Lion in the Valley - Elizabeth Peters [4]
“Mark my words, Emerson, we have not seen the last of that villain. He managed to escape us, but we foiled his plot and deprived him of his ill-gotten treasure. He is not the man to accept defeat without an attempt at revenge.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know a thing about the fellow, not even his nationality.”
“He is an Englishman, Emerson. I am convinced of that.”
“He spoke Arabic with as much facility as English,” Emerson pointed out. “And you never saw his face when it was not swathed in hair. Never in my life have I seen such a beard! Would you know him if you saw him again sans beard?”
“Certainly.”
“Humph.” Emerson put his arm around my shoulders and drew me closer. “Well, Peabody, I admit that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to punch that swine on the nose, and if he intrudes into our affairs I will deal with him as he deserves. But I have no intention of looking for trouble. I have better things to do. Promise me, Peabody, that you will leave well enough alone.”
“Oh, certainly, my dear Emerson.”
“Promise.”
“I promise I will not go looking for trouble.”
“My darling Peabody!” Emerson drew me into a fond embrace, careless of the watching sailors.
I had every intention of keeping my word. Why look for trouble when trouble is certain to come looking for you?
After disembarking at Alexandria, we boarded the train for Cairo. The journey takes a trifle over four hours, and it is considered somewhat tedious by most travelers, since the route crosses the featureless alluvial plains of the Delta. To the trained eye of an archaeologist, however, each mound, or “tell,” indicates the presence of a buried city. Ramses and Emerson were constantly arguing about the identification of these sites, an argument in which I took no part since I do not see the sense in debating matters concerning which so few facts are known. As I told them, only excavation will determine the truth.
Not until we were within a few miles of our destination was the view enlivened by the sight of the Giza pyramids in the purple distance, framed by the low Libyan hills. It was always at this point, and not on the crowded quay at Alexandria, that I felt I had really arrived in Egypt.
Emerson smiled at me in silent sympathy before turning back to feast his eyes upon the glorious vision. He had profanely consented to put on his new gray suit, and was looking particularly handsome—though I confess that Emerson’s splendid physique shows to best advantage in his working costume of shabby trousers and a rumpled shirt open at the throat, with rolled sleeves baring his muscular forearms. He was not wearing a hat because Emerson consistently refuses to wear a hat even when working under the baking sun, and it is beyond my powers of persuasion (extensive though they are) to overcome this prejudice of his.
The elegance of his appearance was only slightly marred by the great brindled feline perched on his knee. The cat Bastet was staring out the window of the train with an interest as keen as Emerson’s, and I wondered if she realized she had returned to the land of her birth. Ramses would have claimed she did, for he had an exaggerated opinion of the creature’s intelligence. She had been his constant companion ever since she had joined our family several years before, and was now an experienced traveler, since Ramses insisted on taking her with him wherever he went. I must say she was far less trouble than her youthful master.
Ramses—ah, Ramses! My eloquent pen falters when I attempt in a few words to convey the complex personality contained in the body of the eight-year-old boy who is my only child. Some superstitious Egyptians actually claimed he was not a child at all, but a jinni that had taken up its abode in Ramses’ meager frame. There are good jinn and evil jinn (the latter being commonly called efreets), for this class of mythological beings is morally neutral in origin, an intermediate species between men and angels. I had not chosen to inquire to which class Ramses was commonly believed to belong.
Ramses