The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [79]
“Who?” he asked, since his father seemed incapable of speech. “Jamil?”
“No.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I followed . . . I didn’t know . . . you were here . . .” Her breath gave out.
“Curse it,” Emerson said. He swung her up into his arms and swore again as something—possibly the canteen—jabbed him in the ribs. He carried her back to the place where they had left their knapsacks, put her down on his coat, and offered her the water bottle.
“I have this,” she said proudly, unhooking the canteen. “And other useful things. Like the Sitt Hakim.”
“Wonderful,” said Emerson, rubbing his side. “Now tell us who you followed. Cyrus?”
“Bertie.” She wiped her chin and hung the canteen back on her belt. “I don’t know how long he was gone before I realized. I asked one of the men; he said he saw Bertie walking very fast down the road away from Deir el Medina and—”
“How do you know he wasn’t going home?” Emerson asked.
“Without telling his father or Reis Abu? He stole away, like a thief!”
“But why here?”
“He had been talking of how he wished he could find something wonderful for Mr. Vandergelt. When you did not come, we were wondering why, and Mr. Vandergelt said . . .” She stopped and thought, and when she went on, it was in Cyrus’s very words and in a fairly good imitation of his accent. “ ‘ . . . he’d durned well better not find out you had snuck off looking for queens’ tombs behind his back.’ He was joking, but—”
“Hmph, yes,” Emerson said guiltily. “The damned young fool! You’ve seen no sign of him?”
“No. I looked and I called him, over and over.” She stood up and straightened her skirt. “We must find him. He may have fallen. Hurry!”
“Hold on a minute,” said Emerson abstractedly. “No sense in rushing off in all directions. What do you think, Ramses?”
He didn’t have to tell them what he thought, they were as familiar with the terrain as he was. There were hundreds of square meters of broken country, around and above and below, split by crevices of all sizes and shapes. Locating one man in that wilderness would be hellishly difficult, especially if he had fallen and injured himself.
“I don’t think he’d have gone over the gebel as Jumana did,” Ramses answered. “He’d have come the way we came the other day; it’s the only route he knows. He didn’t enter this arm of the wadi or we’d have seen him. Unless he arrived long before we did . . . Father, why don’t you sing out?”
Emerson obliged. Not even a bird answered. Jumana was dancing up and down with impatience, but Emerson’s monumental calm kept her quiet. After calling twice more, without result, he said, “He’d have heard that if he were within earshot. All right, we can go on.”
“The Cemetery of the Monkeys,” Ramses muttered. “Yes, that’s where he’d go. I could kick myself for making those clever remarks about missing queens. Which way? I can climb up and go across, while you—”
“No,” Emerson said without hesitating. “You were right, he’d have gone the way we did before.” He hoisted the pack onto his shoulders and started down the rough steps. “You next, Jumana. Watch your footing.”
Once down, they crossed the wide mouth of the wadi and started up the path that led into the next narrow finger. Jumana would have bounded ahead if Emerson had not kept hold of her. Every few minutes he stopped and shouted Bertie’s name. They had gone some distance, with the walls rising higher on either side, before there was a reply, faint and muffled, but unmistakably the sound of a human voice.
“Thank God,” Ramses said sincerely. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Bertie, is that you? Keep calling out!”
Bertie obeyed, but it took them a while to locate him. Sound echoed distractingly between the cliffs, and there wasn’t a sign of him, though they scanned the rock surface with binoculars as well as the naked eye.
“He’s up there somewhere,” Emerson said, indicating a crevice that ran slantwise across the cliff face. “Yes—this is where he climbed.” The marks where booted