Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [31]
He had demonstrated increasing resentment of our questions and implicit criticisms. Rising, he fixed us with a frown. “I will go to my room now,” he announced, and stalked out.
“My room, in point of fact,” remarked Ramses. “The lad has got a bit above himself, hasn’t he?”
“He reminds me of you,” I said, pouring tea.
“Good Lord, Mother, I was never that rude!”
“No,” I conceded. “But there were times when you looked down your nose at me and curled your lip in precisely that fashion. He is young and a stranger in a strange land, and arrogance is sometimes a way of disguising an underlying sense of insecurity.”
“Don’t talk psychology, Peabody,” Emerson muttered. “Arrogance is one thing; attacking a friend without warning is—”
“A custom of the Holy Mountain,” Nefret said. We all looked at her in surprise. She flushed a little. “I’d forgotten. The younger men used to challenge one another, with daggers and short swords. Rather like a duel, to prove their manhood and test their alertness.”
“Hmph,” said Emerson. “I suppose they also boasted of their scars, like German university students. Damn fools.” He stripped off the makeshift sheath and examined the blade. “Steel. They had only iron when we were last there.”
“A good many things have changed, I expect,” I began, and almost swallowed my tongue when I caught the eye of Selim, who was poised on the edge of his chair, holding his cup like an offensive weapon.
“Where is there?” he inquired. “Have you told me the truth, Father of Curses?”
Daoud let out a rumble of protest. “The Father of Curses does not lie.”
Emerson might have blustered with Selim but the trusting gaze of Daoud brought a faint blush to his tanned cheeks. “Er,” he said. “That is…Peabody?”
He did not want to lie to Daoud. He wanted me to do it. The best I could do was resort to the tale Emerson had told David—that Merasen was the son of a sheikh who ruled a remote village in the southern Sudan. It had passed muster with David, but David had never set eyes on Merasen or on that unusual, distinctive sword.
“So it is not to Meroe that you go, but to this…village?” Selim persisted. “It must be remote indeed, for never have I seen a weapon like that one. Do all the people of this…village attack a friend without warning?”
Emerson felt it incumbent on him to say something, and this question he could answer without being guilty of more than a bit of fudging. “No, no,” he said heartily. “The sheikh is an old friend and a man of honor.”
“There will be no danger,” said Daoud calmly. “We will be with them, Selim.”
He and Selim were staying with relatives, since there was no room on the dahabeeyah. After they had taken their leave I reached for a cucumber sandwich, but Daoud had eaten them all.
“Curse it,” I remarked. “That wretched boy has already caused trouble. How many other persons, do you suppose, have seen that bl——blooming sword? We had better send him on his way at once, before someone familiar with the remote villages of the Sudan gets a look at him. I presume he will need to be resupplied with clothing and other necessities; Ramses, can you—”
“He doesn’t need anything more,” Ramses replied. “At my suggestion we stopped by the house where he has been lodging and collected a handsome calfskin suitcase filled with clothes.”
“I purchased them for him in London,” Emerson muttered. “So it wasn’t the people with whom he lodged who robbed him. They would have taken the lot and probably knocked him over the head. What sort of place was this lodging house?”
Ramses glanced at me. “Respectable enough. They wouldn’t have dared rob him. He had announced he was a friend of the Father of Curses.