Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [138]
“That is generally a safe assumption,” Emerson mumbled, but he went at once to comply with my request. When he came back he held a folded paper.
“What does he say?” I demanded.
Ramses had quite a lot to say, but it took us a while to puzzle it out. At the best of times Ramses’s handwriting resembles the squiggles of Egyptian hieratic, and this letter looked as if he had used a rough block of stone for a table. I will reproduce the message as I remember it, without indicating the various points at which we interrupted its reading with exclamations of alarm and astonishment.
“Daria is with me, in the place you once knew well. Could not get Nefret away, handmaidens sleep in her room. Tarek’s scouts patrol access to northern pass. One of them—remember Harsetef?—will meet me and take Daria on to Tarek’s camp, but need shoes and clothing for her. Can you supply tonight, also food and water? Will return after dark.”
“Need shoes and clothing?” I cried. “Good Gad, Emerson! Is she…She cannot be…”
“Stark-naked? Peabody, you have a positive gift for focusing on unessentials! Whatever she is wearing, and I feel certain she is wearing something, it must be unsuitable for a long, difficult trek.”
“But why did he take her with him?”
“Because he was able to,” Emerson said impatiently. “How the devil he pulled it off I don’t know, but it means one fewer hostage to be released. And this tells us he is safe and still free. I would have thought that was the important point.”
“Yes, of course. The place we once knew…Our former abode?”
“I should think so. He wasn’t specific, in case this fell into the wrong hands.”
“Good heavens, yes! We must destroy it at once.”
“Groan,” said Emerson.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I hear the servants. I presume you want to proceed with your scheme?”
“It is all the more imperative now,” I said between groans. “If Ramses cannot reach Nefret, we must do the job.”
“Damned if I know how,” Emerson muttered, and went out.
The obvious possibilities had occurred to me. Holding a handmaiden prisoner and demanding Nefret’s return in exchange for her freedom? Taking Nefret’s place, swathed in veils, while Emerson and the others concealed her…where? Reluctantly I admitted the difficulties. At the moment I could see no way out of them. Ah, well, I thought, I will just have to think of something else.
While I waited, groaning whenever I remembered to do so, I considered Ramses’s message again. I looked forward to hearing the full story of his adventures, which those terse, necessarily brief phrases could not begin to convey, but which maternal concern could easily visualize. He must have covered a great deal of ground during the previous two nights—much of it perpendicular. He had meant to go first to the village. We could assume, I believed, that this part of his plan had succeeded, for it was unlikely that he could have made his way to a rendezvous with Tarek’s scouts without a guide. It was good to know that our old friend Harsetef was still alive and still loyal. Up to that point I could only commend Ramses. But instead of going on to join Tarek, he had come back and done what I had strictly forbidden him to do. Unless he had encountered Daria wandering about the street, which seemed unlikely, he must have got to her by climbing that sheer cliff.
I promised myself I would have a word with that boy. If he returned to the ravine that night I would be awake and ready for him, no matter how late the hour.
The curtain at the door parted and Emerson came in, followed by Selim and Daoud.
“They wanted to see for themselves that you were not really ill,” Emerson explained. “You rather overdid the groans. Would you like coffee?”
“Why not?” I sat up and arranged the sheet modestly about my form before taking the cup from him. “I presume the handmaiden has been sent for?”
“Yes. What are you going to do with her once you’ve got her?” Emerson inquired. I looked meaningfully at the doorway, and he went on, “Don’t concern yourself about the servants, they