“Why don’t you ask the Professor whom he suspects?”
“I could do that,” Ramses admitted.
“It is time you began treating your parents like responsible adults,” David said severely.
Ramses smiled. “As always, you speak words of wisdom. We must part here, my brother. The bridge is ahead.”
“You will let me know—”
“Aywa. Of course. Take care. Maas salameh.”
* * *
When we reached the house we learned from Fatima, who had waited up for us, that Nefret had returned an hour before. She had refused the food Fatima wanted to serve, saying she was too tired to eat, and had gone straight to her room. My heart went out to the child, for I knew she must be concerned about one of her patients. I stopped outside her door but saw no light through the keyhole and heard no sound, so I went on.
I myself was suffering from a slight alimentary indisposition. I put it down to nerves, and too much rich food, and having rid myself of the latter along the roadside, I accepted a refreshing cup of tea from Fatima before retiring. Needless to say, I did not sleep until I heard a soft tap on the door—the signal Ramses had grudgingly agreed to give on his return. I had promised I would not detain him, so I suppressed my natural impulses and turned onto my side, where I encountered a pair of large, warm hands. Emerson had been wakeful too. In silence he drew me into his embrace and held me until I fell asleep.
Somewhat to my surprise, for she was not usually an early riser, I found Nefret already at the breakfast table when I went down. One look at her face told me my surmise had been correct. Her cheeks lacked their usual pretty color and there were dark shadows under her eyes. I knew better than to offer commiseration or comfort; when I commented on her promptness she informed me somewhat curtly that she was going back to the hospital. One of her patients was in dire straits and she wanted to be there.
Only one thing could have taken my mind off what was to transpire that night, and we did not find it. The burial chamber at the bottom of the deep shaft had been looted in antiquity. All that remained were a few bones and broken scraps of the funerary equipment.
We left Ramses to catalog and collect these disappointing fragments, and climbed the rough ladders back to the surface. I remarked to Emerson, below me, “There is another burial shaft. Perhaps it will lead to something more interesting.”
Emerson grunted.
“Are you going to start on it today?”
“No.”
I stopped and looked down at him. “I understand, my dear,” I said sympathetically. “It is difficult to concentrate on excavation when so much hangs on our midnight rendezvous.”
Emerson described the said rendezvous with a series of carefully selected adjectives, adding that only I would stop for a chat while halfway up a rickety ladder. He gave me a friendly little push.
Once on the surface, Emerson resumed the conversation. “I strongly object to one of the words you used, Peabody .”
“ ‘ Midnight ’ was not entirely accurate,” I admitted.
“But it sounds more romantic than eleven P.M. , eh?” Emerson’s smile metamorphosed into a grimace that showed even more teeth and was not at all friendly. “That was not the word. You said ‘our.’ I thought I had made it clear to you that the first person plural does not apply. Must I say it again?”
“Here and now, with Selim waiting for instructions?” I indicated our youthful reis, who was squatting on the ground smoking and pretending he was not trying to overhear.
“Oh, curse it,” Emerson said.
Daoud got the men started and Selim descended the ladder in order to take Ramses’s place in the tomb chamber, assuming, that is, that Ramses would consent to be replaced. After assuring me that David was still safe and unsuspected, and that the delivery of weapons had gone off without incident, and that nobody had tried to murder him, he had rather avoided me. I knew why, of course. Injured and weakened as he had been, he had been forced to rely on me and on his father for help. Now he regretted that weakness of body and will, and wished he had not involved us. In other words, he was thinking like a man. Emerson was just as bad; I always had trouble convincing him that he needed me to protect him. Dealing with not one but two male egos was really going to be a nuisance.
I took Emerson to the rest place, where he immediately began lecturing. I sipped my tea and let him run on until he ran out of breath and patience. “So what have you to say?” he demanded.
“Oh, I am to be allowed to speak? Well, then, I grant you that if he is alone, you and Ramses can probably manage him by yourselves, always assuming he doesn’t assassinate one or both of you from ambush as you approach. However—”
“Probably?” Emerson repeated, in a voice like thunder.
“However,” I continued, “it is likely that he will be accompanied by a band of ruffians like himself, bent on robbery and murder. They could not let you live, for they would know you would—”
“Stop that!” Emerson shouted. “Such idle speculation—”
“Clears away the deadwood in the thickets of deduction,” said Ramses, appearing out of thin air like the afrit to which he had often been compared. Emerson stared at him in stupefaction, and Ramses went on, “Father, why don’t you tell her precisely what we are planning to do? It may relieve her mind.”
“What?” said Emerson.
“I said—”
“I heard you. I also heard you utter an aphorism even more preposterous than your mother’s efforts along those lines. Don’t you start, Ramses. I cannot put up with two of you.”
“It was one of Mother’s, as a matter of fact,” Ramses said, taking a seat on a packing case. “Well, Father?”
“Tell her, then,” Emerson said. He added gloomily, “It won’t stop her for long, though.”
“It will be all right, Mother,” Ramses said. He smiled at me; the softening of his features and the familiar reassurance disarmed me—as he had no doubt counted on its doing. “Farouk is not collaborating with the Germans for ideological reasons. He’s doing it for the money. We are offering him more than he could hope to get from the other side, so he will come to the rendezvous. He won’t want to share it, so he will come alone. He won’t shoot Father from behind a wall because he won’t know for certain that Father has the money on his person. We will frighten him off if we go in force, so we can’t risk it.”
I started to speak. Ramses raised his voice and went on. “I will precede Father by two hours and keep watch. If I see anything at all that contradicts my assumptions, or that makes me uneasy, I will head Father off. Is that acceptable to you?”
“It still seems to me—”
“One more thing.” Ramses fixed intent black eyes on me. His face was very grave. “We are counting on you to keep Nefret out of this. She will want to go with us, and she mustn’t. If she were present, Father would be worrying about her instead of thinking of his own safety.”
“And so would you,” I said.
Emerson had listened without attempting to interrupt; now he glanced at his son, and said, “Ramses is right. In all fairness I must point out that he acted as impulsively as Nefret, and he was lucky to get away with only a knock on the head.”
Ramses’s high cheekbones darkened. “All right, it was stupid of me! But if she had let me enter that room first, you can be damned sure Farouk would never have laid a hand on her. I’d probably do something equally stupid if he threatened her again, and so would you, Father. Supposing there is a scrap—wouldn’t she wade right in, trying to help us, and wouldn’t you fall over your own feet trying to get her out of it?”
“I have heard of such things happening,” said Emerson. He looked at me. “No doubt you will accuse us of being patronizing and overly protective—”
“I do. You are. You always have been. But…”
Emerson heard the note of hesitation in my voice, and for once he had the good sense to keep quiet. His blue eyes were steady, his lean brown face resolute. I
looked from him to Ramses, whose unruly black hair curled over his temples and whose well-cut features were so like his father’s. They were very dear to me. Would I put them at even greater risk by insisting on playing my part in the night’s adventure?
I was forced to admit that I might. I was also forced to admit that Ramses’s analysis of Nefret’s character was not entirely inaccurate. Initially it had struck me as being unjust and prejudiced; but I had had time to think about it, and incident after confirmatory incident came back to me. Some of her early escapades might be excused as the result of youthful overconfidence, such as the time she had deliberately allowed herself to be captured by one of our most vindictive opponents, in the hope of rescuing her brother; but maturity had not changed her very much. She had been a full-grown woman when she entered a Luxor bordello and tried to persuade the girls to leave. Then there was the time she had blackmailed Ramses into letting her go with him and David into one of the vilest parts of Cairo in order to retrieve a stolen antiquity—and the time she had single-handedly attacked a thief armed with a knife… The list went on and on. Emerson’s description of Ramses might equally have been applied to Nefret; she was as brave as a lion and as cunning as a cat, and as stubborn as a camel, and when her passions were aroused she was as quick to strike as a snake. Even her hasty, ill-advised marriage…
“Very well,” I said. “I still think you are being a trifle unjust to Nefret; she’s got you and David out of a few nasty situations, you know.”
“I know what I owe her,” Ramses said quietly.
“However,” I continued, “I agree to your proposal—not because I believe she cannot be trusted to behave sensibly but because I know you and your father cannot.”
Ramses’s tight lips relaxed. “Fair enough.”
“Hmph,” said Emerson.
We scattered to our various tasks.
It was after midday when Nefret turned up. I had been sifting a particularly unproductive lot of rubble for several hours, and was not unwilling to be interrupted. I rose to my feet and stretched. She had changed to her working clothes and I could tell by her brisk stride that she was in a happier state of mind than she had been that morning. She was carrying a covered basket, which she lowered to the ground beside me.
“Not more food?” I exclaimed. “We brought a luncheon basket.”
“You know Fatima ,” Nefret said. “She thinks none of us eat enough. While I was bathing and changing she made kunafeh especially for Ramses; she says he is all bones and skin, and needs to be fattened. Where is he? If he balks, we will stuff it down his throat, the way they do with geese.”
“And did even in ancient times,” I said, smiling. “Go and call him and Emerson to luncheon, then. They are inside the chapel.”
Fatima had also sent a dish of stewed apricots and a sliced watermelon, which had been nicely cooled by evaporation during the trip. We all tucked in with good appetite, including Ramses. The kunafeh was one of his favorite dishes, wheat-flour vermicelli fried in clarified butter and sweetened with honey. Nefret teased him by repeating Fatima ’s criticism, and he responded with a rather vulgar Arabic quotation about female pulchritude, which clearly did not apply to her, and Emerson smiled fondly at both of them.
“Matters went well today?” he inquired.
Nefret nodded. “I thought last night I would lose her, but she’s much better this morning.” She spat a watermelon seed neatly into her hand and went on, “You’ll never guess who called on me today.”
“Since we won’t, you may as well tell us,” said Ramses.
The next seed just missed his ear. His black eyes narrowed, and he reached for a slice of melon.
“I strictly forbid you to do that, Ramses,” I exclaimed. “You and Nefret are too old for those games now.”
“Let them enjoy themselves, Peabody,” Emerson said indulgently. “So, Nefret, who was your visitor?”
Her answer wiped the amiable smile from Emerson’s face.
“That degenerate, slimy, contemptible, disgusting, perverted, loathsome—”
“He was very polite,” Nefret interrupted. “Or should I have said ‘she’?”
“The fact that el-Gharbi prefers to wear women’s clothing does not change his sex—uh—gender,” Ramses said. He looked as inscrutable as ever, but I had seen his involuntary start of surprise. “What was he doing at the hospital?”
“Inquiring after one of ‘his’ girls.” Nefret’s voice put quotation marks round the pronoun. “The same one I operated on last night. He said he had sent her to us, and that the man who hurt her had been… dealt with.”
Emerson had got his breath back. “That crawling, serpentine trafficker in human flesh, that filthy—”
“Yes, Professor darling, I know the words too. And his taste in jewelry and perfume is quite dreadful!” Observing, from Emerson’s apoplectic countenance, that he was in no mood for humor, she threw her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “I love your indignation, Professor dear. But I’ve seen worse and dealt with worse since I started the clinic. El-Gharbi’s goodwill can help me to help those women. That is the important thing.”
“Quite right,” I said approvingly.
“Bah,” said Emerson.
Ramses said, “Well done, Nefret.”
The watermelon seed hit him square on the chin.
My mind was not entirely on my rubbish that afternoon. I was racking my brain trying to think of a way of preventing Nefret from accompanying Emerson and Ramses. A number of schemes ran through my mind, only to be dismissed as impracticable. The inspiration that finally dawned was so remarkable I wondered why it had not occurred to me before.
We dined earlier than was our custom, since I wanted to make sure Ramses ate a proper meal before leaving. It would take him an hour to reach Maadi by the roundabout routes he had chosen in order to get into position unobserved and unsuspected. When the rest of us retired to the drawing room for after-dinner coffee, he slipped away, but of course Nefret noticed his absence almost immediately and demanded to know where he was.
“He has gone,” I replied, for I had determined to tell her the truth instead of inventing a story she would not have believed anyhow.
Nefret jumped up from her chair. “Gone? Already? Hell and damnation! You promised—”
“My dear, you will overturn the coffee tray. Sit down and pour, if you please. Thank you, Fatima, we need nothing more.”
Nefret did not sit down, but she waited until Fatima had left the room before she exploded. “How could you, Aunt Amelia? Professor, you let him go alone?”
The bravest of men—I refer, of course, to my spouse—quailed before that furious blue gaze. “Er…” he said. “Hmph. Tell her, Amelia.”
Nefret pronounced a word of whose meaning I was entirely ignorant, and bolted for the door. I do not know where she thought she was going; perhaps she believed she could intercept Ramses, or (which is more likely) perhaps she was not thinking at all. She did not get far. Emerson moved with the pantherlike speed that had given rise to one of Daoud’s more memorable sayings: “The Father of Curses roars like a lion and walks like a cat and strikes like a falcon.” He picked Nefret up as if she weighed nothing at all and carried her back to her chair.
“Thank you, Emerson,” I said. “Nefret, that will be quite enough. I understand your concern, my dear, but you did not give me a chance to explain. Really, you must conquer this habit of rushing into action without considering the consequences.”
I half-expected her to burst into another fiery denunciation. Instead her eyes fell, and the pretty flush of anger faded from her cheeks. “Yes, Aunt Amelia.”
“That is better,” I said approvingly. “Drink your coffee and I will tell you the plan.”
I proceeded to do so. Nefret listened in silence, her eyes downcast, her hands tightly folded in her lap. However, she did not miss Emerson’s attempt to tiptoe out of the room. Admittedly, Emerson is not good at tiptoeing.
“Wher
e is he going?” she demanded fiercely.
“To get ready.” I was not at all averse to his leaving, since it enabled me to speak more candidly. “For pity’s sake, Nefret, don’t you suppose that I too yearn to accompany them? I agreed to stay here and keep you with me because I believe it is the best solution.”
Her mutinous look assured me she was unconvinced. I had another argument. It was one I was loath to employ, but honesty demanded I should. “There have been times, not many—one or two—in the past, when my presence distracted Emerson from the struggle in which he was engaged, and resulted in considerable danger to him.”
“Why, Aunt Amelia! Is it true?”
“Only once or twice.”
“I see.” Her brow cleared. “Would you care to tell me about them?”
“I see no point in doing so. It was a long time ago. I know better now. And,” I continued, before she could pursue a subject that clearly interested her a great deal, and which I was not anxious to recall, “I am giving you the benefit of my experience. Their plan is a good one, Nefret. They swore to me that they would retreat in good order if matters did not work out as they expect.”
Her slim shoulders sagged. “How long must we wait?”
I knew then I had won. “They will come straight back, I am sure. Emerson knows if he does not turn up in good time I will go looking for him. He would do anything to avoid that!”
From Letter Collection B
Dearest Lia,
Do you still keep my letters? I suspect you do, though I asked you to destroy them—not only current letters, but the ones I wrote you a few years ago. You said you liked to reread them when we were apart, because it was like hearing my voice. And I said—I’m sorry for what I said, Lia darling! I was horrid to you. I was horrid to everyone! You have my permission—formal, written permission—to keep them if you wish. I would be glad if you did. Someday I may want—I hope I may want—to read them again myself. There was one in particular… I think you know which one.
He Shall Thunder in the Sky taps-12 Page 27
