Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [55]
“An idea only. What Cyrus would call a hunch.”
“Ah. Would you care to tell me what it is?”
“No, I would not.”
Emerson removed his arm and drew a little away. “I have a hunch too.”
“I expected you would.”
“I am not going to tell you either.”
“I expected you would not.”
Emerson scooped me up and put me on his knee. Holding me close, he remarked, “I could go on sparring with you all night, my darling, but you need to rest. You lost a half cup or so of blood tonight. Before I tuck you in, tell me what you want to do about this. Are we going to tell the children?”
“Oh, Emerson, I don’t know . . .” I had not realized how weary I was until I lay against his broad breast and felt his strong arms enclosing me. “We agreed not to keep things from one another, but if Ramses and Nefret discover that we have been attacked they will come dashing back to Cairo in order to protect us.”
“I suppose they might,” Emerson said, in tones of mild surprise. “No need, of course, but . . . Well. Hmmm. What about Gargery and Fatima and the others?”
“I would like to keep it from them if we can, and I believe we have a good chance of doing so if I can get rid of that suit. I will bundle it up and take it to the dig tomorrow and bury it.”
“Won’t Fatima notice it is missing?”
“By the time she does, I will have thought of something.”
“I’m sure you will. Good Gad, life would be much simpler if we didn’t have to deceive our friends as well as our enemies.” He rose and carried me into the next room.
Naturally I felt perfectly well next morning and was ready to return to work. Some persons might have found it strange that we would go on with our excavations as if nothing had happened, but for the moment we were at an impasse. There was no way of tracing the men who had attacked us; they had only to lose themselves in the crowded byways of Cairo. We had left the cab at the Turf Club, in charge of the doorman, on the assumption that its owner (assuming he was still alive) would look for it there, since it was there we had hired him. Such proved to be the case, as we learned later that day from the driver himself, who came looking for us to remind us that he had not been paid. He added, somewhat plaintively, that we owed him something extra for the inconvenience. I could not but agree. Being struck over the head, bundled up in a sack, and thrust into a dark corner behind a rubbish heap is unquestionably inconvenient. Unfortunately the driver had nothing useful to contribute. He had not even seen the man who took his place, for he had been asleep when he was knocked unconscious. It had taken him some time to free himself.
The actual work of excavation was proceeding well enough. William Amherst had proved to be a great help, and I took a certain modest pride in having being instrumental in his reformation. However, his abilities were limited. He was a fair copyist—though not in Ramses’s league—and a trained excavator, but he was no use at all when it came to bones, and we were getting a lot of them. The day after our little adventure we cleared the third of the burial shafts and found another set of bones, enclosed in a rather attractive wooden coffin. The bones themselves were not attractive. Bits of them protruded at ungainly angles from the mass of rotten mummy wrappings, and the skull had been separated from the body. It had been placed at the foot of the coffin, between two large cylinder jars. Its fleshless grin was the first thing we saw when the lid was raised.
“Dear me,” I remarked. “How odd. Was the injury pre- or post-mortem, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Emerson growled. “And I won’t, until Nefret can examine the cursed thing. There’s another skeleton behind the coffin. No sign of mummy wrappings . . .”
It took the rest of the morning to get the coffin out and up the narrow shaft. I feared that the bones had got shaken up in the process, but I did not look, since we were about to stop for luncheon. After the men had taken