He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [107]
Selim and the rest of the crew were at the site when we arrived. Nefret left us soon after midday, by which time the men had reached bedrock. The cut blocks lining the shaft ended there, but the shaft went on down into the underlying stone of the plateau.
“It cannot be much farther,” Selim said hopefully. Like myself, he was getting tired of sifting endless baskets of sand and rubble which contained not so much as a scrap of pottery.
“Bah,” said my husband. “It could be another two meters. Or three, or four, or—”
Selim groaned.
“And,” said Emerson remorselessly, “you will have to set a guard tonight, and every succeeding night until we have finished with the burial chamber. After the find we made yesterday, every ambitious thief in the area will want to have a go at it.”
“But we have found nothing else,” Selim said. “Only the statue.”
“Yes,” said Emerson.
We went on for a few more hours without reaching the bottom of the shaft. Glancing at the sun, from whose position he could tell time almost as accurately as he read a watch, Emerson called a halt to the work. When I expressed my surprise—for surely we now could not be far from the burial chamber—he gave me a sour look.
“We have an errand in the city, in case you have forgotten. I must say it would be a pleasant change to have one season without these confounded distractions.”
I ignored this complaint, which I had heard often. “And after we have done our errand?” I inquired, giving him a meaningful look.
“I don’t know what the devil you mean,” said Emerson grumpily.
“I do,” said Ramses, who had just joined us. “And the answer is no, Mother. I have already told Fatima I will be dining out this evening. Alone.”
“Oh, is that what you meant?” Emerson beetled his brows at me. “The answer is no, Peabody.”
Naturally I did not intend to let them bully me. I bided my time, however, until after we had bathed and changed. Nefret had not returned. After the customary squawks and squeals and misconnections I managed to ring through to the hospital. She was still in surgery, where she had been all afternoon. That was what I had hoped to hear. She would return to the house when she was finished and was not likely to go out again. Long sessions of surgery left her wrung out physically, and sometimes emotionally as well.
When I joined Emerson and Ramses I discovered that they had arrived at a compromise, as Emerson termed it. We would all dine out together and then Ramses would go on to wherever he was going.
“It makes good sense, you see,” Emerson explained.
“In what way?”
Pretending he had not heard, Emerson hastily got into the driver’s seat. I ordered Ramses to sit in the tonneau next to me and subjected him to a searching inspection. He was looking very nice, I thought, except for a certain lumpiness about the fit of his coat. It could not be bandages; at his emphatic request (and because the healing process was proceeding nicely) I had reduced them in size.
“Are you carrying a firearm?” I inquired.
“Good God, no. The last thing I want to do is shoot someone.”
“Take mine, then.” I reached into my handbag.
“No, thank you.” He caught hold of my wrist. “That little Ladysmith of yours is one of the most ineffective weapons ever invented. I cannot imagine how you ever manage to hit anything with it.”
“I usually don’t,” I admitted. “But if someone has you in a death grip—”
“A knife is more efficient. Anyhow, the trick is to put the other fellow out of commission before he gets hold of you. Mother, what else have you got in that satchel? It is four times the size of your usual evening bag.”
Before I could prevent him he had inserted his hand. “As I suspected,” he said, pulling out a fold of rusty-black cloth. “You are not going with me tonight, so put the idea out of your head. How would it look for Wardani to bring a woman