Timeless (22 page)

It was no wonder, then, that Alexandria snuck up on all of them. The first thing that signified the momentous event was a slowing in their speed and a loud tooting noise. The captain hurriedly excused himself, tea unfinished, and the Tunstells stopped their antics and stood about dumbly.

The proximity bells clanged out and everyone made busy finishing their conversation and foodstuffs without the appearance of excitement or hurry, although clearly under the influence of both.

“Have we arrived?” Alexia asked her husband. “I do believe we have.”

Conall, for whom high tea was an exercise in futility, there being little protein on offer and too many small fiddly sandwiches expressly designed to thwart a man of his ilk, stood without prompting. “Well, come along, my dear, to the upper deck!”

Alexia took up Prudence, who was ostensibly the excuse for awakening early and attending the tea. The toddler had yet to experience such an occasion as Sunday tea in a public assembly on a steamer, and Alexia had thought she might enjoy the treat. Prudence had indeed, although her good behavior might be better attributed to the performance than the comestibles. Prudence found the Tunstells’ rendition of
Macbeth
more fascinating than
anyone else, possibly because the antics were right about her education level or possibly because life with Lord Akeldama had given her to expect a certain degree of extravagant theatricality.

Prudence was particularly taken with the idea that Mr. Tumtrinkle now answered to the name Macduff, possibly because she could say Macduff but not Tumtrinkle. She was also hypnotized by his mustache, a fact made clear as they climbed out onto the promenade and the actor stood behind them. Prudence somehow ended up leaning over her mother’s shoulder, misappropriating the mustache and wearing it rather proudly on her own tiny, fat face.

“Oh, really!” was her mother’s comment, but she did not try to remove it.

Madame Lefoux came up next to them and gave Prudence a green-eyed look of approval. “Child after my own heart.”

“Don’t you start,” said Alexia, possibly to both of them. “Prudence, darling, look: Egypt!” She pointed before them as the rays of the slowly setting sun caught the beige buildings of the last great Mediterranean port. The first thing to appear was the famous lighthouse, rising above the level of a colorless line of coast. Although, to Alexia’s mind, it seemed a little smaller than one would hope.

“No,” said Prudence, but she looked.

The steamer chugged to a halt, disappointing everyone.

“We have to wait to take a pilot on board,” explained, of all people, Ivy Tunstell.

“We do?” Alexia looked down at her friend, mystified. Ivy had come to stand next to them still garbed in her medieval dress and long blond wig.

Ivy nodded sagely. “The channel into the harbor is narrow, shallow, and rocky. Baedeker says so.”

“Well, then, it must be true.” They spotted a small tug chugging through the water toward them. A sprightly, dark-skinned fellow in very ill-fitting and baggy clothing was allowed aboard. He saluted the watching passengers in a casual manner and then disappeared toward the captain’s lookout.

Moments later, the steamer puffed back up into rumbling action and began making its way sedately into the port of Alexandria.

Lady Maccon was pleased to say the city quite lived up to her expectations. While Ivy prattled on about Pompey’s Pillar, the Cape of Figs, the Arsenal, and various other guidebook sights of note, Alexia simply absorbed the quality of the place: the subdued tranquility of exotic buildings, broken only occasionally by the white marble turrets of mosques or the sharp knitting-needle austerity of an obelisk. She thought she could make out ruins in the background. It was mostly sand colored, lit up orange by the sun—a city carved out of the desert indeed, utterly alien in every way. The thing it most resembled was a sculpture made of shortbread.

Ivy excused herself, remarking that they, too, ought to go below, or at least in out of the sea air. “Too much sea air can detrimentally affect the mental stability, or so I’ve read.”

“Why, Mrs. Tunstell, you must have traveled by boat before,” said Lord Maccon.

Lady Maccon stifled a chuckle and returned her attention to the shore. She felt the heat for the first time as well, rolling at them off the land. True, it had been getting
hotter over the last few days, but this heat brought new smells with it.

“Sand, and sewage, and grilled meat,” commented her husband, rather ignoring the romance of it all.

Alexia shifted against him and took his hand with her free one, bracing Prudence against the railing.

The baby frowned at the city, which loomed larger and larger as they moved in to dock. “Ick,” she said, and then, “Dama.”

Alexia wasn’t certain if the toddler was simply missing her adopted father or if somehow the ancient city reminded Prudence of the ancient vampire. The little girl shivered despite the heat and buried her mustachioed face in her mother’s neck. “Ick,” she said again.

As complicated and difficult as it had been getting on board the steamer, it was twice as problematical getting off of it. Of course, it was intended that passengers spend that last night aboard, to awaken the next morning in a new land and begin their adventures well rested and fully packed. But Alexia and her party were on a night schedule and had no intention of wasting precious evening hours by staying on the ship. They hurried back to their respective rooms and threw a collective tizzy gathering up attendants to help them pack, tracking down multiple missing items, paying steward’s fees, and eventually disembarking.

Even after they were safely ashore and getting their land legs back, Ivy Tunstell had to return to her quarters no less than three times. The first under the impression that she had misplaced her favorite gloves—they were in a hatbox with her green turban, as it turned out. The second
because she was assured her Baedeker’s was left on the bedside table, only to discover it in her reticule. The third because she panicked, convinced she had forgotten Percy, asleep in his bassinet.

The nursemaid, who had charge of the twins, safely ensconced in a rather impressive sling contraption, held Percy up for his frantic mother to see, at which juncture the baby spit up on the strikingly large turban of a native gentleman as he injudiciously cut through their assembled party.

The gentleman made a very rude gesture and said something rapid-fire in Arabic before dashing on.

Ivy tried desperately to apologize to the man’s retreating back. “Oh, my dear sir, how terrible. He’s only a very little boy, of course, not yet under his own power so far as the proper operation of the digestive centers. I am so very sorry. Perhaps I could—”

“He is long gone, Ivy dear,” interrupted Alexia. “Best turn our attention to our hotel. Where are we headed?” She looked at Conall hopefully. It really was rather a bother to travel without Floote; nothing went smoothly, and no one seemed to know exactly what to do next.

Madame Lefoux stepped into the breach. “The custom house is over there, I believe.” She gestured at an ugly square building to their right, from which a military-looking group of local gentlemen were charging in their direction. Alexia squinted, attempting to discern the details of the group. The sun was mostly set at this point, the exotic buildings around them blanketed in shadow.

The customs officials, for that is what they proved to be, practically crashed into them and began garbling unintelligibly in Arabic. Ivy Tunstell whipped out her
travel guide and began trilling some, quite probably, equally unintelligible phrases in, for some strange reason known only to Ivy, a lilting falsetto and what appeared to be Spanish. Tunstell began prancing about trying to be helpful, his red hair attracting a good deal of unwarranted attention. When one of the men tried grabbing at Mr. Tumtrinkle’s carpetbag, Lord Maccon began yelling and gesticulating in English, descending rapidly into Scottish as he became increasingly annoyed.

During the hubbub, Madame Lefoux sidled up to Lady Maccon.

“Alexia, my dear, might I recommend relocating your gun to an inaccessible part of your apparel and opening the parasol as though the sun were quite up?”

Lady Maccon looked at the inventor as though she were mad. It was now evening, no time for a parasol, and Ethel was tucked away in her reticule, where any good firearm should be.

Madame Lefoux nodded significantly at one of the customs men just as he upended Mr. Tumtrinkle’s carpet bag onto the dock, much to that gentleman’s annoyance, and produced a prop musket triumphantly from within. Mr. Tumtrinkle’s efforts to demonstrate that the firearm was, in fact, a fake did not meet with any kind of approval. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Using Prudence’s body to hide her actions, Lady Maccon took her own tiny gun out of her reticule and shoved it down the front of her bodice. Then she reached for her parasol, dangling from a chatelaine hook at her waist, and opened it above her head. Prudence clung on dutifully while she did this and then insisted on holding the parasol handle herself. This delighted Alexia, as now it appeared
as though the parasol were up at her daughter’s childish whim, rather than her own eccentricity.

Lord Maccon was becoming red in the face as he argued violently with the customs officials over the rudeness of actually opening and looking through their luggage right there in public. The men were not intimidated by Lord Maccon’s size, rank, or supernatural state. The first being the only thing they had any direct contact with, the second being irrelevant in Egypt, and the last virtually unknown. It was quite dark, and Conall looked to be in imminent danger of losing his temper altogether when the most curious savior appeared.

A medium-sized, medium-girthed native fellow arrived in their midst. He wore voluminous dark bloomers tucked into suede boots, a high-neck dark shirt of muslin, a wide yellow sash about his waist, and a fez upon his head with a long tassel. He had a beard neatly trimmed into sharp pointed aggressiveness and a serious expression. Alexia wasn’t sure about the beard, nor the bloomers, but she did think that with a different hat and a very long sword, he would look most appealingly piratical. Except that with his figure, that would be more along the lines of a banker at a masquerade.

The newcomer introduced himself politely as Chancellor Neshi in perfect English. He interposed himself between Lord Maccon’s bluster and the customs official’s efficaciousness. Alexia saw her husband’s nose wrinkle in a telltale way and noticed that slight wince that he never could hide if he wasn’t anticipating a bad smell. She sidled up next to him, careful not to touch him just in case they needed all of his supernatural abilities.

“Vampire?” she whispered into his ear.

He nodded, not taking his eyes off of the stranger.

Chancellor Neshi said something in rapid staccato fashion to the officials and they instantly backed away and stopped fussing.

“This must be Lady Maccon? And the miracle progeny?” Their savior leaned forward a little too close for Alexia’s comfort, staring hard at Prudence, and then looked away as though he could not tolerate the sight of the child.

The toddler pursed her little lips in consideration. “Dama,” she said with certainty.

Alexia would wager her right glove that her daughter was picking up on the man’s vampire nature and utilizing the only word in her vocabulary capable of articulating it. So she said, “Yes, my dear, very like.”

Prudence nodded. “Dama Dama duck!”

“Queen Matakara has sent me to be your guide to Alexandria. One might say, perhaps, your dragoman. This is acceptable? I will see you through this business of customs and then safely to your hotel. I have arranged for your audience, and performance, later tonight. If that’s not too soon?” He looked at the actors around him. “This is the famous troupe, I take it?”

Ivy and Tunstell pushed forward.

Alexia said, “Yes, indeed, Chancellor. This is Mrs. Tunstell and Mr. Tunstell, owners, performers, and artists extraordinaire. Your queen is in for a treat.”

Tunstell bowed and Ivy curtsied. “She commands the performance right away? It is a good thing we have been practicing on the journey.”

The dumpy man took in Ivy’s hat and Tunstell’s trousers and could only nod. Ivy had selected a gray felt chapeau
with steel braid around the crown, a long gray feather, and a turned-up brim that showed off a turban of striped surah silk wound underneath. That went around her head to form a bow over the left ear, ending in a fringe down the back. The hat, Ivy no doubt felt, went with the Egyptian aesthetic, and it was her way of honoring their host country. Although, Alexia thought, looking about at the peasants and dockworkers engaging in various tasks around them, it was a little off the mark. Tunstell’s trousers were, naturally, of a very aggressive purple and teal plaid and quite tight enough to be a second skin.

They were led into the custom house at that point and permitted to take seats in comparative comfort. Despite their objections, they then had to witness their bags, hatboxes, and trunks opened and examined in detail. The dragoman explained that it was best not to protest and that everything would be put back except for items of contraband. Apparently they were looking particularly for cigars and chewing tobacco, which was subjected to a high tariff. Prudence held on to the parasol firmly. No one gave it a second glance. They also did not check the gentlemen’s hats, which was where, Alexia had no doubt, her husband had stashed his sundowner and Madame Lefoux her more nefarious gadgets.