‘Affirmative,’ replied Andre.
‘We’ll resume this pursuit when the storm passes,’ Conally resolved. ‘Over and out.’
‘That’s one big wall of sand, all right,’ Tusca commented, viewing the approaching storm via Akbar’s horse- cam. ‘You would have to be mad not to seek shelter.’
‘Perhaps tracking the band will prove rather fortuitous for them?’ Andre was imagining a rosy outcome, where the Arab gratefully gave the keys back to him in gratitude for saving his life.
Static began to creep into the image that Akbar’s horse-cam was transmitting as his party penetrated the storm. The signal that marked our target on the monitor also began to weaken.
‘Is the storm causing the interference?’ I wondered, suppressing my glee as the disruptions intensified.
Tusca was perplexed. She continued typing in a losing battle to restore the transmissions. ‘The storm shouldn’t affect the signals to this extent.’ Tusca, out of ideas, sat back in her seat. The camera window on the monitor turned to total static and the transmitter signal faded completely.
‘I guess we need an invitation, after all.’ I suppressed my relief at the systems failure.
Andre was staring at the monitor, absolutely devastated.
‘A nightmare, indeed,’ I echoed. ‘Fortunately for you, you don’t remember any of it. And from this moment on, I plan to have complete memory failure also.’
Andre and Tusca looked at each other, both carrying a heaviness and guilt that they could not explain. Tusca nodded, thinking it was the best solution for all involved. With a sigh, Andre looked at me and smiled. ‘The project was sabotaged by a local religious sect and we barely escaped with our lives.
EPILOGUE
FROM THE POST-SINAI JOURNAL OF MRS ASHLEE DEVERE
En route back to England I collected Nanny Beat, so that she might fulfil her desire to be nurse to my forthcoming child. It would have been lovely to linger with the gypsies, but with my father’s health hanging in the balance I felt the greatest urgency to return home as soon as was humanly possible. I promised to visit the Continent as soon as motherhood and family life allowed, and Devere and I assured Cingar that the Choron clan would always be welcome at the Granville estate in Suffolk.
We made it home by the celebration of Michaelmas. The autumn chill was making itself felt at the Granville manor in Suffolk, where my father had retired to wait out the cold winter months as he did every year now that he was getting older. Since my mother’s death he had lost much of his enthusiasm for taking up invitations to visit with other members of the country gentry.
I do not believe that I have ever known my father to be so happy to see me, nor so proud of me for that matter. For all the grand and amazing tales of travel I had to tell him, it was my conception of a child that impressed him most, as he’d felt sure he’d never see the day. Needless to say, my dear Mr Devere was now very much in my father’s good books.
‘My spirits insist that I am carrying a male child, papa,’ I brazenly informed him, and for the first time in his life my father was prepared to wholeheartedly believe one of my predictions.
The news of his forthcoming grandson improved my father’s health considerably. He had no intention of leaving this earth before he’d had the opportunity to make an impression on his heir.
Before I set foot on English soil I had packed away my green velvet adventuring guise and weapons; my yen for travel had been satisfied for the present and I felt it was time to assume the role of Mrs Devere, wife, dutiful daughter and soon-to-be mother. The green velvet attire would no longer stretch around my expanding form in any case, but in the years ahead I would have need of this clothing again.
I also packed away Lord Hamilton’s journal. I had found the time to finish reading it on my way home. In the empty volume with the secret compartment, I placed what remained of the bottle of flammable foul-smelling fluid from the Star-Fire Temple. Packing away Albray’s stone proved not so easy.
After a long discussion by the fire in my drawing room one evening, having reminisced about our journey together, my knight and I both agreed that if I cherished my marriage, our further association simply wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t that Devere didn’t like Albray. How could he not, when the knight had saved our lives? It was more that my husband wasn’t comfortable with another man, even a dead one, being closer to me than he was.
It was Albray who requested that his stone of summons be packed away in the back of Lord Hamilton’s hollow journal, and that the volumes, along with my journal, be passed down through the female line of my family.
‘But what if I never have a daughter?’ I inquired, as Albray had predicted I was having a boy child.
‘You shall be far too happy within your marriage to Devere, I fear, for I foresee that you shall be blessed with several children.’ The knight’s news shocked me. ‘Teach them all that you know, and that there is a world of many beliefs out there…none of them perfect, but all worthy of consideration and respect.’
My guardian and I conversed until dawn, and with the coming of the first rays of the new day I dismissed Albray from my life.
I was sad that I had not been the one to free Albray from his curse. Still, as I placed the stone inside the secret compartment, I knew that many years from now, one of my great, great grand-daughters would find this stone and free the knight, just as the black-clad female spirit in the temple had assured me.
It was on a visit to the home of Lord Malory, many years later, that I finally discovered the identity of the dark lady. The lord was the proud owner of a magnificent painting depicting Mary Magdalene’s arrival in France, her belly swollen with child. The woman in the painting was the very image of the mysterious dark lady who had spoken with me in the temple. Obviously this painting was a recent creation and not a portrait of the Great Mother herself, but
