Seven Dials Page 0,96

Pitt to find some way to avert scandal.

"Very Christian?" he asked.

"Very." Ishaq nodded, the emotions remaining unreadable in his voice. "Used to go out to that holy place, the shrine down by the river. Loved it. He was upset because it is a very holy place indeed... a shrine for us as well."

"Us?" Pitt was puzzled. "For Islam?"

"Yes. Before it was-" Ishaq stopped.

Avram looked at him, his face somber.

Ishaq stared past Pitt. "It was my father who buried them all," he said so quietly Pitt barely heard the words. "I remember his face for months after that. I thought he would never get over it. Perhaps he didn't-he had dreams about it for the rest of his life. It was worst when he was dying." He took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly. "My sister looked after him, did what she could to make him easy, but she couldn't stop the ghosts from coming back." His face looked pinched and his voice was thick with emotion. "He used to talk to her for hours, telling her about it because he couldn't help himself. He had dreams... terrible dreams... the blood and the burst flesh, cooked like meat, faces charred until eyes could hardly tell they had once been human... I'd hear him crying out-" He stopped.

Pitt turned to Avram, but Avram shook his head.

They waited in silence.

"Fire," Ishaq said at last. "Thirty-four of them, as far as anyone could count, in the ashes. They were trapped inside."

"I'm sorry," Pitt said softly. He had seen fire in England; he knew the devastation, the smell of burning flesh that never left his memory.

Ishaq shook his head. "My father's dead, and my sister too now."

Avram looked startled. "I didn't know that!"

Ishaq bit his lip and swallowed hard. "In Alexandria... an accident."

"I'm sorry." Avram shook his head. "She was beautiful." He said it as if he was speaking of far more than merely what the eye could see.

Ishaq opened his mouth to say something, but for a moment he had not the control to master the grief within himself.

Pitt and Avram remained silent. It was dark outside now. The stars were visible through the open window, needle sharp in the velvet of the sky. The air was cooler at last.

Ishaq looked up at last. "I think Lieutenant Lovat was sickened by the fire as well," he observed, his voice quite level now. "It wasn't long after that when he got ill. Fever of some sort, they said. Seemed to be a bit of it in the camp. He was shipped home. Never saw him again."

"Did his friends stay?" Pitt asked.

"No," Ishaq replied softly. "They all went, for different reasons. Don't know what happened to them. Sent somewhere else, I expect. The British Empire is very big. Perhaps India? They can sail past Suez and down that new canal to half the earth, can't they." That was a statement, not a question. There was no lift in his voice to imply doubt.

"Yes," Pitt murmured, hoping profoundly that he would find at least one of them in London, not have to conduct questions by telegraph through some deputed official. And Ishaq was right-half the world was accessible to Britain through that genius of negotiation and engineering, the Suez Canal. Thinking of the critical importance of it to the economy and the rule of law to the entire empire, and all that meant, it was inconceivable that Britain could ever give back complete autonomy to Egypt. Cotton was only a tiny part of it. How had Ayesha Zakhari ever imagined she could succeed? The hostage of economic dependence was far too precious to yield.

Pitt felt a weight of darkness descend on him as if he were trying to untangle an impenetrable knot, and every thread he pulled only bound it tighter.

"Thank you for your hospitality," he said aloud, inclining his head to Ishaq. "Your food and your conversation have both enriched me. I am in your debt."

Ishaq was pleased; the evidence of it was something indefinable in his expression, the angle of his body, now only dimly seen in the waning candlelight.

They stayed only a few minutes longer, then left with repeated thanks.

Back on the path by the water's edge, the surface now a pale glimmer reflecting no more than the odd ripple of starlight, it was difficult to see where they were going, and Pitt realized how tired he was. His body ached not only from sitting on the ground but from the