Julia prayed desperately that Ammon and his men wouldn’t find Ella. While she had little hope that Ella had any real chance of eluding him, she worried, on the other hand, that if Ammon did return to camp empty handed, Julia wouldn’t know if that meant he had murdered Ella in the desert or just failed to find her. When, a full day and a night after they had gone roaring off into the desert in search of her, Julia watched them ride back into camp—Ammon the picture of mounted vitriol and rage—her first reaction to their obvious failure was shock and disbelief. Her second was, Well done, Ella. God speed.
When Gita saw the returning group, she dropped the pan she was cleaning and grabbed Julia by the arm to drag her out of sight. For the better part of an hour, Julia sat quaking in Gita’s tent listening to the destruction of Ammon’s maniacal rage in the camp. When he finally came to the tent, Julia watched in horror as the old woman allowed him to enter. Later, Julia would realize that Gita’s goal had only been to spare Julia’s life during the worst of Ammon’s tirade. Whether or not he then chose to beat Julia within an inch of her life was not the old woman’s concern.
As Ammon entered the tent, Julia watched Gita quickly slip away. It was watching the confident, sassy old woman fleeing from Ammon that scared Julia the most. Without looking at her or speaking, he turned to Julia and pushed her down on the floor. When he pulled her legs apart and entered her in one brutal thrust, she cried out and covered her face with her hands. Within moments and after a long shuddering breath, he lay heavy and spent on top of her. She held her breath and thought she could hear both their hearts pounding as one.
Slowly, he lifted himself off of her and gently touched her cheek. To Julia, it felt like an apology, but it was just a moment and then he wrenched himself away and was gone, leaving only a wave of chilled desert air across her naked thighs where before there had been such heat.
The next morning, Julia knew that something had changed between them. He woke her in her tent before dawn and led her outside to her saddled pony. He handed her the reins and indicated that she would ride with him and the other men today. At first, she thought it was because he was afraid she might try to escape like Ella did. But as she watched him ride down to the waiting group in the valley, she realized in amazement that he simply wanted her with him.
That had been three weeks ago. Today, Julia sat on her pony and watched Ammon and the other men descend into a rocky valley toward a nervously waiting wagon of tourists. All it would take would be a scream or for her to kick her pony down the incline to join the group to be rescued and back in the world of steaming baths and hot tea. But Julia knew she wouldn’t scream. And Ammon knew it.
Ammon and his band rode quickly down on the small group. There were five tourists in the party. Two couples and their dragoman in a horse-drawn wagon. The women’s dress looked to be middleclass, Julia thought. She watched with excitement as Ammon, dramatically handsome in his robes with the ends of his hijab flying behind him, reached the wagon. Two of Ammon’s men grabbed the bridles of the wagon horses in order to keep them steady.
Julia heard the screams from both the women and a hand flew to her throat. Ammon was unpredictable and primitive but surely he wouldn’t…? She pressed her heels into the pony’s side to urge him a little closer down the ravine. She stopped halfway but close enough where she could see the people’s faces. One of the women, a portly middle-aged dowager, was crying hysterically and beating on the arm of the man next to her, presumably her husband. Both white men stood in the wagon as if to parlay with Ammon.
She could hear Ammon bark an order to the witless dragoman who promptly turned to the couples and held out his hand. She could nearly understand his words from this distance but she didn’t have to. As she watched, one of the white men faced Ammon and his voice carried up the hill to Julia.
“I say, you filthy wog, if you think we’re handing over our money to some—”
The man’s indignant affront to Ammon was interrupted by one of Ammon’s men in response to a nearly imperceptible cue from his leader. The Bedouin rode up to the wagon, his khopesh flashing and glinting in the sun, and slashed at the dragoman’s head as the man stood listening to his employer rant. Julia’s own scream was involuntary and shrill. She clapped a hand to her mouth but it was too late. Ammon’s head jerked in her direction, as did both men on the wagon. It was but a momentary diversion, however, as the dragoman fell into the wagon and into the laps of the women, his head bleeding from where Ammon’s lieutenant had severed his right ear.
The white man who had triggered the assault turned to Ammon and, stupidly, appeared more resistant than ever. Julia knew that to attack a colored man as some kind of inducement to a white man was useless. Her countryman stood in the wagon with his man bleeding and his women screaming and he continued to bleat like the insufferable ass that he was. Julia bit her lip not to make another noise although her eyes were on her lover. He wouldn’t be pleased that she had disobeyed him or that she had made herself visible to these people. She prayed he would not punish them for her foolishness.
She wondered which woman Ammon would choose to raise the stakes on the idiot man defending a handful of gold when all their lives hung in the balance. With a nod of his head, another of Ammon’s creatures rode to the opposite side of the wagon where he could reach the white man’s woman, and with one vicious punch, grabbed the front of her bodice and ripped it clear to her waist. Her breasts, snow-white and pendulous, sprang free and for a moment, the woman only gaped down at herself in horror, her hands hanging uselessly at her side. A yelp came from her husband as he wrenched off his coat to cover up his wife. He twisted around to speak to the other man in now near hysterical tones: “Empty your purse, Carruthers! For the love of God, give them everything!” He needn’t have bothered for Carruthers was already tossing down wallets, purses and anything else they had of value onto the sand. The woman who had been bared sat huddled in her seat under her husband’s jacket, her eyes blinking like an owl’s.
Julia watched as Ammon’s gang gathered up the loot and prepared to leave. When she turned her horse to wait for Ammon at the top of the ridge, she glanced at the dragoman who now sat hunched in the driver’s seat of the wagon, his hand to his ear. As she looked at him, he turned his head, and his eyes met hers.
* * *
Rowan spent the first three days back in Cairo scouring the city for any sign of Ella. He figured an American woman traveling alone could not be kept secret for long. If Ella was in Cairo, he would find her. If she wasn’t, where could she be? And that raised the question that Rowan really didn’t want to think about. What if Ella had gone back to 2013?
With no trace of her in Cairo, and Digby’s so-called note clearly just a ruse to get rid of Rowan, 2013 was the only place left to look for her.
“Effendi tired of searching?” Ra said. His earnest brown face was creased with worry. “We go back to hotel?”
Rowan stood at the entrance of Khan el-Khalili, the old marketplace, and watched the labyrinth of narrow alleys stone archways crowded with people—tourists, hawkers, merchants—and the stalls, selling everything imaginable: spices, music, brassware, stones, antiquities, textiles, jewelry. The metallurists were at work hammering. The food vendors were waving sticks of roasted goat meat. The air was redolent of incense and the press of humanity.
She wasn’t in Cairo. Even if he hadn’t spent the better part of three days searching for her here, somehow he just knew she wasn’t here.
“Stay here,” he said to Ra. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Ra come with you, effendi.”
“No, it would be really great if Ra would just do what I tell him to do,” Rowan said tersely. He left the boy standing at the entrance to the market and walked to the place Yeena’s stall would be eighty years later. If he couldn’t find Ella, and he didn’t really expect to he would find the alley that had brought him here.
On the corner where Yeena’s coffee shop would one day stand was a shop selling textiles and incense. Rowan stood outside and stared into the window for a moment, then began walking back toward where he remembered the bakery was located.
“Effendi?” A slim brown hand tugged at his sleeve and when he looked to see who was trying to get his attention, he saw a very old woman sitting on a blanket, her back up against the stonewall that surrounded the market.
“Ma’am?” Rowan was about to toss his last Egyptian coin onto the blanket at her feet when she stood and placed her hands on his chest.
“She has not gone back,” she said, her face crinkling with happy wrinkles.
“Excuse me?” But he had heard her. His heart thudded in his chest at her words. He took her by her elbow and led her to a small alcove off the main walkway. “Who hasn’t gone back?”
“Your wife,” the woman said.
Rowan studied her face closely, trying to find some resemblance to Yeena in 2013.
“I am Olna,” she said. “You cannot leave yet. Your wife is here still.”
“You know this how?”
The woman patted his hand as if trying to reassure him. “You cannot go. She needs you.”
“Where is she?”
“This I do not know,” Olna said sadly. Then her expression brightened. “But I know she and the child live. And that they wait for you.”
“Wait for me where?” Rowan’s frustration was building in waves. He’d already wasted two weeks sitting on his ass at Carter’s camp and three more days in Cairo. He gripped the woman’s arm as if he could wrestle the information out of her.
She cried out in alarm and her eyes filled with fear. Instantly, Rowan felt ashamed and released her.
“I’m sorry, Olna. I’m just very worried about my wife. I need to find her.”
“No, effendi,” Olna said, rubbing her arm where he had gripped her. “You cannot go to her.”
“What are you talking about? I must find her but I cannot go to her?”
“That is exactly right.”
“That is exactly bullshit, ma’am,” Rowen said. “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing with me. If you know where Ella is you need to tell me now.”
“What I know, effendi,” Olna said, beginning to move away from Rowan, “is that you will not find her by searching for her.”
Rowan watched her shuffle back to her mat at the base of the wall. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. What the hell did that mean? I have to find her but I can’t search for her?
His eyes darted in the direction of the alleyway that hid the conduit that brought him to this timeline. Finally, however, he turned away from the alleyway to walk back to where he left Ra. As he passed Olna, he heard her humming to herself. She was staring at her hands like a simpleton. Or a mad woman.
That afternoon, after lunch with Marvel at the hotel, Rowan walked her to her suite of rooms. His mind was a swirl of discontent. He knew he was bad company but he also knew she would indulge him.
“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?” Marvel stood up from her daybed and straightened out the blue silken folds of her new Egyptian tunic.
Rowan smiled at her. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said.
She waved away the notion with her hand and came to stand next to him. “No, of course, you’re worried,” she said. “She’s not at the camp. She’s not in Cairo. So do you believe she is lost in the desert?”
“She’s alive,” Rowan said. “That’s all that I know but I know at least that.”
Marvel frowned. “Then living somewhere in the desert? Perhaps with one of the desert tribes?”
Rowan looked out the window of Marvel’s hotel suite at the legendary gardens of the hotel. The sunset created pink steaks of light delicately descending to earth.
“Look, Rowan,” Marvel said, taking his hand in hers. “Why not take me up on my offer? Be my head of security. Stay here at Shepheard’s for as long as your search takes. You know she’ll end up here. I mean, even if she is living with some desert sheik and I’m not saying she is but sooner or later she’ll want a hot bath and meat that hasn’t been fermented in the bladder of a goat. And she’ll come to Cairo.”
Rowan gave her a wry grin and carefully retrieved his hand. “You might have a point,” he said.
“I definitely do. So you’ll let me hire you?”
“Turns out I could use a job. If you’re sure I can be of service to you.”
“Oh, you can,” Marvel said, grinning. “You definitely can.”
Rowan pretended to listen as Marvel chattered happily on about how they would live in her rooms and how she hadn’t given up on getting into Carter’s camp. From her balcony view he could see the minarets of the many mosques above the treetops.
The fact was, he wasn’t sure if Ella had gone back to 2013 or was still wandering around the desert. But short of going back to Dothan, Cairo seemed as good a place as any to wait for her. After his talk with Olna, he was starting to think—as hard as it was to believe—that this might be a case where going looking for the thing he wanted was the least effective way of finding it.
As incredible as it sounded, maybe he really did just need to do nothing.