The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [72]
Maude is still a nuisance. Ramses is usually able to deal with this sort ofthing himself—I’d be afraid to ask how—or rather, when I do ask, he tells me to mind my own business! With some of the others it has been mostly his appearance, I think, and that indefinable aura of… what can one call it? Desirability? He’s quite nice to look at, if one admires the lean, dark type—and you obviously do, since it is also David’s type.
With Maude it’s gone beyond that. When he’s in the room her eyes follow him the way a dog watches his master—and that’s how he treats her, kindly and gently and with only the slightest touch of irritation when she gets in his way. I don’t think Ramses is ever going to fall head over heels either. Perhaps some people just don’t have the capacity for it.
I ought not have worried you about that business with Percy. It is like you to take part of the blame on yourself, but there wouldn’t have been any harm in your telling me the true story if I hadn’t blurted it out to the one person in the universe Ramses didn’t want to know of it! I am thoroughly ashamed of myself, but I don’t suppose any real damage has been done, has it? After all, what can Percy do to injure Ramses?
I spoke seriously to Emerson about finding Ramses a mastaba. He replied that it was not a question of finding one, the cursed things were all over the cursed place. When I would have pursued the subject he informed me that Ramses could excavate mastabas to his heart’s content as soon as we had finished a proper plan of the site. “First things first, Peabody!” The trouble with most excavators …
Royal pyramids are, as a rule, surrounded by the tombs of private persons who (one must suppose) believed that proximity to the king’s remains would assist their survival in the next world.
The mastaba tombs consisted of two parts: a superstructure of mud-brick shaped like the mastaba bench that gave them their names, rectangular in shape with sloping sides; and a substructure sunk deep into the underlying rock, where the actual burial rested. Some of the larger mastabas around the Giza pyramids are beautifully decorated and inscribed. Mr. Reisner had of course kept these for himself. I do not blame him; I simply state the fact.
There were cemeteries of private tombs around our pyramid. Mr. Reisner had excavated a few of these the previous year, finding that they ranged widely in date, from the crude grave pits of the earliest dynasty to equally poor burials of a period two thousand years later. He had therefore left them to us. He was, of course, perfectly within his rights to do so.
Reisner had not published these tombs, so the results of his (somewhat cursory) excavations had to be extracted (by detailed and ruthless interrogation) from Jack and Geoffrey.
The two young men put up with Emerson’s bullying for two reasons. Firstly, because no one dares disagree with Emerson. Physically, professionally, and vocally, he dominates any group. Secondly, because I endeavored to make the encounters as pleasant as possible in other ways, interrupting Emerson’s lectures with my little jokes and encouraging others to speak.
The last of these encounters took place one evening in our charming courtyard. I had issued invitations as if it were to be an ordinary social occasion, but Jack and Geoffrey must have known what they would be in for. They came anyhow. The presence of Nefret, smiling and silently sympathetic, was no doubt a factor. Ramses was present. He was neither silent nor sympathetic. I had also invited Maude, since I supposed she would come whether I did or not.
The only other guest was Karl von Bork. He had taken to hanging about rather like one of the stray dogs Nefret insisted on feeding. I could hardly turn him away; he was an old friend and I knew he was lonely for Mary and the children. He was always bringing me little gifts from the bazaar in Giza village—a gracefully curved