not so much as before, I was stiff again after a day on my camel. I was tired. I’d not be in need of assistance tonight for sleep.
‘You should bathe before it grows cold,’ she said with a change of tone.
I looked over at the little pool in the middle of the oasis. It would soon be warmer than the surrounding air, and I was beginning to smell. It was three days since my last bath, and not far off that since I’d changed clothes. If I got in at the other end from where the camels were spitting and showing their teeth, I might also wash my clothes. Would they dry, though, once the night was here and it turned cold again? Or would we have a while in the morning? I also thought about the blanket I’d have to use for drying myself – it might be sandy. Above all, of course, was the matter of seemliness. Having a bath was all very well. Having one with her looking calmly on was not so well.
I’d pretty well decided to make my excuses. But the Mistress was now pulling at her own boots and then unwinding her leggings. I slumped back in confusion. I tried to think of something to say.
‘Cleanliness, my dear Alaric, is our duty as well as our pleasure,’ she said, with a slight lingering on ‘pleasure’.
You might, if you are a person with limited opportunities, think ill of me if I decline to say in detail what happened next. However, while pain is easily described – in yourself as well as in others – pleasure is something as hard to describe as beauty. The mingling of limbs and the repeated bursts of ecstasy are things that can be imagined without any close narrative. I will only say that, throughout that night of continuous and unrestrained passion, the Mistress never once thought it appropriate to uncover her face.
‘You are not the one,’ she whispered softly in my ear as I finally drifted asleep. ‘But you have pleased me.’
I woke with a start. The sun was already rising high in the east. It would soon be on my face. It was already on my body. I tried to sit up, but found I was wrapped in my blanket as tightly as an embalmed corpse. I lay down and wriggled free. I stood up and stretched. My back was sore. From the red scratches all over my belly and thighs, it wasn’t hard to guess the cause. Whatever she’d done for me after the rioting, it was plain that these would have to heal by themselves. The only part of me to escape her mauling was where I had the medal of Saint Peter hung round my neck.
‘Surely, we ought to be moving,’ I began to cry out. I looked at the single camel tethered to the biggest of the trees and fell silent. The oasis was only about sixty feet across at its widest point, and there was no need to do more than glance round. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I wandered about its perimeter, looking in all directions at the sands stretching endlessly around me.
She’d gone. When she had gone I couldn’t tell. Where wasn’t worth asking. But she had gone. And I didn’t believe she’d be back. Naked, I went over and washed myself by the pool. The water had been warm enough last night. Now, it felt chilly. My clothes had been hung up where they’d catch the first rays of the sun. They were completely dry. I dressed with slow deliberation. The tunic had shrunk a little, and some of its colour had gone in the wash. But it was good to be clean and to wear clean clothes.
Finally, I went over to my camel and picked up the folded sheet of papyrus I’d seen even before realising I was alone. It was taken from The Trials of Penelope, cut carefully from the front of the roll to avoid any further loss of the main text. She’d written on the rather stained outer side with a burned twig from the fire.
‘I have brought you as far as is required of me,’ the message went. ‘The Brotherhood camp where Martin was taken is twenty miles due south of here. You will know what to do.’
You will know what to do, she was telling me! It was a good joke, and I made sure to sit down and have a good laugh over it. But the camel looked back at me, and the sun was rising higher. Oh, I’d conceived a general plan of action back in Alexandria. When it came to details, though, I hadn’t the foggiest what I was supposed to do. I’d have to start rather earlier than expected on settling the details as and when required.
I went and stood on the outer edge of the oasis – right on the eighteen-inch border within which the tangled green sustained by the pool and shaded by itself gave way to the yellow sand. I looked out over the sands that stretched like the sea on and on up to the horizon. Had the Mistress run off, I asked myself, because we’d spent half the night fucking? Or had we spent half the night fucking so she could be sure I’d sleep through her getaway? The latter struck me as more likely – even if it supposed that she’d seen me watching her in the temple. Why, then, had she run off? Was she punishing me for having watched her? Was she working with the Brotherhood, and was this the trap from which I’d be collected? Was she a fraud? She might have certain healing and persuasive abilities. But going against the Brotherhood on its own territory might be far outside those abilities.
I asked these and other questions. I didn’t get very far with answering them. I regretted saying goodbye to the fraud theory. But – with all the reservations already made – I had no doubt she could avoid any direct confrontation with the Brotherhood, and could win in any confrontation that she cared to allow. Her decision to clear out was part of some design that I hadn’t means of explaining.
Still keeping to the green side of the border, I sat and thought, and I thought harder, and I went back on my thoughts, and I thought again from fresh. I can’t say I reached any conclusions that advanced beyond any that I’d already formed in Alexandria. But it was reassuring that, after all I’d been expecting, whatever I now did would be at my own direction. Whether it would work was another matter that might best be left unconsidered.
I had a late breakfast. I refilled the water skins. I attended as best I could to the camel. I sat down in the shade and commanded myself to sleep. My body obeyed me this time. I woke again as the sun was heading into the west. I felt rested and relaxed. If the Brotherhood really were twenty miles due south, now seemed a fine time to be setting out.
Chapter 54
At least I’d got my timings right. I arrived at the Brotherhood camp just as the sun was dipping below the western horizon. The sandy ocean was at my back, and I was once more in one of the rocky zones separating this from the black land. I got the camel to kneel down at the far side of a cluster of rocks behind a small hill that overlooked the camp. Tethering it to anything that would keep it from running off like the last one had was out of the question. Leaving it there was yet another risk I’d have to take.
I had rather expected this to be the main Brotherhood camp. I’d hurried through the last miles of desert with another old temple in mind – something high and solid, with a continual stream of animal and human traffic. Banners and rebuilding works had also featured in my imagination. What I’d found was a disappointment. If it held more than a few dozen men, I’d have been surprised. It was just a collection of tents made from woven papyrus, grouped round a couple of mud-brick buildings that looked about to fall down. There was no outer wall or other protection. The only men I saw had on the loincloths of the lowest grade of Egyptian. Nothing had kept the sun off their upper bodies all through the day. I didn’t suppose they’d have anything to put on against the cold of the night. With no appearance of urgency, they slouched between the tents and the buildings with various jars and packages.
I’d almost missed it at first. Having seen it, I’d come close to dismissing it as the place I was looking for. It was only because there was nothing else in sight for miles around that I’d bothered with a second look. It was then, however, that I’d seen the covered pen filled with camels, and the heaps of spears and shields between the buildings.
This couldn’t be the main camp of the Brotherhood. But it was the place where the Mistress had wanted to send me. The closer I’d approached, the more I’d been thinking about whether I was going straight into a trap. After all, who was the Mistress? What was her interest in me and my concerns? Questions it had been so easy to settle or dismiss back in the oasis wouldn’t stop coming into my head. But I could see that no one here was expecting to be disturbed. It made sense. It would take days longer to get a body of armed men through the desert, and they’d surely be seen long in advance. As for the Nile approach, all landing places would be covered as a matter of course.
The last time I’d done anything like this was with the Lombards, back in Italy. Then, it had meant getting close to King Agilulf in the middle of his army. And I’d known Agilulf was on to me, and had put the managers of his torture garden on alert. But Pavia was nothing compared with this. Then, I was on terrain that I understood. I could dress as a Lombard and, so long as I didn’t try for extended conversations, be taken for one. Above all, I’d known
