Lion in the Valley - Elizabeth Peters [92]
He was a pleasant host, however. We settled ourselves on the divan with its faded chintz cushions, and the priest offered us refreshment, which of course we accepted, for to refuse would have been rude in the extreme. I was expecting the thick, sweet coffee which is the common drink; imagine my surprise when the priest returned from an inner room with a tray on which rested a glass bottle and several clay cups. After Emerson had taken a cautious sip of the liquid his eyebrows soared.
I followed suit. “It is French cognac,” I exclaimed.
“The best French cognac,” Emerson said. “Father, where did you get this?” The priest had already emptied his cup. He poured another generous measure and replied innocently, “It was here in my house when I returned.”
“We have been anxious to hear of your adventure, Father,” Emerson said. “How well I recall the anger of my distinguished chief wife, the Sitt Hakim here, upon learning that the priest of Dronkeh was not who he pretended to be. ‘What have you done with the real priest, you son of a camel?’ she cried. ‘If you have injured that good, that excellent man, I will cut out your heart!’ ”
Emerson’s version was not a very accurate rendering of what I had said, but I had indeed inquired about the missing priest, and well I remembered the M.C.’s cynical reply: “He is enjoying the worldly pleasures he has eschewed, and the only danger is to his soul.”
After thanking me for my concern, Father Todorus launched into his story. It was clear that he had only been waiting for us to ask, and that constant repetition had shaped his account into a well-rehearsed narrative of the sort to which Egyptians can listen over and over again. Unfortunately, there was less information than stylistic elegance in the long, rambling tale; stripped of unnecessary verbiage, it could have been told in a few sentences.
Father Todorus had gone to bed one night as usual, and had awakened in a strange place, with no notion of how he had arrived there. The room was elegantly, indeed luxuriously furnished (the description of its silken curtains and soft couch, its tinkling fountain and marble floors occupied the bulk of the speech). But he saw no one save the attendants who brought him rich food and rare liquors at frequent intervals, and since the windows were barred and shuttered, he could see nothing that would give him the slightest clue as to his whereabouts.
His return was accomplished in the same eerie fashion; he awoke one morning in the same narrow cot from which he had been spirited away, and at first he could hardly believe the entire episode had not been a long and vivid dream. The astonished cries of his parishioners upon his reappearance, and the accounts they gave him of what had transpired during his absence, proved that his experience had been real. But the innocent man frankly admitted he was inclined to attribute the whole thing to evil spirits, who were known to torture holy men by tempting them with the goods of this world.
“So you were tempted, were you?” Emerson asked. “With rich food and fine wines and liquors—”
“They are not forbidden by our faith,” Father Todorus hastened to remark.
“No, but other temptations are forbidden, at least to the clergy. Were the attendants who waited upon your reverence men or women?”
The guilt on the poor man’s face was answer enough. Emerson, chuckling, would have pursued the subject had I not intervened. “It would be more to the point, Emerson, were we to ask Father Todorus for a more detailed description of the place in which he was imprisoned. He may have heard or seen something that would give us a hint as to its location.”
I spoke in English, and Emerson answered in the same language. “If that swine Sethos is as clever as you seem to think he is, he will have abandoned that place long ago. Oh,