The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [64]
I thought it much more likely that Gargery would fall in, but he could not be dissuaded. His self-appointed duties were complicated even more by his suspicion of Jumana; he considered us hopelessly naive for believing in her reformation, and tried to keep an eye on her as well as on Sennia. The days Sennia spent with us were extremely lively, what with one thing and another. Horus was one of the things. We could not leave him at the house, since he bullied the maids and went raging about, breaking bric-a-brac and furniture. His determination to follow Sennia wherever she went led to several unpleasant scenes between him and Gargery.
The other cat was far less trouble. It had made a remarkable recovery, and once we had got it cleaned up it turned out to be quite a pretty creature, with an interesting pattern of black spots and a ringed tail; but it didn’t want to stay at the house either. It trotted after Ramses, shrieking pitifully when he tried to leave for the dig, and it managed to escape from any confinement we arranged. Ramses would not allow it to be caged, and closed doors and shutters proved no impediment. I could not imagine how it got out, but Sennia felt certain she knew. “It is the Great Cat of Re,” she announced. “It has magical powers.”
Ramses’s eyebrows tilted up in silent skepticism as he looked at the miniature creature sitting on his knee, and Sennia elaborated. “I know it is not very large just now, but it will grow.”
Nefret had planned to name the creature Osiris, since it had virtually come back from the dead, but from then on it was the Great Cat of Re, and soon learned to answer to its name. Emerson, who is fond of cats and whose sense of humor is somewhat childish, found it very amusing to bellow out those sonorous syllables and have his summons promptly answered by a very small, very fuzzy kitten. At first Horus was fascinated by the creature. Seized by what appeared to be a misplaced maternal instinct, he would wash it till it squealed and carry it around in his mouth. He became bored with this eventually. Such is often the case, even with human parents.
Toward the end of the week Emerson proposed that we stop work early and go to Medinet Habu to see how Cyrus was getting on. We took the cat with us, since it would not be left behind. It was still small enough to fit into one of Ramses’s pockets, and I must say it looked very peculiar with its paws hooked over the flap and its small head peering interestedly out at the world. Our cats had a considerable reputation in Egypt, being regarded as possessing supernatural powers. I suspected this one would prove to be no exception.
During the Pyramid Age, the temples serving the dead monarch’s funerary cult were built close by the monuments. When the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty decided to hide their tombs in the depths of the western mountains, the temples had to be located elsewhere. At one time a long row of them ran along the edge of the cultivation. Most were now in a sad state of ruination, but Medinet Habu, the temple of Ramses III (not to be confused with Ramses II), was still well preserved, and full of interest. The fortified towers through which one entered the area were decorated in the conventional style, with reliefs of the king smiting various enemies; but the interior contained some charming scenes of his majesty dallying with ladies of the court. (Let me hasten to add that there were no vulgarities depicted.) The first great pylon stood almost intact, its walls and the walls of the courts and colonnades covered with reliefs and inscriptions. The place had been a residence as well as a religious edifice; a tumble of mud-brick walls indicated the site of what had once been a palace. In addition to the monuments of Ramses III, there were two other structures, one of which, begun in the early Eighteenth Dynasty, had been added on to by successive rulers clear down to the Roman period. Another, smaller, complex belonged to the God’s Wives