He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [48]
I knocked softly on the door. There was no response. I tried the door.
It was locked.
Well, I had expected that. Ramses had always been insistent on maintaining his privacy, and of course he had every right to it.
I had taken the precaution, some days earlier, of finding a key that fitted Ramses’s door. I had one for Nefret’s door too. I had not felt it necessary to mention this expedient to the persons concerned, because they would almost certainly have found other security measures which would not have been so easy to circumvent. Naturally I would never have dreamed of using the keys except in cases of dire emergency. Clearly this was such a case.
I unlocked the door and flung it open. This is my customary procedure when I anticipate discovering an unauthorized intruder, but I admit the bang of the door against the wall does often startle people other than the intruder. It produced a muffled oath from Emerson, of whose approach I had not been aware. Hastening to my side, he put his hand on my arm.
“Peabody, what the devil are you—”
The sentence ended in a catch of breath.
There was enough light from the windows giving onto the balcony to show the motionless shape in the bed, covered to the chin by sheet and blanket, and the dark head on the pillow. Another form lay facedown on the floor between the bed and the window. It appeared to be that of a peasant, for the feet were bare and the dark blue gibbeh was threadbare and torn.
I gave Emerson the lamp and ran to kneel beside the fallen man.
“Ramses! What has happened? Are you hurt?”
There was no answer, which more or less settled the matter. As I tugged at my son’s limp body, Emerson put the lamp on a nearby table. “I’ll fetch a doctor.”
“No,” I said sharply. I had managed to turn Ramses onto his back. My peremptory grasp had pulled the robe apart, baring his chest and the bloodstained cloth wound clumsily round his upper arm and shoulder. It must have been cut or torn from his shirt, since that garment was in fragmentary condition. His only other article of clothing, aside from the belt that held his knife, was a pair of knee-length cotton drawers, completing the costume of an Egyptian of the poorer classes.
“No,” Ramses echoed. His eyes had opened and he was trying to sit up. I caught hold of him and pulled him down onto my lap. Ramses muttered something under his breath, and Seshat growled.
“No?” Emerson’s brows drew together. “I see. Your medical kit, Peabody?”
“Close the door behind you,” I said. “And for the love of God don’t wake any of the servants!”
I drew Ramses’s knife from its sheath and began to cut away the crude bandage. He lay still, watching me with an understandable air of apprehension. The knife was very large and very sharp.
“Goodness, what a mess you’ve made of this,” I said.
“I was in something of a hurry.”
I paused for a moment in what was admittedly a delicate operation, and looked more closely at his face. When I ran my fingertip along his jaw it encountered several slightly sticky patches. “What happened to the beard and the turban, and the other elements of your disguise?”
“I don’t remember. I was in the water at one time. . . .” He stiffened as I slid the point of the knife under the next layer of cloth, and then he said, “How did you find out?”
“That you have been engaged in some sort of secret service work? Not from any slip on your part, if that is what is worrying you. I knew you would not shirk your duty, however dangerous and distasteful it might be.”
The corners of Ramses’s lips tightened. He turned his head away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I am trying not to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me. But you will have to, you know. I daren’t risk allowing a doctor to treat what is obviously a bullet wound.”
“These injuries were not made by a bullet,” I said, flinching as another fold of cloth parted, to display a row of ragged gashes just above his collarbone.
Ramses squinted, trying to