Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [88]
Men! I thought to myself. I did not say it, since I have been happily married for many years and intend to remain so. Temperately I inquired, “What was it in that letter that could possibly upset you? Tetisheri’s tomb is safe, the children are well and obviously very happy—if one reads between the lines, which I can easily—”
Sounds of altercation in the hall, including a scream from Gargery, interrupted my speech. Sennia must have forgotten to shut Horus in her room. The cursed cat was bound and determined to go with her to school, and since that would have been inadvisable (the Reader will note that I have avoided the temptation to employ the word “catastrophic”), we had to lock him up until after she had left the house with Gargery. He and the cat had never got on, but mutual dislike had blossomed into open enmity since Gargery had appointed himself Sennia’s escort. He ought to have known better than to catch hold of the beast.
The sounds of combat died, and I heard Sennia scolding Horus in her high-pitched voice as she carried him off. I also heard Gargery cursing. I took no notice. Emerson took no notice either; it was a fairly frequent occurrence and he had become accustomed to it. He had also regained control of himself.
“The letter? Oh, the letter. Nothing. It is a—er—fine letter. I could wish that Ramses had been more communicative; neither of them gave any details about their investigations.”
“Ramses is not much of a letter writer. I don’t believe he is hiding anything, if that is what you suspect.”
Emerson said nothing. “Do you suspect him of hiding something?” I demanded.
“No, why the devil should I? What’s that?” he added, as I handed him the enclosure—the covert epistle, as one might term it. He glanced through it, and his face lengthened.
“What precisely did you tell her?” he asked.
“Everything. Nefret and I agreed not to hide things from one another. She is quite right, you know. We cannot keep these little disturbances from him indefinitely. He is going to be very annoyed with us, and it isn’t fair to Nefret to put her in the position of conspiring with us against him.”
“Us? It was your idea to keep these—little disturbances, good Gad!—secret. Have you changed your mind?”
“Would you like more coffee, Emerson?”
“I have been trying to get the coffeepot away from you for several minutes, Peabody.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear.” I filled his cup.
“Well? Answer my question, if you please.”
“I dreamed about Abdullah last night.”
This might have struck some as a non sequitur, but Emerson understood, or thought he did. His dour expression became even darker. He is such a thoroughgoing skeptic that he continues to deny the validity of premonitions, dreams, and other “superstitions,” as he terms them. I had not told him of my strange sleeping visions of our dear departed reis until the previous year, and although the effort almost choked him he refrained from pouring the ice water of his disbelief on them because he believed the dreams comforted me—as they did. I would always miss Abdullah, who had been very dear to me; to see him again, fit and handsome and strong, in the setting he loved as much as I, was like meeting a living friend. Many of the things he had told me in those dreams had come to pass; he had warned me of danger and consoled me when I was in distress, and I now had a strong if illogical faith in the import of such visions.
Since Emerson could not quite bring himself to ask for details, I proceeded to inform him. “He did not advise me on what course to pursue. I would have asked him if I had had the opportunity, but this was different from the other dreams. The setting was the same—the cliffs behind Deir el Bahri, at sunrise—but this time when I reached the summit he wasn’t there waiting