twig of anything green to be seen; nothing but empty sky above and dusty, barren, rock-crusted hills all around. There was no one about, nor any human habitation-except, at the end of the sphinx-lined avenue, the immense black rectangle of a doorway carved into the side of the dun-coloured hill.
“It looks like a temple or necropolis or something,” observed Kit. “If Cosimo and Sir Henry also landed here, they might have taken shelter there. I say we go investigate-see if we can find out anything.”
Shouldering the bundles containing their provisions and weapons, the three started toward the temple, walking between the paws of the crouched sphinxes whose stone faces gazed on with remote and imperturbable dignity. Some of the statues had hieroglyphs on their pedestals, and some had clearly suffered wear and tear from sandstorms and the simple ravages of time-cracks and fissures in the stone, damaged feet or faces-but most were in fairly good condition.
They proceeded along the broken road, alert to any sound or movement around them. The early morning breeze, though still cool, held the threat of heat to come. From somewhere high above, the lonely cry of a scavenging buzzard drifted down. Closer, they saw that the temple entrance rose on tiered platforms that formed low steps leading up to a massive door guarded by two enormous statues-one of a man in a tall plumed headdress holding an ankh in his hand, the other of a man in the striped headdress and heavily ornamented kilt of a pharaoh. Daunted by the yawning emptiness of the entrance and its giant guardians, they paused at the foot of the steps. “Shall we?” said Kit.
“I think it only right that you go in first,” suggested Lady Fayth.
“Sure.” He mounted the steps to the doorway and tried to peer into the dark interior of the temple. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”
No reply.
“Hello?” he called again. “Anyone?”
His voice reverberated through the empty interior and died away in the dark recesses of the rock-hewn edifice.
“It’s safe,” he said, motioning for the others to join him. “There’s no one here. We have the place to ourselves.”
Kit entered the temple. The air was dry and cool, the light dim. The roof had been pierced in places, allowing shafts of sunlight to penetrate the interior darkness and illuminate a veritable forest of stone pillars. In one of these rectangular pools of light a crude table had been erected, using bricks from the temple and a piece of old planking. Dusty rugs lay in a heap beside the table. The base of the nearest pillar was black with soot where fires had been lit. “Somebody has been here.”
“More than one somebody, I would say,” Giles added, pointing to an array of footprints in the dust on the floor. “And perhaps not all that long ago.”
“There are all sizes here.” Kit bent down for a closer look. Most prints bore the marks of a simple shoe without heels-a sandal, most likely-and some were barefoot. Many were scuffed and overtrod, suggesting people milling about. He straightened again and looked around. “Sir Henry and Cosimo might have been here as well, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”
“Whether they were here or not is irrelevant,” Lady Fayth pointed out. “They are not here now.” She turned in a slow circle, letting her eyes sweep the dim, cavernous interior. “And there is nothing else of interest.”
“Then we continue the search.” Kit turned and walked back to the doorway and out onto the steps. “Maybe we should leave the bags here while we have a look around.” He glanced at Giles, who was shaking his head. “No?”
Kit followed the coachman’s gaze and saw, coming towards them along the avenue of sphinxes, a travelling company made up of at least eight camels surrounded by a small army of people on donkeys and on foot. “Oh,” said Kit. “It looks like we’ve got company.”
“A genuine Egyptian caravan!” gushed Lady Fayth. “How truly exciting!”
They waited and watched as the parade drew closer, and it became clear that the group was coming to the temple and that it was, to Lady Fayth’s disappointment, not an exotic desert caravan at all, but a passel of tourists; the Egyptians among them were guides and beggars. The lead camel stopped a few dozen yards from the entrance, and the camel jockeys made their beasts kneel so that the visitors could dismount. The newcomers were outfitted for a day’s adventure: dressed in elaborate khaki desert gear with multipocket jackets and loose trousers stuffed into tall boots. The men wore pith helmets and carried riding crops, and the ladies wore wide-brimmed hats held in place by gauzy scarves, and carried flyswatters. The Egyptians wore simple white robes and double-strapped sandals; a few sported chequered turbans.
“By Jove!” shouted one of the men, throwing his leg over the crown of the saddle and sliding to the ground. “It is magnificent! Someone get a photo of me at the doorway, what!”
“Tourists all right,” said Kit. At Lady Fayth’s uncomprehending glance, he added, “Travellers-they have come to see the temple.”
“Whoever they are,” she observed, “they speak something very like English.”
“True,” replied Kit. “Wait here, both of you. I’m going to talk to them.” He started toward the man who seemed to be the leader of the group. “Hello!” he called, giving the fellow a wave. “Hello! May I ask where you are coming from?”
The man turned and saw the three travellers for the first time. “Upon my word!” he exclaimed. “You’re here awfully early. I say! They told us we’d have the place to ourselves.”
“Yes, well, we wanted to get here before-before it got too hot, you see.”
“Yes, quite,” replied the man, squinting up at the sun. “We’ve come from the Queen Hatshepsut.” Seeing Kit’s puzzled frown, he added, “It’s a boat. On the Nile? Just over those hills back there.” The man gestured vaguely behind him. “And you? I didn’t see any other boats at the mooring last night.”
“No, we’re on foot.” Kit regarded the tatterlings beginning to swarm around them.
“Ah! Roughing it, what?”
“Something like that,” Kit admitted. “We were hoping-”
Before Kit could finish, he was mobbed by a gang of urchins-barefoot, half-naked beggar children, all of them clamouring to be heard above the others, grabbing at his shirtsleeves and shouting, “Mister! Mister! You English, mister? You English? You have shillings, mister? Shillings!”
“Sorry, no,” said Kit. “No-no shillings. Sorry.”
“Shillings, mister! You have shillings! Give, mister. Give.”
“I don’t have any shillings,” Kit said, more forcefully this time. “No shillings.” A dozen small hands snatched at his sleeves and trousers; small fingers wormed into his pockets. He raised his arms out of their reach and stepped back. “Look, I don’t have any money, see? No money. No shillings!”
“Give, please. Mister, give!”
“Looks like you’ve had it, old man!” called the tour leader. Chuckling, he walked back to join his group members, who had dismounted and were moving towards the temple. “You’ll have to give them something to get rid of them.”
“Thanks for your help,” called Kit, still trying to extricate himself from the clutches of the insistent young vagabonds. His efforts aroused the attention of some older boys with donkeys; they rode their diminutive animals into the besieging horde, clicking their tongues and swatting their rivals with switches made from palm branches. “Mister! You ride donkey! We take you! Ride, mister!”
“No! I don’t want a donkey ride,” said Kit, backing away.
“What are you doing?” asked Lady Fayth, stepping up beside him.
“I got a little tangled up here,” he said. “But I’m working on it.”
“Pray, do not farce about. Ask them if they have seen Cosimo and Uncle Henry,” she suggested.
“I was just about to do that,” replied Kit. “There probably isn’t much that happens around here that they don’t know about.”
“Well?” she demanded, swatting away the hands that were trying to find their way into her pockets.
“Excuse me!” shouted Kit. “Excuse me! We are looking for two Englishmen. Two English-big men. Has anyone seen Englishmen?”
Though his repeated inquiries appeared to have no effect on the bawling horde, one of the donkey boys left the pack and returned a moment later with one of the camel drivers. “You English?” called the driver. “You look for men?”
