Pride and pyramids : Mr. Darcy in Egypt

Chapter 14

Sir Matthew did not appear at breakfast the next morning. Edward was at first impatient and then annoyed, for he was longing to be off.

“Patience,” said Darcy as he drank his coffee. “I am sure he will join us before long.”

But when, sometime later, Sir Matthew had still not appeared, Elizabeth said, “He did not look well last night. I think perhaps someone had better go to his tent and make sure he is all right.”

“Let me,” said Edward, jumping to his feet and moving off toward Sir Matthew’s tent with restless energy.

He returned a few minutes later looking annoyed and said, “You were right, Elizabeth; he is not very well. He seems to have a fever. He is tossing and turning in his bed and he feels very hot. The physician should be arriving later today, but…”

Elizabeth was on her feet at once.

“I will take a look at him,” she said. “It might be some hours before the physician arrives.”

She made her way to Sir Matthew’s tent, calling her maid as she did so. The two women went into his tent and discovered that he was delirious.

“Bring me my medicine box,” said Elizabeth, as she silently thanked Lady Potheroe for advice on which medicines to bring.

The maid departed and returned quickly, whereupon Elizabeth prepared a tincture for Sir Matthew and managed to get him to take it. Then, leaving Sir Matthew in the capable hands of his manservant, with instructions for Sir Matthew’s care, she left his tent and walked back across the camp.

The air was punctuated by frightened murmurs coming from the fellahs, and there was a good deal of wailing as well. She spoke little Egyptian, but the sight of charms being prepared left her in no doubt as to the cause of their fear: Sir Matthew had opened the tomb, and Sir Matthew had immediately been taken ill; therefore, the tomb had been cursed.

Shaking her head, she returned gladly to Darcy and to common sense.

“I am afraid Sir Matthew will not be coming with us today,” she said as she reached the breakfast tent. “He is far from well. He will be in bed for a few days at least.”

“This is the worst thing that could possibly happen,” said Edward, looking glum.

“It is not so bad,” she reassured him. “I am sure he will be up and about again before long, but not before the fellahs have decided his illness is a result of a curse.”

He saw her face and said, “So, it has started. They have already decided. At best, it will cost me a pretty penny to persuade them to return to the tomb, and at worst they will refuse to go anywhere near it.”

“I will speak with the men and find out what they are thinking,” said Saeed.

He returned ten minutes later and said, “It is not good. The men are saying that the magician is angry and that he has struck Sir Matthew down for his meddling. They are saying that Sir Matthew will be dead before nightfall.”

“But that is absurd,” said Elizabeth. “It is a fever, nothing more. You must tell the men, Saeed.”

“It will do no good. I have already tried to reason with them but they are convinced it is the work of a magician. And that is not all. They are now saying that a djinn was in the camp last night. One of the servants has been saying that she thought there was a rat in your workbasket last night, but that when the basket was opened there was nothing there. So they are now convinced that the rocking of the basket must have been the work of an evil spirit, one of the guardians of the tomb who is intent on revenge.”

“We must put a stop to this at once. If not, the men will run away and we will be alone in the camp. Even worse, they could spread their panic among the sailors and persuade them to leave, taking the boats back to Cairo,” said Darcy. “The best way to halt their flight is to show them that we are not afraid. If we cannot persuade them to come with us, then we must go ourselves to the tomb, just as if nothing had happened. When they see us setting out in good spirits and then, more importantly, see us return this evening, they will soon calm down—particularly when Sir Matthew shows signs of recovery. I suggest we start as soon as we are ready. Saeed, you had better stay here to make sure that Sir Matthew is given every care and to contain the panic.”

Edward lost no time in ordering the donkeys to be made ready and laden with everything they would need, as well as giving instructions for the planks of wood they would need to cross the moat to be carried between the donkeys. Their intentions were soon plain, and a pitiable wailing went up in the camp.

“Do not go, I beg of you, effendi,” said one of the fellahs, clutching at Edward most pitifully. “The magician will strike you down.”

“Nonsense,” said Edward, his eyes strangely bright. “There is no such thing as magic. If any man here is brave enough to come with me, I will give him double wages. If not, you must all stay here and wail like women.”

But neither the gold nor the jibe could sway the men, and at last Edward mounted his donkey with only Elizabeth, Darcy, Sophie, and Paul for company and a selection of guards for safety.

Saeed made one last attempt to shame the fellahs into picking up their spades, saying, “See, Mrs Darcy and Miss Lucas are brave enough to visit the tomb. Will you allow yourselves to be shamed by women?” But it did no good, for although the fellahs shuffled their feet and looked at the ground, they would not move.

“I’ll come!” said Laurence, who had been trying to persuade his parents to agree to his company all morning.

“See, even a child is not afraid!” said Saeed.

But although the men shuffled even more, they would not brave the tomb.

“Laurence, you can come with us another day, when we have made it safe,” said Elizabeth, “but today you must stay here. Be a good boy and do what Saeed and Grandmama tell you.”

“Never mind,” said Edward, seeing Laurence’s face. “We will soon make it safe and then you will have your fill of excavations, I promise. I would rather have one of you than ten of these milksops,” he finished, looking at the fellahs in disgust.

Then, without further ado, they set out for the tomb.

***

George Wickham stood at the front of the boat with the wind rippling his hair. He was still a handsome man, and still very charming, still attractive to women. But underneath his superficial good humour, he was soured by his failure as a young man to marry an heiress. He had at last been forced into marriage with Lydia Bennet, having run away with her to London and compromised her beyond all hope of reclaim, and still bore a grudge against Darcy, who had forced the marriage.

It was Darcy who was to blame for every ill that had befallen him since then, for if he had not been forced to marry Lydia, he could have continued his quest to find an heiress and been living a life befitting his hopes and dreams, instead of one fitting his just deserts. And if Darcy’s father had not behaved so shabbily to his own father, then he would have been wealthy from birth and a gentleman of equal standing with Darcy.

But now revenge was in his reach: not the revenge he had once planned, when he had attempted to elope with Darcy’s sister, but still a desirable revenge and one which was capable of making his fortune.

“I do not see why we have to live on this boat,” said Lydia. “I am sure there is no fun to be had here.”

She had grown tired of flirting with the sailors, and she joined her husband at the front of the flat-bottomed boat which had brought them from Cairo and which was now moored a mile upstream of Darcy’s boats.

“Because, my sweet, this is where we will find the tomb. If my father had not destroyed his piece of the map, thinking it might lead me astray, we could go to the right spot and find the tomb ourselves, but as it is, we must wait for Sir Matthew to find it and then rob it of its treasures once it has been excavated.”

“I thought he had already found it.”

“He has found something, but whether it is the intact tomb we do not know. It could be nothing but another false doorway.”

Lydia looked out across the green banks of the Nile to the endless sand dunes beyond and said, “I hope Sef is more use than the sailor you employed to steal the other parts of the map on the ship taking Elizabeth and Darcy to Egypt. He was not only caught but put ashore, and all without getting us the map. That was a waste of a pretty penny.”

“The man was a fool, but Sef is more reliable, and what we give him is a small price to pay for the information he brings us,” said Wickham. “Look, here he is now.”

Wickham left his place at the front of the boat and jumped down onto the bank in his eagerness to hear his spy’s news.

“Effendi,” said Sef, as he hurried toward them. “It is the tomb you seek, effendi. He has found it! It is full of the most beautiful treasures, and your enemy goes there even now to claim them for his own.”

“Why did you not bring me news of this earlier?”

“Because I waited to discover more for you, effendi. Your enemies’ fellahs refuse to go with him. They are ignorant peasants, not educated men like me, and they are convinced the tomb is cursed. Sir Matthew Rosen, he was struck down with a plague when he opened the tomb, and there is an afrit loose in the camp, so they say.”

“Well, well,” said Wickham thoughtfully. “And so Darcy is going to the tomb alone.”

“Not alone, effendi. He has his cousin with him and another man and two women. Then, too, there are some guards, though they will run away at the first sound of a magical wail, and if they do not, they can be bribed. Your enemies take many palm ropes and many planks of wood. They say there is a pit inside the tomb that none may cross, and beyond it lies the treasure, gleaming and tempting. But it is cursed, effendi. It will bring ruin to any man who touches so much as a single cup.”

“I will touch more than a cup,” said Wickham. “Ready me a camel and another for any of the sailors who will come with me. Let us see if they are made of sterner stuff than Darcy’s men. Load the camels with sacks and let me know when you are done. Then we will see who will come away the richer man, Darcy or I.”

***

Despite the setback to their plans, Edward, Paul, Elizabeth, Darcy, and Sophie were in good spirits as they returned to the tomb: Edward was feverishly excited, Sophie was intrigued, Paul was eager to sketch the wonderful treasures, Elizabeth was happy for Edward, and Darcy was quietly gratified that his father had not broken his health for nothing and that his young cousin had achieved his dream.

It seemed strange to see the site so deserted, for even those men left to guard it had fled, afraid that some terrible calamity would befall them if they stayed.

Elizabeth stopped for a moment and drank in the silence. It was something she never experienced at home. There was always the noise of the servants as they moved about the house or the voices of the children, and when they were occasionally quiet, there was the ticking of a clock or the shifting of coals in the fire. But here, everything was still. The sands stretched out in every direction, gleaming under the sun-drenched sky, and even the breeze did not stir.

Then Edward dismounted and said, “Let us begin.”

Without another word, he disappeared inside the tomb, leaving Paul to help Sophie dismount.

“Tether the donkeys here,” said Darcy. “We can carry the treasure across the bridges in sacks and leave the sacks stacked at the foot of the steps. Then, when we have retrieved as many treasures as the donkeys can carry, we can bring the sacks up to the surface and load them onto the donkeys before returning to camp.”

“If I might make a suggestion,” said Paul. “If I am allowed some time to quickly sketch the treasures in their locations before we move them, we will have a record of everything we take and where it came from. It might be of some interest to scholars, and I can then paint a mural on the wall of the Egyptian gallery at Pemberley, giving an accurate feel for the discovery.”

“An excellent notion,” said Darcy.

They agreed, and the men began to unload the ropes and planks of palm wood while Elizabeth lit a flambeau and descended the steps into the tomb, followed by Sophie and Paul. She went through the entranceway into the vast open space and stood looking about her in renewed wonder. The pictures on the walls were as fresh as if they had been painted the day before, with their bright colours and their odd, flat people together with symbols of daily life: wine, figs, bread, grapes, lotus flowers, and rolls of linen.

“Do you know, I think I would like an Egyptian style portrait of us,” she said to Darcy as he came down the steps, carrying ropes over his shoulder.

Paul, following Darcy, immediately took up the idea.

“It has never been done before,” he said with enthusiasm. “Those flat shapes, those strong blocks of colour, it would make a striking painting, or I could create a mural in the Egyptian style.”

“Then let us have one, by all means,” said Darcy. “And we must have some of these extraordinary symbols in the painting, too. Paul, you have been making a study of it. What do they mean?”

“The phoenix is the symbol of the sun god,” he said, looking at the bird that stood, man-size, next to one of the human figures. “And see here, on this painting, there is a barge, the barge that carries the sun on its night’s journey. The hieroglyphs in the background must mean something, and one day they will be deciphered. The pictures of food and drink are symbols of everyday life. I could paint you with bottles of wine instead of jugs and apples instead of grapes. I could paint some of the more attractive hieroglyphs behind you, too, although their meaning would be obscure.”

“And you must be surrounded by all your treasures!” said Edward.

“And what of you, Edward?” asked Elizabeth, as they progressed through the vast space, their voices echoing as though they were in a cathedral and their flambeaux flickering fitfully, shedding dancing light on the painted walls. She fell back a little and put a hand on his arm to detain him so that the others should not hear. “You must take care how you treat Sophie, you know. She has been badly hurt in the past and the time is coming when you must make your intentions plain. Before, when there was no question of a marriage between you, it was different, but now you are in a position to take a wife and you must not lead her on if your feelings are not serious.”

“I mean to marry her, or at least to ask her if she will have me,” he said with a quick glance at Paul, who was some way behind them. “You know her, Elizabeth. Do you think she will say yes?”

Elizabeth hesitated, and Edward was quick to notice it.

“So she has not made up her mind,” he said.

“She has never been asked to,” Elizabeth reminded him. “You have been obsessed with other things.”

“Yes.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “Obsessed. That is how it feels. As if there are times when I can see nothing, hear nothing, think of nothing but the tomb. And yet I love Sophie—”

“You love her?” asked Elizabeth.

“Yes, I love her. More than anything else in the world, I want to make her my wife.”

“Then you had better let her know your feelings. You are not the only young man on the expedition, and if she feels you are not serious, then you may lose her to another young man who is.”

“You are right,” said Edward, looking at Paul, who was talking to Sophie. “Curse him—oh, I had better not say that here. I do not mean it!” he said to the empty space. “I do not wish any harm to come to him, only that he will not steal my treasure away from me.”

They passed the model of a boat they had seen the day before—“To transport the lovers in the afterlife,” he said—and when they moved on, they found several casks which were locked and too heavy to move. On the casks were cartouches, and inside the cartouches were the names, in hieroglyphs, of Ammon and Husn.

“I knew it,” muttered Edward. “I knew we would find it.”

And suddenly his eyes gained a glazed look, and he spoke of Sophie no more.

He hurried on and Elizabeth had to remind him that at any moment the moat would open up beneath their feet.

“You are right,” he said, moving more slowly and holding his flambeau so that the flames showed the floor until at last he stood at the side of the pit.

“I wonder how many men have fallen here,” mused Darcy, raising his flambeaux to show the glittering treasures on the other side. “With their eyes fixed on the gold and jewels, they would not have noticed the moat until it was too late and fallen to their deaths.”

It was a sobering thought.

“We must go forward carefully,” said Darcy, addressing his flushed cousin. “There is no telling what other traps lie in store for us.”

The men set about laying the palm planks across the moat to create a bridge, and when it was done Edward set one foot warily on it. The plank creaked and sprang a little under his weight but otherwise seemed safe enough.

He edged his way across and at last reached the other side.

“It is even more magnificent than we realised!” he said. “There is another door at the far side of the room. I believe there is another chamber.”

“I think you had better stay here,” said Darcy to Elizabeth. “The plank is very narrow and—”

But she had already hitched up the corner of her skirt and was edging her way across the plank.

“It is as Edward says,” she called back. “I believe we have only scratched the surface of the tomb. It is a wonderful find. Edward’s name will be on everyone’s lips when we return home.”

Darcy quickly followed, with Paul helping Sophie, and they gazed in awe at the treasure trove in which they found themselves. Everywhere they looked there was the glint of gold. There were statues of people and animals—“Anubis!” exclaimed Paul, going over to a statue of the jackal-headed god and examining it in awe; golden hawks—“made of wood and covered in thick gold leaf,” Edward said, upon examining them; a young Egyptian man with a spear—“hunting hippos, most likely;” and the figure of a young man being reborn from a blue lotus—“the symbol of rebirth.” There were urns and vases, and over the walls were pictures of a lithe young man, engaged in his everyday activities as well as a young woman in a variety of poses.

“Ammon and Husn,” said Elizabeth.

“Remarkable,” said Darcy.

“And about to become more so,” said Edward, as he approached the door at the opposite side of the chamber.

This door, too, had been sealed, and Edward could barely restrain himself long enough to open it with the proper care. When he had done it, they tested the air for foul gases with their flambeaux as Sir Matthew had shown them, and when all seemed safe, they went through into a smaller chamber. Their way was blocked by boxes. Edward opened the first one he came across, and its contents dazzled them. There were pendants of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, scarabs inlaid with turquoise carnelian, arm bracelets of gold inlaid with jasper, amulets of Anubis and Horus—a dazzling array of jewels and trinkets all twinkling in the dancing light. He whirled round in the centre of the room in high spirits, gazing at the blues and reds and golds that dazzled from every corner and from the magnificent sarcophagus in the centre.

Elizabeth lifted her flambeau to see the walls and gasped.

“The paintings,” she said. “They are the same as the paintings on the frieze of Aahotep I saw in the British Museum, where I first met Sir Matthew.”

“Aahotep must make amends,” muttered Edward, reading the hieroglyphs beneath the painting.

Paul was already busily sketching, his hands moving rapidly as he sought to make a record of everything he saw in its original place.

“And now the work begins,” said Darcy.

“Yes.” Edward shook his head as if shaking strange imaginings away. “We have to transport the treasures back to the camp. But where to begin?”

Their activities soon became more methodical. Returning to the first antechamber, they began to wrap the smaller items and place them in the sacks, and then the men carried the sacks across the plank bridge and deposited them there, ready to be carried to the donkeys later in the day. When they had removed all the portable pieces, they went through into the farthest antechamber and began to empty the chests, filling the sacks with jewels and pausing every now and then to rest and drink, for the air was stifling. But their spirits were high and they scarcely noticed the heat or the closeness of the air, working on willingly as the morning passed into afternoon.

“I think this must be the last one,” said Elizabeth, as she put a final pendant into the sack beside her.

“We can stay another hour and still be back at the camp before dark,” said Edward.

“I do not doubt it, but we have run out of sacks,” said Elizabeth.

Edward was startled.

“Have we really collected so much?” he asked.

“We have. The rest will have to wait. It will all be here tomorrow, and the next day, too,” said Darcy.

“But will it?” asked Edward. “I don’t like leaving it unguarded. I think I will sleep here tonight.”

He picked up his sack, Darcy carried a second one, and Paul, with every inch of paper in his book covered in drawings, picked up a last few items and put them in his pockets. Then they made their way into the outer antechamber and went toward the bridge.

“That’s odd,” said Paul, who had walked more quickly than the others. “I could have sworn the planks were here.”

“Have you lost them?” said Darcy jovially. “I am not surprised. You have not been back and forth all day as we have.” But when he joined Paul he said, “It is not possible.” He called to Edward, and Edward came up beside him. “The bridge,” he said. “It has gone.”

“Impossible,” said Edward.

“I know. But it has.”

“What is that, over there?” asked Paul, peering over the moat to the darkness beyond. “I thought I saw movement.”

“I knew it!” said Edward. “The fellahs have overcome their fear and have come to rob the tomb. They have thrown the planks into the moat, and we were too engrossed in what we were doing to hear them.”

“Not fellahs,” said Paul, whose light shone farthest across the void, remarking in surprise, “An Englishman.”

“An Englishman?” asked Darcy.

“Yes, an Englishman,” came a familiar voice, which echoed and reechoed round the cavernous space.

“I must be hearing things,” said Darcy.

“If you are, then I am too,” said Elizabeth.

“Good afternoon, dear sister,” said Wickham, coming to the edge of the moat so that the light of their flambeaux fell upon him. “What a coincidence, meeting you here.”

“Sister?” asked Paul, surprised. “I had no idea you were related to Mrs Darcy. Why did you not say so when I met you in Cairo?”

“Do you two know each other?” asked Edward.

“Yes. Or, at least, we have met,” said Paul. “This is Sir Mark Bellingham, the gentleman who offered me employment when I finished my work for Mr Darcy. He understood that I would be travelling down the Nile to Sir Matthew’s dig but he said he would be prepared to wait. He said…”

“That talent like yours does not come along very often? That you are a genius?” asked Wickham, amused.

Paul was bewildered at the contemptuous tone in his voice.

“Then you are not a patron of the arts?” he asked as he tried to make sense of it.

“He is nothing of the kind,” said Darcy grimly. “He is a liar. His name is not Sir Mark Bellingham.”

“Then what is it?” asked Paul.

“Wickham,” ground out Darcy.

“Wickham!” said Paul in surprise. “The man whose father joined your fathers on their ill-fated expedition?”

“What?” exclaimed Darcy.

“The third man. See, here, it is written in Lord Fitzwilliam’s diary.” He found the page and read, “…there was a landslide in the tomb, and as we had foolishly entered without guides we thought we were doomed. But luckily Wickham had remained behind as he was feeling a trifle unwell, and becoming alarmed at our absence he set out in search of us. Thank God he did! He worked tirelessly to free us, bloodying his hands raw and breaking a couple of bones tearing the stones away to leave an airway for us before going for help.”

“And what did my father get for his pains?” spat Wickham. “A position as a steward! What a fine reward for risking his life to rescue two wealthy men who could have made his fortune without noticing the loss to their own pockets. And nothing has changed. Your fathers robbed my father of his rightful reward, just as you have attempted to rob me of my share of the treasure. The map was split into three, but you did not let that trouble you. You planned your trip to Egypt and said not a word to me.”

“We did not know the identity of the third man,” said Darcy. “Or, at least, I did not know.”

He looked hard at Edward, and Edward had the grace to look ashamed.

“I knew how you felt about Wickham,” he said. “If I mentioned that his father was the third man on the expedition, I felt you would not lend me your support. I was planning to share the treasure with him, if any was found.”

“And so you tricked me into it?” said Darcy. “This was a bad day’s work.”

“Not for me,” said Wickham. “For me it has been a very good day’s work. Perhaps it is cynical of me to doubt that you ever intended to share these riches, but I prefer things as they are. It was kind of you to leave the sacks of treasure all neatly stacked on this side of the moat for me and equally kind of you to leave a collection of donkeys to transport it for me.”

“You will not get far,” said Darcy. “You have no camp nearby—”

“But I do have a boat,” said Wickham, “and soon all these treasures will be travelling with me to Cairo, where I mean to sell them to collectors and set myself up for life—something you should have done years ago, Darcy, for taking that brat of a Bennet off your hands.”

“That is no way to talk of your wife,” said Darcy.

“No? Well, perhaps when I have a fine house and enough money to buy myself time away from her I will not speak of her that way. Perhaps, the next time we meet, I will say she is the most charming woman on earth. Until then, I will bid you adieu.”

And with that he turned on his heel and walked away, out of the flickering red light and into the blackness beyond.

“You cannot leave us here!” called Paul after him. “We cannot stay here all night; we have women with us! Return the planks at least, so that we might cross the moat.”

But there was no reply.