Heart of Light (23 page)

His hands trembling with fear of shocking her—of hurting her—he undressed and put on his sleeping shirt and his dressing gown. Then he started down the hallway.

It was dark and he did not bring his magelight with him. He assumed that Mr. Martin was none too sure what Nigel's relationship with Emily was, and he was hardly in the mood to have to explain that no impropriety was being committed.

But the hallway was straight, and though filled with shadows and smelling strangely of the smoke, cooking and camel dung from the surrounding encampment— as well as an unknown, sweet animal smell that Nigel couldn't quite place—it was not hard at all to find one's way across it.

From downstairs came the sound of the soldiers' voices, raised in a wild song. They joined other voices, male and female, and Nigel wondered if all the other passengers from the train had found their way here.

As he approached Emily's door, his heart beat so hard that he could not believe it didn't awaken everyone around. No light escaped under the door. Nigel wondered if this was a good or bad sign and settled for thinking that, as shy and inexperienced as Emily was, she obviously felt more comfortable in the dark.

Shaking, he knocked on the door.

No sound, not even a rustle of a body upon the mattress, answered his knock. He knocked again. Again no sound.

“Emily,” he whispered at the door. “Emily. It is I. Please, open the door.”

There was no answer.

Nigel stood there a long while, staring at the door. Could she have fallen asleep and not heard him? It seemed unlikely. He had, after all, warned her of his intentions. How could she not be awake and waiting? Did she not desire him as he desired her? Did she not love him?

He stood there a long time before it dawned on him that perhaps Emily was taking revenge for his own seeming indifference the previous week. But would Emily do that? Wasn't she the kindest and sweetest of women? And yet he remembered how furious she'd been, knowing he had lied about the purpose of their trip to Africa. Perhaps she viewed this as his just deserts for his behavior so far.

Walking back to his room, in the dark, he patted the pocket of his dressing gown for his pouch of tobacco, but he'd neglected to put it in. What he longed for was some stronger relaxant anyway—wine, or port, or brandy. But he had none about him, having assumed he'd be on his honeymoon and not wanting to shock Emily.

At the end of the hallway, listening to the soldiers downstairs now joined by a high female laughter of unknown provenance, Nigel knew he would not be able to sleep without something to help him.

He hesitated for a moment before deciding to knock on Peter's door. He'd never discussed brandy with Peter—their association in school had taken place before either of them was old enough to drink. However, Peter looked to Nigel as someone who would carry brandy upon his person.

Turning, Nigel knocked halfheartedly on Peter's door. He thought he heard a rustle within, but not any answer. Tonight was his night for being ignored, it seemed. He knocked again, hard. The door—insufficiently held by its latch—gave under his knock and revealed Peter's room. Empty.

Nigel stepped into the room, stupefied, unable to think of what this meant. Peter was gone. Where could he be? The room was almost exactly like Nigel's own—barely able to contain a bed and a washstand and a very small trunk, which seemed to be all of Peter's luggage. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the water in the basin looked dingy and gray. Peter's clothes lay, neatly folded, at the bottom of the bed. But then, what was Peter wearing?

Nigel heard the laughter from the soldiers downstairs. No chance that Peter was down there with them, talking and laughing and socializing with whatever woman might have come straggling in from the train. Peter would not go out in his dressing gown. But then . . .

Mute and still, Nigel stood in the middle of Peter's room and felt as though the building was collapsing around him. He thought of Emily's closed door, of her lack of response. His fists closed and tightened, just as a pressure tightened around his heart. No. Emily wouldn't do it. Nor would Peter. They were honorable English people, not savages who gave in to every impulse.

Rage, like a red flood, seemed to build behind his eyes. It couldn't be. Emily loved him. She would not betray him. And yet Nigel had not consummated their marriage. Nigel had rebuffed her more than once.

Peter's window was open, Nigel noticed, and it looked over an immense space of treetops and dark, starry sky. Strange screams and hisses echoed from the oasis and Nigel wished he, too, could scream and hiss and howl. But he could not. He was a civilized man.

Turning on his heel, he left Peter's room behind and went to his own, where he took off his dressing gown and lay upon the narrow and, it turned out, very hard mattress and tried not to think about his dilemma. Sometime during the night he slept, worn down by his misery, only to wake with his window opening, forcibly.

He blinked and saw, stretched through the window, a long sinuous neck and, at the end of it, a wedge-shaped head with immense teeth, a mouth shaped to rend and tear. Halfway between sleep and a scream of terror, Nigel caught the impression of an immense winged body outside the window, of narrow, yellow-green eyes glimmering, a smell of fire and scorch, a feeling of being watched. Then the Masai fetish upon the wall threw out a beam of golden light and the huge head pulled back and was gone.

Nigel blinked at the dark room. His window was open and the white, flimsy curtain blew in the wind.

He took a deep breath. Another dragon. He'd seen a dragon. But it must have been a dream. The crazed natives with their talk of fantastic beasts had gotten in Nigel's head. As for the rest . . . Nigel would wish this entire night to be an evil dream.

He extended his hand and wished his magelight lit and spent the rest of the night awake in the humid warmth of Africa, staring at the stuccoed ceiling and longing for England.

THE SECRETS OF HIS HEART—UNFATHOMABLE

There was a tension in the air that Emily could not
understand.

She, Nigel and Peter sat around the table in Mr. Martin's plain but comfortable dining room with its massive, carved mahogany furniture and its chairs that appeared to have been fashioned each from a single block of wood. Two black-skinned maids, attired in black dresses with white lace at the cuffs and collar, served them from a buffet as sumptuous as any Emily had ever seen, consisting of braised kidneys, fried fish, beef and—exotic in England, but perfectly appropriate here—couscous.

The soldiers, whom Emily had dreaded encountering again, were nowhere in sight. Just Nigel, herself and Peter Farewell, sitting around a huge table that could well have accommodated thirty.

Even without the soldiers present, tension was palpable, hanging in the air like an uninvited guest.

Nigel's skin had that dingy gray tone that very pale people acquired when unwell. His eyes looked washed out, too, surrounded by dark, bruised circles. He held himself too straight, too controlled, and kept darting Emily pained, wounded looks, as if she'd done something to hurt him.

“There is a caravan leaving for Khartoum tomorrow,” Farewell said brightly. “The unflappable Mr. Martin says we'll be safe.” He tore a small piece from a large roll of bread and buttered the piece vigorously. He looked as though he was in a great hurry to do something and it didn't matter what. In fact, he looked the exact opposite of Nigel's spirits—bright, awake, healthy. His eyes sparkled and a smile crossed his lips at every moment, seemingly without reason. He now grinned at Nigel, his smile slowly enlarging, a black eyebrow slowly rising, in a look of Mephistophelian irony. “Nigel, old man, did you hear a single word I said?”

“Word?” Nigel said. “Of course. Caravan. To Khartoum.” Nigel lifted his teacup, took a sip and gave Emily another wounded glare. Then he looked back at Farewell and frowned. “But why do we need a caravan? Khartoum is within a few days' journey, is it not?”

Farewell sighed and hesitated. “Not on foot,” he said. “No.”

“But . . .” Nigel set the cup down forcefully, lifted his hands in a show of confusion. “Why can't we borrow or lease camels?”

“Good question,” Farewell said. He motioned to the maid to serve him more braised kidneys, then smiled. “Mr. Martin implied that it's not safe to travel without an escort.”

“Mahdists?” Nigel asked. He looked like he was asking something quite different and more personal, his voice full of anger. “But I thought they were all defeated.”

“Ah, Nigel.” Peter grinned. “You are too good and, being good, imagine that everyone is the same—a reflection of yourself. Mahdists were defeated, sure, but there are many other religious groups, just as hostile, on the ground. In this region, each tribe is a sect, and each man has his hand against everyone else. We'll never defeat them all, Nigel.”

He ate the kidneys with the appetite of a starving man, then set his knife down and looked up at his friend. His eyes appeared to twinkle with a secret amusement. “Have you ever heard the expression:
me and my cousin against my neighbor, me and my brother against my cousin, me against my brother
?”

Nigel looked annoyed. “Of course, I heard it from my teacher, long ago.” He fiddled with a piece of toast on his plate, then slowly spread it thickly with jam. “I'm not a child, Peter, nor the fool you apparently take me for.”

Farewell lifted his hands up and out, in a gesture of helplessness and innocence. “I never said you were a fool, Nigel. I don't make friends with fools. And you, Mrs. Oldhall, you have hardly eaten. Are you well?”

Emily nodded, unwilling to speak. Something was happening that she couldn't fully understand.

Nigel sipped his tea slowly, all the while gazing at Peter, as if considering the next move in an intricate game of chess. He'd left the toast quite abandoned on his plate. “Wouldn't it be easier, and safer, to find out if the train will be repaired soon? Would we really gain any time by going in a caravan?” He looked at Emily. “Mrs. Oldhall has never ridden a camel. A caravan, by Jove, like something out of
The Arabian Nights
.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “My dear Nigel.” He looked around and saw that the maids were safely at the other end of the room, then he spoke in a voice that didn't carry. “It would be safer, surely, if both you and Mrs. Oldhall weren't branded by the enemy. But as it is, should they get curious, they will reach for you, and we haven't gone so far that it would be hard for them to track you down.”

Emily wondered why Nigel had referred to her as Mrs. Oldhall and not Emily. Oh, it was proper etiquette, of course, and nothing she could protest, but it seemed to her as though Nigel used the honorific to punish her for crimes she was not aware of having committed. Had he taken her rejection the night before that seriously? She'd heard him knocking, of course, but after his nights and days of coldness, to want to visit her bed on that night of all nights, with drunken soldiers downstairs, had seemed improper and presumptuous. She felt a pinprick of anger that Nigel thought he could claim her, body and heart, at any time, in any way he wanted to.

Her father would have said Nigel was in the right. She was his wife and therefore his property. But Emily was starting to really think about marriage and her condition as a woman. She had been lied to, dragged to Africa on a dangerous mission of which she'd not been forewarned. Her consent had not been asked for any of it. So now she wanted Nigel to ask her consent to consummate her marriage. Her wedding vows, though willingly given, seemed to have been given so long ago and had been so little respected—indeed, so little reciprocated—that she could hardly consider it
consent
now. Certainly not informed consent, as she'd never imagined that Nigel intended to drag her to Africa in search of a mythical lost jewel. Had she known, would she have accepted him?

She couldn't tell. Though it was only a few days ago, the woman she had then been might as well be dead. Emily could only dimly remember what she'd thought and why.

She took a small spoon and ate the egg from within the shell in tiny bites.