Heart of Light (24 page)

“Mrs. Oldhall,” Peter said. “What do you think we should do? Should we wait here, till the railroad is done?”

“Or should we risk ourselves upon the jungle,” Nigel said, “with natives who might not speak the language, nor be respectful of you as they should be? Should we go with a party of natives into unknown territory, where they might easily enough kill us all?”

“Oh, come now,” Peter said. “We are not the first safari party, nor the last, to come through Khartoum and hire carriers. The very fact that there is a plaza where we can easily hire workers means there is a continued trade. What merchant cuts his client's throat? Wouldn't that destroy the business?”

Nigel looked at Peter, then at Emily. He was eating a slice of toast, well buttered.

In the center of the table lay a banquet of eggs and fried steak, different breads and fruit compote. It occurred to Emily what a great waste it was that the three of them were eating so little. But she rather suspected the soldiers would be eating after them.

“Mrs. Oldhall,” Nigel said, and smiled a little, as if the address were somehow ironic. “How do you choose? For it is clear the choice is yours.”

So,
now
she was being given a choice? She felt another wave of annoyance at Nigel. “How long do you think it would take to get the train repaired?” she asked.

“Well,” Peter said, wiping his fingers vigorously onto the linen napkin provided, and tossing it aside to get another morsel of bread, “I believe it will take one or two weeks, at least according to what the railmen were doing early this morning.”

Nigel gave Peter a dark look. “You were up very early,” he said, as if it was an accusation.

Peter chuckled. “Yes. The bed is awfully hard, is it not?”

“Mine was perfect,” Emily said, then blushed, remembering she had denied Nigel a place there.

“Your bed is wholly different,” Nigel said, glaring. “So the hard bed kept you awake?”

Inexplicably, Peter seemed embarrassed. “I often have trouble sleeping. And often find beds too hard or too soft. So, yes, I was up early.”

Emily wished she could tell Nigel they would wait for the train to be repaired. She knew that was what he wanted, and besides, she now slept in a room appointed with such European comforts as she could not hope to find anywhere else in Africa. But she knew this house was not safe. Not with the Hyena Men hot on their heels, and with Hyena Men brands on their flesh. They must proceed as soon as possible. Find the Heart of Light and return to safe England, where—she looked at Nigel from beneath lowered eyelids—where maybe she and Nigel could become a truly married couple.

“We'll take the caravan,” she said, after long, careful deliberation.

“See?” Peter said. “What did I tell you, Nigel? Mrs. Oldhall agrees with me, and since she's the most frail member of our expedition, this must mean it is the right route to take.”

All color drained from Nigel's face, leaving him waxy yellow. Getting up from the table, he flung down his napkin as though it were a glove. “Perhaps Mrs. Oldhall heard you thinking aloud,” he said, glaring at Farewell. “Last night. When you were absent from your room.”

Farewell in turn blanched milk-white and gaped, then recovered with visible effort. “I do not have the pleasure of understanding you, Oldhall,” he said, his accents careful and exact and painfully correct. “The only time I left my room was in search of bathing facilities.” Nigel opened his mouth, then closed it. “Oh,” he said. And it was patent from his expression that he'd never thought of that.

Emily understood what he meant all of a sudden. She realized that she hadn't answered her door, and that Peter Farewell had been absent from his room. A raging blush burned at her cheeks as she looked from one to the other of the men. Nigel could not for a second have contemplated . . .

She felt a mortified shame, a horrible anger. She bit her lips to avoid any words escaping her control.

“Mrs. Oldhall?” Farewell asked. “Is anything wrong?”

Everything was wrong. And Peter Farewell was the last person in the world whom Emily could tell about it.

KHARTOUM

Emily rode for hours upon the baked, dun emptiness
of the desert. Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see, and her mind turned upon the words Nigel had pronounced. Could Nigel think that Peter Farewell had been absent because he'd been visiting Emily's room? Could Nigel think Emily so lost to propriety?

Or had he another meaning? She thought of the way Peter Farewell had blanched. Could Nigel have another reason to question Peter's whereabouts on that night?

Lost between offense and guilt, Emily rode the camel through the parched landscape, and it seemed to her that the desert mirrored her own heart, where no hope of life or good could take hold for long. She would not—she could not—ever forgive Nigel for such a thought. And now she understood that whether he had another secret love or not, he could never have loved her. Not truly.

The camel gave off an evil stench and swayed back and forth like a rowboat on a stormy sea. But all that wouldn't matter if she could have been easy in her mind. Most of the time, Nigel and Farewell rode their own camels beside her and slightly ahead. Each of the men carried a powerstick of the best quality—polished English walnut gleaming under the desert sun—on a scabbard at his back, and wore light-colored suits and domed hats. From behind, they looked very much alike, though Farewell was perhaps more thickly built and, of course, dark-haired. Emily couldn't hear what they talked of, nor if they did.

In this numb grief, it seemed to her that the journey took no time at all, or else an eternity. They slept in encampments and rode through unremarkable days. She didn't think of what would happen when they reached the city, she didn't think at all and just lived, in the eternity of the desert, the swaying of the camel, the stench.

As they neared the outskirts of Khartoum, the sight of green, looking cool and impossible amid the desert, brought her back from her musings.

They rode into a wide avenue that ran beside a river, shaded by trees, for a distance of more than two miles. Beyond the trees were private houses, secluded within verdant gardens. Though the vegetation was very different—palms and a riot of large-leafed bushes—Emily felt as though she was walking into a European city. “All of this was built in the last few years,” a voice next to Emily said, startling her.

Peter Farewell looked guarded and anxious, as though he feared she was hurt. Indeed, Emily was. But why would he feel this was any of his responsibility?

“So new?” she asked, more to appease the anxiety in his eyes than because she truly wanted to know. She looked ahead to where Nigel rode, seemingly indifferent to how Emily might have taken his words. She turned back to the city around her, feigning interest. It looked new and clean, but Emily had heard of Khartoum well before ten years ago.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps not all of it. The city existed here until the Mahdi rebellion. They destroyed all of the houses and, with strong magic, forced the inhabitants to move to Omdurman, the capital.” He gestured expansively at the neat houses in their luxuriant gardens. “It wasn't until the English regained control of this region that they encouraged the rebuilding of the city—first by making it once more the administrative capital of the region, but also by planning the city around new and clean-cut lines.”

“Oh,” Emily said. Truth be told, she had no interest in city planning, one way or the other.

“We'll go to a hotel nearby,” Farewell said, changing subject. “Mr. Martin gave us a recommendation. He says it's in Khedive Square at the center of town, where in the morning it will be possible to hire carriers and guides with whom to proceed into the jungle.”

“Should we need them,” Nigel said from Emily's right side, startling her.

She'd been paying so much attention to Farewell on her left that she'd not noticed Nigel's falling back to her side. She now looked and found her husband staring at her with such intent eagerness that she almost smiled back at him. But then she noted his mouth, severely closed, and his features, expressionless. And her anger flared again at the memory of what he'd thought of her, the memory of how he didn't understand her.

She looked away, toward the side of the road, where a house under construction was being worked on by Arab men and strong, tall African women, most of them wearing no more than a blue sheet wrapped around their sweating bodies.

The sight of women doing such violent work in such a public setting was unimaginable in England, and it made Emily wonder what it would be like to be one of these women, working with their own hands and for their own sustenance. Emily had been pampered and protected her whole life, but how much had this cost her in freedom and the ability to live a life unrestricted by the yoke of a man?

“If you'd consent to consult the . . . instrument for us,” Nigel said.

Emily nodded without looking at him.

“If it's needed,” Nigel said, with seeming great enthusiasm, “then I'm sure that Mr. Martin's directions on how to find carriers will see us right. Indeed, Mr. Martin offered us such hospitality as I never thought to find in an African desert.”

“Indeed,” Peter said from Emily's other side, his voice full of irony. “And very easy it is for him to do that, as he lives in that oasis, in all ease, collecting fees from all the caravans that must stop and get water for their animals and food for themselves. Very obliging of the British army to have got that oasis for his use.”

“The British army?” Emily asked, disbelieving. And was met with a nod from Farewell.

“I heard about the incident myself this morning,” Nigel said. “I believe it was part of the campaign against the Mahdi.”

“And yet,” Farewell said, his voice distant, “the result was the same.”

“But,” Nigel said, “as long as there is magic, that will always be true.”

“As long as there's magic,” Farewell said with finality.

This was an irrefutable opinion, and it seemed to Emily that it did not interest either of the men nearly as much as it seemed to. She thought that they were arguing something else altogether.

Unable to know for sure what it all meant, Emily felt shut out, alone. So she welcomed their arrival at a surprisingly well-appointed hotel. It gave her a respite from the veiled hostility between her two companions.

THE DUTIES OF A STRONG WOMAN