The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [56]
‘I beg your pardon, Mother,’ said Ramses, reddening. ‘Do you wish me to continue my narrative?’
‘Not at the present time,’ said Emerson. ‘The boy is awake, Amelia.’
When I returned my attention to David I saw that his eyes were open. ‘I am going to have to clean and stitch this wound in your head,’ I said in my best Arabic. ‘It will be painful.’
‘No,’ said the boy through clenched teeth. ‘I do not need your help, Sitt. Let me go.’
‘Why did you come here, David?’ Emerson asked.
‘My dear, you should not question him now; he is in pain and requires –’
‘I have no quarrel with your medical ethics or your altruistic intentions,’ Emerson replied, now talking English, as I had done. ‘You may dose him and bandage him and stitch him as much as you like, but first it is essential to ascertain the reason why he was attacked and take the necessary steps to prevent further harm to him – or one of us. Well, David? You heard my question.’
The last sentence was again in David’s native tongue, but I suspected, from the tightening of the boy’s lips, that he had understood some, at least, of the preceding speech. Abdullah certainly had.
Emerson did not repeat the question; he stood waiting, inflexible as a judge. Then Ramses rose to his knees, and David’s eyes turned to him. For a moment I had the uncanny impression that I was seeing my son reflected in a mirror that showed him, not as he was, but as he might have been had hard usage and poverty changed him. His eyes and David’s were almost identical in colour and setting, with the same fringe of thick dark lashes.
Neither spoke. After a moment Ramses resumed his squatting position and David looked at Emerson.
‘After you went, Abd el Hamed tried to beat me,’ he muttered. ‘I struck the stick from his hands and ran away.’
‘He had beaten you before,’ Emerson said.
‘Yes. I had run away before.’
‘But always before this you went back,’ Emerson said.
‘He had nowhere else to go,’ Nefret exclaimed. ‘Must you continue, Professor? It is obvious that he –’
‘No, my dear, it is not obvious,’ was the gentle but firm reply. ‘He could have gone to his mother’s family. Is that not true, Abdullah?’
Abdullah nodded, but his face was so grim that only someone who knew him as well as I did would have sensed the softer emotion he was ashamed to display. I could understand why David, who knew his mother’s family only from the bitter speeches of his father, would not want to seek refuge with them. And something had happened to the boy that day – Nefret’s gentle concern, Emerson’s interest and offer of help, even the vulgar, boyish tussle with Ramses – no single event, but a combination of all of them, had, perhaps without his conscious awareness, affected his decision.
‘Hmph,’ said Emerson, who knew Abdullah as well as I did. ‘So you decided to accept my offer of help. Why did you wait until night?’
‘I did not come to ask for help,’ David said haughtily. ‘I thought about the things you said – all day, as I lay hidden in the hills, I thought about them, and I thought, I will see the Inglîzi again and speak with them again, and then perhaps . . . But it would have been stupid to come openly, in daylight; I knew Abd el Hamed would be looking for me, trying to catch me and bring me back. I did not know he would go to such lengths . . .’
‘You do not know why he would rather see you dead than out of his hands?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps it was not Abd el Hamed. I do not know who it was, or why . . .’
His voice had become hoarse and faint. I said firmly, ‘Enough, Emerson. I am going to stitch this cut, and then he should rest. Hold on to him. Ramses, sit on his feet.’
But before Emerson’s big brown hands could close over the boy’s bony shoulders, he was pushed aside and Abdullah took his place.
Having had considerable practise with Emerson, I made quite a neat job of my sewing. David did not groan or move a muscle; with his grandfather looking