Avram interrupted. “He was brave. That is good. A coward is of use to no one. And he was obedient, yes? A soldier who cannot obey orders is a danger to his fellows, is that not true?” This time he looked at Pitt.
“Certainly,” Pitt agreed, not sure why he had been cut off. Had he been too direct, or was it a question whose answer might embarrass Ishaq? Why? Illegal dealings of some sort? Immoral? “Did the soldiers spend their time off duty in the village or go into Alexandria?” he asked.
Ishaq spread his hands. “Depends how long,” he replied. “There is little to do here, but the city needs money for pleasure.”
“It is a beautiful city simply to walk around,” Pitt said, quite sincerely. “There is much to learn of history, the cultures of many other people; not only Egypt, but Greece, Rome, Turkey, Armenia, Jerusalem-” He stopped, seeing the look in Ishaq’s face. “I did not know Lovat,” he finished.
“So much I see,” Ishaq said dryly. “Soldiers off duty like to eat and drink, to find women, and sometimes to explore a little, look for treasures, have fun.”
It sounded time-wasting if indulged to the exclusion of all else, but harmless. He had not reached the subject of broken rules, even obliquely. It looked like it was going to be a long evening, but at least Pitt was not cross-legged anymore, although the ground was hard. He had become so used to the mosquitoes that he swatted at them without thought.
“What sort of fun?” Avram asked, but with an expression of boredom, as if he was merely filling the silence.
Ishaq shrugged. “Hunting in the marshes,” he replied casually. “Birds, looked for crocodiles occasionally. I think they went upriver once or twice. I arranged it for them.”
“To look at the temples and ruins?” Pitt asked, trying to keep the same tone of voice as Avram.
“Think so,” Ishaq agreed. “Went all the way up to Cairo once. See the pyramids at Giza, and so on.” He grinned. “Got caught in a sandstorm, so they said. Mostly, though, they stayed closer.”
It was not worth pursuing, but there was little else to say to keep the conversation alive. Pitt was beginning to lose hope of learning anything about Lovat that would even show his character, let alone any idea why he had been murdered. Perhaps all he would learn in Egypt was that Ayesha Zakhari was a highly educated and passionate patriot rather than a woman seeking to make use of her beauty to buy the luxuries of life.
“They usually went together, all four of them?” he asked. Perhaps he would be able to find at least one or two of these other men and learn more details of Lovat from their recollections.
“Mostly,” Ishaq agreed. “Not so safe to wander around alone.” He regarded Pitt closely, to see if he understood without having it spelled out to him, word for word, that the English were occupiers, an armed force in a foreign land, and as such, very naturally subjects of many emotions, some of them violent.
Pitt understood it very well. He could feel it in the air, see it in the covert glances of people when they thought themselves unobserved, both men and women. There might be gratitude for financial rescue, but no one liked to be obliged, or dependent. There would be individual affections and hatreds, like Trenchard’s love for his Egyptian mistress. There would be a certain respect, possibly curiosity, and even at times a growing understanding. But always the anger was close under the surface. The memory of the bombardment of Alexandria would make it sharper now, but the same feelings would have been there then, only more deeply buried.
They sat in silence a few minutes. The sound of the oxen moving in the water was relaxing, a steady, natural noise. The night wind carried a breath of coolness, refreshing after the long, hot day.
“And of course there was the woman,” Ishaq said, watching Pitt more closely than he pretended. “But if anyone were to kill him for that, they would have done it then. She was the daughter of a rich man, a learned man, but a Christian. Not as if she were a Muslim. That might have caused trouble… a lot of trouble. Very Christian, Mr. Lovat.” In the darkness of the hut his face was unreadable, but Pitt heard a dozen different emotions in his voice. If Ishaq had been English, Pitt might have been able to discern them, untangle one from another, but he was in an alien land, an old and infinitely complex culture, and speaking to a man whose ancestors had created this extraordinary civilization thousands of years before Christ, let alone before a British Empire. In fact, the pharaohs had ruled an empire of their own before Moses was born, or Abraham fled the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The earth under him was unyielding, the air still heavy and warm, and he could hear the beasts moving now and then outside in the starlit night, all as real as the hard ground and the whine of mosquitoes, and yet he felt an unreality of the mind as if his presence here were a dream. It was hard to remember that Saville Ryerson was actually in prison in London, and that Narraway expected Pitt to find some way to avert scandal.
“Very Christian?” he asked.
“Very.” Ishaq nodded, the emotions remaining unreadable in his voice. “Used to go out to that holy place, the shrine down by the river. Loved it. He was upset because it is a very holy place indeed… a shrine for us as well.”
“Us?” Pitt was puzzled. “For Islam?”
“Yes. Before it was-” Ishaq stopped.
Avram looked at him, his face somber.
Ishaq stared past Pitt. “It was my father who buried them all,” he said so quietly Pitt barely heard the words. “I remember his face for months after that. I thought he would never get over it. Perhaps he didn’t-he had dreams about it for the rest of his life. It was worst when he was dying.” He took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. “My sister looked after him, did what she could to make him easy, but she couldn’t stop the ghosts from coming back.” His face looked pinched and his voice was thick with emotion. “He used to talk to her for hours, telling her about it because he couldn’t help himself. He had dreams… terrible dreams… the blood and the burst flesh, cooked like meat, faces charred until eyes could hardly tell they had once been human… I’d hear him crying out-” He stopped.
Pitt turned to Avram, but Avram shook his head.
They waited in silence.
“Fire,” Ishaq said at last. “Thirty-four of them, as far as anyone could count, in the ashes. They were trapped inside.”
“I’m sorry,” Pitt said softly. He had seen fire in England; he knew the devastation, the smell of burning flesh that never left his memory.
Ishaq shook his head. “My father’s dead, and my sister too now.”
Avram looked startled. “I didn’t know that!”
Ishaq bit his lip and swallowed hard. “In Alexandria… an accident.”
“I’m sorry.” Avram shook his head. “She was beautiful.” He said it as if he was speaking of far more than merely what the eye could see.
Ishaq opened his mouth to say something, but for a moment he had not the control to master the grief within himself.
Pitt and Avram remained silent. It was dark outside now. The stars were visible through the open window, needle sharp in the velvet of the sky. The air was cooler at last.
Ishaq looked up at last. “I think Lieutenant Lovat was sickened by the fire as well,” he observed, his voice quite level now. “It wasn’t long after that when he got ill. Fever of some sort, they said. Seemed to be a bit of it in the camp. He was shipped home. Never saw him again.”
“Did his friends stay?” Pitt asked.
“No,” Ishaq replied softly. “They all went, for different reasons. Don’t know what happened to them. Sent somewhere else, I expect. The British Empire is very big. Perhaps India? They can sail past Suez and down that new canal to half the earth, can’t they.” That was a statement, not a question. There was no lift in his voice to imply doubt.
“Yes,” Pitt murmured, hoping profoundly that he would find at least one of them in London, not have to conduct questions by telegraph through some deputed official. And Ishaq was right-half the world was accessible to Britain through that genius of negotiation and engineering, the Suez Canal. Thinking of the critical importance of it to the economy and the rule of law to the entire empire, and all that meant, it was inconceivable that Britain could ever give back complete autonomy to Egypt. Cotton was only a tiny part of it. How had Ayesha Zakhari ever imagined she could succeed? The hostage of economic dependence was far too precious to yield.
Pitt felt a weight of darkness descend on him as if he were trying to untangle an impenetrable knot, and every thread he pulled only bound it tighter.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said aloud, inclining his head to Ishaq. “Your food and your conversation
