making notes on Egyptian antiquities whilst the most dangerous fighting force in Egypt sweeps over your camp, surely?’
‘No, I hope even Father would bow to the inevitable under those circumstances. The problem is to prevent the days of argument beforehand while we convince him the danger is real.’
‘The village we passed on our way here had several feluccas moored. We could buy or hire two—surely that would be enough room for the three of us and all your possessions.’
‘But I cannot sail and Father...’
‘I can sail a small boat. The rig is different, but the principles are the same. Besides, we can hire some men.’
Laurent was watching them intently, his head moving from side to side, eyes narrowed in calculation. ‘How will you pay for this, monsieur? I have no funds to buy boats for civilians.’
And that was all too true, Cleo knew. The emperor had left his troops short of everything from coin to boots, while promising to send them a shipload of clowns and entertainers from Paris to keep up morale. Thierry had once bitterly observed that he would be quite prepared to eat a comedian, provided he was roasted well enough.
‘I have money,’ Quin said and stood, his hand held out to help her to her feet. Quite how he managed to stand there, clad in a galabeeyah like any local peasant, and look as though he was in a drawing room, Cleo had no idea. Not that she had ever been in a drawing room in her life. ‘Capitaine, we will join you here tomorrow before noon.’
Laurent looked as though he was searching for reasons to argue and could find none. ‘Your father’s correspondence, madam?’
‘No need to trouble you with that, I am sure you have a great deal to do, without having extra paperwork cluttering things up,’ Quin said before Cleo could respond. ‘He will be able to deal with it himself when we arrive in Cairo and probably he will want to add to it as we sail down river.’
Cleo opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. What Quin said was perfectly true, her only objection was with his casual assumption of complete control.
‘Shall we go, madame? The sooner we reach the village and open negotiations, the better.’
‘One moment, Monsieur Bredon. I wish to have a word with the capitaine.’ She held his gaze. ‘In private.’
‘But of course.’ He bowed to the officers and strolled off to where the donkey was grazing.
‘He is insolent, this American, but then I hear they all are,’ one of the lieutenants observed as the junior officers walked away to leave her alone with the captain.
‘What do you know of him?’ Laurent demanded, as she knew he would. She had no answers for him, but she wanted to discover what he thought of Quin.
‘Nothing.’ Cleo shrugged. ‘He had an infected wound and was burning up with heat-stroke. He carried money, but nothing else. I have no reason to suspect he is anything but what he says.’
‘But it is strange to find an American here.’
‘The frontiers are easy enough to penetrate for a single traveller, are they not? Many people beside the emperor are intrigued by Egypt.’
‘The English certainly are,’ Laurent remarked, his eyes on Quin’s elegant back as he leaned one hip against the panniers and waited, apparently incurious about their conversation or the camp around him. His head was bowed and Cleo wondered fleetingly if he was very tired. ‘And not for the antiquities either.’
‘You think he might be a spy?’ That had not occurred to her before, but then it would be madness to send an agent deep into the desert when there could be nothing of interest to the British here. ‘He is not a soldier, I saw his body when I nursed him, he has no scars beyond old ones that must belong to his boyhood.’ She shrugged and answered her own question. ‘But what would a spy be doing here? In Cairo or Alexandria, I could understand it. No, he must be what he says.’
She was never quite easy with Laurent, who had been her husband’s friend. Sometimes she wondered if she could ask him why Thierry had married her. Her father’s enthusiasm for allying his daughter with an officer in the army of his country’s enemy she understood quite clearly—it protected their position. But why had Thierry courted her with every appearance of passionate attachment and then proved such a distant and uncaring husband?
In the low times, in the hour before dawn when she lay restless and aching with unhappiness, she wondered if the mess her marriage had become was her fault or... Or what? He knew who he was marrying. Anyone would think he was a fortune hunter, but I have no fortune.
‘Madam?’
‘I am sorry.’ He must have been talking to her and she had been far away in her head. ‘I must go and see if we can secure those boats. If not, we will be here tomorrow with our bare necessities.’
‘Of course. You are certain you do not wish to give me your father’s correspondence?’
‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Surely he had more pressing matters to concern himself about just at the moment? ‘Au’voir, Capitaine Laurent.’
* * *
Quin pushed the twine back into place and dropped the package of letters into the pannier as he heard the tone of Cleo’s voice change into an unmistakable au’voir. If he had no further opportunity to get his hands on them, at least he had memorised the names of the eight men addressed, including the Englishman, a Professor Smith of Portsmouth. Was it coincidence that the professor happened to live in the country’s foremost naval town?
‘And pigs might fly,’ Quin muttered to himself.
‘Are you well?’ Cleo asked, right behind him.
‘Well enough and better for the prospect of heading north.’
She nodded agreement as she took the leading rein and started down the path towards the village with the boats. ‘It will be a relief to be back in civilisation.’
Then you are going to be sorely disappointed, Quin thought, fanning away the flies with a leafy twig. We are heading into a plague-ridden battlefield and the best you can hope for is that your father is exposed as a gullible idiot. At worst, perhaps that crocodile might be the kindest option after all.
Men were lounging around the ramshackle jetty where the boats were moored, but Quin made for the largest house. ‘This will be the village sheikh, I imagine. Are you going to sit meekly outside with the donkey while I negotiate?’
He expected an argument, but Cleo simply slipped the tail of her headscarf across her lower face and went to sit under the shade of the wall. ‘I know my place,’ she said. It was said without inflection or complaint, but there was something in the way she spoke that made Quin look back. ‘Yes?’ She raised one brow. ‘I assume your Arabic is up to it, or do you need help?’
‘No, thank you.’ But you do, Quin thought as he tapped on the door, clearing his mind of French and English. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he said to the elderly man who opened it and ducked through the opening as the sheikh gestured him inside.
* * *
Quin knew that bargaining required patience and persistence—he’d
