Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [5]
Ramses exchanged glances with his wife. The argument wasn’t over; his mother would go right ahead with her plans, and his father would continue to complain. His parents enjoyed those “little differences of opinion,” as his mother called them—though “shouting matches” might be a more descriptive term. She was smiling to herself; her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled.
Hers was, her son thought, a rather forbidding countenance, even in repose; when she was annoyed about something, her prominent chin jutted out and her dark-gray eyes took on a steely shine. The years had not changed her appearance much; her carriage was as erect and the new lines in her face were those of laughter. The thick black hair was, according to Nefret, no longer the original shade. Nefret had made him promise he wouldn’t say a word, to his mother or father. In fact, he had found that evidence of feminine vanity rather touching.
Catching his eye, she broke off in the middle of a sentence. “What are you smiling at, Ramses? Have I a smudge on my nose?”
“No. I was just thinking how well you look this evening.”
* * *
WHEN RAMSES AND EMERSON ARRIVED at the site next morning the sun had just lifted over the eastern cliffs and the little valley of Deir el Medina lay in shadow. High barren hills framed it on the east and west. The main entrance was to the north, where the walls of the Ptolemaic temple enclosed some of the earlier shrines to various gods. The tumbled ruins of other older temples surrounded it. And on the valley floor were the remains of the workman’s village that had occupied the site for—at Emerson’s latest estimate—at least three hundred years. Evidence of earlier occupation was yet to be found; if it existed, it would lie under the foundations of the later structures.
At first glance there seemed very little to show for over two years of work. When they had first taken over the excavation, the ruins of the village lay under millennia of accumulated debris and blown sand. In the past century it had suffered from random digging, by archaeologists and by local villagers searching for artifacts to sell. On the slopes of the eastern hill were the tombs of the workers, crowned in some cases by small crumbling pyramids. These too had been looted and their contents dispersed. In the recent past a few Egyptologists had conducted relatively scholarly excavations of a few tombs, but the museums of Europe contained masses of papyri and miscellaneous objects that had been bought on the antiquities market during the nineteenth century A.D., many of which had probably come from Deir el Medina, without any record of their origin or location having been made. In short, the site offered a daunting challenge, and Emerson was one of the few men in the field who could do the job right. Ramses drew a deep breath of satisfaction as he gazed out at the unimposing scene. His father preferred temples and tombs, but masses of inscribed material were turning up, ostraca and papyri, awaiting decipherment—the job he enjoyed most. If only his father would let him concentrate on them instead of demanding his presence on the site every day . . .
In fact, considerable progress had been made, under difficult conditions. It had taken a long time to remove the debris down to the top of the remaining walls, and to sift (as his mother had once remarked, in a rare fit of profanity) every bloody square inch of the cursed stuff. The task had been worthwhile; they had come across a lot of material early excavators had missed or discarded. They had also discovered that the village consisted of two sections, divided by a narrow main street and enclosed by a wall. They were working along the north side of this street, clearing each house in turn.
A number of distractions had delayed or interrupted their work. In the late summer of 1917, when it became apparent to Ramses’s eagle-eyed mother that Nefret