Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [162]
“It can’t have been hours,” I said. “Your disappearance has just now been discovered. How on earth did…er…he manage it?”
“Don’t badger her now, Peabody,” said Emerson. “Nefret, my dear, are you all right? Did they hurt you? If anyone dared—”
“I’m all right now.” She clung tightly to him. “Don’t let them take me away again.”
“No,” said Emerson.
Daoud was standing by the door of the sitting room. When he saw Nefret he ran to embrace her, and I had to remind him of his duty. “No one tried to come in,” he reported after he had calmed down.
“They will,” Emerson said. “They cannot accuse us of being responsible for her disappearance, since we were here the whole morning, but they will look everywhere.”
“I can’t go down there again,” Nefret said faintly. “Please don’t make me.”
“Not under any circumstances,” said Emerson.
“They will search the subterranean passages too,” I said. “It will take them a while, though. I wonder what has become of…Put her down on the bed, Emerson, and get the whiskey.”
The white robes and veils of the High Priestess were crumpled and dusty, and her pretty hair hung tangled over her shoulders. I found a comb and began gently working out the tangles. As every woman knows, this has a soothing effect. She began to relax, and after she had taken a sip of the whiskey the color came back to her face.
“Where is Ramses?” was her first question.
“At the moment he is in a cell under Merasen’s villa,” I replied. Nefret let out a gasp, and I went on, “But we have taken steps.” At least I hoped we had; the news of Nefret’s disappearance might make the king decide to keep Ramses in close confinement. I certainly would have done.
“How did you get away?” Selim asked. “We had given up hope.”
“So had I. It was the most amazing thing. I told you—didn’t I?—that Amase took me to a separate room every day in order to instruct me in the rituals?”
“No, you didn’t,” I replied. “It doesn’t matter. Go on.”
“Sometimes there was another priest with him, hollow-eyed and stony-faced. Even stonier than that look of Ramses’s. Aunt Amelia, how are you going to get Ramses—”
“Have another sip of whiskey,” I said. “And go on.”
“It was the priest who took me away. He hit poor old Amase on the head and tied him up with his own robes. I was too astonished to move until he came toward me, and then I would have cried out if he hadn’t put his hand over my mouth and spoken to me in English. In English! I asked him who he was, but he just shook his head and told me he would bring me to you. The priests know where the entrances to the subterranean passages are located; so did I, once, but I couldn’t get to them. I was never alone.
“He led me along those awful dark passages for what seemed like hours. Some of it was familiar to me, but I couldn’t have found my way here. He left me at the foot of the stairs while he went up and had a look round; but you weren’t there, and the servants were, and when he came back he said I would have to wait while he went to find you and tell you, and I did, and the lamp went out…”
“It’s all right,” I said soothingly. My thoughts were in a whirl, but I managed to concentrate on the most important matter. “We must think of a way of hiding you. I have an idea—”
“So do I,” said Emerson. “Yes, Peabody, I do occasionally have ideas of my own, and this time mine is the one we will follow.”
From Manuscript H
After the door had closed behind his mother, whose face was working and whose hair was coming undone, Ramses sprang to his feet. The blade of the object she had shoved under him had cut a gouge across his back. He picked it up and stared at it.
“A pair of scissors?” Moroney exclaimed in bemusement.
“The blades are pretty sharp,” Ramses said, from personal experience. “And a good six inches long. Even if Merasen had sense enough to search her medical bag he wouldn’t have recognized this as a weapon. It’s a woman’s tool.”
He stooped and collected several other items from where they had fallen. Hairpins. Another woman’s weapon.
They also served