The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [161]
“I am waiting for the men to join us,” I replied. “We cannot take the risk of being separated. Since I do not know whether they will follow us through the bab-sirr or come round to the back, we had better remain where we are. Put out the torch, Nefret. I expect they will be along shortly.”
My confidence was not assumed. With the aid of Emerson’s strength, they should be able to close and barricade the gate and beat a strategic retreat. However, it is difficult to estimate time in the dark; we waited, breathing with difficulty, for what seemed like hours, before hinges creaked and a square of paler darkness opened before me.
“Don’t shoot,” said a familiar voice.
I tucked my pistol back into my pocket. “I couldn’t be sure it was you,” I explained. “Are Ramses and Selim—”
“All present and accounted for,” said Ramses breathlessly. “We can’t stay here, they’ll be looking for us. Let’s go.”
“Where?” I demanded, squeezing through a narrow aperture and a curtain of thorny vines.
“We have an appointment at midnight, I believe. I am all the more anxious now to hear what the . . . fellow has to say. Damn these cactuses,” Emerson added.
They formed a hedge a few feet away. The wall of the house rose sheer and windowless behind us. Nefret and Esin followed me out and Emerson closed the panel, which was of wood painted to resemble the plastered surface of which it formed a part.
“Lead on,” I said.
The narrow lane into which we had emerged led back to the square, but it was obvious we could not go that way; from the sounds of it, a full-scale riot was in progress. A tongue of fire shot up. Someone usually sets fire to something during these affairs, which, once started, go on of their own momentum—especially when there are interested parties fanning the flames. As we retreated in the opposite direction, I heard the same high-pitched shriek of “unbelievers.”
It was fortunate that we had explored the town earlier. Cactus hedges and high walls formed barricades that had to be got round, and twice the sight of men waving torches forced us to retreat in haste. It was quite exciting. However, we found ourselves at last in the open countryside. The moon shone brightly down on fields of waving grain and groves of orange and fig trees.
Moonlight is good for lovers but it is cursed inconvenient for fugitives. We kept to the shadows whenever we could, and once the sound of approaching hoofbeats made us dive for cover in a ditch. After the small troop had galloped past, I said to Emerson, “They were our fellows, Australians and New Zealanders. Perhaps we ought to have stopped them.”
“Do you want to explain this evening’s events—and her—to General Chetwode?” Emerson demanded.
It was a rhetorical question, and he did not wait for an answer.
The distance was less than two miles, but I would never have found the place without a guide. The small hamlet had long been abandoned and the majority of the houses had collapsed into shapeless piles of stone. One or two of them still retained their walls and parts of the roof. There was no sign of life in the half-ruined structure to which Ramses led us.
“We are a trifle late,” I whispered. “Perhaps he has left.”
“If he isn’t there, I will go to Gaza and drag him out by his collar,” Emerson muttered.
He wasn’t there. Ramses, who had insisted on searching the place before we entered, returned to report this fact. “It’s not that late,” he added. “Give him time.”
“I suppose we can’t expect punctuality under these circumstances,” Emerson admitted. “This is as good a place as any to rest; we may as well make ourselves comfortable. What have you got in that bundle, Peabody?”
“Only the bare necessities, I fear. Water, of course, and my first-aid kit. Did any of you incur injuries that require attention?”
“Nothing to speak of,” Emerson said. He let out a soft laugh. “Your quotation was apropos. The damned fools tried to crowd in all at once. ‘In yon straight path a thousand may well be stopped by three,’ as the Lays of Ancient Rome so poetically expresses it. We pushed them back, got