The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [57]
However, careful observation convinced me that Nefret did ask for more, and that she had not found what she wanted in either man. Her manner with Geoffrey was gentler than her teasing exchanges with the lively young American, but there is a certain look … I did not see it—and I am seldom mistaken about such things.
One mystery was solved when Ramses told us about his meeting with the leader of the Young Egypt party.
We were having breakfast on the upper deck, as was our habit, and Emerson was swearing, as was his habit, about the smoke and the stench and the increased river traffic. Ramses was late in joining us. The dark circles under his eyes were particularly prominent that morning, so, though I make it a point to allow the young people a proper degree of privacy, I felt obliged to ask him what he had been up to.
It would be inaccurate and unfair to say that Ramses often lied. He seldom had to; even at a tender age he had been a master of equivocation and his skills had become honed with time. On this occasion he replied that he had intended to inform us of the matter that very morning and would do so at once if I liked. Taking this with the usual shakerful of salt, I invited him to proceed.
Though the narrative raised innumerable questions, we let him talk without interruption—I because I knew the futility of trying to interrupt Ramses, Emerson because he had only had one cup of coffee and was not fully awake, Nefret because (my infallible instincts informed me) she knew already.
“You think he was telling the truth, then?” said Emerson, when Ramses stopped talking. “I am relieved to hear it. I had wondered …”
“You, too, Professor?” Nefret exclaimed.
“The suspicion was painful but unavoidable,” Emerson said. “I gather we all shared it, and were reluctant to say so.”
“Not I,” I said, helping Ramses to eggs and bacon. “I won’t scold you for wearing yourself out unnecessarily, Ramses; if your mind is now at ease, the effort was worthwhile. But I could have told you not to bother.”
“Your intuition, I suppose?” Emerson inquired, taking out his pipe.
“It is based, in my case at least, on long experience and a profound understanding of human nature.”
“Bah,” said Emerson mildly. “I’ll wager you didn’t think of the nationalist cause as a possible motive for David’s wanting money. I confess I did not. That’s the devil of a complication, I must say. Kitchener is determined to crush the radical nationalists, and Wardani is his principal quarry. Is David deeply involved with the movement?”
“Not so deeply that he is under official suspicion,” Ramses said. “At least I believe not. I hoped I could persuade Wardani to keep David at a distance. I may or may not have succeeded.”
“Can’t you talk some sense into David?” Emerson demanded. “You are his closest friend.”
“I tried.” Ramses had not touched his food. It was always difficult to know what he was thinking—as opposed to what he was saying—but there was an unusual degree of emotion in his voice when he went on. “It was a serious error on my part.”
“Why?” Nefret demanded.
“Because I was smug and condescending. I didn’t mean to be, but that’s how it must have sounded—a kindly lecture, for his own good. It is precisely that attitude that Egyptians like David and Wardani resent in us. And when he talked about Denshawai … He’s become obsessed with it, and who the devil am I to tell him he ought not care?”
The word is probably meaningless to most of my readers. Though the incident had occurred only a few years before the time of which I write, and had stirred up considerable furor even in the British press, it had soon been forgotten. We have very short memories where injustice to others is concerned, especially when we are the ones responsible for it. The incident had been one of the darkest blots on the British administration and a source of shame to all decent Englishmen.
The mud-brick towers of dovecotes are familiar features in the Egyptian scene, for the