Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [54]
His uncle’s thin face broke into a smile. “I understand. Well, my boy, perhaps I can lend a hand. A medical text, you say?”
Emerson, whose hearing was annoyingly acute when one hoped he wasn’t listening, strode up to them. “Never mind the cursed texts, they will keep. I need you both on the dig. Unless you have forgotten everything I taught you about excavation technique, Walter.”
“It’s been a long time” was the mild response.
“You’ll soon pick it up again,” Emerson declared.
Before they left, Emerson had settled everything to his own satisfaction. “Everybody at Deir el Medina tomorrow morning, eh?” He didn’t wait for answers.
I TRY TO AVOID CONTRADICTING Emerson’s dogmatic pronouncements in public. It is ill-mannered, and although a good brisk argument never bothers me—or, to do him justice, Emerson—it upsets some members of the family. However, I had no intention of allowing him to brush aside the needs and interests of his staff so dictatorially. I had not realized, until I overheard the conversation between Walter and Ramses about the masses of ostraca we had found, how badly Ramses wanted to get at those texts. Like his uncle, he was primarily interested in the ancient language and its literature. The eager note in his voice, the brightness of his eyes were those of an excited boy. Those eyes were somewhat sunken, however; he must have been sitting up half the night, every night, over the ostraca, after putting in a long day at the site. That could not be good for his health—or, come to think of it, his marriage. The instincts of a mother informed me that I had failed him. I ought to have stood up to his father. Emerson takes a good deal of standing up to.
I would have to stand up for Walter, too. And for Cyrus. In a few weeks the majority of the objects from the tomb would be removed to the Museum. Heaven alone knew how they would survive the transport and the handling they would receive in Cairo. Now was the time to make copies, and the opportunity to avail ourselves of the skills of two trained artists was not to be missed.
I did not doubt that Emerson had also decided to ignore other, more serious, matters. M. Lacau had not questioned Martinelli’s antecedents when Cyrus hired the latter, but now that he had turned out to be a cunning thief, Lacau might well inquire why we had employed a restorer who was unknown to the Department of Antiquities. Sethos might turn up at any minute, in some guise or other, to make a nuisance of himself. Then there was that strange encounter of Ramses’s. I had formulated a little theory about it, which I meant to investigate when I found the time.
I raised several of these issues with Emerson after we had retired to our room that night. One after the other he pooh-poohed them. One after the other I demolished his arguments. We ended up nose to nose, shouting at each other. Emerson shouted because he had lost his temper, whereas I raised my voice only because I had to do so in order to be heard.
“So how do you explain the veiled lady?” I demanded.
“I don’t see why the devil I should have to!”
“Are you indifferent to a threat to your son’s life?”
I had known that would fetch him. The angry color faded from his face. “Peabody,” he said in plaintive tones, “from what I have been able to gather about that encounter, she did not threaten Ramses with anything except—er—um. It may have been meant as a joke.”
“Joke? Really, Emerson!”
“The word was ill-chosen,” Emerson admitted, fingering the cleft in his chin. “Damnation, Peabody, you know what I mean. Sethos suggested it the other evening. Some lunatic female has taken a fancy to the boy. Egypt is full of people like that,” Emerson went on sweepingly. “Believers in mystical religions, reincarnation, the wisdom of the ancients, and that