The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [96]
“Well!” I said, drawing a deep breath. “Now we have time to think of a plan.”
“Go right ahead,” said Emerson through tightly set lips. “At the moment my mind is a blank.”
“And no wonder, my dear. I am sure you are in considerable pain. Have a little brandy.”
“My discomfort is more mental than physical,” Emerson muttered, but he accepted the brandy and took a long swallow. “Peabody, this is ridiculous. We’ve been in uglier places before, with opponents far more dangerous than that miserable boy; and yet he’s managed to get us in an exceedingly tight spot. No one knows where we are . . . except Jumana. Have we been so mistaken in her character? I can’t believe she would connive in murder.”
“No,” I said. “She wouldn’t.” The strained voice, the odd, bent walk . . . “That wasn’t Jumana, Emerson. It was Jamil.”
7
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
When the citizens of Deir el Medina abandoned their houses they took their most valued possessions with them—except for the most valuable of all, the goods devoutly deposited with the dead. Looking for tombs was a gamble, with approximately the same odds as any game of chance. The great majority of them were empty and vandalized, but every now and then a lucky winner would find a prize, with some of the grave goods still intact, and the grand prize, the unrobbed tomb of a king or king’s wife, was a will-o’-the-wisp that tantalized the imagination of every excavator, whether he admitted it or not. However slim the odds, the temptation to search for treasure was hard to resist, especially when the alternative was a clutter of unimpressive mud-brick walls, or the tedious tasks of measuring and recording.
Jumana was supposed to be helping Bertie and Cyrus finish the surveying, but Ramses wasn’t surprised to see her halfway up the hillside, squatting, her head bent, her hands busy. He let out a shout that made Nefret jump and brought Jumana to her feet. She waved vigorously and started down.
“She shouldn’t be doing that,” he said in exasperation. “Look at her, grinning and cavorting. She knows she is violating orders.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Nefret said tolerantly. “Mother would be up there too. She’s found something.”
She was holding a small stela. It was not an unusual discovery; a good many of them had been found by earlier excavators, in or near the chapels of the tombs. She offered it to Ramses, raising shining eyes to him.
“You were told not to remove objects from their place,” Ramses said severely. The way she was looking at him made him nervous.
“I tagged the place,” Jumana protested. “As you showed me. I made the measurements, I know exactly where it should go on the plan. There is no chapel there, Ramses, it must have fallen from its place and tumbled down the hillside. See—isn’t it pretty?”
Mollified, and regretting his hard tone, he took the stone from her. The curved top and straight sides, the rows of hieroglyphs that praised the deities worshiped by the male and female figures, were of a standard type, but the deities were somewhat unusual—two plump cats, facing each other across an offering table.
“I’ve seen other stelae from Deir el Medina that depict cats,” he said. “They were identified with several goddesses, including Amon’s wife Mut.”
“Not with the Great Cat of Re?” Jumana asked.
“Not these.” They were rather charming animals, fatter and less aloof than the usual lean Egyptian cat. He indicated the appropriate hieroglyphs. “ ‘Giving praise to the good and peaceful cat.’ Well, maybe they are at that. They aren’t named. But the Great Cat of Re wasn’t peaceful, was he.”
“They’re delightful,” Nefret said, nodding at Jumana. She got no response; Jumana was watching Ramses, breathless and expectant, waiting for a word of praise from him.
“They are,” he conceded. “Let’s take it to Bertie. Drawing it will be good practice for him.”
“I would like to give it to the Little Bird,” Jumana said, as they walked toward the