The Falcon at the Portal: An Amelia Peabody Mystery (18 page)

We had all been disappointed to learn they did not mean to join us until after Christmas. David had been offered a wonderful opportunity to assist in restoring the frescoes of the palace of Knossos in Crete. He had always been interested in the Minoan influences on Egyptian art, and this invitation from Sir Arthur Evans, one of the most distinguished names in archaeology, was a tribute to David's growing reputation as a skilled copyist. Lia, it was clear, did not care where she was so long as she was with him.

In my opinion, this news was not enough to account for Nefret's uncharacteristic behavior. Hers was not a temperament given to gloomy introspection. With a young unmarried lady one particular explanation for mental perturbation comes to mind, so I set myself to determine whether a particular young man was responsible. Jack Reynolds and Geoffrey Godwin were the most likely suspects, I thought. Both were nice-looking, young, gentlemanly, well-educated, and professionally engaged in Egyptology. A fond parent or, as in my case, an individual in loco parentis, could hardly ask for more.

However, careful observation convinced me that Nefret did ask for more, and that she had not found what she wanted in either man. Her manner with Geoffrey was gentler than her teasing exchanges with the lively young American, but there is a certain look... I did not see it—and I am seldom mistaken about such things.

One mystery was solved when Ramses told us about his meeting with the leader of the Young Egypt party.

We were having breakfast on the upper deck, as was our habit, and Emerson was swearing, as was his habit, about the smoke and the stench and the increased river traffic. Ramses was late in joining us. The dark circles under his eyes were particularly prominent that morning, so, though I make it a point to allow the young people a proper degree of privacy, I felt obliged to ask him what he had been up to.

It would be inaccurate and unfair to say that Ramses often lied. He seldom had to; even at a tender age he had been a master of equivocation and his skills had become honed with time. On this occasion he replied that he had intended to inform us of the matter that very morning and would do so at once if I liked. Taking this with the usual shakerful of salt, I invited him to proceed.

Though the narrative raised innumerable questions, we let him talk without interruption—I because I knew the futility of trying to interrupt Ramses, Emerson because he had only had one cup of coffee and was not fully awake, Nefret because (my infallible instincts informed me) she knew already.

"You think he was telling the truth, then?" said Emerson, when Ramses stopped talking. "I am relieved to hear it. I had wondered..."

"You, too, Professor?" Nefret exclaimed.

"The suspicion was painful but unavoidable," Emerson said. "I gather we all shared it, and were reluctant to say so."

"Not I," I said, helping Ramses to eggs and bacon. "I won't scold you for wearing yourself out unnecessarily, Ramses; if your mind is now at ease, the effort was worthwhile. But I could have told you not to bother."

"Your intuition, I suppose?" Emerson inquired, taking out his pipe.

"It is based, in my case at least, on long experience and a profound understanding of human nature."

"Bah," said Emerson mildly. "I'll wager you didn't think of the nationalist cause as a possible motive for David's wanting money. I confess I did not. That's the devil of a complication, I must say. Kitchener is determined to crush the radical nationalists, and Wardani is his principal quarry. Is David deeply involved with the movement?"

"Not so deeply that he is under official suspicion," Ramses said. "At least I believe not. I hoped I could persuade Wardani to keep David at a distance. I may or may not have succeeded."

"Can't you talk some sense into David?" Emerson demanded. "You are his closest friend."

"I tried." Ramses had not touched his food. It was always difficult to know what he was thinking—as opposed to what he was saying—but there was an unusual degree of emotion in his voice when he went on. "It was a serious error on my part."

"Why?" Nefret demanded.

"Because I was smug and condescending. I didn't mean to be, but that's how it must have sounded—a kindly lecture, for his own good. It is precisely that attitude that Egyptians like David and Wardani resent in us. And when he talked about Denshawai ... He's become obsessed with it, and who the devil am I to tell him he ought not care?"

The word is probably meaningless to most of my readers. Though the incident had occurred only a few years before the time of which I write, and had stirred up considerable furor even in the British press, it had soon been forgotten. We have very short memories where injustice to others is concerned, especially when we are the ones responsible for it. The incident had been one of the darkest blots on the British administration and a source of shame to all decent Englishmen.

The mud-brick towers of dovecotes are familiar features in the Egyptian scene, for the peasants raise pigeons for food. When a party of British officers went pigeon hunting at the village of Denshawai, the villagers were understandably enraged; as a distinguished British writer pointed out, it was as if a party of Chinese sportsmen had begun shooting the ducks and geese swimming in the pond of a Devonshire farmer.

A temporary truce was reached, but a year later the sportsmen returned to Denshawai. They were only a few hundred yards from the village when they began firing, and the infuriated villagers attacked them—not with guns, for they had none, but with rocks and wooden staves. In the ensuing struggle four Egyptians were shot, and an officer who had been beaten died while hastening to bring help to the others. Medically speaking, his demise was due to sunstroke and overexertion, but the authorities decided to make an example of the case. Twenty-one villagers were sentenced, four of them to death, some to penal servitude, and the rest to fifty lashes. The sentences of hanging and flogging were carried out at the place where the incident had occurred, and the villagers, including the relatives of the condemned, were made to watch.

Emerson had been one of those who protested the dreadful business, in impassioned letters to the English newspapers and in personal interviews with Lord Cromer. Even now his face flushed darkly with indignation when he remembered.

"Cursed if it doesn't make me want to join Wardani myself," he muttered.

Ramses had regained his customary composure. "Quite. Mother would say two wrongs don't make a right, and the end does not justify the means, and so oft; more to the point, retaliation in kind only makes matters worse. The Denshawai affair provoked the assassination of Boutros Ghali, which led in turn to harsher treatment of the nationalists. To all intents and purposes the movement is dead. So may Wardani be if they track him down and he resists arrest."

"Hmmm, yes." Emerson tapped the ashes from his pipe. "Perhaps I might have a word with David."

"It would be better coming from you than from me," Ramses admitted.

"We'll keep him too busy to get into mischief," Nefret said. "I'm sure Lia will cooperate."

By concentrating all my considerable efforts and forcing my assistants to do the same, I got the house ready in record time. Fatima whirled through the rooms like a small black tornado directing the activities of the workers Selim had delivered. They were all friends and relations of his and Fatima's, and they worked diligently and intelligently. Selim did not want to be there; aided and abetted by Emerson, who did not want to be there either, he kept inventing excuses to absent himself. I got a little help from Nefret, none at all from Ramses, a great deal from Daoud and his wife Kadija, and a considerable amount of interference from Maude Reynolds, who turned up every morning offering her assistance. As soon as she found out Ramses was not there (he usually was not), she disappeared and I saw her no more.

One wing of the villa was soon ready for occupancy. The tiled floors gleamed, the walls shone with whitewash, the insect and rodent populations had been persuaded to find other lodgings, and Fatima was busily hemming curtains. We moved our possessions on the Thursday, and on the Friday, which was the day of rest for our Moslem friends, I decided I was entitled to a little holiday of my own. The others had been at Zawaiet el 'Aryan almost every day, for at least part of the day (whenever they could get away from me, to be precise); almost every evening I had to listen to Emerson's enthusiastic description of his activities.

I went to Emerson's new study to tell him I would join him that day, anticipating the pleasure the news would give him. I had left him shelving books. The books were still in the boxes, the shelves were empty, and Emerson was nowhere to be seen.

After searching the house and discovering that the rest of them had got away from me too, I went to the stable. Part of the building was already occupied by what Ramses called Nefret's menagerie. She collected abandoned and injured animals the way some young girls collect jewelry. In less than a week, she had acquired a large, homely yellow dog, an orphaned gazelle, and a hawk with a broken wing. The latter would be returned to the wild as soon as the wing healed, unless it became so attached to her it refused to leave. A good many of the creatures did. The dog—one of the least attractive specimens of the canine species I had ever encountered—had to be shut in the shed when she left the house to keep it from following her. What we were going to do with the gazelle I could not imagine.

The previous day Selim had brought the horses from Atiyah. The Arabians were gone from the stable, as I had expected. Only one of the hired animals, a skittish bay mare, remained in her stall.

She rolled a critical eye in my direction when I instructed Mohammed to saddle her.

Mohammed also looked dubious. "The Father of Curses told me not to—"

"Never mind what he told you. They have gone to Zawaiet el 'Aryan, I suppose? Well, I am going there too. Please do as I say."

"But, Sitt Hakim, the Father of Curses said I should not let you go alone."

"Nonsense. You don't suppose I would lose my way, do you? I, who know every inch of the terrain from Abu Roash to Giza, from Sakkara to Abusir?"

I tend to exaggerate just a bit when I speak Arabic—it is a habit I got from Emerson—but the general sense of my claim was accurate.

Mohammed shook his head mournfully. He knew he was in for a lecture from Emerson if he did not accompany me, and a scolding from me if he insisted on doing so. The lecture was not imminent; the scolding was. His decision was not surprising.

"At least you will take your parasol, Sitt."

He gave the word the English pronunciation, and very odd it sounded. My parasol had come to be regarded as a weapon of extreme magical potency. In addition to its psychological effect, it is the most useful all-round implement imaginable, serving as walking stick, sunshade and—since my parasols are made with stout steel shafts and rather pointed tips—weapon. I assured Mohammed I would go fully armed.

Then I heard a low growl and saw in the shadows two green-glowing orbs. No wonder the poor horse was nervous. Horus must have been there the whole time, staring her out of countenance and imitating a lion.

"I will have something to say to
you
later," I informed the cat, and led my steed out of the stable before mounting.

It was a beautiful morning, clear and still—a perfect day for pyramids. Annoyance has an unfortunate effect on one's literary style; phrases like "work my fingers to the bone" and "sacrifice my own inclinations to the needs of others" dominated my musings. However, I am not the sort of person who allows resentment to spoil her pleasure. When I found my errant family I would express myself in a few well-chosen words; until then, I would enjoy the passing moment and the moments to come.

If I had been the sort of person who broods on her injuries, I would have found an additional cause of resentment in what had been going on at the site during my enforced (by duty) absence. After our first visit I had gone looking for the reports of Signor Barsanti, which I had last seen in the hands of Ramses. They were not in the bookshelves in the saloon; they were not on the upper deck; they were not on Ramses's desk in his room. I finally ran them to ground under a chair in the saloon and sat down to read them at once before someone else carried them off and misplaced them.

Honesty compels me to confess that the pyramid was a good deal more interesting than I had believed. As Emerson had said, in his quaint fashion, it is the interiors of pyramids that fascinate me, perhaps because they recall childhood fantasies about caves and underground passages, crypts and buried treasure. He can speculate about construction methods and fossiliferous limestone and angles of inclination and headers and stretchers all he likes; for my part, I will take a long, dark, complicated substructure any day. This one appeared to be quite nice, and I did not believe for a moment that Signor Barsanti had explored it properly.

Before I had gone a mile, whom should I chance to meet but Geoffrey Godwin, strolling along with his hands in his pockets.

"Why, Mrs. Emerson," he exclaimed, removing his pith helmet. "What an unexpected pleasure!"

"Is it really?"

A shy smile crossed his face. "A pleasure, certainly; unexpected—well, not entirely. I happened to run into the others a little while ago. They said they were on their way to Zawaiet el 'Aryan and that you would probably follow as soon as you— er—"

"Discovered they had eluded me," I finished. "That was Emerson, I suppose. He was quite correct. I am on my way there now, Mr. Godwin."