The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [32]
‘I am not borrowing from it,’ I said in a dignified manner. ‘I am referring to it and to various other versions – just to check one against the other.’
‘Quite proper,’ said Emerson. ‘Would you be willing to interrupt your work? And send for the children, if that is agreeable to you. It is time we had a little conference.’
‘Ah, indeed? You are condescending to inform us of our future plans?’
‘I told you I wanted to get my thoughts in order. I have now done so, to such good effect that I am even willing to risk the disruption of those thoughts by our son. Go and fetch him and Nefret, will you, my dear?’
I sent one of the stewards after Nefret, who was, as usual, on deck, but deemed it advisable to collect Ramses myself. The servants had refused to enter Ramses’ room ever since the time one of them had gone there to change the bed linens and been confronted by a strange man with a wen on his forehead and a hideous scar drawing his upper lip into a snarl. (Ramses’ notions of disguise, at which art he had become only too proficient, ran at that time to the melodramatic.) I had made him remove and reassume the wen, the scar and the snarl in the presence of the assembled staff, but they preferred to believe in his magical powers.
That day I was confronted, not by a character out of sensational fiction, but by a stench so appalling I stepped back, pinching my nostrils together.
‘Ramses, are you mummifying things again?’
Ramses turned from his workbench. ‘I told you, Mother, that I have given up the study of mummification for the present, having ascertained to my satisfaction that my basic theory is correct. In order to refine that theory it would be necessary for me to mummify a human cadaver, which, given current laws and social attitudes, seems a difficult if not impossible –’
‘Thank heaven for that. What are you – No, never mind, don’t tell me. Come along, your father wants to see us.’
‘He is ready, then, to take us into his confidence?’
‘So I believe. Hurry and wash your hands. And your face. And change your shirt. What are those peculiar – No, don’t tell me. Just change it.’
Ramses obeyed, retiring modestly behind a screen in order to replace the offending garment – a somewhat absurd procedure, since, like his father, he was accustomed when on the dig to go about bare to the waist. When he was ready we started for the saloon.
‘Please do refrain from interrupting your father every few minutes, Ramses,’ I said. ‘He is the most affectionate of parents, but the habit would irritate anyone, and I don’t want him to be distracted.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ said Ramses.
Emerson had arranged the chairs in a semicircle facing the table he used as a desk, and was sitting behind it trying to look professorial but not succeeding because Nefret was perched on the arm of his chair. When we had all taken our seats, Emerson cleared his throat and began.
‘We will be working in western Thebes this season, in the Seventeenth Dynasty cemetery. I have every expectation of discovering a royal tomb – that of Queen Tetisheri.’
‘But Emerson,’ I exclaimed. ‘You said –’
Emerson fixed me with a hard stare. ‘If you will allow me, Peabody.’
‘I beg your pardon, my dear. But you said –’
‘The ring Saleh – Shelmadine . . . Why do so many of the people we encounter have more than one name? That ring and Shelmadine’s fantastic story did not affect my decision. It had been made before we arrived in Cairo.
‘As you all know, the third volume of my History of Egypt, on which I am presently at work, begins with the rulers of the Seventeenth Dynasty. It is a very confused period about which little is known, and I realized some time ago that it would be necessary for me to conduct further excavations in the area before I could hope to present a coherent account.
‘This resolution was strengthened last spring, when we spent several weeks at Abydos before returning to England. Despite the fact that our work was once again interrupted by events I need not recount,