The Ape Who Guards the Balance (13 page)

“Curse—” I began. “Er—mille pardons, Madame. I am afraid that is Professor Emerson, come to get me. He is not a patient man.”

Madame smiled. “Yes, I have heard this about Professor Emerson. He is welcome, of course.”

She gestured at the servant, who bowed and backed out. The white chiffon boukra had golden loops that hooked over the ears. Madame adjusted hers, and the door of the sitting room opened to admit, not the Professor, but Ramses and David.

I wanted to murder them, but I could not help feeling a little proud of my menfolk. They were looking particularly smart. David is always neat and well-groomed, and Ramses was wearing his best tweed suit. I supposed he had forgotten his hat, since his hair was somewhat windblown; it is very wavy and usually too long, since he dislikes taking the time to have it cut. I could tell Madame was favorably impressed, despite the veil that concealed most of her features. She looked them over, slowly and deliberately, and then gestured to Ramses to take a seat beside her on the divan.

Ramses shook his head. “Ma chère Madame, we would not dream of taking up your time. My sister is expected at the hotel for a dinner engagement. I am only pleased to be able to express my admiration and that of my parents for your encouragement of a cause we all support.”

Ramses speaks French, as he does many languages, fluently and idiomatically. When Madame replied, I thought she sounded amused. “Ah. So you too are a believer in the emancipation of women?”

“It could hardly be otherwise, Madame.”

“Naturellement. I had hoped I might persuade your mother to write a little article for our journal. Have you perhaps seen it?”

“Not yet, but I look forward to doing so. I will pass your request on to my mother. I am sure she would be pleased to assist in any way. Now, if you will excuse us . . .”

“Un moment, s’il vous plaît.” Her hands went to the back of her neck. After a moment she lowered them and displayed a gold chain from which depended a small carved pendant. “A small token of esteem for your distinguished mother,” she said. “It is the insignia of our organization.”

Ramses bowed. “You are most gracious, Madame. Surely this is of ancient Egyptian origin—the baboon, one of the symbols of Thoth.”

“It is appropriate, n’est-ce pas? The ape who sits beside the balance that weighs the heart. It might be considered a symbol of justice.”

“It might,” said Ramses.

It was an ungracious response, I thought, and anyhow Ramses had been monopolizing the conversation too long. I reached for the little trinket. “The justice women deserve, and that they will attain one day! I will give it to her, Madame. I know she will treasure it.”

“Let me put it round your neck so you won’t lose it.”

She insisted on fastening it with her own hands. The pendant was carved of a red-brown stone. It was surprisingly heavy.

She did not see us to the door. The little garden was a magical place in the night shadows, redolent with the sweet smell of jasmine, but I was not allowed to linger; Ramses had me by the arm, and he shoved me into the carriage with more energy than courtesy. David helped Fatima in and we started off.

“What was the point of that performance?” I demanded.

“I wanted to have a look at the lady,” Ramses replied coolly.

“So I deduced. And what did you think of her?”

“I concluded,” said Ramses, “that she was no one I had met before.”

I hadn’t expected
that;
I had assumed that Ramses was playing big brother on general principles. “Good Gad!” I exclaimed. “Sethos? Ramses, that is the most far-fetched hypothesis—”

“Not so far-fetched. However, it appears my theory was unfounded. Sethos is a master of disguise, but not even he could take eight inches off his height or reduce the size of that prominent aquiline nose. The lady’s veil was thin enough for me to make out the outline of her features.”

“And I saw those features unveiled,” I reminded him. “There can be no doubt of her gender. Her cheeks were smooth, her countenance benevolent and kind.”

“Kind,” said Fatima, who had been following the conversation intently and who had understood that word, at least. “Kind, good teacher.”

Ramses said in Arabic, “Yes. We will get another teacher for you when we reach Luxor, Fatima. Won’t we, Nefret?”

“You mean me, I suppose. By all means, if we can’t find someone better than I. Curse it, Ramses, what on earth put it into your head that Sethos might have taken up a teaching career?”

Ramses looked a little sheepish. It’s hard to tell, I admit, but I have been making a study of his expressions, such as they are. “Sheepish” is two quick blinks and a slight compression of his lips.

“Father put it into my head. Admittedly he is not entirely reasonable about Sethos, but once he inserted the idea it found fertile ground. You’ve never seen Sethos in action. The man is a confounded genius, Nefret.”

“Well, you and the Professor were wrong this time.”

“You aren’t angry that we came after you, are you?” David asked.

I
was
annoyed, but not with him. I knew perfectly well whose idea that “rescue” expedition had been. I leaned forward and brushed the curls back from Ramses’s forehead. He hates it when I do that.

“You meant well,” I admitted. “But I find it difficult to forgive you for bringing me back in time to dine with those boring people.”

:

I
t took us almost two weeks to reach Luxor, despite the assistance of the motorized tug that accompanied us. The delays were only the usual sort of thing, but my intuition, which is seldom in error, assured me that everyone seemed preoccupied and on edge. The boys were particularly restless, prowling the deck all day and half the night. There was no doubt about it, the dear old dahabeeyah was too cramped for such energetic individuals, though Fatima had gone on ahead by train to get the house in order and David was able to reclaim his room.

I attempted to distract my mind with scholarly work, but even I, well disciplined though I am, was unable to settle down to anything. In past years I had made something of a reputation with my translations of little Egyptian fairy tales, but when I looked over the material at hand I could not find anything that caught my interest. I had already done the most entertaining of them: The Tales of the Doomed Prince and the Two Brothers, the Adventures of Sinuhe, the Shipwrecked Sailor. When I voiced my difficulty to Emerson he suggested I turn my attention to historical documents.

“Breasted has published the first volume of his texts,” he added. “You could correct his translations.”

Emerson was making one of his little jokes. Mr. Breasted of Chicago was a linguist whom even Walter respected, and Volume One of his
Ancient Records of Egypt
had appeared that spring to universal acclamation. I smiled politely.

“I have no intention of treading on Mr. Breasted’s toes, Emerson.”

“Tread on Budge’s toes, then. His translation of the Book of the Dead is riddled with errors.”

“Ramses appears to be working on that,” I said. I had seen the photographs on Ramses’s desk and wondered when and where he had acquired them.

“That must be another version, not the one Budge mangled. His is in the British Museum, as you ought to know—one of Budge’s contemptible violations of the laws against purchasing antiquities from dealers. Why the authorities at the Museum continue to countenance that villain . . .”

I left the room. Emerson’s opinions of Mr. Budge were only too familiar to me.

What with one aggravation or another, I was even more pleased than usual to round the curve in the river and see before me the monumental ruins of the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the buildings of the modern village of Luxor. The village was rapidly becoming a town, with new hotels and government buildings rising everywhere. Tourist steamers lined the bank. There were a few dahabeeyahs among them; certain wealthy visitors, especially those who returned to Egypt every season, preferred the comfort of a private boat.

Our friend Cyrus Vandergelt was one of them. His boat, the
Valley of the Kings
, was moored on the West Bank, across from Luxor. He was good enough to share his private dock with us, and as the
Amelia
glided in under the skillful hands of Reis Hassan, I saw the usual reception party awaiting us. Abdullah was there, stately as a high priest in the snowy robes he preferred, and Selim, his beloved youngest son, and Daoud and Ibrahim and Mohammed—the men who had worked for us so long and who had become friends as well as valued employees.

Over the years Abdullah’s once-formal manner toward me had gradually softened; now he took my outstretched hand in both of his and pressed it warmly.

“You look well, Abdullah,” I said. It was true, and I was relieved to see it, for he had suffered a mild heart attack the previous year. Precisely how old he was I did not know, but his beard had been grizzled when I first met him, and that had been over twenty years ago. We had given up trying to persuade him to retire with a well-deserved pension; it would have broken his heart to leave us and the work he loved as much as we did.

Abdullah straightened his shoulders. “I am well, Sitt. And you—you do not change. You will always be young.”

“Why, Abdullah,” I said, laughing. “I believe that is the first compliment you have ever paid me.”

I passed him over to the respectful embrace of his grandson David, and went to Ramses, who was embracing his horse. The beautiful Arabian stallion had been a gift from our old friend Sheikh Mohammed, with whom Ramses and David had lived for a time learning to ride and shoot—and, I suspected, learning other things they had never admitted to me. High-spirited yet gentle, as intelligent as he was handsome, Risha had won all our hearts, as had his consort Asfur, who belonged to David.

Emerson’s amiable curses ended the demonstration and we proceeded to the house. Fatima was waiting for us on the verandah, and I was delighted to see that the vines I had planted the previous year were flourishing. Abdullah had never bothered to water them. Now they twined green arms up the trellises that framed the open window apertures, and blooming roses scattered crimson petals onto the dusty ground.

The young people immediately went off to the stables, accompanied by Selim; he was an excitable young fellow, and even Ramses was unable to get a word in as Selim reported on the livestock that had been left in his charge. The donkeys had been washed, the goat Tetisheri was fatter than ever, and the filly . . .

Asfur and Risha had become proud parents the previous year. Nefret, whose claim to the beautiful little creature no one denied, had named her Moonlight; she was a gray, like her sire, but of a paler shade that glowed with a pearl-like luster. Nefret had a well-nigh uncanny rapport with animals of all kinds; by the time we left Egypt in the spring the filly had taken to following her like a puppy. She had, of course, never known the touch of saddle or bridle.

When Nefret came back, her face was alight with pleasure. “She remembers me!”

“She certainly does,” I said, for Moonlight was at her heels, quite prepared, as it appeared, to join us for luncheon. Frustrated in this purpose she went round to the window opening and poked an inquiring nose at Horus, who was sitting on the ledge. Horus was accustomed to horses, but not on his territory. He sprang up with a hiss, his fur bristling, and the filly began to browse on my roses.

Nefret finally persuaded her to go with Selim, and the rest of us sat down to eat. This sort of fraternization, which had become a custom with us, was a source of scandalized gossip among the European community of Luxor. The more “liberal” of them condescended from time to time to entertain Egyptians of the wealthy, educated class, but none of them would have sat at table with their own workers. Our people were of a superior sort, of course.

Naturally I did not invite Fatima to join us. She would have been as horrified at the idea of sitting with a group of men as the men themselves would have been. She bustled back and forth, superintending the service of the food and drink.

When we had caught up on the gossip—marriages, deaths, illness, new babies—Emerson pushed his chair back and took out his pipe.

“So, Selim,” he said genially. “What have your rascally relations in Gurneh been up to lately? Any new tombs?”

A shadow of vexation crossed the imperturbable countenance of my son, who had taken up his favorite position on the window ledge, with his back against a pillar. I thought I understood its cause, for I shared the emotion. Emerson is so direct and forthright he does not understand that inquiries of that sort should not be pursued so directly. Selim was related by blood or marriage to a good many of the Gurnawis, and a good many of the Gurnawis were accomplished tomb robbers. A direct question put all our men, especially Abdullah, in a difficult position; they had to choose between informing on their kin or lying to us.

Selim, sitting on the ledge next to Ramses and David, looked uncomfortable. He was a handsome young man, with the big dark eyes and well-cut features of his handsome family, and he bore a strong resemblance to his nephew David, who was only a few years younger than he. With an apologetic glance at Abdullah, he said, “No new tombs, Father of Curses. Nothing. Rumors only. The usual rumors . . .”

“What rumors?” Emerson demanded.

“Now, Emerson, this is not the time for that sort of discussion,” I said, taking pity on the afflicted youth. I knew Emerson had already quizzed Abdullah, but Abdullah had been away from Luxor most of the summer, visiting family in Atiyah near Cairo, so he could not be expected to know as much as Selim about what had been going on in Thebes. At least he had a good excuse for claiming not to know.

“What about the antiquities dealers?” I went on. “Has anything of unusual interest turned up?”

That was safer ground, for once a stolen or looted object reached the hands of the dealers it became public knowledge. Brightening, Selim rattled off a list of artifacts which had come onto the market. Even Emerson could find nothing of particular significance among them. It annoyed him a great deal; he had hoped there would be evidence that the Gurnawis had discovered a rich new tomb, which would give him an excuse to look for it.