‘Hermes, I was questioned and humiliated for hours!’
A short whistle came from behind me and I swung around. Ibrihim, my housekeeper, was standing on the other side of the street some distance away, nervously watching the armed guards at the sentry box outside the police headquarters. The company car waited next to him. He shot Hermes a glance of utter disdain, then gestured frantically that I should join him.
I turned back to Hermes. ‘It seems that my every move really is watched.’
‘Possibly more than you realise. Would you like to come with me?’
‘No. Stay away!’
He gripped my arm. ‘Don’t forget: whenever you need me, I’m here.’
I shook him loose and, without looking back, crossed the road towards Ibrihim and the car.
Back at the villa, Ibrihim pressed the rucksack containing the astrarium into my arms.
‘Your friend Mr Saheer delivered it. He told me to tell you that sometimes it is better that the heart does not know what the hands are doing. But please, Mr Warnock, I have a wife, and a son at university. I don’t want trouble.’
‘I promise, Ibrihim, no trouble.’
He looked at me disbelievingly, then shrugged and disappeared into his room.
I carried the rucksack upstairs into the bedroom, then locked the door and pulled down the blinds. After placing the rucksack on the desk, I waited, my nerves rattling, half-expecting a heavy banging on the front door below. My bruises ached as if my muscles were expecting another beating. I was convinced that the villa would be raided at any moment and this time I was sure they would either charge or ‘disappear’ me. There was nothing but silence.
I lifted out the astrarium carefully and stared into its mechanism. To my surprise, the two magnets were still whirling furiously, the dials turning to activate an avalanche of fate that I had unwittingly begun.
So many people wanted this mysterious instrument, believing it could influence lives, events, even history. An extraordinary but, as much as I’d have liked to deny it, an exhilarating thought. The very ownership of the device made me feel empowered.
I looked around the room, assessing my options. The instrument had to be hidden, but where? After the attempted break-in here and the ransacking of my flat in London, the villa itself felt unsafe as a hiding place. Besides, there were too many people, staff and the like, walking through daily. It had to be concealed somewhere unexpected, too unusual for a seasoned thief to consider. I went to the balcony, pulled aside the blind and stared down into the garden. On Ibrihim’s side of the house there was a makeshift yard where Tinnin the Alsatian was kept. Muslims regarded dogs as unclean, but recent events had forced Ibrihim to tolerate Tinnin’s presence because he was a good guard dog. There was a kennel there, large enough for something to be buried at the back of it.
Later, after shouting a quick goodbye to Ibrihim as I left, I took a walk along the Corniche. Battling the gusts of wind coming off the Mediterranean, I crossed the road and sat on the sea wall. The scent of roasting chestnuts floated from a brazier nearby, reminding me incongruously of Oxford Street at Christmas. Courting couples, some in traditional dress, others in Western clothes, strolled past, the wind making sails of their garments. The women were beautiful, vivacious, luxuriant in their flesh; the men thin-faced and earnest. Their intimacy suddenly made the absence of Isabella painfully apparent. I was reminded of a walk I’d taken with her only months before. I looked out over the sea. To the right was the islet upon which had once stood that great wonder of the ancient world - the Pharos. Isabella had taken me there, describing the lighthouse in detail, as if she had lived through that era herself. The lighthouse had been built during Ptolemaic times to protect the increasing number of trading ships from being wrecked in the harbour. Isabella told me that the Pharos would have appeared to defy gravity in its soaring height and, for the religious pilgrims of the era, the tower must have been a spiritually transcendent vision with its flaming beacon burning day and night. As she stared out at the site that day, I remembered being struck by how convincing her description sounded.
In the Café Athenios the old men had begun to congregate for the evening, chatting over hookah pipes, small cups of thick black coffee and baklava. I sat at a table outside and ordered a coffee. I needed to put my scattered thoughts into some kind of order.
The police had mentioned that the Ba hieroglyph was the symbol of an illegal organisation. The fact that Isabella and Hugh Wollington both had a Ba tattoo suggested there was a stronger connection between them than I’d first suspected. Were the people in that photograph from Behbeit el-Hagar involved? Perhaps Enrico Silvio was a part of it too. But what kind of organisation was it?
The printed image on the front of the menu caught my eye. The drawing of a woman with snakes for hair somehow resonated. Then I remembered the head of Medusa that Isabella had pointed to in my dream. There had been a fish and a bull scratched onto the cell wall too. Where would one find those three images together? I forced my thoughts back to the illegal organisation. Would Hermes—
‘Mr Warnock?’
Startled, I looked up. Aadeel, Francesca’s housekeeper, stood at my table, looking flustered.
‘I went to the villa in Roushdy - your housekeeper told me you would probably be here.’ He looked at the cut above my eyebrow and lowered his voice. ‘You have been questioned again?’
I nodded. ‘It was unpleasant but it could have been far worse. I suspect I got preferential treatment as a European.’ Aadeel glanced nervously behind him, and I had the sense that he was worried about being seen with me. He indicated that we needed to get going.
‘Please, we need to move. I fear the grief is destroying Madame Brambilla. She is losing her mind. Please, you must come now.’
Francesca was sitting in the drawing room, the French doors thrown open to the garden. Despite the warmth of the afternoon she was wearing a blanket around her shoulders. Terrified by my appearance, she clutched at my arm.
‘So you have finally come to take my house?’
I sat down on the sofa beside her chair. Her grand authority had been replaced by a childlike bewilderment. It was devastating to witness. ‘I’m not going to take anything or send you anywhere, Francesca. You’re safe here.’ Trying to reassure her, I stroked her hand.
‘It was my fault, Oliver, I killed her. It was that woman. I knew Giovanni was a fool to trust her. Do you hear that, Giovanni?’ she cried, addressing the empty space in front of her. ‘Do you hear?’
She appeared to be slipping in and out of a mild dementia.
‘Which woman?’ I asked gently.
‘The English woman, the one who helped Isabella go to Oxford. She was always scheming.’
‘Amelia Lynhurst?’
‘Giovanni chose her to be his high priestess . . . they had so much power together, then she wasted it, all of it . . .’ Francesca began rocking herself in the chair. ‘The body always lets us down so what does it matter? The poor child was already dead.’
I assumed she was talking about Isabella’s missing organs. I leaned forward, trying to hold her gaze and pin her to some semblance of lucidity.
‘Francesca, who took Isabella’s body to the mortuary?’
‘The men who work for our church, that was what I arranged. I didn’t want the autopsy but the police insisted.’
‘And how long did the priests have her?’
Again Francesca appeared to lapse into dementia. ‘A Brambilla has never been cremated. We are always buried, like the great kings of Egypt. We are immortalised by our ancestry.’ She grasped my hand. ‘Isabella was born on a very auspicious day. She was destined for greatness. She was chosen, you know. My husband had her astrological chart calculated; he believed in such matters.’
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I pulled out the photograph of the group that had been shot at the Behbeit el-Hagar dig. ‘Do you recognise any of the others in this photo?’ I asked.
Francesca pointed to Hugh Wollington. ‘This man, he visited here a few times as a student. I didn’t like him, but he worshipped Giovanni. A good wife never asks her husband certain questions. Marriage is a mutually agreed conspiracy. Sometimes it is a travesty,’ she finished bitterly. ‘Come, it is time you met my husband.’
She reached for her cane, then hobbled towards an archway. I followed, a little apprehensively. Where was she going to take me? We arrived at a small door covered by a curtain. She pulled the curtain across, then lifted a key hanging off a chain around her neck and inserted it into the lock. I pushed the heavy door open for her.
‘This was Giovanni’s study. Only a privileged few were allowed to enter. Nothing has been altered since his death.’
The large room was filled with antique furniture. A Napoleon campaign desk sat at one end, in front of a bay window. On top of it was an oval portrait of a middle-aged man in his fifties wearing the uniform of the Italian Fascist Party, a falcon perched on his outstretched arm. Next to it was a photograph of the same man with a young King Farouk, looking remarkably slim and handsome; the two were shaking hands. A stuffed falcon peered down from a ceiling corner, its glass eyes glinting. A scaled-down model of what appeared to be the family cotton factory, made from balsa wood and matchsticks, stood under a dusty bell jar on a stand to the right of the desk. At the opposite end of the room was a small camp bed made up with sheets and a blanket, set discreetly behind a sofa. It was a poignant sight.
Catching my gaze, Francesca remarked defensively, ‘I sleep with the ghosts of my family. They make me safe. But I wanted to show you these . . .’
She led me to a wall covered in framed pictures and pointed to a row of group shots, all men. The photographs were dated in neat inked script from 1910 through to 1954. I noticed that the war years, 1939 to 1945, were missing. All appeared to be taken at the same spot, on the shore of Lake Mariout, an area where many wealthy Alexandrians used to hunt duck and other waterfowl. In one of the latter photographs, dated 1954, a small girl stood proudly beside a middle-aged man who was sporting a moustache and was dressed in a hunting jacket and hat. He had a falcon on his outstretched arm and the child’s concentration on the bird transported the viewer straight into the moment: I could almost hear the cries of the disturbed herons as they flapped out of the rushes, the rustling wind in the swaying palms. I recognised Isabella in the child immediately.
‘There she is,’ Francesca said, ‘five years old and already hunting with her father and grandfather. That is Paolo, my son, with the falcon. The other men had hunting dogs, but Paolo had birds of prey. Our family have always kept falcons - since the sixteenth century in Abruzzo. My granddaughter loved that bird.’
She pointed to the stuffed bird hanging from the ceiling. ‘That is it there; that ridiculous creature lived longer than my son. That is life: full of banal surprises. After his death, Isabella would take the falcon out herself. “Nonna,” she used to say, “why don’t I have wings?” She should never have left Egypt; she should never have studied abroad. She would be alive now.’
‘How do you mean, Francesca?’
‘
Basta
! It is all meaningless now. The line is finished.’ Angrily, she hit the leg of an armchair with her cane.
I walked over to a low bookcase and kneeled to look at the titles:
Ancient Astrology
,
The Ancient Art of Mummification
,
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Spells and Incantations
,
Nectanebo II - Magician or Politician?, Moses - the Magus, The Writings of Hermes Trismegistus as interpreted by Toz Graecus.
The old woman shuffled up behind me. ‘Giovanni’s tomes - they travelled everywhere with him. At first I humoured him. I even joined in with his little re-enactments, but then it got serious . . .’ She faltered, as if she had revealed too much. Re-enactments? Could this have been the performances that Cecilia had spoken about? The officer’s words about the ‘sect’ came to mind.
‘Serious how?’ I asked the question casually, to preserve Francesca’s fragile connection to reality.
Her face closed over. ‘You can’t stop the men,’ she said bitterly.
I pulled out a book entitled
Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt
by Gaston Maspero - a name I knew from Isabella’s bookshelves. The book fell open at a page relating the dream of Nectanebo, the one that Amelia Lynhurst had described in her thesis. A pressed flower slipped onto the floor. Despite its desiccated state, an exquisite scent flooded the room. I picked up the flower - it was a dried blue lotus, the colour of the petals still faintly visible. I knew it was a sacred flower and was regularly depicted on the walls of the temples and in scenes with members of the Egyptian court poised elegantly over the blossom. Isabella had told me it was an hallucinogen.
‘Was Giovanni researching Nectanebo II?’ I asked.
‘The Pharaoh was his obsession. Giovanni was fascinated by the notion of racial purity and Nectanebo II was the last truly Egyptian ruler. Those that followed, my husband described as colonial impostors - the Persians, then the Arabs, then the Turks, French and English. Ironically the next Egyptian ruler was Nasser, but that didn’t stop Giovanni’s fascination with the pharaoh.’
‘There’s no such thing as racial purity,’ I said, slightly absent-mindedly. I was still looking at the flower, my mind scrambling to try and make the right connections.
‘The 1930s were a different time - people looked for certainty then, it made them feel secure. You must understand that we were all desperate, especially here in Egypt. We Italians wanted to belong. Giovanni knew there was change coming; he wanted to secure his family’s future, to ensure we would not lose everything.’ My ears perked up at the ominous note of her last words.