Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [59]
I could think of a number of ways, but there was no sense in raising doubts. It is a well-known fact that courage is based to some extent on the failure to recognize danger (stupidity, in other words) and also on self-confidence.
After swearing Selim and Daoud to secrecy, we went early to bed. Emerson dropped off to sleep at once, but I could not. Forebodings seldom trouble my husband; he does not believe in them, or so he says. They troubled me that night. Small wonder, considering what the morrow would bring. At last I gave up the attempt to woo slumber; rising quietly, I put on my dressing gown and slipped out of the tent. The moon was nearing the full. Its silvery rays were bright enough to illumine a familiar form standing still as a statue some distance away. His back was toward me; he looked toward the west. He must have heard the rustle of my skirts as I approached, but he did not turn.
“Is something the matter, Ramses?” I asked.
His voice was as soft as mine when he replied; the stillness forbade loud speech. “I was remembering a certain night ten years ago, when you found me outside my tent, and I told you I had heard a voice summoning me. A voice I took to be yours. It was on this very spot.”
“Or near it,” I agreed cautiously, for he sounded very strange. “Please don’t tell me it has happened again. That imagined voice was the result of a post-hypnotic suggestion planted in your mind by Tarek in order to—”
“I know why.” His face looked like stone, his eyes sunk in pits of shadow, his high cheekbones and firm mouth sharply outlined. In a sudden panic I caught hold of his arm and was ridiculously relieved to feel warm, hard human muscle. He shivered. The air was cold. Then he looked down at me and said lightly, “No, Mother, nothing has happened, not even a ghostly voice from the past. I couldn’t sleep and stepped out for a breath of air. I hope I didn’t waken you.”
“I couldn’t sleep either.”
“It will be all right, Mother.”
“I know.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
I was drinking my tea when Selim came striding toward me.
“Ali has not come back,” he said, too worried to give the conventional greeting. “The boy is not in camp either, unless he is with you.”
I turned in silent inquiry to Ramses, whose tent Merasen shared. He shook his head. “He didn’t come in last night.”
“Send someone to the village to look for them.” Emerson’s teeth snapped together. “If they are sleeping off a night of—er, well, if that proves to be the case, I will make them run behind the camels for a day or so.”
They were not in the village. Daoud returned to report that they had been there, but had left shortly before midnight. “The boy (he had adopted Selim’s contemptuous name for Merasen) drank much beer and boasted to the girls. Ali drank too.”
Selim sprang to his feet with a furious exclamation. “Never has he done such a thing. He knows the Law. When here turns I will—”
“I don’t think we should wait for him to return,” Ramses said in a curiously flat voice. “I’ll go back to the village and start from there. Perhaps someone saw which way they went.”
This seemed the most sensible procedure, so we all accompanied him. We got little information from the locals; the virtuous among them had been asleep and the habitues of the illicit tavern too drunk to be observant. We spread out, searching behind every outcropping and hillock. It was Ramses and I who found Ali, in a little gully only ten feet from the path. One look was enough. The pool of blood in which poor Ali’s body lay had already dried. Ramses made me look away when he turned the body over, and I did not protest. Ali’s throat had been cut. There was no trace of Merasen.
“That takes care of coincidence,” said Ramses, after we returned to camp. Selim and Daoud were preparing Ali’s body for burial, which must be done before sunset. The villagers had offered all possible assistance, including a grave in the cemetery near the small mosque. The poor souls were afraid they would be blamed, and horrified by the brutality of the murder.
“It wasn’t one of