The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [102]
I’m getting to be as superstitious as Mother, he thought. It hasn’t happened. It isn’t going to happen.
His mother’s half-heard orders had provided enough information to save valuable time. Some of their followers ran off and came back with enough wood to make a litter as well as a splint for Emerson’s arm. The light of several torches brightened the increasing darkness and one overly enthusiastic helper got a basketful of rock square on the chin as he leaned over the shaft offering unnecessary advice.
As soon as the space was clear enough, Ramses dropped down and crawled into the passage. It was half-filled with bits of stone, which sloped down toward the far end. His mother hadn’t sat waiting to be rescued; she had scooped the stuff out from below as Jamil dumped it in above. She hadn’t been able to keep up with him, but that was his mother for you—“every little bit helps,” she would have told herself, and, “Never give up hope.” Something caught in his throat. He hurried on toward the square opening at the far end, which glowed with faint light.
He took in the scene in a single glance, by the light of the failing torch—the pile of rugs on which Emerson was lying, the jars, the stores of food—and his mother, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, dredging peas out of a tin with her fingers.
“Ah, there you are, my dear,” she said. “And Nefret too? How nice.”
Her face was filthy, her hair gray with stone dust. Arms and shoulders were bare and as dirty as her face; the garment that more or less covered the upper part of her body had narrow ruffled straps, yards of lace, and several little pink bows.
Ramses was unable to speak or move. Nefret had gone at once to Emerson and was examining his arm. She let out a choked laugh. “She’s used the ribs and shaft of the parasol for a splint!”
“Once again proving, if proof were needed, the all-round usefulness of a good stout parasol,” said his mother.
Peas went flying as Ramses snatched her up and hugged her.
“All’s well that ends well,” I remarked, sipping my whiskey and soda.
The axiom was trite, I confess, but I do not believe it deserved the general grumble of disapproval it received. They were all there on the veranda, even Katherine. Dinner was going to be very late, since Fatima had been too agitated to instruct the cook when she learned that not only we, but Ramses and Nefret and Daoud and Selim, had vanished into thin air, somewhere between Sheikh Abd el Gurneh and the western cliffs. Cyrus and Bertie had waited less than an hour before going in pursuit; finding the horses still in Mohammed’s charge and with no idea of where to look next, they had returned to the house in the hope that some or all of us had returned.
I cannot say that anyone behaved sensibly. Cyrus had sent for his wife, Sennia demanded that she be allowed to take the Great Cat of Re out to look for Ramses, and Gargery had to be forcibly restrained from dashing wildly out of the house waving a pistol. His grumbles, on the monotonous theme of “going off like that without me” were the loudest of all.
“Do be still, Gargery,” I said sternly. “And the rest of you. We had no choice but to act at once.”
“Quite,” said Emerson, who was having some difficulty smoking his pipe and drinking his whiskey with only one serviceable arm. Nefret had tended to him; he had a nice neat cast and a proper sling. Nefret had admitted,