Sands of Time

They had taken off their hats and coats and settled into chairs in the pretty drawing room overlooking the small garden of Louisa’s terraced London house.

‘Has he taken anything?’

‘I don’t know.’ Louisa was staring round the room. ‘I haven’t noticed anything. There is only one thing he wants.’

‘And is it there?’

Louisa shrugged. Standing up she led the way back into her studio and stood in front of the davenport where she did her correspondence. The studio was very cold; there was a strange smell in there she couldn’t immediately identify – not paint. Not linseed oil, or charcoal. Something sweet and slightly exotic. She shivered. ‘I put it in there. In the secret drawer.’

‘See if it’s there.’

Louisa put her hand out to the polished wood of the desk lid. Then she shook her head. ‘Supposing he’s watching me.’

‘Watching?’ Sarah glanced over her shoulder uneasily. ‘How could he be watching?’

‘How could he do any of the things he does?’ Louisa replied crossly. She moved away from the desk. ‘He has been in this room. How else could the snake have got here? It is a message. A warning. Oh, Sarah what am I to do? Can’t you feel it? There is something here. Someone.’ She picked up the piece of paper with its strange illegible message and stared at it, then with it still in her hand she turned on her heels and swept out of the room with Sarah behind her.

In the drawing room where Mrs Laidlaw had brought them a tray of tea Louisa threw the piece of paper with its scrawled hieroglyphics down onto the table.

‘What does it say? Can you read it?’

Louisa shook her head. Bending over it she ran her finger lightly over the symbols which had been inscribed there, then drew her hand away sharply.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Sarah’s blue eyes were fixed on the paper.

‘Nothing. It felt hot. My imagination.’

Sarah glanced up sharply. ‘Are you sure?’

Louisa shrugged. ‘I’m sure of nothing. I don’t know why he’s left this. He must realise I can’t read it.’

‘He’s just trying to frighten you. Tear it up.’

Louisa shook her head. ‘Supposing it’s important. These symbols. They have power.’

‘Exactly.’ Sarah stood up. She reached for the paper. ‘If you won’t destroy it, I will.’ About to throw it into the fireplace she stopped with a gasp.

The figure in front of them was no more substantial than a wisp of mist but both women saw it. Both shrank back. The paper dropped from Sarah’s hand and she fell back into her chair, white-faced.

‘Dear God!’ Louisa’s whisper was barely audible. ‘The djinn. The evil djinn!’

Already the figure had gone. It had been no more than a shadow.

‘What was that?’ Sarah’s voice shook.

‘Hatsek. The priest of Sekhmet. Two priests follow my ampulla and fight over it.’ Louisa’s voice was dreamlike. ‘Hassan called them djinn. The paper that came with the bottle was inscribed with their names. I don’t read hieroglyphs but I suppose this is what is written here.’ She took a deep shaky breath.

She bent and picked up the piece of paper. ‘You were right. It must be destroyed.’ Without giving herself time for second thoughts she walked across to the fireplace and threw the paper down. Then she reached for the box of Vestas on the mantelpiece. In seconds the paper was a pile of ash.

She gave a deep sigh. ‘I hope that is the last we shall see of him!’ She shuddered.

Sarah gave a shrill laugh. ‘You hope! Louisa. Do you realise what happened just now? We saw a –!’ She paused, at a loss as to how to describe it. ‘A ghost? A spirit? An ancient Egyptian! And you hope it won’t come back!’

‘It was a warning.’ Louisa shrugged.

‘So, will the fire stop it coming again?’ Sarah stared down at the small heap of ashes.

Louisa nodded. ‘I think so.’ She gave a grim laugh. ‘Fire would appear to have a cleansing effect on most things.’

And so it seemed. In the days that followed the household settled into calm. Louisa unpacked. She forced herself to check the house minutely. There was no sign of anything missing. The only place she did not look was the davenport. There was no need.

News came from Scotland that Mr Dunglass had been arrested in Glasgow. He had, it appeared, been quietly salting away a fortune in cash and valuables from the castle and the authorities looked no further for a cause of the fire. The case was closed. The two Carstairs boys, they heard, had been sent to a distant relative in the far north of Scotland for the rest of the summer. There was still no news of the absent lord.

In October came a letter from Augusta Forrester. The Fieldings had returned home, it said, with the wonderful tidings that Venetia had met a widower in Edinburgh and agreed to marry him. He had both a title, although not one as exalted as that of Lord Carstairs, and a small fortune as well as a goodly estate and she was content. Reading the letter Louisa smiled. Poor Venetia. If only she knew the fate she had been spared had she won her noble lord.

With many hugs and kisses and promises that they would meet again in Scotland the following year Sarah said her farewells and left and Louisa’s two boys returned from their grandmother. Her eldest son David was beginning his second year at Eton; his brother John returned to the schoolroom with George Browning. The staff was completed by the return of Louisa’s man servant, Norton, from a holiday with his family in Hertfordshire.

The day after Sarah left, Louisa’s nightmares about Egypt returned. But this time she did not dream about Hassan. Instead she was standing on the banks of the River Nile, the scent bottle in her hand, about to throw it into the water, when she realised there was a man standing in front of her. A tall, swarthy man dressed in the skins of a lion. ‘Do not dare to throw it!’ His mouth did not move but she felt the strength of his thoughts as though he had screamed them at her. ‘Do not throw! What you hold is sacred.’

She woke up with a start and sat up, shaking. The priest of Sekhmet had returned in her dream. His face was stern and forbidding, his eyes piercing, as he stood over her. The following night she was not on the banks of the Nile; he was here, in her room, bending over her bed.

Her screams brought Mrs Laidlaw and Sally Anne running from their bedrooms, just above hers in the attic. Luckily John and George Browning had not heard her and were not disturbed.

The next morning she went into the studio and stared at the davenport. Why had he returned? What did he want her to do? The answer to that came very swiftly. Two nights later she was preparing for bed, standing dreamily in her room, brushing her hair by the light of a bedside candle, when she became aware of someone standing near her in the shadows. The brush fell from her hand as she turned.

‘Egypt. Take it back to Egypt.’ The voice rang in her ears. ‘The tears of Isis belong in her own land; the ampulla must return whence it came.’ She could see him in the shadows.

‘How can I? How can I take it back?’ she stammered, but already he had gone.

As the autumn nights drew in Louisa felt her strength waning. She found it hard to eat and coughed incessantly, but she returned to her painting. Day after day she retired to the studio and embarked upon a new series of pictures of Scotland. The magic of loch and mountain could not however drive her demons away and at last she found herself painting the priests of ancient Egypt, Hatsek and his one time colleague and eternal enemy, Anhotep, who haunted her dreams, as though by capturing them on canvas she could exorcise them from her brain.

It didn’t work. Still they returned, sometimes apart, sometimes together, arguing with each other, arguing with her, every time coming closer, appearing more threatening, more inexorable. In her misery she wrote to Sarah, to the Forresters, even to the Fieldings. Then one night as sleep failed yet again to come and she sat up in bed reading, the one person who had not haunted her dreams in London appeared once more. Carstairs came back.

She looked up from her book to see him standing at the end of the bed watching her. He was dressed in an open necked voluminous white shirt and baggy trousers with a broad sash into which was thrust a scimitar.

‘So, clever Mrs Shelley. So devious. So cunning. You have hidden the ampulla from me, set a priest to guard it and you have destroyed my life’s work into the bargain. But don’t think you can continue to outwit me. I shall have that bottle. I know it is here.’

Louisa clutched her wrap around her shoulders, shivering. ‘If you have not found it by now, my lord, I think it unlikely you ever will,’ she said defiantly. She held his gaze. ‘So, where have you been? Where are you now? Still in America? Or have you returned to Scotland? Or are you really here, in the flesh, having walked up the stairs like a mere mortal? Did you ring the bell and ask Norton to show you up? I must confess, I did not hear a knock at my door.’

‘A walker between the worlds does not knock.’ He folded his arms. ‘Anymore than does a priest of the old gods.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘When I leave here I shall set something to guard the sacred bottle from you and from the priest. Wherever it is my serpent will protect it. I cannot guarantee the safety of your household or your children, Mrs Shelley. Please do not sacrifice another life for the sake of something so trifling. You have no interest in my bottle save to thwart me. Is that not so?’

She shrugged. ‘You are probably right. It is just that I cannot rid myself of the notion that whatever power lies in that bottle should be used for good, if it is used at all. And you, my lord, intend to use it for your own evil purposes.’

‘So, you would risk your sons’ lives?’

‘There will be no risk.’ She continued to hold his gaze defiantly. ‘I can send John back to his grandparents at any time. He will be safe there –’

He shook his head. ‘Do you still underestimate me so grievously, Louisa?’