The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [92]
“I should rather beg yours, my dear. I didn’t realize you were here. It is almost time for lunch.”
“I’ll get Father,” said Ramses, retreating in haste. Nefret, who was trying to twist her loosened hair into a knot, let out one of her musical chuckles. “Were you afraid we had gone off to quarrel in private?”
“Not really. I presume you were admiring those nice heads of Hathor. I believe I heard Ramses repeat one of her charming epithets—‘Golden One.’ ”
“If you heard,” said Nefret, amused and not at all embarrassed, “you know he was addressing me.”
“Very appropriate,” I said. A ray of sunlight haloed the red gold of her locks. “Hathor was the goddess of love and beauty and—er—”
“Happiness.” She looked up at the carved face. It might not have struck some people as the epitome of beauty, for the ears were those of a cow, one of the goddess’s sacred animals. After so many years of viewing ancient Egyptian art, such elements had come to seem quite natural to us, however, and the other features were delicately rendered, the long hair curling over the shoulders. “Praising the Great Goddess, Lady of Turquoise, Mistress of the West,” Nefret recited. She bowed gravely and deferentially.
I couldn’t help myself. “What are you asking for?”
“Happiness,” Nefret repeated.
“Then—it is all right, isn’t it? Between you two?”
“Of course.” She took my arm. “Let’s eat.”
Emerson kept us so busy that it was not until later in the week that I was able to make my annual pilgrimage to Abdullah’s grave. I never felt any particular urgency about doing it, since I did not think of him as being there. I only went because . . . In fact, I do not know why. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.
On this occasion my primary purpose was to look at his new monument. I had not seen it before, since Abdullah had not got round to mentioning that he would like one until just before we left Egypt the previous spring. The request had taken me by surprise; one would not have supposed that an immortal spirit—or, according to Emerson, a sentimental fantasy of my sleeping brain—would care about such things. Emerson raised no objection, however, and I had sent David’s sketch and plan to Selim, asking him to proceed.
I meant to go alone, but Ramses saw me slipping out of the house and intercepted me. “I thought we agreed none of us would go off by ourselves, Mother.”
“If I see Jamil wearing the Double Crown and blowing kisses I assure you I will not follow him.”
Ramses was not amused or convinced. “Where are you going?”
“Only to the cemetery. I have not seen Abdullah’s tomb.”
“Oh. I haven’t seen it either. May I come with you?”
Recognizing the uselessness of a refusal, I agreed. In point of fact, he was the only person to whose company I had no objection. He had been with me the day after Abdullah’s funeral, and had helped me to bury over the grave the little amulets of Horus and Sekhmet, Anubis and Sobek—symbols of the ancient gods who guard the soul on the road to the West—in flagrant defiance of Abdullah’s faith and my own. However, I had always suspected Abdullah had a secret, half-shamed belief in the old gods. Ramses’s silent understanding had given me comfort, which I needed badly that day.
We went on foot, over the rocky ridges and across the stony expanse of the desert plain, Ramses slowing his long strides to match mine. The cemetery was on the north side of the village, not far from the mosque. It was all desert here, all baked earth and stony ground; neither tree nor flowering plant softened the starkness of the lonely graves. The tombs themselves were underground, their location indicated by low rectangular monuments of stone or brick, with upright stones at head and foot. The grave of a saint or sheikh of eminence might be marked by a simple structure crowned with a small cupola. There were only a few of such monuments in this humble cemetery; Abdullah’s was conspicuous not only by the freshness of the stones that had been used in its construction