The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [162]
“It was a good fight,” Selim said reminiscently.
He reached for the water bottle, which was passing round, and I said with a sigh of exasperation, “All right, Selim, let me see your hand. Why didn’t you tell me you had been wounded?”
“It is nothing,” said Selim. “It will heal. I do not need anything on it.”
He meant antiseptics. Men are strange creatures; he had taken a cut on the side of his wrist which had bled copiously and must have hurt quite a lot, but I had to speak sternly to him before he let me swab it with alcohol.
It was a relief to rest our weary limbs. Esin was half asleep already, stretched out on a patch of ground Selim had gallantly swept clean of pebbles, with her head on one of the bundles. “Biscuit, anyone?” I inquired, extracting the packet from my parcel.
Emerson chuckled. “What, no whiskey? My dear girl, packing those bundles was a brilliant thought, but I have come to expect no less of you.” We were sitting side by side in a darkish corner, so he gave me a quick demonstration of approval.
“How long can we stay here without being discovered?” I asked.
“It’s safe enough,” Ramses replied. “The locals think the place is haunted.”
“By you?” Nefret asked.
“I encouraged the idea. I wonder . . .” He went to the darkest corner of the place and shifted a few stones. After a moment he said, “No, it’s not here—the pistol I took from Chetwode. He must have collected it on his way back.”
“Pity,” said Emerson. “We may want a weapon before the night is over. Ah, well, we usually manage without one.”
“Yes, sir,” Ramses agreed. He went back to Nefret and sat down. She leaned her head against his shoulder and he put his arm round her. “Darling, why don’t you stretch out and sleep for a while? It’s beginning to look as if he—”
He broke off with a hiss of breath, his head turning alertly, and raised a finger to his lips. Ramses’s acute hearing had prompted one of Daoud’s more memorable sayings: “He can hear a whisper across the Nile.” We froze, holding our breaths. Ramses rose and drifted toward the door, silent as a shadow in his dark galabeeyah.
Someone was coming. He walked quietly but not noiselessly. I heard a twig snap and then a form appeared in the ragged moonlit aperture of the door. The silhouette was that of a tall man wearing a turban and a long robe. He leaned forward, peering into the darkness, his arms raised in greeting or defense. One sleeve hung limp from the elbow.
Ramses seized the fellow in a tight grip and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Hell and damnation,” Emerson exclaimed, surging to his feet. “Bring him in. Keep him quiet. He must be the bastard who was howling out anathemas against the unbelievers; I thought that voice was familiar! If he’s led that pack of jackals here . . . We need a gag, Peabody. Tear up some extraneous garment or other.”
“I do not possess any extraneous garments, Emerson. Hit him over the head.”
The prisoner, who had been quiescent until then, was galvanized into frantic movement. He managed to wrench Ramses’s hand from his face.
“For God’s sake, don’t be hasty!”
The words were English. The accent was refined. The voice was not that of Sethos.
Ramses lowered his hand but did not release his hold. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“A friend. That is the conventional reply, I believe. I really am, though.”
It had been a long time, but the well-bred drawl, with its undercurrent of amusement, struck a chord of memory.
“Let him go, Ramses,” I said. “You remember Sir Edward Washington, Sethos’s aide and co-conspirator?”
“I am flattered, Mrs. Emerson.” Sir Edward removed himself from Ramses’s loosened grasp and made me an elegant bow. “How very good it is to see you again. And the Professor . . .” Another bow. “Nefret—do forgive the liberty—beautiful as ever . . . Selim, my friend . . . And I see you have the young lady safe. Well done.”
Ramses switched on his torch and stared