Whispers in the Sand. Barbara Erskine

now wakeful Joe, Anna saw Charley link her arm through Andy’s and give it a proprietorial squeeze.

      ‘So, how did you enjoy day one?’ Ben said quietly in her ear as he poured her a glass of wine.

      ‘Wonderful.’ She smiled at him and caught his wink. ‘I could get used to all this very easily.’

      ‘And so you shall. But today is not over yet. Did you see the noticeboard outside the dining room? Omar is going to give us a talk in the lounge after dinner, then the boat leaves at about eleven, so when we wake up in the morning we shall be well on our way up the Nile.’

      There was a sudden roar of laughter from one of the other tables and Anna turned. Glancing up Toby caught her eye. With a sardonic wink he raised his glass and mouthed a toast at her, but in the general noise of conversation and laughter she couldn’t hear it. She raised her own glass back and saw Andy turn quickly to see who it was she was smiling at. He frowned. ‘So how did your visit today compare with Louisa Shelley’s?’ He leant across his plate, raising his voice so that it reached her across the table. ‘Has the valley changed a great deal?’

      ‘Out of all recognition in some ways.’ She glanced from him to Charley and back. ‘In others not at all. There really is a timelessness, isn’t there?’

      ‘As there is all over Egypt,’ Ben put in.

      ‘Louisa had the valley all to herself, of course. It must still be wonderful when all the tourists go and it’s empty. That’s a problem all over the world nowadays, I suppose. There are so few places left where one can get away from other people.’

      ‘The cry of a true misanthrope.’ Andy grinned at her.

      She felt herself blushing. ‘No, I like people, but I like to be able to get away from them too, especially when it’s somewhere where atmosphere is part of the attraction. It’s the same in great cathedrals. It should be possible to get away from parties of noisy tourists and uninterested school children who are just ticking the place off their list of trophy visits, or being dragged around by desperate teachers without the slightest genuine interest.’

      ‘Hear, hear! Well said.’ Andy clapped solemnly. ‘A great speech.’

      ‘And a sensible one.’ Ben smiled at her. ‘Which I think we would all agree with deep down in our heart of hearts.’

      There was a moment’s silence. At the table next door Anna noticed that Toby had turned to listen. She looked down at her soup in confusion. It was a novelty, she suddenly realised, to be listened to!

      Exhausted, she went back to her cabin early. Glancing out of the window, shading her eyes against the reflections, she could see the dark river; they had not as yet moved away from the bank. With a shiver of excitement she got ready for bed, and at last reached up for her case, to retrieve the diary. She was looking forward to reading another section before she fell asleep.

      ‘Sitt Louisa?’ Hassan’s shadow fell across the page of her sketchbook. Louisa glanced up. Her easel, her parasol clipped to the canvas, had been set up in the bows of the dahabeeyah as it slowly sailed south. Of the others on the boat there was no sign. Succumbing after their midday meal to the heat of the afternoon they had returned to their cabins, leaving her alone on deck with her watercolours. Only the steersman at the opposite end of the boat, the tiller tucked under his arm, had kept her company up to now. She glanced up at Hassan and smiled.

      ‘Before we left Luxor I went to the bazaar,’ he said. ‘I have a gift for you.’

      She bit her lip. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Hassan –’

      ‘I am pleased to do it. Please.’ He held out his hand. In it there was a small parcel. ‘I know you wanted to visit the souk yourself to buy a memento.’

      Sir John and Lady Forrester on hearing of Louisa’s plan to visit Luxor again had decided almost wilfully that now was the time to sail south.

      Taking the parcel from him Louisa looked at it for a moment.

      ‘It is very old. More than three thousand years. From the time of a king who is hardly known, Tutankhamen.’

      For a moment the angle of the boat changed and the shadow of the sail fell across them. She gave an involuntary shiver.

      ‘Open it.’ His voice was very quiet.

      Slowly she reached for the knotted string which held the paper closed. Untying it she let the string fall. The paper crackled faintly as she pulled it away. Inside was a tiny blue glass bottle. With it was a sheet of old paper, crumbling with age, covered in Arabic script. ‘It is glass. From the 18th dynasty. Very special. There is a secret place inside where is sealed a drop of the elixir of life.’ Hassan pointed to the piece of paper. ‘It is all written there. Some I cannot read but it seems to tell the story of a pharaoh who needed to live for ever and the priests of Amun who devised a special elixir which when given to him would bring him back to life. It was part of a special ceremony. The story on the paper says that in order to protect the secret recipe from evil djinn their priest hid it in this bottle. When he died the bottle was lost for thousands of years.’

      ‘And this is it?’ Louisa laughed with delight.

      ‘This is it.’ Hassan’s eyes had begun to sparkle as he watched her pleasure.

      ‘Then it is truly a treasure and I shall keep it always. Thank you.’ She looked up at him and for a moment their eyes met. The seconds of silence stretched out between them, then abruptly Hassan stepped back. He bowed and turned away from her.

      ‘Hassan –’ Louisa’s voice was husky. The name came out as a whisper and he did not hear her.

      For a long time she sat still, the little bottle lying in her lap, then at last she picked it up. It was little taller than her forefinger, made of thick opaque blue glass decorated with a white, twisted design and the stopper was sealed in place with some kind of resiny wax. She held it up to the sunlight, but the glass was too thick to see through it and after a minute she gave up. Slipping it into her watercolour box, she tucked it safely into the section where the brushes and water pot lived. Later in her cabin she would put it away in the bottom secret drawer of her wooden dressing case.

      Picking up her brush again, she turned back to her picture, but she found it difficult to concentrate.

      Her thoughts kept returning to Hassan.

      Anna laid down the diary and glanced at the slatted shutters over the window. The boat had given a slight shudder. Then she heard the steady beat of the engines. Climbing to her feet she went to the window and pushing back the shutter she opened it. Already they were moving away from the bank. She watched the strip of dark water between the boat and the shore widen slowly then the note of the engines changed and she felt the steady forward thrust of the paddle wheels. They were on their way. She stood for several minutes watching the luminous darkness, then leaving the window open she went back to her bed and sliding under the cotton quilt she picked up the diary again. So, the bottle lying there in her bag, had originally been a gift from Hassan. And what a gift! It wasn’t a scent bottle at all. It was some kind of ancient phial, a holy artefact from the time of Tutankhamen, whose tomb of course had not yet been discovered in Louisa’s day, and it contained nothing less than the elixir of life!

      She shuddered. For an instant she was back in that dark inner burial chamber looking down at the mummy case of the boy king and she remembered how she had become instantly and totally aware of his body lying there before her, and how she had dropped her bag – and the bottle – virtually at his feet.

      Pulling the quilt more closely under her chin she picked up the diary again, soothed by the gentle rumble of the engine deep in the heart of the boat, and she began to read on.

      That