forced to do so.
There was another ditch in their path, this one choked with an almost
impenetrable, thicket of brambles. Some of the larger dogs, like the
Labradors, balked at entering such a thorny barrier. Georgina whistled
sharply and Magic's ears went up. He was soaked and his coat was a
matted mess of mud and buffs and thorns. His pink tongue lolled from the
corner of his grinning mouth and the sodden stump of his tail was
wagging merrily. At that moment he was the happiest dog in England. He
was doing the work that he had been bred for.
"Come on, Magic," Georgina ordered. "Get in there.
Get them out."
Magic dived into the thickest and thorniest patch, and disappeared
completely from view. There was a minute of snuffling and rooting around
in the depths of the ditch, and then a fierce cackle and flurry of
wings.
A pair of birds exploded out of the bushes. The hen led the way. She was
a drab, nondescript creature the size of a domestic fowl, but the cock
bird that followed her closely was magnificent. His head was capped with
iridescent green and his cheeks and wattles were scarlet. His tail,
barred in cinnamon and black, was almost as long again as his body and
the rest of his plumage was a riot of gorgeous colour.
As he climbed he sparkled against the lowering grey sky like a priceless
jewel thrown from an emperor's hand.
Royan gasped with the beauty of the sight.
"Just look at them go!'Georgina's voice was thick with excitement. "What
a pair of crackerjacks. The best pair today. My bet is that not one of
the guns will touch a feather on either of them."
Up, and then on up, the two birds climbed, the hen drawing the cock
after her, until suddenly the wind boiling over the hills like
overheated milk caught them both and flung them away, out over the
valley.
The line of beaters enjoyed the moment. They had worked hard for it.
Their voices were tiny and faint on the wind as they urged the birds on.
They loved to see a pheasant so high and fast that it could beat the
guns.
"Forward!" they exulted. "over! and this time the line came
involuntarily to a halt as they followed the flight of the pair that
were twisting away on the wind.
In the valley bottom the faces of the guns were turned upwards, pale
specks against the green background. Their trepidation was almost
palpable as they watched the pheasant reach their maximum speed, so that
they could no longer beat their wings, but locked them into a back-swept
profile as they began to drop down into the valley.
This was the most difficult shot that any gun would face. A high pair of
pheasant with a half gale quartering from behind, dropping into the shot
at their terminal rate of flight, set to pass over the line at the
extreme effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun. For the men below it
was a calculation of speed "and lead in all three dimensions of space.
The best of shots might hope to take one of them, but who would dare to
think of both?
"A pound on it!" Georgina called. "A pound that they both get through."
But none of the beaters who heard her accepted the wager.
The wind was pushing the birds gently sideways. They started off aimed
at the centre of the line, but they were drifting towards the far end.
As the angle changed, Royan could see the men at the pegs below her
brace themselves in turn as the birds appeared to be heading straight
for them, and then relax as the wind moved them on. Their relief was
evident as, one after the other, each of them was absolved from the
challenge of having to make such an impossible shot with all eyes
fastened upon him.
In the end only the tall figure at the extreme end of the line stood in
their flight path.
"Your bird, sir," one of the other guns called mockingly, and Royan
found that instinctively she was holding her breath with anticipation.
Nicholas Quenton-Harper seemed unaware of the approach of the pair of
pheasant. He stood completely relaxed, his tall frame slouching
slightly, his shotgun tucked under his right arm with the muzzles
pointing at the ground.
At the moment that the leading hen bird reached a point in the sky sixty
degrees ut ahead of him he moved for the first time. With casual grace
he swung the shotgun up in a sweeping arc. At the instant that the butt
touched I I his cheek and shoulder he fired, but the gun never stopped
moving and went on to describe the rest of the arc.
The distance delayed the sound of the shot reaching I Royan. She saw the
barrels kick with the recoil, and a pale spurt of blue smoke from the
muzzle. Then Nicholas lowered the gun as the hen suddenly threw back her
head and closed her wings. There was no burst of feathers from her body,
for she had been hit cleanly in the head and killed instantly. As she
began the long plummet to earth Royan heard the thud of the shot.
By then the cock was high over Nicholas's head. This time as he mounted
the gun in that casual sweeping gesture he arched his back to point
upwards, his long frame bending from the waist like a drawn bow. Once
again at the apex of the swing the weapon kicked in his grasp.
"He has missed!" Royan thought with a mixture of satisfaction and
disappointment, as the cock sailed on seemingly unscathed. Part of her
wanted the beautiful bird to escape, while part of her wanted the man to
succeed.
Gradually the profile of the high cock altered as the wings folded back
and it rolled over in flight. Royan had no way of knowing that his heart
had been struck through, until seconds later he died in mid-air and the
locked wings lost their rigid set.
As the cock tumbled to earth, a spontaneous chorus of heers ran down
the line of beaters, faint but enthusiastic on the icy north wind. Even
the other guns added their voices with cries of, "Oh, good shot, sir!'
Royan did not join in the cheering, but for the moment her fatigue and
cold were forgotten. She could only vaguely appreciate the skill that
those two shots had called for, but she was impressed, even a little
awed. Her very first glimpse of the man had fulfilled all the
expectations that Duraid's stories about him had raised in her.
By the time the last drive ended it was almost dark.
An old army truck came mbling down the track through ru the forest along
which the tired beaters and their dogs waited. As it slowed they
scrambled up into the back.
Georgina gave Royan a boost from behind before she and Magic followed
her up. They settled thankfully on one of the long hard benches, and
Georgina lit a cigarette as she joined, in the chat and banter of the
under-keepers and beaters around her.
Royan sat silently at the end of the bench, enjoying the sense of
achievement at having come through such a strenuous day. She felt tired
and relaxed, and strangely contented. For one whole day she had not
thought either of the theft of the scroll or of Duraid's murder and the
unknown and unseen enemy who threatened her with aviolent death.
The truck ground down the hill and slowed as it reached the bottom,
pulling in to the verge to let a green Range Rover pass. As the two
vehicles drew level, Royan turned her head and looked down into the open
driver's window of the expensive estate car, and into the eyes of
Nicholas Quenton Harper at the wheel.
This was the first time she had been close enough to him to see his
features. She was surprised at how young he was. She had expected him to
be a man of Duraid's age.
She saw now that he was no older than forty, for there were only the
first strands of silver in the wings of his thick, rumpled hair. His
features were tanned and weatherbeaten, those of an outdoors man. His
eyes were green and penetrating under dark, beetling brows. His mouth
was wide and expressive, and he was smiling now at some witticism that
the driver of the truck called to him in a thick Yorkshire accent, but
there was a sense of sadness and tragedy in the eyes. Royan remembered
what the Prof had told her of his recent bereavement, and she felt her
heart go out to him. She was not alone in her loss and her mourning.
He looked directly into her eyes and she saw his expression change. She
was an attractive woman, and she could tell when a man recognized that.
She had made an impression on him, but she did not enjoy the fact. Her
sorrow for Duraid was still too raw and painful. She looked away and the
Range Rover drove on.
Her lecture at the university went off extremely well. Royan was a good
speaker and she knew her subject intimately. She held them fascinated
with her account of the opening of the tomb_of Queen Lostris and of the
subsequent discovery of the scrolls. Many of her audience had read the
book, and during question time they pestered her to know how much of it
was the truth. She had to tread very carefully here, so as not to deal
too harshly with the author.
Afterwards Prof Dixon took Royan and Georgina to dinner. He was
delighted with her success, and ordered the most expensive bottle of
claret on the wine list to celebrate.
He was only mildly disconcerted when she refused a glass of it.
"Oh, dear me, I forgot that you were a Moslem," he apologized.
"A Copt," she corrected him, "and it's not on religious grounds. I just
don't like the taste."
"Don't worry," Georgina counselled him, "I don't have the same odd
compulsion to masochism as my daughter.
She must get it from her father's side. I'll give you a hand to finish
the good stuff."
Under the benign influence of the claret the Prof became expansive, and
entertained them with the accounts of the archaeological digs he had
been on over the decades.
It was only over the coffee that he turned to Royan.
"Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you. I have arranged for you to
visit the museum at Quenton Park any afternoon this week. just ring Mrs.
Street the day before, and she will be waiting to let you in. She is
Nicholas's PA."
Ryan remembered the way to Quenton Park when Georgina had driven them
to the shoot, but now she was alone in the Land Rover. The massive main
gates to the estate were made of ornate cast iron. A little further on,
the road divided and a cluster of road signs pointed the way to the
various destinations: "Quenton Hall, Private', "Estate Office' and
"Museum'.
The road to the museum curved through the deer park where herds of
fallow deer grazed under the winter'bare oaks. Through the misty
landscape she had glimpses of the big house. According to the guidebook
that the Prof had given her, Sir Christopher Wren had designed the house
in 1693, and the master landscapist, Capability Brown, had created the
gardens sixty years later. The results were perfection.
The museum was set in a grove of copper beech trees half a mile beyond
the house. It was a sprawling building that had obviously been added to
more than once over the years. Mrs. Street was waiting for her at the
side door, and introduced herself as she let Royan in. She was middle
aged, grey-haired and self-assured. "I was at your lecture on Monday
evening. Fascinating! I have a guidebook for you, but you will find the
exhibits well catalogued and described.
I have spent almost twenty years at the job. There are no other visitors
today. You will have the place to yourself.
You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until
five this evening, so you have all afternoon.
If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage.
Please don't hesitate."
From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African
mammals she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete
collection of every single species of ape and monkey from that
continent: from the great ilver-backed male gorilla to the delicate
colobus in his long flowing mantle of black and white fur, they were all
represented.
Although some of the exhibits were over a hundred years old, they were
beautifully preserved and presented, set in painted dioramas of their
natural habitat. It was obvious that the museum must employ a staff of
skilled artists and taxidermists. She could guess what this must have
cost. Wryly she decided that the five million'dollars from the sale of
the plundered treasure had been well spent.
She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at
the magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a
family group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan
variety, Hippotragus niger variant. While she admired the jet black and
snowy-chested bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his
death at the hand of one of the Quenton, Harper family. Then she checked
herself. Without the strange dedication and passion of the
hunter-collector who had killed him, future generations might never have
been able to look upon this regal presence.
She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the
African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of
ivory tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been
carried by a living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of
some Hellenic temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase.
She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:
Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana.
Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left
tusk 289 lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11' 4'. Girth 32".
The largest pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.
They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick
again as her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room
she-marvelled at the size and strength of the creature that had carried
them.
She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the
room. It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Rarnesses 11, depicted as the
god Osiris in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on
muscular legs, wearing only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his
left hand he carried the remains of a warlbow, with both the upper and
lower limbs of the weapon broken off. This was the only damage that the
statue had suffered in all those thousands of years. The rest of it was
perfect - the plinth even bore the marks of the mason's chisel. In his
right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed with his royal cartouche.
Upon his majestic head he wore the tall double crown of the upper and
lower kingdoms. His expression was calm and enigmatic.
Royan recognized the statue instantly, for its twin i stood in the grand
hall of the Cairo museum. She passed it every day on her way to her