The Buried Pyramid (14 page)

Jenny longed to hold the monkey, but knew without asking that this was Lady Cheshire’s show. Still, she could assert herself, too, and did so by opening the book of hieroglyphs that Uncle Neville had loaned her and making a point of attending to her studies, rather than to Lady Cheshire.

This didn’t bother Lady Cheshire one bit. That lady’s intended audience was not the small circle of women, but the men gathered over at the card tables. Before long, a deep voice interjected itself into the female twittering, and then another, and when Jenny slipped away to her cabin, no one noticed her departure.

Emily was in the cabin, folding away some freshly laundered clothing. She offered to excuse herself, but Jenny was glad for her company. Both Emily and her Bert were the kind of direct, honest hardworking folk Jenny had frequently met on the frontier, and seemed more real to her than the majority of the first class passengers.

For her part, Emily had forgiven Jenny for the incident of the six-guns, especially after Jenny had told her any number of stories about real Indians and cattle drives—the retelling of which had made Emily very popular with her associates.

“Emily,” Jenny asked, “had you met Lady Cheshire before this voyage?”

“Her?” Emily said, pursing her lips in a momentary frown. “We haven’t been introduced, if that’s what you mean, she being gentry and all.”

“Did she ever call on Uncle Neville?”

Emily considered.

“I believe she might have been to Hawthorne House a time or two, for the master’s lecture nights. He was holding those fair regular for a while, belonged to some association for antiquities. They met at the houses of the members until the group grew so large they thought a hall might be better.”

“And Lady Cheshire came to some of those?”

“I think so,” Emily said. “She seems familiar. I’d be helping out you see, with coats and things, and she’s a striking lady, with those green eyes and all that dark hair.”

“Yes, she is,” Jenny agreed. “So she’s genuinely interested in Egyptology, then.”

“I believe so, Miss. Lady Cheshire’s maid was saying that the lady has all sorts of horrid things at her house: mummy cases, bones, bits of hair and linen.” Emily shuddered. “I don’t mind saying, Miss, that I wouldn’t want to have the dusting of such trash. Sir Neville’s collection is much nicer. The alabaster is lovely stuff and so is that fay-ance glass, though why anyone would want broken old pots is beyond me.”

“I like them for the wonder of touching something made by people who lived so very long ago,” Jenny said. “So you know Lady Cheshire’s maid?”

“Can’t hardly help it on a boat like this,” Emily sniffed, “though I fancy she wouldn’t give me the time of day in other circumstances. She’s French—gives herself airs for knowing about high fashion and being able to do delicate lacework and such. The other woman’s maid, she who waits on that Mrs. Syms—Polly, her name is—she’s a simple countrywoman with no nonsense to her.”

“Not very much like her mistress, then,” Jenny said with a light laugh. “Mrs. Syms believes all sorts of nonsense.”

Surprisingly, Emily, who was a good churchgoing woman and should have no truck with things like spiritualism, softened.

“Ah, but then the poor woman has had her share of hardship, she has.”

Jenny tilted her head inquiringly.

So encouraged, Emily went on, “You knows Mrs. Syms is a widow, but do you know how her husband died?”

“I do not. Mrs. Syms is remarkably silent on the subject, given how much she likes to talk on other things. Only yesterday Mrs. Travers was talking about how her sister had recently lost her husband. I noticed that Mrs. Syms became quite pale, and soon after she excused herself.”

“Mr. Syms died saving her life, he did,” Emily explained in hushed tones. “They were traveling by carriage from some country ball and highwaymen pulled them over and were going to rob them. The thieves hit the coachman over his head and left him senseless. Mrs. Syms was quite terrified, so Polly says, especially when it came clear that the men were more than a bit gone in drink and might be thinking of more than robbery.

“Mr. Syms was having none of that, though. He hit one man and took his gun, then shot another. The highwaymen ran for their lives, then, but not before the good man himself was shot. Mrs. Syms herself drove the coach to the nearest house, but there was no saving her husband. They had no children, being young married then, and she never looked to wed again. Lord Cheshire was some sort of a cousin to her and gave her a roof so her small inheritance wouldn’t be wasted, and Lady Cheshire has continued just as kind.”

Another point to her,
Jenny thought with a certain desperation.
I don’t want to hear good things about Audrey Cheshire. I can feel in my bones she doesn’t mean well by us.

“Poor Mrs. Syms,” Jenny replied with real feeling. “I can indeed see why she might be interested in spiritualism. I wonder if she has ever forgiven herself.”

Emily sighed agreement. “I can’t imagine how I’d feel seeing my Bert bleed out his life to save my honor. It’s romantic enough in stories, but I think it would really be quite horrid.”

“You are a sensible woman, Mrs. Hamilton,” Jenny said. “The ladies’ servants may be chatty, but I saw Captain Brentworth’s boy for the first time today, and he’s quiet enough.”

Emily’s eyes grew round.

“You mean the Mohammedan lad?” she said. “Oh, he’s quiet, and like to stay that way. Polly tells me he’s a mute and an idiot. Captain Brentworth hired Rashid from some orphanage or poorhouse in Cairo. The lad cannot say a single word, only makes a sort of flat noise like a goat bleating that’s supposed to be laughing. He fair gives me the creeps, never looking you in the eye, though I suppose he’s a good enough soul. He’s kind to that queer pet of his, and they do say you can always judge a man by how he treats his creatures.”

“Mute?” Jenny said. “Is Rashid deaf as well?”

“No, he can hear right enough, just can’t make his throat shape talking sounds. Can’t write, neither, on account of not being very bright.”

“So how does he make his master know what is needed?”

Emily grew guarded.

“I don’t suppose Captain Brentworth is the type to take much direction from a servant, Miss.”

“But what if Rashid needs supplies? Needles and thread or something?”

Jenny felt rather vague about those things a manservant might use to tend his master’s needs, but Emily understood.

“I think Rashid has a few signs he can make, gestures and suchlike,” Emily replied. “They must get by, since Rashid has been in Captain Brentworth’s service some years now—though Polly says the captain is always threatening to get rid of him.”

“True.”

Fascinated by the exotic young servant, Jenny found excuses to have her path intersect Rashid’s and to offer a pleasant nod or a polite greeting in her rather stilted Arabic. Such opportunities were not difficult to find. Rashid seemed to be the favorite errand boy for both Lady Cheshire and Captain Brentworth, as Babette, Lady Cheshire’s French maid thought herself above such tasks, and Polly was not taking well to sea travel.

The number of ladies traveling on
Neptune’s Charger
was not large, so even if Jenny had wanted to avoid Lady Cheshire, she could not have done so. However, she did not wish to do so—not with Uncle Neville forming a member of Lady Cheshire’s court more often than Jenny felt was wise.

Sir Neville had even taken to reading poetry to the lady. His selections were not in the least romantic, but Captain Brentworth, who could not read aloud without making the verse sound like barked commands, clearly envied the other man his delivery—and his proximity to the lady. When Lady Cheshire suggested that Sir Neville read for one of the entertainments the passengers regularly got up for their mutual amusement, Captain Brentworth was clearly irate.

Stephen Holmboe had already participated in one of these entertainments, reading the grisly “Murders in the Rue Morgue” by the American author Edgar Allan Poe, and afterwards arguing quite engagingly about the merits of pure deduction as a means of solving mysteries. Sir Neville had taken the opposite side, and the pair had been applauded for their skill in arguing black white, which Mr. Babellard, the clergyman, had said verged on the Jesuitical.

Jenny was considering what she could offer as her portion of one of these entertainments—perhaps some of the frontier tales that had so fascinated Emily would do—when another communication in hieroglyphs jolted her party out of their more casual preoccupations.

The missive had been handed to Stephen along with the rest of the Hawthorne party’s mail when he went below to fetch a book he needed to consult during one of Jenny’s lessons on Egyptology.

“Whatever is wrong, Mr. Holmboe?” Jenny asked, when Stephen returned, an envelope held awkwardly in one hand.

“Something rather curious,” he said, moving his hand so that she could see that a series of hieroglyphs had been written at the bottom of the envelope below the otherwise very usual routing instructions. Had it not been for their earlier experience, she might have dismissed them as decoration.

Stephen lowered his voice. “I fear we should not discuss whatever this contains in such a public area. If you will locate your uncle and ask him to meet us at his stateroom, I will gather up our books and will join you shortly.”

Jenny did so. She waited until Uncle Neville had concluded the long passage he was reading from one of Browning’s dramatic monologues, and had received the gushing praise of Lady Cheshire, before saying rather petulantly:

“Uncle Neville, I wish you would resolve an argument between myself and Mr. Holmboe. I tell him that his interpretation of one of the exercises he has set me cannot be correct.”

“Oh,” replied Sir Neville, obviously amused. “You wish me to defy my own instructor on your behalf?”

Jenny pouted slightly. “I think you could help. This lesson reminds me of the first lesson we did back at Hawthorne House, the one on phonetics. You were able to offer some valuable clarification then, and I do wish you would do so now.”

For a moment she thought he might not remember that first lesson, but the momentary flicker of puzzlement departed his features almost as soon as it formed. He laughed, perhaps a trifle theatrically, and rose to his feet.

“If you ladies will excuse me,” he said, bowing around the small group. “Mr. Holmboe forgets himself in his enthusiasm. It may be that a more recent student such as myself may indeed be able to offer some assistance.”

The ladies did excuse him, though Jenny thought that Lady Cheshire would have liked to have had a reason to attach herself to their party. However, she had already admitted ignorance of all but the most general principles of hieroglyphic writing, so there was no reason why her presence might be helpful.

Jenny followed her uncle to his stateroom, where Stephen Holmboe joined them almost immediately, firmly closing the door into the small room.

“Same correspondent,” he began, dropping the envelope onto the table for their inspection. “I recognize the hand.”

Jenny was now familiar enough with hieroglyphic writing to know that the signs were shaped slightly differently by every scribe. Still, she thought Stephen’s distinction unnecessary.

“I should hope so,” she said. “I can hardly imagine two such cranks!”

Stephen cocked a bushy blond eyebrow at her.

“We should not make assumptions,” he said. “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

He grinned then, and Jenny, remembering that “ass” was not as rude a term in British English as it was in American, stopped being shocked and caught the joke. She snorted and returned her attention to the envelope.

“It’s addressed to you, Uncle Neville. Open it!”

Neville Hawthorne was frowning at the routing instructions. Except for the line of hieroglyphs, they were in keeping with the other letters that had arrived in the same post—although the postmarks were somewhat blurred, as if the envelope had been splashed.

“I wonder who is sending these to us?” he said.

“Let’s look at what’s inside,” Jenny suggested. “Maybe this one will be easier to read.”

Nodding, Sir Neville slit open the envelope and removed a folded sheet of paper, neatly lettered with a series of hieroglyphs. Jenny bent forward, eager to see if she could read any of them.