Lion in the Valley - Elizabeth Peters [132]
At least that was where I had planned to strike him. My fists landed in the middle of his back and fell numb and tingling to my side. The fellow was almost seven feet tall, and his muscles felt like granite.
He was an astonishing and formidable figure, one that might have stepped straight out of the pages of The Arabian Nights. His sole article of attire was a pair of knee-length drawers, bound at the waist by a wide crimson sash into which he had thrust a pair of long, curving swords, one on each side. Otherwise his body was bare, from the crown of his shaven head to his midriff and from his knees to the soles of his enormous feet. Every inch of his exposed skin gleamed with oil and bulged with muscle. His arms were as big around as my waist.
He glanced at me with mild curiosity. I suppose my blow must have felt to him like the brush of a butterfly’s wing. As he advanced slowly toward me I retreated, step by step, until the backs of my calves struck the couch and I sat down rather more abruptly than I had intended. That seemed to be what the apparition desired I should do. He halted, and then drew himself up into military rigidity as the curtain once more lifted to admit his master.
I knew him—yet he was no one I had ever seen before. A black beard and mustache masked the lower part of his face; but unlike the hirsute adornments he had worn in his disguise as Father Girgis, this beard was short and neatly trimmed. Tinted glasses concealed his eyes, and I had no doubt that his black, waving locks were false. He wore riding boots and breeches and a white silk shirt with full sleeves, a costume that set off his narrow waist and broad shoulders, and made me wonder how he could ever have played the role of the hollow-chested, feeble-looking young nobleman.
With a peremptory gesture he dismissed the guard. The giant dropped to the floor in a deep salaam and then went out.
“Good afternoon, Amelia,” said Sethos. “I hope I may call you that?”
“You may not,” I replied.
“Defiant as ever,” he murmured. “It does not surprise me to find your spirit undaunted and your courage high; but are you not in the least curious as to how I brought you here?”
“Curiosity is a quality I hope I will never lose,” I said. “But at the moment the question of how I came here interests me less than the more important question of how I will get away.”
“Allow me to satisfy the former question, then,” came the suave reply. “But first, let us make ourselves comfortable.”
He clapped his hands. The giant reappeared, carrying a tray that looked like a doll’s platter in his huge hands. He placed it on the table and withdrew. Sethos poured wine into the crystal glasses.
“I know you must be thirsty,” he remarked, “for the drug I was forced to use has that effect, and I observe you have not tasted the fruit or used the cup. I admire your caution, but it was unnecessary; the water and the fruit are untainted, as is the wine.”
“I had expected cognac,” I remarked ironically.
Sethos burst out laughing, displaying a set of handsome white teeth. “So you appreciated my little joke with the good father? Since some ignorant persons persist in regarding my divine patron as the Egyptian Satan, I feel I ought to live up to the reputation he enjoys. Tempting the smug and the pious, and observing the ludicrous haste with which they tumble from virtue, gives me a great deal of innocent pleasure.”
“I am not amused,” I assured him. “It was a childish, unworthy gesture.”
“One day, my dear, you will learn to laugh with me at the follies of mankind. But I beg you will assuage your thirst.”
The sight of the pale liquid in the glass he offered made my throat feel drier than ever, but I folded my arms and shook my head. “Thank you, no. I never drink with assassins and kidnappers.”
“You don’t trust me? See here.” He raised the glass to his lips and drank deeply before offering it again. I took it; ostentatiously turning it so that my lips would not touch the spot his had rested upon, I quenched my thirst. The wine had