The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [101]
The word ended in a gurgle as Selim spun round and caught him by the throat. “You saw him? When? Why didn’t you say so?”
Plucking at his fingers, the luckless man gasped, “You did not ask, Selim.”
Selim loosened his grip and Ramses apologized in the usual way. Clutching a handful of coins and swelling with pride at being the center of attention, their informant explained that he had seen the Father of Curses and the Sitt Hakim early that morning, when he was on his way to work. They had been wearing Egyptian dress, but, the fellow added, the Father of Curses could not be mistaken for any other man. He had been tempted to follow, but he was late for his work and they were going too fast. Yes, that way, toward Deir el Bahri.
He and several of the other men trailed along, speculating and discussing the matter. The sun was low and the shallow, well-remembered bay was deep in shadow. Ramses thought he saw a darker shadow, slim and supple as a snake, move rapidly along the broken ground to the south. He might have imagined it, and just then it was the least of his concerns.
One look into the shaft told him they had come to the right place. It was four feet deep in rubble—not the drift of sand and random bits of rock that might have accumulated naturally, but new fill, broken stone. Not far from the opening lay a rough wooden ladder and a crumpled basket.
“My God,” Nefret gasped. “He was filling in the shaft. They must be . . . Mother! Father, can you hear me?”
The uneven surface of the fill moved, shifted, subsided. Using language he had never before employed in their presence, Selim fell flat on the ground, reached down and snatched a handful of chips. “They are under it! They are still alive, they are moving! Hurry—Daoud—”
“Hold on,” Ramses said, ducking to avoid the chips Selim had flung frantically over his shoulder. “There’s the basket Jamil must have used. Leave it to Daoud.”
“Yes,” said Daoud placidly. “There is no hurry. Look.” Another shift of the stone surface resulted in a further subsistence—no more than an inch, but now Ramses saw what Daoud’s calmer mind had grasped. Someone was digging the stone out from below, a little at a time.
“They will be in the passage,” Daoud went on, climbing down into the shaft and taking the basket Selim handed him. “We will soon have them out.”
There wasn’t anything they could do to help Daoud except empty the basket as soon as he handed it up. Ramses fought the urge to join him in the shaft, but only one person could work efficiently in the narrow space. It was not long, though it seemed an eternity to the anxious watchers, before a break in the solid wall of the shaft became visible—the squared-off lintel of the entrance to the side passage.
It was filled to the top with broken stone.
Ramses lost the last remnants of his calm. “Father!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Mother, for God’s sake—”
Daoud stopped digging. In the silence Ramses heard sounds of activity behind that ominous blockage. An irregular gap, less than two inches deep, appeared, and an eerily distorted, very irritated voice was heard.
“Ramses, is that you? I trust you did not allow him to escape. Is Daoud with you? He will have to empty the entire shaft, the cursed stones keep trickling down into the passage. Though ‘trickle’ is perhaps an inappropriate word.”
After Ramses had drawn his first full breath in what felt like hours, he persuaded his garrulous mother to retreat farther down the passage. She continued to shout instructions and questions, and they shouted questions back at her—a fairly futile exercise, since Daoud had gone back to work with renewed energy and the crash and rattle of stone drowned out most of the words. Ramses shouted along with the rest of them. He had been utterly taken aback by the intensity of his relief when he