The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [134]
Emerson descended the stairs first while Tarek held the lamp. I was about to follow my husband when I realized that Ramses was still standing, rigid as a block of wood, in the exact spot he had occupied throughout the interview.
“Ramses!” I said sharply. “What the dev —— Come here at once!”
Ramses jumped. When he turned I saw that his face was as blank and withdrawn as that of a sleepwalker. I seized him and shook him briskly. “Get down there!” I ordered.
He obeyed without so much as a “Yes, Mama.” A hideous foreboding gripped me.
Tarek was the last to descend, drawing the trapdoor back into place as he did so. As we hastened along the path by which we had come he told us, not all but a good deal.
“I was still in the Women’s House [i.e., he was less than six years of age, at which time boys left the care of their mothers] when the strangers came. It was a great wonder to me. I had never seen people like them, especially the lady, with her strange white face and her hair like a moonlit stream. My Uncle Pesaker, who had just become High Priest of Aminreh, feared the white man and would have slain him; but my mother quoted from the old books of wisdom that tell us the gods love those who give water to the thirsty and clothing to the naked. The lady was ill, and she was soon to have a child.
“My mother’s words moved my father, who was a kindly man; and soon he came to love the white man, who gave him good counsel and taught him many things. I too grew to love the stranger; I drank in his words about the great world beyond this place.
“After the child was born, her mother sought the god. The child was given to my mother’s women to nurse, for her father denied her. Later, though, he came to love her and found happiness in her care. He named her Nefret, the beautiful maiden, and she was… But you have seen her. She was like a white lotus, and when I first saw her she curled her fingers around my hand and smiled at me.”
He was silent for a time. Then he said, “I must be brief, for soon we must go in silence. The sage, as we called him, had sworn to stay with us forever; he hated the world outside and we were his children. But one day he sickened and he felt the cold breath of the Gatherer of Souls, and he opened his eyes and saw his child would soon be a child no longer but a woman grown. My mother had died, my father was old—and my brother, my brother Nastasen had also seen Nefret blossom with the promise of womanhood. For who could see her and not desire her.…”
“I think you love her too,” I said softly. “Yet you are willing to help her escape.”
Tarek sighed. “The day does not mate with the darkness, or the black with the white.”
“Bah,” said Emerson. “Of all the silly twaddle!”
“Hush, Emerson,” I said. “You are a noble man, Tarek.”
“She must go back to her own people, that was the desire of her father,” Tarek said. Again he sighed. “I will wed Mentarit, whom I also love, and she will be my Chief Wife, Queen of the Holy Mountain.”
He stopped, holding the lamp high. “From now on we creep like lizards, under the open sky. Hear me. From Forth I also learned that all men are brothers under the law. When he sent me to find Nefret’s people, I saw the world of the white man. There is cruelty and suffering there, but some among you strive for justice. I would bring that justice to my people. I saw that another thing of which Forth had warned me was true. The soldiers of the English queen gather like locusts along the great river. Someday they will find this place and we will be like mice in the claws of the sacred cats of Bastet. I alone can prepare my people for that time. I alone can lift the sufferings of the rekkit. Because of these beliefs, and because I would keep Nefret from him, my brother hates me. He wants the kingship and will do anything to get it. He will kill you if he can, for you have shown kindness to my people and defied his orders. Be wary! Stay in your house! An assassin’s arrow can strike from afar! Trust only Mentarit. Even the men wearing my colors may be my brother’s spies.