I was ready to give it.

“According to el-Gharbi’s sources, her father was an Englishman named Vincey, the man with whom Bertha lived for several years before we exterminated Vincey and Bertha went to you. No. You are not her father. She and Maryam are half sisters. How they met and when I do not know, but Justin is unquestionably the ringleader. She is the elder, and unlike Maryam she has lived all her life with criminals.”

“That doesn’t absolve Maryam,” Sethos said. Except for the perspiration that beaded his forehead, he might have been talking about a stranger. “She was a willing participant from the start. The attack on her was staged; the result was that Ramses ‘rescued’ her and brought her to you—with well-feigned reluctance that gained your sympathy and support. She’s been spying on you and reporting back to the others.”

“She may be under duress,” Evelyn said.

“Give it up, Evelyn,” Sethos said. “She is a true child of her mother—and God help us, of me.”