He Shall Thunder in the Sky (54 page)

     “We may as well see what’s there,” he announced, indicating the opening of the shaft. “Get back to work on your walls, my boy, I will start the men here.”

     “Selim is down there helping Nefret take photographs. They don’t need me.”

     “Oh?” Emerson gave him an odd look. “As you like.”

     He didn’t want to go near Nefret. It would be like showing a hungry child a table loaded with sweets and telling him he must wait until after supper. In a few days, perhaps a few hours, he could confess, beg her forgiveness, and ask her again to marry him. And if she said no he would follow his mother’s advice. The idea was so alluring it dizzied him.

     They didn’t put in a full day’s work after all. His mother dragged them back to the house for an early luncheon, pointing out that it would be rude to ignore their guests. Emerson had to agree, though he hated to tear himself away; as the shaft deepened, they began to find scraps of broken pottery and, finally, a collection of small model offering vessels.

     The Vandergelts had planned to spend that day and night with them, to enjoy what his mother called “the too-long-delayed pleasures of social intercourse with our dearest friends.” She’d enjoy it, at any rate, and Lord knew she deserved a respite. Katherine Vandergelt wasn’t looking her usual self either. War was hell, all right, not only for the men who fought but for the women who stayed at home waiting for news.

     Ramses knew his father had every intention of working that afternoon, no matter what anyone else did. His description of what they had found that morning made the discovery sound a good deal more interesting than it actually was, and Cyrus declared his intention of joining them.

     “I doubt we’ll find an untouched burial,” Ramses warned him. “Those pottery sherds look like bits of the funerary equipment.”

     “There may be something interesting left,” Cyrus said hopefully. “Katherine?”

     “I suppose I may as well come too,” said his wife resignedly. “No, Amelia, I know you are aching to see what’s down there, and if I stay here you will feel obliged to stay with me. What about you, Anna?”

     “I’m going to the hospital.” She looked challengingly at Nefret.

     “You needn’t overdo it, Anna. I rang Sophia earlier; things are quiet just now and she promised to let me know if anything arose that required my presence — or yours.”

     “You aren’t going in today?”

     “No. I have other plans. You can spare me for a few hours, can’t you, Professor?”

     “Where —” Emerson stopped himself and looked at his wife, who said, “Will you be back for dinner?”

     “Yes, I think so.”

     “Enjoy yourself,” Anna said. “I shall go to the hospital. There is always something to be done.”

     Nefret shrugged, excused herself, and left the room. She and Anna must have quarreled; their stiff smiles and sharp voices were the female equivalents of an exchange that would have ended in a brawl if they had been men.

     “Be back in time for tea,” Katherine ordered.

     “I will stay as long as I am needed,” Anna snapped. Without excusing herself, she left the table and the room.

     “Now what is wrong with her?” Katherine demanded. “She has been in a much better frame of mind lately.”

     “One must expect occasional relapses when dealing with the young,” said Ramses’s mother.

     It took only half an hour to reach the burial chamber. Ramses was glad of the distraction the work provided; he knew the chance of finding an undisturbed burial was slight, but it always gave him a queer feeling to penetrate a chamber that had not been entered for thousands of years. This one opened off the south side of the shaft and was almost filled by a large stone coffin. It hadn’t given its owner the protection he wanted; his bones lay scattered on the floor beside the coffin, whose lid had been shifted just far enough to enable the thieves to drag the body out. They had overlooked only a single piece of jewelry: a small scarab which one of them must have dropped.

     “They made a clean sweep, curse them,” said Emerson, after he had climbed up out of the shaft. He and Ramses and Selim had been the only ones to go down; Cyrus would have disregarded his wife’s objections if there had been anything to see, but he was not inclined to risk the crude wooden ladders for a few dried bones.

     “Do you want photographs?” Ramses asked.

     “It can wait until tomorrow,” his mother said firmly. “No thief is going to bother with those scraps. We have done enough for today. More than enough.”

     The look she gave Ramses was pointed and somewhat reproachful. If she had had her way, he would have been in Cairo at this moment, making the arrangements he had promised to make. As he had tried to tell her, it wasn’t that simple. He had rung Russell before luncheon, only to learn that Russell was out of the office and wasn’t expected back until late afternoon. There was a prearranged signal — “inform him that Tewfik Bey has a camel for him.” He had left that message, and if Russell received it he would be at the Turf Club that night.

     The others went back to the house. Ramses stayed on for a bit to help Selim clean up the site and cover the shaft. When he entered the courtyard Fatima darted out of the sitting room and intercepted him.

     “There is someone here, to see you,” she whispered.

     Wondering why she was behaving like a stage conspirator, he glanced round. “Where?”

     “In your room.”

     “My room?” he echoed in surprise.

     Fatima twisted her hands together. “She asked me not to tell anyone else. She said you had invited her. Did I do wrong?”

     “No, it’s all right.” He smiled reassuringly. “Thank you, Fatima.”

     He took the stairs two at a time, anxious to solve this little mystery. He couldn’t imagine who the woman might be. Anna? One of the village women seeking help from an abusive husband or father? It was well known that the Emersons wouldn’t tolerate that sort of thing, and some of the younger women were too much in awe of his mother and father to approach them. Obviously they weren’t in awe of him.

     The smile on his lips faded when he saw the small figure seated on his bed. Reflexively his arm shot out and slammed the door.

     “What the — what are you doing here?”

     The child’s face was limpid with innocence. Streaks had plowed a path through the dust on her cheeks; they might have been caused by perspiration or by tears. She had got herself up in proper visiting attire, but now her pink, low-necked frock was wrinkled, and her hair was loose on her shoulders. With the cool confidence of an invited guest, she had made herself at home; her hat and handbag and a pair of extremely grubby white gloves lay on the bed beside her.

     “I wanted to play with the cat,” she explained. “But it scratched me and ran away.”

     A low grumble of confirmation came from Seshat, perched atop the wardrobe, beyond the reach of small hands.

     “Don’t be childish, Melinda,” Ramses said sternly. “Come downstairs with me at once.”

     Before he could open the door, she had flung herself at him and was hanging on like a frightened kitten. “No! You mustn’t tell anyone I’m here, not yet. Promise you’ll help me. Promise you won’t let him send me away!”

     He put his hands over hers, trying to detach them, but they were clenched tight as claws, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He lowered his arms to his side and stood quite still. “Your uncle?”

     “Yes. He wants to send me back to England. I won’t go! I want to stay here!”

     “If he has decided you must go, there is nothing I can do to prevent it, even if I would. Melinda, do you realize what an ugly position you’ve put me in? If your uncle found out you were here with me, alone in my room — if anyone saw us like this — they would blame me, not you. Is that what you want?”

     “No . . .”

     “Then let go.”

     Slowly the hard little fingers relaxed. She was watching him closely, and for a moment there was a look of cold, adult calculation in her eyes. It passed so quickly, drowned in twin pools of tears, he thought he must have imagined it.

     “
He
hurt me,” she said. With a sudden movement she tugged the dress off one shoulder and down her arm almost to the elbow.

     Her bones were those of a child, fragile and delicate, but the rounded shoulder and the small half-bared breasts were not. There were red spots on her arm, like the marks of fingers.

     “Don’t send me away,” she whispered. “He beats me. He’s cruel to me. I want to be with you. I love you!”

     “Oh, Christ,” Ramses said under his breath. He couldn’t retreat any farther, his back was against the door, and he felt like a bloody fool. Then he heard footsteps. The cavalry had arrived, and in the nick of time, too.

     “Pull your dress up,” he snapped.

     She didn’t move. Ramses grasped the handle and opened the door. “Mother? Will you come here, please?”

     The girl wasn’t crying now. He had never seen so young a face look so implacable. “Hell hath no fury . . . ?” He turned with unconcealed relief to his mother, who stood staring in the doorway.

     “We have a runaway on our hands,” he said.

     “So I see.” She crossed the room, heels thudding emphatically, and yanked the girl’s dress into place. “What are you running away from, Melinda?”

     “My uncle. He beat me. You saw the bruises.”

     “He took you by the shoulders and shook you, I expect. I cannot say I blame him. Come with me.”

     She shrank back. “What are you going to do to me?”

     “Give you a cup of tea and send you home.”

     “I don’t want tea. I want . . .”

     “I know what you want.” She directed a quizzical look at Ramses, who felt his cheeks burning. “You cannot have it. Go downstairs to the sitting room. Now.”

     Ramses had seen that voice galvanize an entire crew of Egyptian workers. It had a similar effect on the child. She snatched up her hat, gloves, and bag, and Ramses stepped hastily out of the way as she ran past him and out the door.

     His mother looked him over, from head to foot and back. She shook her head and pursed her lips. “No. There is nothing that can be done about it,” she said cryptically. “You had better stay here, I can deal with her more effectively if you are not present.”

     After he had bathed and put on clean clothes, Ramses skulked in his room for an additional quarter of an hour before he summoned courage enough to go downstairs. Weeping women unnerved him, and this one wasn’t even a woman, she was only a little girl. (But remarkably mature for her age, jeered a small nasty voice in the back of his mind. He buried it under a pile of guilt.) What else could he have done, though? “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”

     What a smug, self-righteous thing to say to someone whose heart you had cleft in twain. Hamlet had always struck him as something of a prig.

:

I
did not have to deal with the young person after all. She had actually ventured to disobey me! When I came down into the courtyard I saw that the front door stood open and that Ali and Katherine were looking out. Katherine turned as I approached.

     “What was that all about?” she demanded.

     “What was what all about?”

     “The frantic flight of little Miss Hamilton. I was crossing the courtyard when she came pelting down the stairs; she almost knocked me over in her wild rush for the door. I didn’t know she was here. Should we go after her?”

     From where I stood I could see along the road in both directions. There was no sign of a flying pink figure, only the usual pedestrian and vehicular traffic. I considered Katherine’s question. The girl had got here by herself. So far as I was concerned, she could get herself away without my assistance. It was not the decision of a kind Christian woman, but at that moment I did not feel very kindly toward Miss Molly.

     “I think not,” I replied. “She is out of sight now; we have no way of knowing whether she went to the train station, or hired a conveyance.”

     “She ran out into the road and stopped a carriage, Sitt Hakim,” Ali volunteered. “She had money; she showed it to the driver.”

     That news relieved my conscience, which had been struggling to make itself heard over my justifiable annoyance. I promised myself that I would telephone her uncle later, on some pretext, to make sure she had got home safely.

     Katherine was frowning slightly. As we returned to the courtyard she said, “Something must have happened to upset her. What was she doing here?”

     The others had come down for tea. I heard voices in the sitting room, and Cyrus’s deep chuckle. I saw no need to discuss the affair with the men, so I stopped and gave Katherine an explanation which was the truth, if not the whole truth.

     “Her uncle is sending her home. She doesn’t want to go. You know how unreasonable children can be; she had some nonsensical notion of staying with us.”

     “She’s old enough to know better,” Katherine said.

     “But badly spoiled. There is no need to mention this to the others, Katherine.”

     “As you like, Amelia dear.”

     Ramses was slow in making an appearance. After a quick involuntary glance at me, to which I responded with a nod and a smile, he avoided my eyes. I trust I may not be accused of maternal prejudice when I say that I did not wonder at the child — or at any of the other women who had made nuisances of themselves about him. He was a fine-looking young man, with his father’s handsome features and the easy grace of an athlete, but there was something more: the indefinable glow cast upon a countenance by the beauty of a noble character, of kindness and modesty and courage. . . .

     “What are you smiling at, Mother?” He had seen my fond look. It made him extremely nervous. He adjusted his tie and passed his hand over his hair, trying to flatten the clustering curls.

     “A pleasant little private thought, my dear,” I replied. And private it must remain; he would have been horribly embarrassed if I had voiced my thoughts aloud.