The Skin Map

CHAPTER 36
In Which It Is Darkest Before the Dawn

The footsteps in the passage faded, and silence reclaimed the tomb. Kit stood in the darkness, blind, mute, and unmoving. The enormity of the betrayal and the swiftness with which it had taken place took his breath away. He felt dead inside, hollow, as if his entrails had been carved out with a dull spoon. Whatever Giles was feeling, he kept it to himself. It was a long time before either of them could speak, and then it was Giles who said, “That was ill done.”

Fairly shaking with anger and humiliation, Kit finally mustered enough composure to ask, “Why didn’t you join her, Giles? You could have walked free.”

“My loyalty is to Sir Henry.” After a moment, he added, “And to those who are loyal to him.”

“Thank you,” Kit said. “But it may well cost you your life. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” came a soft reply. “I do.”

“Well, then,” said Kit. He fumbled in the darkness for the nearest wall and sat down with his back against it. Kit heard Giles moving, feeling his way along the wall. He stopped at the place Sir Henry lay.

“Sir Henry is dead,” Giles confirmed, his voice ringing hollow in the chamber. “He must have expired in the night.” He paused. “Should we do something for him?”

“We will,” said Kit after a moment. “As soon as it gets light.”

He closed his eyes, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. How? he wondered. How in the name of all that is holy could he have been so stupid? How could he have got tangled up in such a reckless and ill-conceived scheme? How could he have come here so staggeringly unprepared to rescue anybody? Rescue! The word mocked him. The whole affair was an absolute, unmitigated catastrophe: Cosimo and Sir Henry dead, himself and Giles captured, and Lady Fayth allied with the enemy. Well done, Kit. Pin a medal on your chest, you bloody genius.

He was a stranger in a strange land: lost in the cosmos, a man with neither compass nor guide, sitting in a tomb in Egypt surrounded by the dead, with Giles-a man his own age, but separated by class and sensibility and four hundred years-looking to him for answers. He had none: only questions, the chief of which was how could he have been so utterly asinine?

The internal accusations and recriminations scalded his psyche and seared his soul. The disgrace-the disgrace of so monumental a failure-dragged at his heart with almost unbearable weight. Despite his best efforts to stifle them, hot tears of shame leaked from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks as Kit descended into abject misery. This failure was his alone, and now he would have to pay the price. Tragically, he had dragged others into his half-baked scheme, and now they would pay too: Giles with his life and Lady Fayth with her honour, whatever might be left of it. And that was another thing! He had trusted her and, trusting her, had allowed himself to be manipulated by her. The realisation that he had been completely taken in by that pretty face made the disgrace complete.

These unhappy thoughts, and a clamouring host just like them, occupied Kit through the remainder of the night. Eventually, the darkness of the tomb receded with the dawn of a new day. As soon as he could make out the outline of the stone sarcophagus, Kit crept close and knelt down beside it. “I am sorry, Cosimo,” he whispered, steeling himself for a glance at the cold, stiff corpse of his great-grandfather. “I have failed you… failed everyone. I am so very sorry.” He forced himself to look into the pale, lifeless face, etching it in his memory. There was a peacefulness about it that surprised him, but it was clear that what he saw in the sarcophagus was the mere shell of the man that had been. Cosimo was no longer there. “If I ever get a chance to make things right, I will. I promise you, I will.”

He had put his hope in you… were the last words Sir Henry had said to him. His own father and grandfather had, each in their own way, proven unsuitable. Now it was Kit’s turn. Was he any more fit than they?

Faint stirrings of determination quickened his heart. First they had to get out. Kit began pacing the length of the chamber-arms outstretched, fingers splayed, sifting the air for that telltale tingle of a ley field. He felt nothing, but still did not give up. He tried jumping-once and again-in various locations in the tomb, to no avail. Not that he had expected anything to happen. After all, if there had been a ley portal or hub in the tomb, Cosimo would have found it.

Abandoning that tack, he went to where Giles sat by Sir Henry. He knelt beside the body stretched out on the floor of the tomb and observed him for a moment. No breath stirred his chest; no pulse flickered at his throat. Just to be certain, Kit lightly pressed his fingertips to Sir Henry’s wrist, then applied them to the side of his neck. “I’m sorry, Giles,” he said.

“We cannot leave him like this,” said the coachman. “We should do something.”

“Come on; we can put him in the sarcophagus.”

Together they lifted the body and carried it to the huge granite coffin in the centre of the room; they gently lowered it in, carefully placing it beside Cosimo. They then straightened the nobleman’s limbs and folded his hands across his chest. “Friends in life,” said Kit. “They can keep one another company in death.”

Even as he spoke, the sound of light footsteps on the stairs leading down into the tomb echoed from the vestibule beyond. Whoever it was moved quickly and quietly.

Kit rushed to the iron grate. “Burleigh! Let us out. Killing us makes no sense. This is madness! Let us out.” He paused to listen. The footsteps faltered as the intruder entered the vestibule and paused. Then there was the quick patter of feet as the newcomer hurried across the empty chamber. “Burleigh! Do you hear me?”

“Kit? Are you in there?”

The voice was soft and feminine, and despite all that had transpired since he had left the only world he had ever known that day in an alleyway off Grafton Street, Kit recognised it instantly. “Wilhelmina!”

And there she was: Wilhelmina, tanned and radiant, gazing back at him through the grate. Dressed in a zippered military jumpsuit with a desert camouflage pattern, her long hair was upswept and tucked beneath a sky-blue scarf that she wore in the manner of the Egyptian women. Tall and slim as ever, the dark circles were gone from beneath her eyes, and her skin glowed with robust good health. She held a small oval-shaped brass object in one hand and a large iron key in the other. The object was emitting a soft turquoise glow. “Had enough of Burleigh’s hospitality?” she asked with a smile.

“I can’t believe it,” said Kit. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to break you out-you and your friends.” She put the key in the lock and jiggled it around.

“Mina! Mina, I was trying to find you. I never abandoned you-you have to believe me. I didn’t know where you were, or how to reach you. Cosimo went back for you, but you weren’t there, so we asked Sir Henry to help. That’s what all this is about-trying to find you.”

“And here I am, finding you,” she said, smiling sweetly. “We’d better hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“But how-?”

Giles put his head around the corner. “Sir?”

“Oh, Giles, step up here. This is Wilhelmina Klug,” he said. “Mina, Giles Standfast.”

“Glad to meet you, Giles,” said Wilhelmina.

“An unexpected pleasure, my lady,” replied Giles.

Wilhelmina jostled the key again, gave it a twist, and the lock clicked. She pulled, and the heavy iron grate swung open, releasing the two captives. Kit stepped into the vestibule and into Wilhelmina’s arms-their embrace the slightly hesitant and awkward clasp of familiar strangers. Kit understood in that moment that she was no longer the woman he knew; the change was fundamental and profound. “Thank you, Mina,” he whispered, holding her close, trying to recapture something of their old intimacy.

“My pleasure,” she said, releasing him. “We’d best be off.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About losing you, getting everyone mixed up in this… I’m sorry about everything.”

“Don’t be,” she said brightly. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She turned and started for the stone staircase. Kit hesitated. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Cosimo and Sir Henry-they’re dead,” Kit told her, gesturing to the tomb behind him. “We can’t just abandon them-walk away as if nothing happened.”

“Oh.” She stood in the dim light of the chamber for a moment, gazing through the open grate and into the tomb; she made no move to enter. “I’m sorry, Kit, I really am,” she said at last. “But if we don’t leave now we will join them. There’s nothing more we can do. We have to go.” She softened then, adding, “Look at it this way-what better resting place than a royal tomb?”

Giles came alongside him. “She is right, sir. The gentlemen are beyond our help, and it avails us nothing to remain here. ‘Let the dead bury the dead’-so it is written, is it not?”

“I suppose,” allowed Kit, still unpersuaded. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

“If we go now, there is a chance we can come back and make it right,” suggested Wilhelmina. “But we do have to go.”

Kit accepted this assurance and put aside his qualms. “Lead the way, Mina.”

Crossing the chamber in quick strides, she paused at the foot of the steps to listen. Hearing nothing from the wadi above, she started up the stairs. “Stay close,” she said, her smile beguiling. “You really don’t want to get lost.”