Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [108]
“Eventually. Ah.” He picked up a fragment and examined it. “No. The handwriting is similar, but this is part of a list of supplies.”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said. “I am off to the Castle for tea. Any messages for Cyrus?”
Walter only grunted. Ramses got up and went with me to the door. “What’s on your mind, Mother?” he asked, eyebrows tilting.
“Nothing, my dear. Er—you haven’t come across any other interesting predictions in the papyrus, I suppose?”
He took me by the shoulders and gave them an affectionate squeeze. “Honestly, Mother! You don’t credit that nonsense, do you?”
“Certainly not,” I said, laughing. “À bientôt, then.”
As Walter had explained, it would be virtually impossible to match the date on the papyrus with a modern calendar. However, if one took as a point of departure the day on which our accident had occurred, and counted the days from then on . . . It was only a matter of academic curiosity, and one I would not be able to satisfy unless I could persuade one of the absorbed scholars to translate the text for me.
* * *
EMERSON WAS NOT AT ALL pleased when I informed him I had accepted Katherine’s invitation to a reception on Sunday. He had already begun to work himself into a state of aggravation about the fantasia.
“Selim has been so busy making arrangements he isn’t worth a piastre,” he grumbled. “And Daoud is almost as bad. Now you are proposing I waste another day. I won’t do it, Peabody, and that’s flat.”
“Supposing I let you have Ramses and David tomorrow and the next day to make up for your lost time.”
“Let me? Hmph,” said Emerson.
Everyone was agreeable, even Walter, who said he wouldn’t at all mind a day in the fresh air. All of us, including Sennia and Gargery, were at the dig the following afternoon. Horus went everywhere with Sennia and the Great Cat of Re had decided to accompany us as well. He and Horus got on reasonably well, since the former was attached to Ramses and did not challenge Horus’s preemptive claim on Sennia. The Great Cat of Re, who specialized in snakes, flushed an angry cobra out of its hole and was with difficulty prevented from attacking it. Emerson killed the poor snake. It was only behaving as a snake is entitled to behave, but a venomous serpent is a dangerous neighbor. We did not often encounter them, for they avoid human beings.
I was alone with my rubbish, since the others found the task tedious and had found excuses to be elsewhere. I watched them enviously, for I, too, had become bored with rubbish. Evelyn was under the shelter, taking a little rest; her silvery hair glowed even in the shadows. Emerson, bareheaded in the boiling sunlight, was lecturing Walter about something . . . As my eyes wandered, I became aware of a strange insect-like buzzing. As it grew louder I looked about, trying to find the source.
Ramses, whose keen hearing is proverbial in Egypt, popped into sight from behind the ruined wall he was digging out. Like his father, he was without a hat. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked up.
I sprang to my feet, staggering just a little, and hurried to Emerson. The others had seen it too; frozen in identical postures, heads raised, they stared in astonished silence as the aeroplane circled and headed off across the river.
“What’s everybody gaping at?” Emerson demanded, recovering from his initial surprise. “Haven’t you ever seen an aeroplane before?”
A good number of them had—during the rioting the previous spring. Planes had dropped leaflets all over the country, warning that anyone committing acts of sabotage would be shot, and bombs had been dropped on any gathering that struck the military observers as suspicious. It is not surprising that as this one turned and came back toward us, a great outcry arose, and some of the men flung themselves flat on the ground. I found the confounded things unnerving myself. When they were airborne they looked unreal—not like a bird or a machine, but like some mythological flying insect, rigid and fragile, gliding on the wind with motionless