The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [57]
The ancient language was his specialty, as excavation was Emerson’s, and he reacted with as much enthusiasm as Emerson had done over his wretched huts. We got not a word out of him during luncheon. Nefret had to keep jogging his elbow to remind him to eat.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Hmmm?” was the only response.
Nefret brushed a lock of curling hair away from his forehead, and he gave her an abstracted smile before returning his attention to the scrap he held. I understood why she had been moved to that tender gesture. Absorbed in a task that challenged and delighted him like no other, he looked as happy as a child over a new toy. This was what he was meant to do. This was what he ought to be doing for the rest of his life, undisturbed by crime and war.
Knowing Ramses as I did, I realized there was not much chance of that, and I consoled myself with the thought that it was not my fault that he got in so much trouble—not entirely. According to the latest psychological theories, he must enjoy a certain amount of danger, or he wouldn’t go out of his way to invite it. It made a change from hieratic, at any rate.
We put in a long hard day, removing Kuentz’s rubbish dump, and Emerson began the survey of the site. This was an onerous and time-consuming procedure, which some archaeologists neglected, but which Emerson considered absolutely necessary. If Kuentz had done such a survey, he had left no record of it. (Emerson would have done it again anyhow.)
Jumana was back to her normal self, cheerful, interested, and willing, and even Ramses admitted she was of considerable help. All she had to do, really, was hold a stick level while the measurements were made, but it was a rather tedious task and she followed orders meticulously.
Naturally I kept a close eye on her. There were two possible explanations for her recovered good spirits: either she was not as attached to her brother as I had believed, and had dismissed him from her thoughts—or she was more devious than I had believed, and expected to hear from him again.
When we returned home I had several more nice ostraca for Ramses.
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
The windows of their bedroom faced the stables, but that building was some distance away and they would not have heard the soft noises if they had not been awake. They had been late getting to bed, since Ramses had to be pried away from his “nice ostraca.” Once Nefret had got his attention she had no difficulty holding it, but it was he who heard the sounds, not she. Responding to the slow movements of his lips and hands, she was jarred out of her state of drowsy pleasure when he suddenly jumped up and went to the window.
“Hell and damnation,” she began.
“Sssh. It’s Jumana. She’s leading one of the horses.”
He started to climb out the window. “Put on some clothes,” Nefret said, rising in her turn and fumbling in the dark for various discarded garments.
“Well, then, damn it, find—I don’t care what—something. I can’t let her get too far ahead.”
He snatched the trousers from her hand and put them on, and then he was gone, over the sill and into the darkness. Nefret pulled a caftan over her head and found a pair of boots that turned out to be hers. She would need them; her feet were not as hardened as his. She caught him up as he was leading Risha, unsaddled and unbridled, out of the stable.
“Wait for me,” she gasped.
“No time.” He vaulted onto Risha’s back, and in spite of her excitement and worry, the sheer beauty of the movement stopped her breath. She could do it sometimes, but never like that, never in a single seemingly effortless flow of muscle and sinew. He turned Risha with a touch of his knee and the stallion