The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [7]
I did not bother to explain. Only an Englishman would have understood.
I planned to get him away that night, before Zaal could begin dismembering him, but unfortunately Zaal took it into his head to visit us again the same evening. He was somewhat the worse for drink, and looking for amusement. I cannot in decency repeat the vile proposal he made to my companion, nor the words in which Feisal (to his credit) refused. Remarking, “So, you prefer a beating?” Zaal ordered four of his men to seize the slight, shrinking form of the lad and hold him down.
It was not noblesse oblige alone that made me offer to take the beating in place of Feisal. My plan of escape would have been seriously jeopardized if I had to encumber myself with a companion who was unconscious or crippled—for of course it would have been unthinkable to abandon him. I knew I could withstand torture better than an Arab.
Zaal was too inflamed by passion, drink, and bloodlust to resist the temptation. It would have given the creature enormous pleasure to hear an Englishman beg for mercy. Naturally I had no intention of doing so. Feisal took a tentative step toward me. I called out to him not to resist and then pressed my lips tightly together, determined that not another sound should escape me. They tore off my shirt and threw me down upon the divan. Two of them gripped my ankles and two more twisted my wrists and held them. Zaal’s stick crashed down across my back. I locked my teeth to endure the pain that lapped like flames across my back …
With his sleeve Ramses mopped up the puddle of spilled beer before it could stain the page on which he had spent the greater part of the day. He was still shaking with laughter when he tossed the book back to David. “Here, I’ve had all I can stand.”
“You missed the best part,” David said, turning over a few pages. “When you and he swear blood brotherhood before he delivers you safely to the tent of your father and rides off into the night alone.”
“On his faithful white stallion, under the cold light of the distant desert stars, no doubt. He’s certainly fond of banal adjectives, I …” Belatedly, the import of several pronouns sank in. He stopped laughing. “What are you talking about?”
David tossed the book onto the floor. “I may be a bit slow, Ramses, but I’m not stupid. Percy had gone prancing off into the desert and the rest of us were about to leave for England that spring when the Professor and Aunt Amelia got the ransom demand from Zaal. You had already made arrangements to spend the summer working with Reisner at Samaria. I didn’t think anything of it when you decided to start a few days earlier than you had planned, but when Percy turned up, plump and swaggering and undamaged, not long after you left Cairo, I began to wonder. Now I know. Most of what he wrote is rubbish, but he couldn’t have got away without help, and who else could the ’slight’ little Arab prince have been but you? It certainly wasn’t Feisal. He’ll murder you when he finds out you took his name in vain.”
“I’ll tell him it was you.”
David grinned, but shook his head. “I wouldn’t have risked my neck for Percy. Why did you?”
“Damned if I know.”
David looked exasperated. “How much of this—this nonsense is true?”
“Well …” Ramses finished the beer and wiped his mouth on his other sleeve. “Well, if you really want to know—not a lot.”
Ramses had known what he must do as soon as the ransom note reached them. There could be no question of its authenticity; Percy had added a frenzied appeal in his own hand. Even his father admitted they couldn’t take the chance of leaving Percy to the tender mercies of Zaal; he was a renegade and a drunkard, and God only knew what he might do when he was in one of his fits.
“Then,” said Emerson gloomily, “Britain would feel obliged to avenge the bloody idiot and innocent people would be killed. Damnation! We will have to raise the money, I suppose.”
“Uncle James will never repay you,” Ramses said. “He’d swindle a starving charwoman out of her last halfpenny.”
No one bothered