The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [120]
“That was not swearing. That was a prayer, from the heart. See,” Emerson went on in Arabic, “did I not tell you he would come back? I do not tell lies! He is here.”
“She wouldn’t go to bed,” his mother said. He had never heard her sound so helpless. “We had to wrap her in your coat before she would stop crying. Ramses. Do something.”
Ramses felt a sudden, insane desire to laugh. He was afraid, he was worried sick, he didn’t dare think about quite a number of things; but he felt better, somehow. The bundle wriggled, and an arm appeared, reaching for him.
“I can’t touch you until I wash,” Ramses said, remembering where he had been that day.
She took her thumb out of her mouth and said something.
“What? Oh—wash? Yes. Of course. Right back,” he added.
There wasn’t time for a bath—the situation was obviously desperate—so he had to settle for washing hands and arms and face, and exchanging his European clothing for a galabeeyah. When he came back she squirmed out of the coat and off his father’s knee, and ran to him. The little brown body was bare except for a cloth wrapped round her hips. Ramses picked her up, wondering what she made of that item of clothing; children of the poorer classes just squatted, wherever they happened to be. Her face and body were unmarked, except by the scratches and bumps a small child might normally acquire. He had made sure of that when Fatima bathed her.
He wrapped the coat round her and held her till she settled into the curve of his arm and put her thumb back in her mouth.
“It is time to sleep,” he said. “You are safe now. Sometimes I must go away, but I will always come back, and when I am not here, they will watch over you. Do you know who they are? They are my mother and my father. We must obey them.” His mother coughed.
“And,” Ramses said hurriedly, “they are mighty magicians! Now that they are your friends, no one can hurt you. Fatima is your friend too. Go with Fatima.”
Fatima held out her arms and this time she went unprotesting, her eyes already half closed.
“I’m sorry,” Ramses said, not quite sincerely. He was absurdly pleased that she had wanted him.
“Ha,” said his father. “She seems to have inherited another family characteristic—stubbornness. What about a whiskey, my boy? You look as if you could use it. Where have you been all this time? Wasn’t Nefret with the Vandergelts?”
“Nefret,” Ramses repeated. The only positive feature of the afternoon’s frantic search had been the fact that it kept him from thinking about Nefret. He didn’t want to think about her. It hurt too much. “I wasn’t looking for Nefret.”
“Ah,” said his father. He reached for his pipe. “Did you find … what is her name?”
“Rashida. No, I didn’t find her.”
His mother put her glass down on the table. She had drunk every drop, but her chin was firm and her shoulders were squared. “It has been,” she said, “quite a day. I apologize for failing to realize that the welfare of that unfortunate girl ought to have concerned me. One cannot blame her for not contradicting the old villain’s lies; a woman in her position cannot afford the luxury of morality.”
“Well put, Peabody,” said Emerson, his face softening. “We’ll find her, Ramses, and I will personally dismember Kalaan and hang bits of his anatomy all round el Was’a. I wish I could do the same to every procurer in Cairo, but so long as there are men contemptible enough to use those women, there will be other men exploiting them. She is probably in hiding, you know. It may take a while to locate her. Where did you look?”
Fatima had come back down the stairs. She gave Ramses a smile and a reassuring nod, and then glided around the courtyard lighting the lamps. The crimson and orange of hibiscus blooms and the green of their leaves shone in the mellow light; the contrast between the quiet, murmurous beauty of this house and the places he had seen that afternoon was almost too much to bear. All at once he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open.
“The rooms I had taken for them are in Maadi,” he mumbled. “She hadn’t been there. I waited for over an hour