Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [87]
It was agreed that they would limit the expedition to their four selves. David had expressed an interest in painting the temple by moonlight; that would be their ostensible motive.
“Though why the devil we are obliged to have a reason for going off by ourselves I don’t know,” Ramses muttered. “They cling a bit, don’t they? Especially—”
“For all you know they may be anxious to be rid of us for a time,” David said with perfect good humor.
After luncheon he and Walter left, David to the Castle and Walter back to the house, to work on his translations. Ramses watched them go with unconcealed envy. They had turned up a lot of inscribed material, most of it fragmentary but all of interest and, so far as he was concerned, at least as important as the bloody temple ruins. His father didn’t really need him on the dig. After years of being shouted at by Emerson, the men knew the techniques of excavation; many of them, including Selim, could read and write and keep accurate records. With Bertie and Lia and Nefret, and his wife, Emerson had a staff more than adequate for his requirements. Ramses decided he would raise the subject again that evening. He had already discussed with his uncle the prospect of jointly publishing some of the more interesting texts. Walter wasn’t awfully good at standing up to Emerson—neither was he!—but perhaps if the two of them joined forces they could present a convincing case.
After they returned to the house that afternoon he hastily changed, left Nefret with the children, and went looking for his uncle. One of the rooms in the new wing had been fitted up as storage and work space. Shelves along one wall contained boxes of potsherds, sorted and labeled. Numbers in India ink on the edge or back of each piece referred to the index that had been kept as they were found. A long table served as desk. Ramses found his uncle bent over it, his nose a scant inch away from the surface of the brown, brittle papyrus in front of him, his eyes shifting back and forth from it to the sheet of paper on which he was copying the hieratic signs.
“Ah, Ramses,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here. What do you make of this group of signs? It resembles the word for ‘mooring post,’ but that doesn’t make sense in this context.”
Ramses had hoped to work on the inscription he had begun translating, but he couldn’t refuse his uncle. He took the sheet of paper. In contrast to the faded, sometimes broken, signs on the papyrus, Walter’s copy was neat and clear, except where gaps indicated signs he had been unable to make out.
“You’ve made good progress,” Ramses murmured, scanning the lines. “ ‘It is the day when the dead go about in the necropolis in order to . . . something . . . the enemy . . . of the mooring post’? That’s a metaphor for dying, driving in the mooring post. Safely reaching the land of the West?”
“The enemy of the mooring post?” Walter repeated doubtfully. “It’s a bit esoteric, even for the Egyptians, isn’t it?”
They were still at it, arguing with perfect amiability and happily oblivious to the passage of time, when the door opened. Nefret had come looking for them. Ramses was about to apologize for their tardiness when she spoke, in a strained voice.
“Mother wants you to come right away. We have a visitor.”
I WAS SITTING ON THE veranda all by myself. Such moments of privacy were rare of late, and I found myself wishing selfishly that I could enjoy them more often. I love every member of my family, but there are times when an individual of reflective temperament wishes, even needs, to be alone. Why didn’t they go off and do things by themselves? Not all the time; just now and then.
I particularly enjoy that hour of the evening, when the light lies like a wash of gold across the desert and sparkles on the distant river. My view that evening was spoiled by the confounded motorcar, which Emerson continued to leave standing outside the house instead of putting it in the stable. I did not see the approaching carriage until it stopped and a man got out. I