Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [32]
“And that information will spread too,” I said with a sigh. “The sooner we get him on his way, the better. I wonder who else knows about the Emersons’ interesting protégé?”
From Manuscript H
Ramses wondered too. Their carefully crafted plot was beginning to leak like a sieve, and Merasen was the one poking holes in it. He had searched Merasen’s suitcase, over the latter’s furious objections, and had found several items which, according to Merasen, had also been retrieved from the slavers, including the scabbard for Merasen’s sword—an object even more remarkable than the sword itself, with inlaid gold foil over thin strips of wood. He didn’t doubt the proprietor of the hotel had also searched the boy’s luggage, and he hated to think what the fellow had made of that little item, and how many people he had told of it. Ramses wasn’t surprised that Merasen should boast of his acquaintance with the famed and feared Father of Curses, despite the fact that Emerson had emphatically ordered him not to do so, except in a dire emergency. But it was the one thing they had hoped to avoid—their connection with a mysterious youth from an unknown place. There had been no emergency, just Merasen being his normal, boastful self.
The fact was that he didn’t like Merasen much, and not only because he had got tired of being jumped on. He knew the real reason for his antipathy: Nefret. She and Merasen had spent a lot of time alone together, conversing in the language that she spoke with increasing fluency. Ramses hadn’t been invited to join them. From the first, Merasen’s behavior toward her had a quality that set Ramses’s teeth on edge, though he would have been hard-pressed to define it. Deferential, verging on gallant at times, friendly verging on familiar at others…He wondered if he would ever get over being jealous of every man she talked to.
Emerson and he took Merasen (and the suitcase) to the station next day and put him on the train to Aswan with his ticket in his hand and his ears ringing with Emerson’s instructions. Emerson was no fool; he too had had his doubts about the purported theft of Merasen’s money.
“You have more than enough to get you to Wadi Halfa in comfort,” he said sternly. “Go to the house of my friend Sheikh Nur ed Din and await us there. If you fail me in this, Merasen…”
“I will not fail you, Father of Curses, I swear!” Merasen had got over his fit of pique and was his smiling, self-confident self. He was wearing European clothes and a tarboosh, and might have been a young clerk or minor official—if one didn’t look closely at him. He patted his flat belly. “I have the money belt. If they wish to rob me they will have to take it from my dead hand!”
“Very well, very well,” said Emerson. “Maasalemeh. A good journey.”
Merasen turned to Ramses and held out his hand. “It is the English custom, yes? To show goodwill. To show you have no…what are the words?”
“Hard feelings?” Ramses shook his hand. It would have been rude not to, though his feelings were far from soft. “Good luck, Merasen.”
They stood in silence, waiting, until the train left. “Almost teatime,” said Emerson, consulting his watch. “Let us go, eh?”
“Go on without me, Father. I have an errand.”
“Ah,” said Emerson. His heavy brows drew together. “I trust you are not planning anything foolish.”
“Not at all, sir. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
His “errand” took him to the Gezira Sporting Club. His father refused to go near the place, since it was an aggressively British institution in the heart of Cairo, complete with golf course, tennis courts, and beautifully landscaped grounds. Ramses maintained his membership at the Gezira and the even more exclusive Turf Club for purely practical reasons; the foreign community, especially the male half of it, frequented both, and they were good places to pick up the sort of gossip his mother probably wouldn’t hear from her lady friends. The Gezira admitted some foreigners, including “upper-class” Egyptians, and Ramses knew that when his unquestionably upper-class friend was in Cairo, he generally played golf