The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [150]
I reminded myself to ask Emerson whether all evidence of the tragedy had been cleared away. Ramses had said there had not been much blood. He had not mentioned other things.
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
Ramses had told David about his meetings with Wardani. David hadn’t liked it one damn bit.
They were sitting on the upper deck of the Amelia when the conversation took place. It was not late, but Lia had gone to bed, and the last of the tourists had left long ago. Only the stars and a slim crescent moon, and the crimson glow of David’s pipe broke the darkness.
“I grant you your right to a certain interest in my affairs,” David said, after he had cooled down. “But I don’t need you to look after me, Ramses. Not in this, at any rate.”
“I know you don’t need me to look after you, but couldn’t you consider lending your support to one of the more moderate organizations? You have a wife—”
“Don’t bring her into this. Would you allow a woman—or a man—to keep you from what you consider your duty?”
Ramses sighed. “David, I know how you feel—”
“No, you don’t. You try, but you can’t know! You’ve never been in danger of being imprisoned or beaten half to death because you expressed unpopular opinions. You are sacrosanct because of your nationality and your class. Have you ever seen a man flogged, as they were at Denshawai?”
“Once.”
The silence lengthened uncomfortably. “In case you wonder why I didn’t stop it,” Ramses said, biting the words off, “it is because I was tied to a post waiting my turn.”
David didn’t make the mistake of apologizing. “You never told me. What happened?”
Ramses took out a cigarette and lit it. “Oh, Father arrived, hurling thunderbolts. He always does, you know.” Even in the dark he could sense David’s distress. In a gentler voice he went on, “You were in Paris that summer. The business was hushed up. It was, as the diplomatists say, a matter of some delicacy.”
“You were in Palestine. So that’s why you—”
“No, that’s not why I was ill last year. I told you, Father appeared before they’d got well started. However, the incident did rather lessen my tolerance for the Ottoman Empire. Wardani is soft on the Turks. It’s understandable—co-religionists and all that—but there’s an awful lesson to be learned from the Young Turks. They started out as reformers and revolutionaries too. Now they’ve been in power awhile, they are becoming as corrupt as the old regime, and the penal system in the provinces is unchanged. It’s still the kurbash, and execution without trial, and absolute power for the local magistrates, some of whom have extremely ugly habits. I won’t see that happen here, David, not if I can prevent it. Britain has a lot to answer for, but not as much as the Sultan.”
There was another thing the experience had taught him, but he couldn’t admit it even to David. Watching a man beaten to death by an expert who carried out his duties with cold-blooded skill had been a new experience. The business had taken quite a long time, and they had made sure he saw every stroke of the kurbash and heard every scream. By the time they removed the bloody remains and fastened him up in their place, he had been ready to scream or beg for mercy, and he’d have done it too, if his father hadn’t arrived. To say the kurbash was the only thing he feared would have been a lie; he was afraid of a lot of things. But it was the only thing he feared more than death.
David began, “There’s surely no danger of—”
“Egypt becoming an Ottoman province again? Legally it still is, you know. Why do you suppose they call it the Veiled Protectorate? Britain has never formally annexed the country; Cromer’s titles were Consular Agent and Minister Plenipotentiary even though he was the ultimate power in Egypt for thirty years. Now Kitchener is in the same position. He’s out to crush the Nationalists, and he’s done a damned thorough job of it. Wardani is the