The Last Camel Died at Noon (5 page)

And there he was indeed, rising up from behind the sofa like a genie from a bottle - or a flagrant eavesdropper from his place of concealment. Irritation replaced my eerie forebodings, and as my son obediently hastened towards his aunt, I said sharply, 'Ramses, what have you got there?'

Ramses stopped. He looked like the reverse image of a small saint, for the mop of curls crowning his head was jet-black and the face thus framed, though handsome enough in its way, was as swarthy as any Egyptian's. 'Got, Mama? Oh...' With an air of surprised innocence he glanced at the paper in his hand. 'It appears to be the leaf from Papa's notebook. I picked it up from the floor.'

I did not doubt that in the least. Ramses preferred to tell the truth whenever possible. I had placed the paper on the table, so he must have pushed it off onto the floor before he picked it up.

After he had handed over the paper and gone through the lengthy process of saying good night, we made our way to the dining room.

I had long since given up trying to prevent Emerson from discussing private family matters in front of the servants. In fact, I had come round to his point of view - that it was a cursed silly, meaningless custom - for the servants always knew everything that was going on anyhow, and their advice was often helpful since on the whole they had better sense than their purported superiors. I fully expected that he would discuss the extraordinary events that had just taken place. Gargery, our butler, obviously shared this anticipation; though he directed the serving of the meal with his usual efficiency, his face was beaming and his eyes alight. He always enjoyed participating in our little adventures, and the peculiar behaviour of our visitors certainly justified the suspicion that another was about to occur.

Conceive of my surprise, therefore, when, after having satisfied the first pangs of hunger by polishing off his soup, Emerson patted his lips with his napkin and remarked, 'Inclement weather for this time of year.'

'Hardly unusual, though," said Walter innocently.

'I hope the rain will let up. You will have a wet journey home otherwise.'

'Quite,' said Walter.

I cleared my throat. Emerson said hastily, 'And what are you giving us tonight, Peabody? Ah - roast saddle of lamb. And mint jelly! I am particularly fond of mint jelly. A splendid choice.'

'Mrs Bates is giving us the lamb,' I said, as Gargery, visibly pouting, began serving the plates. 'You know I leave the menu to her, Emerson. I have no time for such things. Especially now, with so many extra supplies to order -'

'Quite, quite,' said Emerson.

'Mint jelly, sir?' said Gargery, in a voice that ought to have frozen that wobbly substance into a solid chunk. Without waiting for an answer, he proceeded to give Emerson approximately half a teaspoonful.

Like his brother, Walter was inclined to ignore conventions, not because he necessarily shared Emerson's radical social theories but because he forgot all else when professional enthusiasm overcame him. 'I say, Radcliffe,' he exclaimed. 'That bit of papyrus was quite fascinating. If an ancient Egyptian scribe had known how to write English, the result would have looked precisely like that message. I wish I had had a chance to examine it more closely.'

'You may do so after dinner,' I said. 'By a strange coincidence, and in the haste of his departure, Lord Blacktower forgot to take it with him. Or was it a coincidence, Emerson?'

'You know as well as I do that it was deliberate,' Emerson snarled. 'Pas devant les domestiques, Peabody, as you are always telling me.'

'Bah,' I replied pleasantly. 'Ramses has probably told Rose all about it by now. I know you well, my dear Emerson; your countenance is an open book to me. That supposedly meaningless scrawl on the back of the notebook page had meaning for you. I know it. His lordship knew it. Will you take us into your confidence, or force us to employ underhanded means to discover the truth?'

Emerson glowered - at me, at Walter, at Evelyn, and at Gargery, who was standing guard over the mint jelly, his nose in the air and wounded dignity in every lineament of his face. Then Emerson's own face cleared and he burst into a hearty laugh. 'You are incorrigible, my dear Peabody. I won't inquire what particular underhanded methods you had in mind... In fact, there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you what little I know of the matter. And now, Gargery, may I have more mint jelly?'

This delicacy having been supplied, Emerson went on. 'I spoke the truth when I told Blacktower that piece of paper could have no bearing on Forth's fate. Yet it gave me an eerie feeling to see it again after all these years. Rather like the hollow voice of a dead man echoing from his tomb...'

'Now who is allowing a rampageous imagination to run away with him?' I inquired playfully. 'Get on with it, Emerson, if you please.

'First,' said Emerson, 'we must tell Evelyn what happened after she left with the children.'

He proceeded to do so, at quite unnecessary length. Gargery found it most interesting, however. 'A map, was it, sir?' he asked, giving Emerson more mint jelly.

'Take that cursed stuff away,' Emerson said, studying the green puddle with loathing. 'Yes, it was a map. Of sorts.'

'Of the road to King Solomon's diamond mines, I suppose,' said Walter, smiling. 'Or the emerald mines of Cleopatra. Or the gold mines of Gush.'

'It was a fantasy almost as improbable, Walter. It is coming back to me now - that strange encounter, the last meeting I ever had with Willie Forth.' He paused to give Gargery time to remove the plates and serve the next course before resuming.

'It was the autumn of 1883 - the year before I met you, my dearest Peabody, and a year when Walter was not with me. Having no such engaging distractions, I found myself at loose ends one evening in Cairo, and decided to visit a cafe. Forth was there; when he saw me, he jumped to his feet and called my name. He was a great bull of a fellow with a head of wiry black hair that always looked as if it had not seen scissors or brush for weeks. Well, we had a friendly glass or two; he demanded I drink a toast to his bride, for he had just been married. I ragged him a bit about this unexpected news; he was a confirmed old bachelor of forty-odd and had always insisted no woman would ever tie him down. He only grinned sheepishly and raved about her beauty, innocence, and charm like any infatuated schoolboy.

'Then we got to talking about his plans for the winter. He was cagey at first, but I could see that something besides marital bliss had fired him up, and after another friendly glass or two he admitted that his ultimate destination was not Assouan, as he had initially told me, but somewhere farther south.

'"I understand you have excavated at Napata," he said casually.

'I was unable to conceal my surprise and disapproval. The news from the Sudan was extremely disquieting, and Forth had told me he planned to take his wife with him. He brushed my objections aside. "The worst of the trouble is in Kordofan, hundreds of miles from where I mean to go. And General Hicks is on the way there; he'll settle those fellows before we reach Wadi Haifa."' Turning to the butler, he explained, 'Wadi Haifa is at the Second Cataract, Gargery, several hundred miles south of Assouan.'

'Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And that other place - Nabada?'

'Hmm, well,' said Emerson. 'There has been some debate about that. The Cushites, or Nubians, had two capitals. Meroe, the second and later of the two, was near the Sixth Cataract, just north of Khartoum. Its ruins have been visited and identified. We have a fairly good idea of where Napata, the earlier capital, was situated, because of the pyramid cemeteries in the area, but its exact location is uncertain.

'Well, we all know what happened to Hicks. (His army was annihilated by the Mahdi, Gargery, contrary to all expectations except mine.) Word of that disaster did not reach Cairo until after Forth had left. All I could tell him that night was that I had visited a site I believed to be Napata and that - to put it mildly - it was not the spot I would have chosen for a honeymoon. "You surely don't mean to take your bride to a primitive, fever-ridden, dangerous place like that?" I demanded.

'Forth was feeling the effects of four or five friendly glasses. He gave me a drunken grin. "Farther than that, Emerson. Much farther."

'"Meroe? It's even more remote and dangerous than Gebel Barkal. You're mad, Forth."

'"And you're still off the mark, Emerson." Forth leaned forward, planting both elbows on the filthy table, and fixed me with burning eyes. I felt like the Wedding Guest, and indeed, as he went on, I would not have been surprised to see the albatross hung about his neck. "What happened to the royalty and nobility of Meroe after the city fell? Where did they go? You've heard the Arab legends about the sons of Cush who marched towards the setting sun - westward through the desert to a secret city..."

'"Stories, legends, fictions," I exclaimed. "They are no more factual than the tales of Arthur being carried off to the Isle of Avalon by the three queens, or Charlemagne sleeping under the mountain with his knights - "

'"Or the Homeric legends of Troy," said Forth.

'I swore at him - and at Heinreich Schliemann, whose discoveries had encouraged lunatics like my friend. Forth listened, grinning like an ape and fumbling in the pockets of his coat - for his pipe, as I thought. Instead he took out a small box and handed it to me, inviting me, with a sweeping gesture, to lift the lid. When I did so... Peabody, do you remember the Ferlini Collection in the Berlin Museum?'

Caught unawares by the question, I started to shake my head and then exclaimed, 'The jewellery brought back from Meroe by Ferlini half a century ago?'

'Quite.' Emerson whipped a pencil from his pocket and began to draw on the tablecloth. Gargery, who was familiar with this habit of Emerson's and with my reaction to it, deftly inserted a piece of paper under the pencil. Emerson finished his sketch and handed the paper to Gargery, who, after inspecting it closely, handed it round the table like a platter of vegetables. 'What I saw in the box was a gold armlet,' Emerson continued. 'The designs, consisting of uraei, diamond shapes, and lotus buds, were inlaid with red and blue enamel.'

Walter frowned at the paper. 'I have seen a lithograph of a piece of jewellery resembling this, Radcliffe.'

'In Lepsius's Denkmaler,' Emerson replied. 'Or perhaps the official guide to the Berlin Museum, 1894 edition. An armlet of the same type, with similar decoration, was found by Ferlini at Meroe. I saw the resemblance at once, and my first reaction was that Perth's armlet must also have come from Meroe. The natives have been plundering the pyramids ever since Ferlini's time, hoping to find another treasure trove. Yet the cursed thing was in virtually pristine condition - a few scratches here and there, a few dents - and the enamel was so fresh it might have been newly made. It had to be a modern forgery - but what forger would use gold of such purity it could be bent with one's fingers?

'I asked Forth where he had got it, and he proceeded to tell me a preposterous story about being offered the piece by a ragged native who offered to lead him to the source of such treasures. A source far in the western deserts, in a secret oasis, where there were huge buildings like the temples of Luxor and a strange race of magicians who wore golden ornaments and performed blood sacrifices to demonic gods...' Emerson shook his head. 'You can imagine how I jeered at this absurd story, all the more so when he told me that the unfortunate native had suffered from a fever to which he succumbed a few days later. 'My arguments had no effect on Forth; he was drinking quite heavily, and when I finally gave up my attempt to dissuade him from his lunatic plan I could see he was in no condition to be left alone. Late at night, in that district, he would have been robbed and beaten. So I offered to escort him to his hotel. He agreed, saying he was anxious to introduce me to his wife.

'She had waited up for him, but she had not anticipated he would bring a stranger with him; she was wrapped in some sort of fluffy white stuff, all trembling with lace and ruffles; part of her bridal getup, I suppose. An exquisite creature, looking no more than eighteen; great misty blue eyes, hair like a fall of spun gold, skin white as ivory. And cold. An ice maiden, with no more human warmth than a statue. They made a bizarre contrast, Forth with his ruddy beaming face and mane of black hair, his wife all white and silvery pale - Beauty and the Beast personified. I thought of that flowery-white skin of hers baked and scourged by blowing sand, of her gleaming hair dried by the sun - and by heaven, Peabody, I felt only the regret one might feel at seeing a work of art disfigured - no human pity at all. She would have received none; she would have felt none. No, the pity I felt was for Willie Forth. The idea of taking a frozen statue like that into one's arms, into one's... Er, hmmm. You understand me, Peabody.'

I felt myself blushing. 'Yes, Emerson, I do. Yet one can't help but feel for her. She can have had no idea of what she was about to experience.'

'I tried to tell her. Forth had collapsed onto the bed and lay snoring, with both hands clenched over the box that contained the armlet. I spoke to her like a brother, Peabody; I told her she was mad to go, that he was madder to let her. I might have been speaking to a chryselephantine statue. At last she intimated that my presence displeased her, so I left, and I am sorry to say I slammed the door behind me. That was the last I saw of either of them.'

'But the map, Emerson,' I said. 'When did you - '

'Oh.' Emerson coughed. 'That. Well, curse it, Peabody, I'd had a few friendly drinks myself, and I'd been reading some of the medieval Arabic writers...'

'The Book of Hidden Pearls?'

Emerson grinned sheepishly. 'Confound you, Peabody, you're always a step or two ahead of me. It's that rampageous imagination of yours. But there is often a germ of truth in the most fantastic of legends. I am quite willing to believe that there are unknown oases in the western desert, far to the south of the known oases of Egypt. Wilkinson names three, in his book published in 1835; he had heard about them from the Arabs. The people of Dakhla - one of the known oases in southern Egypt - tell tales of strangers, tall black men, who came out of the south. And El Bekri, who wrote in the eleventh century, described a giantess who was captured at Dakhla; she spoke no known language, and when she was released, so that her captors could not track her to her home, she outran them and escaped.'