And what incomparable discoveries awaited the French Scientific Commission! The Sphinx itself would no longer have any secrets for them. Conté chafed with impatience to see the coast of that ancient land appear over the horizon. What a long way he had come from his humble little village of St-Céneri-le-Gérei, Nicolas-Jacques Conté, the self-taught son of peasants, promoted rapidly in the Republican ranks by the sheer merit of his genius, the Director of the first Engineering School in France; and here he was now at forty, launched on the adventure of his lifetime, of all their lifetimes – an expedition for the ages.
‘Land ho!’
Conte’s heart leapt in his chest. Egypt, at last! The great adventure had begun.
For only the second time in her forty years of life, Lady Nafisa the White dreaded the dawn. Sleep had eluded her all night, but she lay quietly in order not to disturb her maids in the adjoining room. They would have risen, bleary and heavy-limbed with sleep, and hovered around her bed, offering to bring mint tea, or to massage her feet.
Nafisa knew where her husband was tonight, and wished it were with another woman.
She glanced at the gold-mounted ormolu clock with the rose faience face that she could not make out in the dark. It had been a present from the French consul, Magallon, in happier times. The irony struck her: how the world had changed! But she did not need a clock to tell the time; she could smell the dawn in the air before the first bird stirred, before the muezzin cleared his throat to chant the call for prayers; long before the watchmen unlocked the heavy wooden gates that secured each neighbourhood for the night against robbery and mischief. She knew the exact order in which the gates to the quarters were drawn back: first the Moroccan quarter, then the Jewellers Lane, then the Nasiriya quarter where most of the European merchants lived, then the Ezbekiah Lake and the Alley of the Syrians, and finally the gates to the Citadel. Cairo was her city; she could take its pulse at any moment.
The first time Nafisa had lain sleepless had been her wedding night – her first wedding night, thirty years ago now, to Ali Bey. Her awe of her husband-to-be had been complete. As a child she had seen his image struck on coins: Ali Bey the Great, sole master of Egypt. She had watched from the latticework shutters of the harem windows as he rode past at the head of his army, on one campaign or another, to Syria and the Sudan and the borders of Egypt. When his choice had fallen on her for his second wife, the honour had been overwhelming.
Her hair had been long and thick like a curtain then, the colour of light molasses where it sprung at the roots, grading down to the clearest honey where it slapped against the back of her knees. The first time she had undressed before Ali Bey, she had shaken her hair about her in a shudder of modesty, cloaking herself with her own tresses. He had thrown his head back and laughed, and her dread had begun to melt around the edges.
She had been little more than a child at the time. Over their long years together she had grown from child-bride to trusted consort, consulted and cultivated by the powerful in Egypt and abroad. Until the day Ali Bey had been betrayed and assassinated. Nafisa tensed and held her breath, listening for the clatter of horses’ hooves, for the night watchmen dragging open the heavy wooden gates that closed off her neighbourhood. But it was only her overwrought imagination, and she lay back, winding a thick strand of hair around her palm. When the muezzin called for dawn prayers she would clap her hands and her maids would bring the mint tea she drank first thing every morning to keep her breath sweet all day. Even when she had gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca, two years ago, one of the camels in her caravan had carried nothing but pots of live herbs: mint, but also caraway for digestion, basil to stimulate appetite, and chamomile to rinse her hair. A cow plodded along, ensuring her diet of fresh milk and cheese. The Prince of the Pilgrimage leading the caravan from Egypt that year had made sure her every whim was accommodated.
Nafisa threw off her bedcovers; she was naked but for her fine silk shift. She was still beautiful, and still desirable. Was she not the same age as Khadija had been when she proposed to the Prophet Muhammad, and he a young man fifteen years her junior? Like Khadija, Nafisa had chosen a husband. A widow as young and wealthy as she could not remain without a husband and protector, and so she had opted for Murad, with his curly red bush of a beard heralding his choleric temperament like a banner. Among the senior Mamlukes, Murad had stood out by his ambition, but it was her status as the widow of Ali that raised him to the rank of co-regent of Egypt.
Today, Murad would be tested as no one could have imagined.
Until a week ago, her world had turned steadily on its axis. Her days were spent supervising the trading operations of her wikala, the caravanserai at Bab Zuweila, and overseeing construction of the charitable waterworks she was erecting nearby on Sugar Street. And along with the rest of Cairo she followed avidly reports of the rise of Elfi Bey’s new palace on the Ezbekiah Lake, and gauged the rise of his ambition as warily as the city leaders watched the peaking of the Nilometer before the summer flood.
Then came the news that English warships had dropped anchor off the port of Alexandria, looking for the French fleet. They had left, not finding their prey, but Egypt held its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had not been long in coming. The French fleet landed at the Bay of Alexandria two days later.
Last night her husband had gone to the judge’s house with old Ibrahim Bey and Elfi and the senior Mamluke commanders to devise a strategy. And Nafisa had lain awake, unable to sleep for only the second time in her life.
Nafisa started at the clatter of horses’ hooves followed by a shouted command and the scramble of the night watchmen to unlock and open the gates to the lane as her husband and his retainers approached. The servants bestirred themselves and fumbled to light torches with the haste bred by dread of their master’s temper. Nafisa’s maids hurried to her and she motioned for her Damascus silk slippers and robe. She slipped from room to room down the narrow, winding stone staircase, her robe sweeping the steps behind her, till she reached the mezzanine gallery with its arcades where, standing behind the wooden latticework mashrabiyya, she could look down on the central hall without being seen.
Murad had not come alone, there were two Mamlukes with him. As the servants scurried about, torches in hand, to fetch cushions for the wooden banquettes, Nafisa recognized Sennari, her husband’s right-hand man, by his great height and his ramrod posture, even before she caught a glimpse of his coffee-brown face with the tribal markings of his native Sudan etched deep into the cheek and chin.
The other Mamluke commander had his back to her, but something about his bearing, arrogant and wary at once, struck a familiar chord. At that instant he glanced over his shoulder and she recognized in his gesture that sixth sense that alerted him that he was being watched. It was Elfi himself.
The first time she had laid eyes on Elfi, Nafisa had been standing in this very spot. All of Cairo had buzzed about the peerless young Mamluke her husband had paid an extraordinary price for; it was said there was none to rival him for beauty or spirit, so wilful he had forced his first master to part with him, although no one knew exactly what he had done. She had waited behind the filigreed mashrabiyya for