The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [115]
Then he heard an odd little sound, half squeak, half sob, and turned. When he saw her face his breath stopped. There was no mistaking that look, he had waited long enough to see it. He knew that if he went to her then, she would come unresisting into his arms, but he forced himself to hold back. One more step, the last, must be hers. Her choice, her desire as great as his.
When finally she moved, it was in a stumbling rush. They met halfway.
In the still darkness before sunrise, as she lay in his arms, he felt a drop of moisture on his shoulder and asked why she was crying.
“I feel like Sinuhe.”
He laughed a little and drew her closer. “Not to me, you don’t.”
A breath of answering laughter warmed his skin. “You know what I mean.”
“I think I do. But I’d like to hear you say it.”
“Like an exile who has finally come home.”
She slept then, but he lay awake, holding her, until the dawn light strengthened and she stirred and smiled.
When Emerson and I returned to the house that morning, they were waiting outside the door—an old man and a veiled woman holding a small, very dirty child. I took the woman for one of Nefret’s pathetic charges; she was decently covered with a threadbare dark blue tob (outer robe) without which no woman of any class would have dared appear in public; but the black eyes visible over the veil were heavily rimmed with kohl and the cheap ornaments dangling from face and head veils betrayed her profession. The man, whose dusty gray beard reeked with scented oil, wore a silk caftan, striped in gaudy colors and girdled with a colored shawl. Either they had not had the courage to ask for Nefret, or Ali had refused to let them in, for which one could hardly blame him.
I was about to speak to the woman when Emerson addressed the old man by name.
“How dare you dirty my doorstep, Ahmed Kalaan? You know where the clinic is; take her there.”
The woman shrank back. The old man caught her by the arm. “No, Father of Curses, no. And do not send me to the kitchen as if I were a servant. I come as a friend, to spare you.”
“Rrrrrr,” said Emerson. “You vile, contemptible old …”
Words failed him. In fact I was sure they did not, for they seldom did, but the words he would like to have employed were too inflammatory for my ears, much less those of an innocent child. For all his bravado, Kalaan was not willing to risk the wrath of the Father of Curses. With a muttered oath he snatched at the child, whose face was hidden against the woman’s shoulder. She clung desperately to her mother—for so I assumed the woman to be—but Kalaan’s clawlike hands pulled her away and held her up so we could see her face. Her skin was brown, her curly hair black, her features rather delicate and, at the moment, almost witless with fear. She was a typical Egyptian child … except for one thing.
“See—see!” Kalaan gabbled.
“Good Lord,” Emerson gasped. He looked at me. “Peabody—what—“
Though I was shaken to the core, I am accustomed to react quickly in a crisis. This was unquestionably a crisis. I said, “We cannot pursue this matter in the open street. Bring them in at once. Ali, open the door.”
Kalaan’s face split into a gargoyle grin. He thrust the child back into her mother’s arms and strutted after me. Fatima, who was in the courtyard, let out a cry of protest at the sight of the trio. “Sitt Hakim—where are you taking them, Sitt? If it is Nur Misur they want, she is here, she wishes to see you and the Father of Curses—”
“Is Ramses here?” Emerson asked.
“Aywa. He came just before you and went with Nur Misur to his room. Do you wish—”
“Not now, Fatima,” I said and closed the sitting room door almost in the poor woman’s face.
Kalaan selected the most comfortable chair, lowered himself into it, and smiled insolently at me. He was in control now, and he knew it. He gestured brusquely at the woman, who came to him cringing like a dog who expects a beating. Her veil had been pulled away by the child