the people that created them, perhaps.’ She made no move to shake off his hand. Men and women had stood and looked at these buildings since time immemorial, perhaps touching as she and Quin were, supporting each other, perhaps in fear, perhaps in awe. It seemed a small miracle that she had found someone who understood that.
The donkey moved, tugging the rein and with it, her arm. The moment was gone into the hot air, just like every moment evaporating in the heat and dust of this place.
‘Come, we need to get to the camp before the sun gets too high.’ She began to walk without looking back, listening to the familiar soft footfall of the little donkey and the faint slap of the leather sandals worn by the man who walked with her. It had been a long time since anyone had kept her company. It was strange that it should make her feel lonelier than ever.
‘Do you want to stop and rest?’ Cleo glanced back at Quin. ‘There is shade just ahead and another mile to go.’
To her surprise, he nodded. ‘Yes, that would be welcome.’ Then, when she continued to stare he added, ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. Nothing beyond the fact that an adult male is prepared to admit to a woman that he would like to rest.’
‘You think I am betraying weakness?’
‘No, I think you are showing common sense,’ she retorted and led the donkey down to the river’s edge. ‘There is a fallen column from some monument in the shade of those palms. A good place to rest.’ She leaned on the donkey’s rump while it drank and watched Quin covertly as he sat. His pace had not flagged, although he was pale under his eyes and around his mouth. Considering that he had been prostrate with heat-stroke, and was still carrying a wound that had been seriously infected, it would seem that Quin Bredon was both fit and hardy.
‘Men do sometimes demonstrate common sense,’ he said mildly when she rejoined him. ‘Thank you,’ he added as he took the proffered water skin and tipped it expertly so the water arced into his mouth without the neck touching his lips. ‘How long does it take to get used to the taste of goat-flavoured water?’
‘You never do.’ She drank and pushed the stopper into the flask. There were boys herding cattle on the opposite bank and a flock of egrets flew upstream, their white plumage brilliant in the sunlight. A large pied kingfisher landed on a branch nearby and squawked loudly, claiming its stretch of riverbank before diving into the brown water and emerging with a fish. A few hundred yards beyond the ribbon of green on the opposite bank the sand dunes formed a glittering golden ridge.
‘This is very beautiful. Timeless. One half-expects to see the pharaoh’s daughter find Moses in the bulrushes or for a great barge to float downstream with banners flying and trumpets sounding,’ Quin said. He leaned back on a palm trunk, eyes slitted against the sun dazzle on the water.
‘It has always been beautiful. And hot, dry, poor and dangerous,’ Cleo said. Egypt was somewhere to be endured, battled, overcome. It was a place where men fought to extract something, as miners struggled beneath the earth in heat and danger. Only here there was an ancient civilisation, not diamonds, political advantage, not coal. ‘You relax and enjoy it and it will kill you.’ She pointed to a small snake slithering into cover.
‘I hope your army friends will have more information about the movements of the Mamelukes,’ Quin said. ‘I have no wish to encounter Murad Bey. He is rather more lethal than that snake, I think.’
Cleo shivered. Thierry had spoken about the Mamelukes, their bravery and savagery, and his hand had tightened on his sword hilt as if to still a tremor of fear. She had no wish to encounter them either. ‘What will you do?’
‘I am hoping the soldiers will have been recalled towards Cairo. I imagine they will go by river, will they not? It seems perverse to march in this heat.’ Quin stood and stretched, six feet of lean muscle unselfconsciously displayed.
‘I cannot imagine how I would persuade Father to go.’ She got to her feet and made rather a business of straightening the panniers. ‘He is very stubborn.’
‘Nothing a sharp blow to the head would not cure,’ Quin said. He took the leading rein and walked off down the path leaving her blinking at his retreating back.
Did he mean that? How wonderful if he did. She was certain he would accomplish it very neatly, with no more damage to Father than a sore head when he awoke. No, it had to be a joke. Respectable engineers did not go around hitting scholars over the head and loading them on to river boats. She took a grip on her imaginings and ran to catch Quin up.
* * *
The camp was small and orderly in the bleak, soulless way of soldiers without women. Capitaine Laurent was sitting on a folding chair outside his tent, his two lieutenants standing listening to him. When he saw them approaching he stood up, watching the stranger from under heavy black brows.
‘Madam.’ He sketched a bow and the other two men did likewise. ‘Qui est-ce?’
‘Quintus Bredon, American engineer, Captain,’ Quin responded in French before Cleo could speak. ‘I have been rescued by Madame Valsac and her father. Bedouin raiders took my camels.’ He pushed back his sleeve as he spoke, revealing the edge of the bandage.
‘American?’ Laurent still made no gesture of hospitality.
‘The United States is the ally of France, is she not?’ Quin said easily. But he could see that Laurent’s stance was alert, subtly more aggressive. The two men were facing up to each other like dogs meeting on the edge of their territories, not convinced yet that a fight was required, but quite willing to scrap if necessary.
‘Oui. But what are you doing here?’
‘Indulging my curiosity. I was in the Balkans, I heard about your emperor’s savants and I decided to see for myself. There is a brotherhood amongst scientists, I find. I had hoped to reach the Cataracts—an intriguing problem in navigation—but I hear that would be suicide now.’
‘Ha!’ Laurent gestured to one of the soldiers and the man ran forward with two more folding chairs. ‘Sit, have coffee. Murad Bey is on his way north with a force of fifteen thousand, the latest intelligence confirms it.’
‘And you have what...fifty men?’ Quin glanced around the encampment. ‘I imagine your orders do not involve suicide either.’
‘Correct. We will strike camp and load up the barges.’ He gestured towards the river bank and the moored vessels. ‘I was about to send to your father, madam, to tell him to prepare to move by dawn tomorrow. We have room for the two...the three...of you and one small piece of baggage each.’
‘But my father’s books, his papers...’
‘His life?’ the captain enquired, one brow lifted. ‘Yours?’
‘It seems I may have to take you up on your offer to knock Father out after all, Mr Bredon.’ Escape, at last. A way to get across those hundreds of miles to the coast and there... And there, what? she asked herself. She was a woman with no money of her own and no protection once she left her father’s side in this dangerous country. But if she could get to France or England, surely she could find work of some kind?
Quin sat back in the chair, his relaxed stance steadying her circling,
