Doyle was lifted up, carried to the rail, and after a hook was snugged in under the rope that went under his arms he was lowered like a bundled-up rug into a rowboat that bobbed and banged against the hull in the emerald water twenty feet below. A sailor in the boat grabbed his bound ankles and guided him down to a sitting position on one of the thwarts while Romanelli descended a rope ladder and, after swinging about for a minute on the end of it, waving a free foot and swearing, did a sort of half-slide into the boat. The sailor helped him to another thwart and then the last passenger came swinging wildly down the ladder—it was the Luck of the Surrey-side Beggars himself, the time-ruined Doctor Romany, with two big metal spikes tied to his shoes for weight. After placing this grinning, winking creature on the narrow bow, where it sat like a trained cormorant, the sailor wiped his hands and sat down himself, impassively facing Romanelli and Doyle; he picked up the oars and set to work.
Doyle immediately toppled over against the starboard gunwale, and from this position watched the ship’s hull slide past and eventually give way, as they rounded the high arch of the bow, to a view of Alexandria, half a mile away across the glittering water.
The city was a disappointment to him—he’d expected the labyrinthine Oriental city Lawrence Durrell had written about, but all he saw was a small cluster of dilapidated white buildings baking in the sun. There were no other ships in the harbor, and only a few boats lay moored to the weathered quays.
“That’s Alexandria?” he asked.
“Not what it used to be,” growled Romanelli in a tone that didn’t invite further discussion. The wizard was huddled against the opposite gunwale, breathing in long wheezes. What was left of Romany was giggling quietly on the bow.
The man at the oars let the harbor’s current slant them to the left, east of the town, and on a sandy rise Doyle finally saw some people; three or four figures in Arab robes stood in the shade of a dusty palm tree, while a number of camels stood and sat around a section of ruined wall nearby. Doyle wasn’t surprised when the sailor heeled the boat about and aimed the bow toward the palm tree and Romanelli waved and yelled, “Ya Abbas sabahixler!”
One of the robed men was now walking down to the shore. He waved and called, “Saghida, ya Romanelli?”
Doyle eyed the man’s lean, sharp-chiseled face and nervously tried to imagine the fellow doing anything just domestically pleasant, like petting a cat. He couldn’t.
When the boat was still a few yards from shore the keel grated on the sandy bottom, stopping the little craft and pitching Doyle forward.
“Ow,” he mumbled, his lips brushing the thwart, which was coldly and saltily wet from the splashing of the oars. A moment later Romanelli yanked him upright.
“That hurt?” asked the wide-eyed bow-croucher with mock alarm. “Sa-a-a-ay—did that hurt, Burt?”
The sorcerer had stood up and was barking instructions in Arabic, and two more of the men from under the palm hastened down toward the water, while the first man was already splashing out toward the boat. Romanelli pointed down at Doyle. “Taghald maghaya nisilu,” he said, and lean brown arms reached over the gunwale and lifted Doyle out of the boat.
Doyle was tied onto a camel and in spite of the several rest and water stops, by the time they arrived at the little town of El Hamed by the Nile, late in the afternoon, Doyle’s legs were distant columns of numbness, only recognizable as his own when they were occasionally lanced with tooth-grinding agony, and his spine felt like a big old dried sunflower stalk that kids had used for a blowgun dart target. When the Arabs untied him and carried him aboard the dahabeeyeh, a low, single-masted boat with a little cabin in the back, he was half delirious and muttering, “Beer … beer…” Fortunately they seemed to recognize the word, and brought him a jug of what was, blessedly and unmistakably, beer. Doyle drained it in several long swallows and fell back across the deck, instantly asleep.
He awoke in darkness when the boat bumped gently against wood and rocked to a stop, and when his captors hoisted him up and sat him on the dock, facing inland, he could see lights only a few hundred yards away to his left.
A man with a lantern stepped down onto the dock. “Is salam ghalekum, ya Romanelli,” he said quietly.
“Wi ghalekum is salam,” Romanelli answered.
Doyle had been dreading another camel ride, and he sighed with relief when he noticed the silhouette of a real British carriage up on the road behind the man. “Are we in Cairo?” he asked.
“Just past it,” Romanelli said shortly. “We’re going inland, toward the Karafeh, the necropolis below the Citadel.” He barked at the Arabs and obediently they lifted Doyle by his ankles and shoulders and carried him up a set of ancient stone steps to the road and pushed him into the carriage.
