Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [76]
Promising boys. It would be a comeuppance for them if this girlchild turned out to have the qualities that would make an archaeologist. Men were all blind, even the best of them; Ramses’s benevolent expression suggested he was about to pat the girl on the head and give her a sweet. Nefret had a feeling Jumana was going to show him up too, and she was prepared to cooperate to the fullest.
The three of them rode side by side, with Jamil trailing after them with the basket of food and water bottles. Jumana chattered, giving them her opinions of her father, her brother, various cousins, the school and its faculty, and she would have gone on to the wider environs of Luxor if Nefret had not stopped her. “The first thing you must learn,” she said, “is to be quiet except when you ask a question. This is your chance to learn from a man who knows more about Egyptology than any teacher you could have.”
Ramses, who had been listening indulgently to the girl’s chatter, gave Nefret a sidelong grin. Nefret gave him a frown. He could be authoritative, even brusque, with his professional associates and the men who worked for him, but like his father he was too damned polite to women.
The morning air was cool and crisp. They followed the road through the fields into the desert beyond. The group from the Metropolitan Museum of New York was working in an area between the cultivation and the great temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri, where the cliffs of the high desert enclosed the plain in a series of bays. In the largest and most spectacular of them the female pharaoh Hatshepsut had constructed her mortuary temple, next to the earlier Eleventh Dynasty temple. The ruined monuments of other kings stretched along the edge of the cultivation. Few of them had been properly excavated. Then there were the tombs. They were everywhere, dug into the hills of Gurneh and Drah Abu’l Naga and Deir el Medina. In the broken terrain behind the cliffs lay the Kings’ Valleys, east and west, and the Valley of the Queens, and dozens of smaller wadis, any one of which might contain undiscovered tombs. It was an embarras de richesses, a long lifetime’s treasure hunt, with no map and few clues. The Asasif itself was a rich site, from an archaeological point of view. Ramses envied the Met people their concession, but even his father admitted they were doing an excellent job.
Ambrose Lansing, a slender dark man with a neat little mustache, was directing a crew of workmen in an area near the foot of the Asasif. When one of his men drew his attention to them he jumped up and came to greet them.
“We heard you were in town. It’s good to see you.” He looked curiously at Jamil and Jumana, who had remained at a discreet distance, and grinned. “I see Yusuf has foisted his best-beloved son off onto you. Who’s the girl?”
Nefret explained. “I take it you don’t think highly of Jamil?” she asked.
“He’s worked for practically every Egyptologist in Luxor at one time or another,” Lansing replied. “To use the word ‘work’ loosely . . . Hey, George, come here and meet the Emersons.”
The man he addressed had been waiting for his summons; he was obviously a subordinate, and, as Lansing explained, a new member of the staff. He was several inches taller than his superior, with features that suggested words like “craggy” and “rugged,” but as he approached at a shambling trot Ramses realized he was even younger than Lansing. Barton gaped admiringly at Nefret and tried to find words in which to express how honored he was to meet Ramses, whose book on Egyptian grammar . . .
“Good of you to say so,” Ramses said, feeling approximately a hundred years old. “Are you enjoying Egypt?”
“Yes, sir!” Barton brushed sweat-soaked sandy hair out of his eyes. “I’ve been all over the west bank and Karnak and Luxor temples—when I’m allowed time off, that is.”
“Everyone knows what a slave driver I am,” Lansing said amiably.