The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [2]
People were often misled by this talent into believing Ramses must be equally precocious in other areas. (‘Catastrophically precocious’ was a term sometimes applied by those who came upon Ramses unawares.) Yet, like the young Mozart, he had one supreme gift – an ear for languages as remarkable as was Mozart’s for music – and was, if anything, rather below the average in other ways. (I need not remind the cultured reader of Mozart’s unfortunate marriage and miserable death.)
Ramses was not without amiable qualities. He was fond of animals – often to extremes, as when he took it upon himself to liberate caged birds or chained dogs from what he considered to be cruel and unusual punishment. He was always being nipped and scratched (once by a young lion), and the owners of the animals in question frequently objected to what they viewed as a form of burglary.
As I was saying, Ramses had a few amiable qualities. He was completely free of class snobbery. In fact, the little wretch preferred to sit around the sûk exchanging vulgar stories with lower-class Egyptians, instead of playing nice games with little English girls and boys. He was much happier in bare feet and a ragged galabeeyah than when wearing his nice black velvet suit with the lace collar.
The amiable qualities of Ramses . . . He did not often disobey a direct command, providing, of course,that higher moral considerations did not take precedence (the definition being that of Ramses himself), and the order was couched in terms specific enough to allow no possible loophole through which Ramses could squirm. It would have required the talents of a lord chief justice and a director general of the Jesuit order to compose such a command.
The amiable qualities of Ramses? I believe he had a few others, but I cannot call them to mind at the moment.
However, for once it was not Ramses who caused me aggravation that spring. No. My adored, my admired, my distinguished spouse was the guilty party.
Emerson had some legitimate reasons for being in an evil humour. We had been excavating at Dahshoor, a site near Cairo that contains some of the noblest pyramids in all Egypt. The firman (permit, from the Department of Antiquities, giving us permission to excavate) had not been easy to secure, for the Director of the Department, M. de Morgan, had intended to keep the site for himself. I had never asked him why he gave it up. Ramses was involved in some manner; and when Ramses was involved, I preferred not to inquire into details.
Knowing my particular passion for pyramids, Emerson had been naïvely pleased at being able to provide them. He had even given me a little pyramid of my very own to explore – one of the small subsidiary pyramids which were intended, as some believe, for the burials of the pharaoh’s wives.
Though I had greatly enjoyed exploring the dank, bat-infested passageways of the miniature monument, I had discovered absolutely nothing of interest, only an empty burial chamber and a few scraps of basketry. Our efforts to ascertain the cause of the sudden, inexplicable winds that occasionally swept through the passages of the Bent Pyramid had proved futile. If there were concealed openings and unknown passageways, we had not found them. Even the Black Pyramid, in whose sunken burial chamber we had once been imprisoned,