Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [63]
“Yes, yes.” Yusuf’s chin wobbled as he nodded. “You wish to go there now? Jamil will come. He is at your service while you are in Luxor, for anything you need. You will take him wherever you go. If you need more men, he will hire them for you.”
Nefret was looking at the open door of the house. Ramses glanced in that direction, and saw a small brown hand. The fingers were wriggling furiously.
“Right,” Nefret said, half to herself and half to the almost invisible eavesdropper. “Yusuf, I understand your daughter Jumana has been attending school. We would like her to work for us while we are here.”
“Yes, you will need a maidservant,” Yusuf said complacently. “She is a good girl, clever with her hands. I will send her to the dahabeeyah—”
“No!” Nefret moderated her voice. “I don’t want a maid, Yusuf. I have heard she is clever in other ways, that she can read and write. We can use her as a—a secretary.”
“Secretary? You mean to write letters for you? On the dahabeeyah?”
“Not on the dahabeeyah,” Nefret said decidedly. The last thing she wanted was a bright, inquisitive young girl sharing their quarters. “We want her to come with us when we inspect the tombs.”
“You want to take her with us?” Jamil demanded, scowling. “She will only be in the way. She is a nuisance, always following me and wanting to do what I do.”
The little brown hand clenched into a fist. Yusuf glanced uneasily at his son, who was sitting at his feet. Jamil had spoken out of turn, anticipating his father’s response, but it was obvious that he could do no wrong in Yusuf’s eyes.
“I don’t know,” Yusuf muttered. “I have never heard of such a thing. A woman’s place is in the house.”
“Not always,” Ramses said, with an amused look at his wife. “Think about it, Yusuf. We would be grateful for her help. And we would pay well for a skilled scribe.”
“Ah. Hmmm.” Yusuf tugged at his beard. “So. I will think. Bokra (tomorrow) perhaps.”
Yusuf insisted on accompanying them to Tetisheri’s tomb. Ramses tried to dissuade him; unlike his cousin Abdullah, who had been fit and capable into his seventies, Yusuf couldn’t even get out of a chair without puffing and wheezing. He waved Ramses’s objections aside.
“The Father of Curses would be angry if I let you go into the hills without protection. Jamil, bring me my gun.”
The boy jumped up and ran out. When he returned, Nefret’s eyes widened and Ramses stared in consternation. The weapon was an antique Martini, at least forty years old. It had been kept oiled and polished, but it was a single-shot, wildly inaccurate at long range, with a kick like a mule’s. The only way you could be sure of damaging someone with it was to hit him over the head, and Jamil was fondling it in a way that made it more than likely he would shoot himself in the leg.
“Yusuf, none of the men of Luxor would threaten us,” Ramses said. “You don’t need that.”
“No, no one in Luxor,” Yusuf agreed, snatching the weapon from Jamil. “They all fear the Father of Curses and the Brother of Demons. But the Senussi have taken Kharga and Siwa and the Bedouin are in arms.”
“When did this happen?”
“Some days ago,” Yusuf said, with the vagueness about time typical of a man who does not own a clock or a calendar. “There is fighting in the north, near the coast, and it is said the Inglizi are falling back. The desert tribes from Cairo to Nubia are waiting to see who will win. If the Inglizi lose, they will attack.”
Ramses wondered how accurate Yusuf’s report was. He wasn’t surprised to hear that some, if not all, of the oases were no longer in British hands, but the chance of a band of bloodthirsty Bedouin attacking Luxor was preposterous. However, Ramses abandoned hope of persuading the old fellow to give up his cherished weapon.
It took two of his sons to hoist Yusuf onto his horse, which was almost as fat as Yusuf, with a belly like a barrel and a decided disinclination to go faster than a walk. It seemed to take them hours to cross the desert stretch between Gurneh and the hills of the high plateau. As they plodded