This gave Leighton pause. “Sir,” he said. “Surely we all agree that all the world is in London.” He smiled at Catriona. “I assure you, the natives don’t care where the pieces happen to be.” He sliced into the rosy beef on his plate. “It is us who recognize the significance of these artifacts, why else do you think they had just been lying around until we secured them? To the locals, why, even a Roman temple is just another source of building material for walls and huts. Isn’t it, Wester Ross?”
Elias said nothing. A dangerous heat was quickly creeping up his throat.
The professor took off his glasses. “Roman temples still exist in the region, some astonishingly well intact, to my knowledge, hence not all have been turned into huts just yet,” he said. “There is also at least one large museum in Constantinople. But Mr. Khoury is right here, perhaps he can enlighten us.”
“Oh, that museum,” Leighton said. “I have heard of it. Unfortunately, it seems to be filled with an absurd collection of rubbish.”
The professor rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m surprised to hear that.”
“I have it on good account,” Leighton assured him, and skewered a bite-sized piece of meat with his fork. “No, no, they should be grateful for every statue we preserve on our expense. Just look at the bulls. Witnesses of ancient high cultures, marvelous craftsmanship, I think it would be a shame to see them pockmarked by the cross fire of the next petty local strife.”
“There always seems to be trouble in the Near East,” Miss Regina said. “Such a pity.”
“It is. British naval ships shelled Alexandria into the ground just the other week,” Catriona said. “I can’t imagine the structural damage.”
Elias pressed his right knee into her skirts. Don’t, it said; we are at an impasse. Indeed, a charged stillness fell between the dinner guests. Leighton eyed Elias while he chewed his beef. He licked around over his teeth behind closed lips, then said, “Where did you say you were from, Mr. Khoury?”
It took a moment to override his pride and answer. “I hadn’t said. I’m from Zgharta.”
Leighton gave a shocked little laugh. “I say. Fancy that.” He shook his head and looked around as if to share his astonishment with an invisible audience. “Your people caused us quite the trouble,” he then said, and wagged a finger at Elias. “Threw a christening in my family into disarray, if you can believe it.”
Elias perceived the admonishing, pointing finger through a rapidly thickening red mist. He saw Miss Regina tilt her head and move her lips, but only Leighton’s reply reached his ears again.
“。 . . hence, all was quite settled,” Leighton explained, “when the governor of this young man’s district decided he disliked the new order after all. Bey Karam was his name, well, Karam was a hothead and thought he knew better than us, and the Ottomans, the French, and the Austrians put together, and he went and bedeviled the Pasha with some mutiny. Naturally, the Pasha sends in the army to restore order on the mountain yet again, but, in a strange turn of events, Karam beats back the army with just some ragtag band of villagers—an embarrassment, for the Ottomans, that is. Next, the French ambassador and our foreign office are inundated by Ottoman complaints, and one another’s complaints . . . the Austrians stuck their noses in again, too. That’s why your father missed his boat to your sister’s christening—he was entangled in crisis negotiations.”
Miss Regina put her fingers to her lips. “Goodness,” she said to Elias. “How fateful that we should all meet here today.”
He pushed back his chair and stood. Catriona’s upturned face was an anxious white blur.
“Do excuse me,” he said. “It seems the food doesn’t agree with me after all.”
He left with long strides, a vein pounding in his throat.
* * *
Catriona sat staring down at her plate. Elias’s exit pulled at her insides as if he had her vitals on a leash, and her distress would show on her face.
“Interesting,” she heard Leighton say. “Felled by mere parsnips. I recommend ginger tea to restore the young man.”
“Ginger cures many ailments,” said Wester Ross in a neutral tone, but to anyone who knew him it was clear he was not amused.
“Not in time to report his progress on the classification, I fear,” Leighton said with a sniff.
Catriona pressed the edge of her knife against the slab of beef on her plate. A rivulet of blood seeped from the meat into the gravy. Her forehead pulsed with some strange fever but her thoughts were clear and sensible: to save face for everyone, to not burn bridges, to conceal her private feelings from prying eyes. Her body demanded only one thing: to see him. It beat through her with the bright insistence of a church bell. Go see him.