Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [35]
“Now, now,” I said. Ramses’s face was as flushed as hers, and he was on the verge of an angry protest. “We are all tired and excited. Obviously Ramses did not see the goddess, he saw a woman costumed like Hathor. As for rooms furnished in that fashion, there are many of them in Cairo. Curse it,” I added, in sudden vexation. “I ought to have thought of it before. Could you find the house again, Ramses?”
“I doubt it. I’ve no recollection whatever of how I got there. The last thing I remember is a pair of hands closing round my neck.”
“There are no bruises on your throat,” Nefret said. Her tone was studiously neutral.
“Need I remind you,” said Ramses, in the same tone, “that it doesn’t take much pressure or much time to put someone out, if you know how to do it. On the other hand, I might have imagined that, too.”
“Still, perhaps we ought to make an attempt to find the place,” I said quickly. “When you left the house—”
“I was in too much of a hurry to pay attention to where I was going, and still in something of a fog. Anyhow, they’ve had time to clear out. Whoever they were.”
“There were at least two of them,” I mused. “Assuming that the beggar and your assailant—and perhaps the shadowy acolyte—were one and the same. Which need not be the case.”
Nefret was watching Ramses, who was concentrating on his breakfast. “I did not mean to give the impression that I doubted Ramses’s word,” she said stubbornly. “I’m only trying to understand what happened, and why.”
I am not in the habit of disparaging my own gender, but there are times when even the best of us “behaves like a woman,” as men put it. “Goodness gracious,” I said in exasperation. “That is what we are all trying to ascertain, is it not? Let us face facts, no matter how unpalatable they may be to you, Nefret. Your husband, like mine, is irresistibly attractive to women. I must say, though, that this one has gone to extraordinary lengths to capture his attention. The costume, you say, was authentic?” Ramses nodded. He was now annoyed with me, for pointing out a fact he also found unpalatable. Unperturbed, for I am accustomed to the vagaries of the masculine mind, I went on. “The seemingly supernatural touches would have been easy to arrange. Electricity has been a great boon to charlatans. An electric torch fastened to her person, a quick press of the switch, and voilà! She appears, out of nothingness. She must have used the torch again to blind you before she left the room, hoping you would take it for a bolt of divine lightning. Rather childish, that.”
“Not to a man whose senses are befuddled with opium,” Emerson said. He pushed his plate away and took out his pipe. “It is remarkable that Ramses managed to keep his wits about him as well as he did.”
Ramses’s tight lips relaxed. He glanced at his hands. “Pain helps. So do . . . other things. Unfortunately, I observed nothing that would enable me to recognize her, not even her height, which is, as you know, difficult to determine without something with which to compare it. She was young and slim, but not an immature girl. A woman. She disguised her voice by whispering and by using an artificial accent. That’s all I know, and without wishing to be rude, Mother, your theory as to the woman’s motives is pure imaginative fiction! I don’t want to talk about it. What were you about all night, Father? I suppose you went after poor old Rashad?”
“It was the only clue we had,” Emerson replied. He grinned round the stem of his pipe. “I persuaded your mother and Nefret to stay here, in case you came back, and went off to see Thomas Russell. I had the satisfaction of rousting him out of bed, at any rate. I was somewhat surprised to learn that all the revolutionaries have been freed, even your friend Wardani, though nobody knows his present whereabouts. Russell already had a few of his lads looking for Rashad, who had sensibly refrained from returning to his rooms after trying to foment a riot earlier. We located one of his associates—Bashir—sleeping the sleep of the just