The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [49]
“I would gladly die to please you, but I draw the line at carrying that lazy carnivore.”
Nefret glanced at David, who was staring fixedly at the horizon. He didn’t care for Horus either. With a martyred sigh, she lowered Horus gently to the ground. The cat gave Ramses a malevolent look. He knew who was responsible for this indignity, but he had discovered early on that heavy boots were impervious to teeth and claws.
They went on, with the cat stalking after them. Ramses knew Nefret was angry with herself for probing that old wound, and with him for refusing to talk about it. No doubt she was right, it would have been better to get his feelings out into the open and accept the consolation she was aching to offer; but reticence was an old habit that was hard for him to overcome. A damned annoying habit too, he supposed, to Nefret, who never left anyone in doubt as to how she felt about anything. A little moderation wouldn’t do either of them any harm.
She hadn’t meant to upset him. How could she have known it would hurt so much, when he himself had been caught unawares? He seldom thought about that ugly business now, except on the rare occasions when a bad dream brought back every grisly detail of the desperate struggle in the dark and its unspeakable ending—the sound of bone and brain spattering against stone.
She remained silent, her face averted, and Ramses took up the conversation at the point it had reached before her unwitting blunder.
“I admit I wouldn’t mind showing off a bit, but there’s not much hope of our succeeding. We’re working in the dark, and in part it’s because Mother and Father still treat us like helpless infants who require to be protected—especially you, Nefret.”
Ramses kicked a stone. It missed Horus by a good two feet, but the cat howled and rolled over onto his back. Nefret picked him up, cuddled him, and crooned endearments. Ramses scowled at Horus, who sneered back at him over Nefret’s shoulder. One way or another Horus would get what he wanted.
They were approaching the end of the path and the steep descent from the plateau into the eastern Valley. Nefret’s shoulders sagged, probably from the dead weight of Horus, since she sounded quite her old self when she spoke.
“You’re right about that, and I intend to take steps to change it. I adore both of them, but they do infuriate me at times! How can they expect us to take them into our confidence when they won’t tell us what we need to know?”
:
The path leading down into the Valley is steep but not difficult if one is in fit condition, which all of us were. I persuaded Nefret to put the cat down and put her hat on. Horus complained, but even Nefret had better sense than to attempt the descent with her arms full of cat. The tourists were out in full force; this was the height of the season and the tombs closed at one P.M. Some of them stared impertinently at our party, especially at Horus. Emerson scowled.
“It gets worse every year,” he grumbled. “They are all over the place, buzzing like flies. Impossible to find a spot remote enough where one can work in peace without being gaped at and subjected to impertinent questions.”
“The side wadi where we worked last year is relatively remote,” I reminded him. “We were not often interrupted by tourists.”
“That is because we were not finding anything that was worth a damn,” said Emerson. Tourists always put him in an evil humor. Without further ado or further comment, he stamped off along the cleared path that led, not to the rocky ravine I had mentioned, but toward the main entrance to the Valley and the donkey park.
“Where is he going?” Nefret asked.
I knew the answer, and—of course—so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me. “He wants to have a look at numbers Three, Four and Five. He has not given up hope of being allowed to excavate them, especially number Five.”
Not even I can claim to be able to identify all the tombs in the Valley by number, but all of us knew these particular tombs. We had heard Emerson rant about them only too