Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [46]
Sennia had been trying to learn how to raise her eyebrows as Ramses did. His were very thick and dark and expressive, rising and lowering and tilting at various angles according to his state of mind. Thus far Sennia’s best attempt had been to open her eyes very wide and wrinkle her forehead, with no visible alteration in the position of her brows. She did this now.
“Far be it from me to contradict you, Aunt Amelia,” she said, in a fair imitation of Ramses’s best drawl. “But being polite was a waste of time. They didn’t like me till I cursed them.”
I dropped the scone I had been buttering. Horus extended a paw, pulled the scone to him, and ate it.
“Cursed them?” I said weakly.
“In ancient Egyptian. I know a lot of bad words in Arabic and English but the Professor told me I mustn’t use any of them.” She reached for a cream bun and bit into it.
“Emerson! You didn’t teach her—”
“Certainly I did. Children are natural bullies, my dear, and the only way to deal with bullies is to overpower them, physically or morally. Since it did not seem right to teach Sennia how to knock someone down—”
“Ramses taught me that,” Sennia volunteered. She licked cream off her fingers. “But I only did it once, and not until after he pushed me.”
I turned my indignant stare toward my son, who avoided my eyes and began to mumble. “It was just a little harmless trick of tripping someone up—self-defense, really—it’s only effective if the person has got too close for comfort . . .”
Nefret began to laugh. “Never mind, darling. Mother may not approve your methods but they seem to have been effective. So, Sennia, you are now enjoying school?”
“Oh, yes. The lessons are not too boring and everyone wants to be on my side when we choose up for games.”
So that was all right. Sennia kindly consented to continue her education and I informed the parties concerned that they would sail next day. It was as well that I did, for the evening post brought a letter from Howard, who had returned to Luxor for a brief visit, containing news that brought Emerson’s fury to the boiling point.
The latest theft had been extraordinarily bold and daring; the miscreants had actually carried off part of a monumental black granite statue of Ramses II from his mortuary temple on the west bank. The statue had been in fragments, but the head had been very well preserved. The head had been the first element to disappear. Its absence had been noted, not by any of the guards, but by a tourist—one of those tirelessly compulsive persons who reads his Baedeker line by line. He had reported it to the authorities, who had promised to investigate. By the time they got round to visiting the Ramesseum, two other large chunks of the statue were gone.
“How the hell did he do it?” Emerson demanded, waving Howard’s letter like a battle flag. “The cursed head must have weighed hundreds of pounds. Then he had the damned effrontery to return the following night, after the original theft had been reported—”
“He?” I repeated.
Emerson broke into a fit of coughing.
“Whoever he was,” said Ramses. “Father, would you like a glass of water?”
“I would like to—er—hmph. No, thank you, my boy. I suppose,” said Emerson, “one of the Abd er Rassuls might have done the job.”
The men of Gurneh were among the most accomplished tomb robbers in Egypt. One could not help suspecting there was a hereditary factor; their ancestors had been locating and looting tombs since pharaonic times. The Abd er Rassul brothers had had an almost uncanny aptitude for finding hidden burials; the cache of royal mummies had been only one of their discoveries.
“That’s not really their line of work, though,” Nefret said thoughtfully. “The fragments of that statue have been lying about for years. One can’t really blame the authorities—such as they are—for failing to guard them. One would need a block and tackle to lift the pieces, wouldn’t one?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “You have seen our men raise objects even heavier