The Last Camel Died at Noon (35 page)

'I will fetch the young one,' said Mentarit tactfully.

'He is probably under the bed,' I remarked, reaching for my robe. 'What do you suppose she wants him for?'

'Ours not to reason why,' said Emerson. 'Where the devil is my sash? Ah, here it is. Ours but to - '

The reappearance of Mentarit with Ramses in tow mercifully prevented him from completing the depressing quotation. 'Ah, there you are, my boy,' he said pleasantly. 'Sorry to knock you up; it was the lady's idea.'

'I was not asleep,' said Ramses. 'Where are we going, Papa?'

'Cursed if I know,' said Emerson.

'Sssh,' said Mentarit.

I wondered at her assurance, for although she had cautioned us to silence, she seemed not to fear being discovered. One part of the mystery was explained when we reached the anteroom. There were four guards, motionless as statues, their great spears reflecting the lamplight. They did not move even their eyes as Mentarit led us past them.

'Hypnotised, perhaps,' I breathed.

'By my eloquence,' said Emerson. 'Hem. Didn't you recognise them?'

The great wooden doors were closed and bolted. Mentarit ignored them, directing us through a series of corridors that grew ever narrower and plainer, and then down a flight of stairs that ended in a small door covered with coarse matting. Mentarit thrust it aside; we filed through, to find ourselves in a walled courtyard. I let out a stifled exclamation, for the sight was a horrid one - row upon row of motionless bodies, stretched out like corpses in the pale light of the waning moon.

We had to pick a path among them. As I stepped carefully over one prostrate body I caught a gleam of eyes, open and alert, and I knew the truth. This was the sleeping place of the servant-slaves; the sky their only roof, a thin mat their only bed. But they were not sleeping. Wherever we stepped, those wide, watching eyes were upon us. Call me fanciful if you will, but I felt the thoughts they dared not express aloud - hope and encouragement and goodwill - guiding my steps like warm, helping hands.

A gate opened out onto the hillside and a pile of vile-smelling refuse. Mentarit picked up her skirts and started to run, following a narrow path of beaten earth. She was as fleet as a hare, and I was quite breathless when she finally came to a stop. Looking down at the causeway far below, I saw just ahead a familiar pyloned gateway. We were on the edge of the cemetery.

When I looked back, Mentarit had disappeared. Emerson took my hand. 'Another tunnel, Peabody. There is a hole here, behind the rock.'

There were a good many holes, fissures, and cracks. The one Emerson indicated did not look promising, but I squeezed through and felt Mentarit's hand clasp mine. Emerson's broad shoulders stuck but he got through at the expense of a few inches of skin.

Mentarit struck a light. She seemed more at ease now that we were under cover, but she went even more quickly. The tunnels looked exactly like the ones we had traversed earlier, narrow and dark and unadorned. For all I knew they might be part of the same network.

We must have travelled for a good twenty minutes through this maze. At last we came to a steep stairway, lit by a glow from an opening above. I followed Mentarit, with Ramses close on my heels and Emerson bringing up the rear. Soft though the lamplight was, it blinded me after the relative darkness of the tunnel. Mentarit guided me through the opening and I found myself standing upon a bare stone floor.

The chamber was small and so low Emerson's head brushed the ceiling as he climbed up to join me. A dark rectangle on the far wall indicated a more conventional entrance to the room, which was unfurnished except for another of the low stone benches. Someone was sitting on it - not the stalwart male figure I had expected, but a veiled female. Another swaddled form stood by her, holding a lamp. Mentarit went to stand on the other side of the seated woman, whose gold-embroidered veils glittered in the light.

'Oh, good Gad,' exclaimed Emerson. 'Not another one!'

For the figure had risen, and he saw at once, as did I, that it was not the same woman who had kissed the grisly brow of the dead man. This form was slighter and its movements more graceful. A long shiver passed through her; her diaphanous draperies fluttered like the wings of a frightened bird. Then, with a sudden gesture, like a bird taking flight, she flung them back and they drifted to the ground.

Her slim body, scarcely concealed by the flimsy garment beneath the veils, was that of a girl on the threshold of womanhood. Her face was heart-shaped, curving gently from rounded cheeks to a delicate pointed chin. Her skin had the translucent lustre of a pearl. The faintest tinge of rose warmed its pallor. Her eyes were blue - not the blazing sapphire of Emerson's, but the tender azure of forget-me-nots. Delicate brows arched above them, long lashes framed them. And from her broad white brow the crowning glory of her hair fell over her shoulders and down her back, a flood of molten gold bright with coppery highlights.

The first sound that broke the stillness came from somewhere in the region of my left shoulder blade. It resembled the last drops of water gurgling from a hose.

Emerson, on my right, let out his breath in a great sigh. The girl's lips trembled and her eyes swam with tears. I knew I ought to say something - do something - but for perhaps the first time in my life I was literally incapable of speech.

Straightening, she squared her little shoulders and tried to smile. 'Professor and Mrs Emerson, I presume?' she said.

Her voice was soft and sweet, with a quaint little accent. There was another gurgle from Ramses, and a choking sound from Emerson, who is very sentimental under his brusque exterior.

I ran to her and threw my arms around her. I cannot remember what I said. It is safe to assume that I said something.

She clung to me for a moment, and I felt a few hot tears dampen my shoulder. They were quickly controlled, however. 'I beg your pardon,' she said, drawing away. 'I had quite given up hope. You cannot know what it means to me... But we are in desperate danger, and we dare not waste time. You are - you will - you won't leave me here?'

Emerson cleared his throat noisily and stepped forwards, holding out his hand. She gave him hers; his big brown fingers closed over it. 'I would as soon leave Ramses,' he declared.

'Ramses.' She glanced at him and smiled. 'Forgive me for failing to greet you. I have heard a great deal about you from -from a friend of mine.'

'You must forgive us, my dear,' I said. 'For staring so rudely and behaving as if we had lost our wits. The truth is, we had no idea you were here.'

'The truth is we had no idea you existed,' said Emerson. 'Good Gad! I have not recovered my wits yet. You can only be Willoughby Forth's daughter, but you seem so... How old are you, child?'

'I was thirteen years of age on April 15,' was the reply. 'My father taught me to reckon time as the English do, and impressed upon me the importance of remembering that date - and many other details, so that I would not forget my heritage. But please forgive me if I do not answer your other questions - you must have many, and, oh! so do I. I must return at once; my loyal handmaidens - of whom, alas! there are only a few - will suffer a hideous fate if my absence is discovered. This meeting had to be arranged in haste, without the precautions I would have preferred. We learned only a short time ago that you had been shown an impostor. I was afraid - so afraid! - you would believe in her, and leave without me.'

'Wait, my dear,' I exclaimed. 'Questions that serve only to satisfy our curiosity must wait, but there are others of burning importance. How are we to communicate with you? Whom can we trust? This place appears to be a hotbed of intrigue.'

'You are quite right, Mrs Emerson.' Mentarit touched her shoulder and whispered in her ear, and she nodded. 'Yes, we must hurry. Fear not, those questions and others will be answered, by the person who will take you back to your house.'

'Mentarit?'

'No, she must return with me. But your guide is someone you know - the friend of whom I spoke. My dearest friend.' She turned; and from the passageway behind her came a man. He wore the short coarse kilt of a commoner; a hood or mask of the same loosely woven fabric covered his head and the upper part of his face. Feet, breast, and arms were bare, with no distinguishing marks of rank or rich ornaments. I knew him, though, even before he pushed the hood back from his brow.

'Prince Tarek,' I said. 'So you are the Friend of the Rekkit. I thought so.'

'Your eyes are keen as an eagle's, Lady,' said Tarek with a smile. 'I came to you in darkness because I knew that you would recognise your servant even when he was masked and in the dress of a commoner. Now we must hasten. And you, little sister -'

She threw her arms around him. It was the innocent embrace of a child; her shining head barely reached his shoulder. 'Take care, dear brother. I will be ready when you summon me.'

And with a last radiant smile at us she wrapped the veils around her and vanished into the opening from which Tarek had come. Mentarit and the other girl followed. Tarek stood looking after her until the glow of the lamp died into darkness.

'Come,' he said in sonorous tones. 'You shall know all; but there is no time to lose. You must be back in your accustomed place before dawn tiptoes into the eastern sky.'

Emerson descended the stairs first while Tarek held the lamp. I was about to follow my husband when I realised that Ramses was still standing, rigid as a block of wood, in the exact spot he had occupied throughout the interview.

'Ramses!' I said sharply. 'What the dev - Come here at once!'

Ramses jumped. When he turned I saw that his face was as Wank and withdrawn as that of a sleepwalker. I seized him and shook him briskly. 'Get down there!' I ordered.

He obeyed without so much as a 'Yes, Mama.' A hideous foreboding gripped me.

Tarek was the last to descend, drawing the trapdoor back into place as he did so. As we hastened along the path by which we had come he told us, not all but a good deal.

'I was still in the Women's House [i.e., he was less than six years of age, at which time boys left the care of their mothers]" when the strangers came. It was a great wonder to me. I had never seen people like them, especially the lady, with her strange white face and her hair like a moonlit stream. My Uncle Pesaker, who had just become High Priest of Aminreh, feared the white man and would have slain him; but my mother quoted from the old books of wisdom that tell us the gods love those who give water to the thirsty and clothing to the naked. The lady was ill, and she was soon to have a child.

'My mother's words moved my father, who was a kindly man; and soon he came to love the white man, who gave him good counsel and taught him many things. I too grew to love the stranger; I drank in his words about the great world beyond this place.

'After the child was born, her mother sought the god. The child was given to my mother's women to nurse, for her father denied her. Later, though, he came to love her and found happiness in her care. He named her Nefret, the beautiful maiden, and she was... But you have seen her. She was like a white lotus, and when I first saw her she curled her fingers around my hand-and smiled at me.'

He was silent for a time. Then he said, 'I must be brief, for soon we must go in silence. The sage, as we called him, had sworn to stay with us forever; he hated the world outside and we were his children. But one day he sickened and he felt the cold breath of the Gatherer of Souls, and he opened his eyes and saw his child would soon be a child no longer but a woman grown. My mother had died, my father was old - and my brother, my brother Nastasen had also seen Nefret blossom with the promise of womanhood. For who could see her and not desire her...'

'I think you love her too,' I said softly. 'Yet you are willing to help her escape.'

Tarek sighed. 'The day does not mate with the darkness, or the black with the white.'

'Bah,' said Emerson. 'Of all the silly twaddle!'

'Hush, Emerson,' I said. 'You are a noble man, Tarek.'

'She must go back to her own people, that was the desire of her father,' Tarek said. Again he sighed. 'I will wed Mentarit, whom I also love, and she will be my Chief Wife, Queen of the Holy Mountain.'

He stopped, holding the lamp high. 'From now on we creep like lizards, under the open sky. Hear me. From Forth I also learned that all men are brothers under the law. When he sent me to find Nefret's people, I saw the world of the white man. There is cruelty and suffering there, but some among you strive for justice. I would bring that justice to my people. I saw that another thing of which Forth had warned me was true. The soldiers of the English queen gather like locusts along the great river. Someday they will find this place and we will be like mice in the claws of the sacred cats of Bastet. I alone can prepare my people for that time. I alone can lift the sufferings of the rekkit. Because of these beliefs, and because I would keep Nefret from him, my brother hates me. He wants the kingship and will do anything to get it. He will kill you if he can, for you have shown kindness to my people and defied his orders. Be wary! Stay in your house! An assassin's arrow can strike from afar! Trust only Mentarit. Even the men wearing my colours may be my brother's spies.'

He gave us no time to ask further questions, but hastened on. After we had squeezed through the hole in the hillside he increased his pace. The moon was down. The breeze that cooled our perspiring faces had the fresh smell of morning.

When Tarek stopped we were still some distance from our abode but I could see its outlines; the sky had lightened that much. 'I talked too long, the hour is late,' he whispered urgently. Can you find your way from here? You must be in your rooms before the sun lifts over the mountain, and so must I.'

'Yes,' I answered. 'But what about Amenit? She is - '

'My brother's spy,' said Tarek. 'But the wine she and her lover drank tonight was drugged. Tell him nothing of this! He believes the lies she told him, and he... There is no time! Begone!'

He followed his own advice, melting into the darkness like a shadow. The sound of his passage was no louder than the rustle of dry grass in the wind.