Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [149]
“Tell her not to fuss,” David said. “A sandwich will do.”
Gargery “ran along,” sniffing. Ramses leaned back in his chair. “May I ask . . .”
“I’m off to Luxor. We ran out of cotton wool and cloth. Aunt Amelia made me promise to take you along. But if you’re busy—”
“You aren’t going to get out of it that easily.” Ramses pushed the papers aside. “I’ve been translating that horoscope text for Mother. Couldn’t concentrate on anything more difficult. What made her suppose you needed me to come along?”
“I’m going to the railroad station.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I hope.”
“You think there will be trouble?”
David smiled slightly. “I have a foreboding.”
It was more than an idle premonition, it was the knowledge of how easily a group of idlers could turn into an angry mob. A crowd would certainly gather, inspired by curiosity and the hope of scavenging. Ramses blamed himself for failing to follow the current news, as David had. The situation was already volatile. The slightest provocation, real or fancied, could start a riot.
And David would try to stop it. Damn it, Ramses thought, we don’t need this. “I’m with you,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
By the time they reached the station it was early afternoon, and the temperature was in the nineties. They heard the uproar some distance away.
An irregular line of police held the crowd back from the tracks and the station, where several men in khaki were standing guard over the wreckage, ignoring the curses and waving fists with admirable British aplomb. How the soldiers had got there so quickly Ramses didn’t know; Allenby must have taken the precaution of dispatching mobile columns into potential hot spots. The police officers in their shabby uniforms didn’t look happy. Many of them were in sympathy with the protesters. Someone was waving a banner with a rude (and incorrectly spelled) description of the Inglizi. The sun beat down like a furnace and dust fogged the air, kicked up by the shuffling feet.
“Stop a minute,” Ramses said, catching hold of David before he could plunge into the thick of it. “They’re just letting off steam. What’s going on?”
The man he addressed wore a ragged galabeeyah and a dirty rag wrapped round his head. He turned with a snarl on Ramses, recognized him, and turned the snarl into a propitiatory smile. “We only wanted to take away the broken wood and the nails and bricks, Brother of Demons. What harm is there in that? But the accursed—uh—the British stopped us.”
“They want to find out what caused the explosion,” David said. “You will be allowed to remove the wreckage when they have finished. Tell your friends to go home.”
“I? What sort of fool do you take me for? They are angry.”
“And enjoying themselves,” Ramses said to David in English. “Nothing like a jolly riot on a hot day to alleviate boredom.”
“Someone is haranguing them,” David said, trying to see over the field of bobbing turbans, with an occasional red fez for contrast.
The fellow was no orator, but he was loud and indignant. Words like oppression and injustice—and the name of the exiled patriot Zaghlul—started an angry muttering. David swore and began to force his way through the close-packed bodies.
Ramses followed, shoving even harder and making suggestions. “Go home, you fools. Get away from here. Think of your wives and children. Do you want to be shot?”
They made way for him, and a few took his advice to heart, but the orator was still screaming and the front ranks of the mob surged forward. The police weren’t armed, but the soldiers were. Hoping none of them would mistake him and David for rioters, Ramses dodged the hands of a hot-eyed protester who was reaching for his throat and kicked the fellow’s feet out from under him. The men in the front rank were the bravest, or, to look at it another way, the ones with the least sense. David flattened a few of them, fighting with the cool efficiency Ramses remembered so well. The ones nearest the victims began to have second thoughts. They backed off, leaving Ramses and David in the empty space before the beleaguered