Mahmoud had to let them go. He got four of them to take the cart he had borrowed back to the outhouse. The men went away and shortly afterwards he saw the clerk, standing beside the barn, much relieved. He left the yard behind some women returning to the kitchen who had been interested in the spectacle and could hear them talking.
‘Bride box!’ one of them sighed. ‘I had a bride box once. Ah, those were the days!’
‘Mine was green and orange,’ said another woman wistfully. ‘And blue for the sky.’
‘Mine had birds.’
‘And mine had fish.’
‘I had a bird catching a fish!’
‘Beautiful!’
‘Ah, those were the days.’
The party broke up.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘No, I’ve got to get back to the other house.’
‘Other house?’ Mahmoud, overhearing, asked them.
They turned to look at him.
‘Yes, the other house.’
‘What house is this?’
‘It is where the Pasha’s wife lives now that she does not live with him.’
‘Another house? Does she have servants?’
‘Of course.’
‘Servants of her own? They would not have been with the others?’
‘You asked only for men on the estate.’
‘Why was I not told?’ said Mahmoud furiously.
He knew, really. This was Ismail’s revenge.
‘There is this one, which the Pasha uses when he is here. The other is for his wife.’
‘And the son.’
‘There is a son?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
There was a ripple of amusement.
‘She’s the master there!’ someone said.
Behind the temple were the mountains, pink and as if floating in the air, with satiny sand drifts heaped in the rifts in the rock and lines of soft blue shadow in the more remote crevices. Where the mountain fell back a long vista of desert was revealed.
As Owen approached, by a raised fragmented causeway which linked the temple with some paint down by the river, he found himself in a kind of derelict area, with low half-opened mounds, broken bits of sculptural capitals and mutilated statues buried in tall clumps of rank grass: but also little damaged buildings which might once have been workshops and a vast number of semi-subterranean tanks with black tarry patches inside them which showed that once they had contained nitre.
Egypt is the land of nitre. The Nile mud is impregnated with it. It lies in talc-like flakes upon the rocks, upon the fallen statues. The nitre has been worked for centuries. It is washed and crystallized in the tanks and made workable. In the days of the Ottomans it began to be used for gunpowder.
He stood for a moment in front of the temple, looking up at the great, heavy bulk of stonework. And then he had a moment of shock, for it appeared to be moving! He looked again and saw that it was a swarm of bees, flooding out from crevices in the stonework.
He went into the temple. In the half-light he saw great columns stretching away into the distance. He was in a huge hall, with a line of columns on either side. As his eyes grew used to the darkness he saw that their tops were carved into images of birds: hawks, ibises, bird-faced humans, the traditional figures of the old gods. Here and there was a representation of a cow with horns.
Between the columns, on the roof, were paintings. The paintings were of the holy scarab beetle and some curious winged globes. Looking at them more closely he saw that they were in patterns. Gradually he realized that the patterns were astronomical. He was looking at the famous signs of the Zodiac: Leila’s ‘marks of the giants’.
‘So this is where you came with Soraya,’ he said to Selim, whom he had brought with him.
Selim shrugged. ‘It was a place to go, where we would not be seen,’ he said.
‘And Leila came, too?’
‘She stood outside to warn us if anyone should be coming. She wouldn’t go in. She said it was a bad place and smelt of the dead. However, she agreed to keep watch for us.’
‘And did anyone come?’
‘Once, as I told you. One day the slaver came.’
‘How did you know he was the slaver?’
Selim shrugged. ‘They had spoken of him in the village. I knew he was the man.’
‘What sort of man was he?’
‘A Sudani.’
‘You are sure?’
‘I am sure. I heard him speak.’
‘This was at the temple?’
‘Yes.’
‘You heard them speaking together?’
‘Yes, we were hiding behind the pillars. They had come suddenly and Leila had had no time to warn us.’
‘So you heard what they were saying?’
‘A little, yes. We dared not go too close.’
‘What were they talking about?’
‘There was talk of deliveries.’
‘Slaves?’
‘I do not think so. For they spoke of a consignment and where it could be stored. The slaver said that the temple was a good place because it was big and had many rooms, in some of which, deep inside, things could be stowed and no one would find them. People were afraid of the temple and did not like to go in. The white man said that it sounded ideal, and the slaver said that he would show him a place. Then they both went off deeper into the temple and Soraya said we should go now that there was the chance. Particularly as Leila was sure she had been seen.’
‘So you went and did not see the place they had gone to?’
‘No, but later I went back on my own, when there was no one there. I did not like going; I was afraid I would lose my way and never get out. Still, I went.’
‘And did you find the place?’
‘Yes, I am almost sure. It was in a room at the back of the temple. It was off another one so well concealed that unless you knew it was there and where to look, you would not find it. But I had a torch with me and saw marks in the sand where they had been, and I followed the marks. And when I got there I knew it was the place because I found an old box and in it I found a shell.’
‘A trocchee shell?’
‘No, no. A gun shell. A bullet. One they use in rifles.’
‘That is very interesting. Could you show it to me?’
‘I have it at home.’
‘I would like to see it. And perhaps the place where it was left.’
When they came out again into the sunlight Owen’s eye was caught by a flash from one of the nitre tanks. For a moment he thought there must be some water in it, but then he realized it must be from the tar. Odd, he thought, that the connection between the temple and warfare should be so long-standing and still continuing.
Now that he had emerged victorious, Ismail, the head of the Pasha’s household, was prepared to be conciliatory. He sent a servant with them to show them off the estate. They went by a different route from the one they had come by.
‘It is quicker,’ said the servant.
The path led through a field of berseem, food stuff for the animals of the household, and then through thin acacia shrub. Through the scrub they occasionally caught a glimpse of the Nile. Then they turned away and headed inland. A road forked off, and on it a dead donkey was lying, buzzing with flies.
‘It is to attract the jackals,’ said the servant. ‘For the master to shoot.’
‘The master? He is here, then?’
‘The young master.’
‘Ah, the son.’
‘The son, yes. He stays with his mother.’
‘And he shoots jackals?’
‘What else is there for him to do?’
The servant stopped when they got to the fork. ‘Keep on this way,’ he said, ‘and it will take you back to Denderah.’
‘And the other path?’
‘Leads you to the other house.’
‘Where the Pasha’s lady lives?’
‘That is so, yes.’
The servant turned back and they continued on their way.