The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [186]
“You certainly have, my dear. I cannot recall ever seeing you in finer condition.”
The tone of his voice and the sparkle in his handsome blue eyes gave the words a meaning that made me blush like a schoolgirl. “Now, Emerson,” I began—and then I remembered. The dear children were hundreds of miles away. Discretion was not necessary.
I will not record my reply, but it made Emerson laugh a good deal. He lifted me from my chair onto his knee, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flutter of skirts as Mahmud beat a tactful retreat with the fresh coffee he had intended to deliver. At that moment I realized fully how necessary it is for a fond mother to accept the departure of her children from the nest. It would be a blow, but I thought I could bear up under it.
I was glad to see them, though, when we returned to Luxor several weeks later. They all commented on how fit and rested we looked. I returned the compliment, though privately I was not pleased with Ramses’s appearance. Physically he was much the same; it was a certain look in his eyes. I said nothing at the time, but the day before we were to leave Luxor, I took him aside.
“I have a final visit to make, Ramses. Will you come with me? Just you, I don’t want the others.”
He accompanied me, of course. I think he suspected where I meant to go.
The cemetery was deserted. It was a desolate place, with the wind blowing fine sand across the bare ground, and not a flower to be seen. I had not brought flowers. I had brought a small trowel.
I laid them one by one in the hole I dug—the little figures of Isis with the child Horus, and Anubis, who leads the dead to the Judgment, and Hathor and Ptah and the others. Last of all I unfastened the chain from round my neck and detached the figure of the baboon, the ape who watches over the scales of the Judgment. After I had placed it with the others I gave Ramses the trowel. He filled in the little hole and smoothed the sand over it. Neither of us had spoken. We did not speak now. In silence he helped me to my feet, and held my hand a little longer than was necessary before we turned away. I hoped this would help him. I had known he would understand.
There is no harm in protecting oneself from that which is not true; and who can say what eternal truths are preserved in the mysteries of the ancient faith?
“I am yesterday, today and tomorrow, for I am born again and again. I am he who comes forth as one who breaks through the door; and everlasting is the daylight which His will has created.”
They attacked at dawn. I woke instantly at the sound of pounding hooves, for I knew what it meant. The Beduin were on the warpath!
“What is it you find so amusing, my dear?” I inquired.
Nefret looked up from her book. “I am sorry if I disturbed you, Aunt Amelia, but I couldn’t help laughing. Did you know that Beduins go on the warpath? Wearing feathered headdresses and waving tomahawks, no doubt!”
The library of our house in Kent is supposed to be my husband’s private sanctum, but it is such a pleasant room that all the members of the family tend to congregate there, especially in fine weather. Except for my son Ramses we were all there that lovely autumn morning; a cool breeze wafted through the wide windows that opened onto the rose garden.
Reclining comfortably upon the sofa, Nefret was dressed in a practical divided skirt and shirtwaist instead of a proper frock, and sunlight brightened her gold-red hair. She had become as dear as a daughter to us since we rescued her from the remote oasis in the Nubian desert where she had spent the first thirteen years of her life, but despite my best efforts I had been unable to eradicate all the peculiar notions she had acquired there. Emerson claims some of those peculiar notions have been acquired from me. I do not consider a dislike of corsets and a firm belief in the equality of the female sex peculiar, but I must admit that Nefret’s habit of sleeping with a long knife under her pillow might strike some as unusual. I could not complain of this, however, since our family does seem to have