The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [176]
Tarek’s face hardened. “Would you have believed me?”
“Certainly!” Emerson caught my eye and had the grace to blush. “Well—perhaps not immediately. But you could have convinced us, given time—”
“Time was what I did not have,” said Tarek gravely. “Nor did I have the knowledge of you and the lady I have now. By the time I had traveled to Cairo and then to England, I had learned how those of your color treat those of mine.”
I would have denied it, but I could not. Shame, for my nation and my race, brought the color flaming to my cheeks. Emerson bit his lip. “You are right,” he said. “What can I say?”
“You need say nothing. There is no hatred in your heart or that of the lady—but there are few like you.”
Tarek went on to explain that by the time he reached England he was sadly embittered by the contempt with which he had been treated—he, who was a prince in his own land. Nevertheless he persisted, overcoming the obstacles he met with rare courage and intelligence, until he found himself unable to deliver Forth’s letter. The servants drove him from the door, and the police threatened him with arrest if he returned to that aristocratic neighborhood.
“I did not know what to do,” Tarek said simply. “I crept back by night and left the packet on the doorstep, but for all I knew it might have been ignored or thrown away. I had seen the young one with the fiery hair come and go from the house; I learned he was the son of Forth’s brother, but I was afraid to speak to him there, for the soldiers in blue [the police] had threatened me with their dungeon. I followed him instead, to your house, though I did not know it was yours until I asked a man passing by. Forth had told me of you, and I thought, That is why the young one has come here. The old one showed him the message and he seeks the help of Emerson. So I waited, hiding in the darkness, and saw the old one come, and knew I had been right.”
“All the more reason for you to approach us directly,” said Emerson. “You would not have been driven from our door.”
“I know that now,” said Tarek. “I did not know it then. And you have not heard the rest.” He hesitated for a moment, as if searching for the right words. “I had not come alone to England. Two came with me. One you know—Akinidad, who was with you for a time in Nubia, and who carried my orders back to my scouts at the oasis. The other … The other was my brother Tabirka, the son of my father by his favorite concubine. He was closest to my heart of all my brothers.
“He was at my side that night. When the carriage of the old one left, I tried to stop it, but the coachman struck at me with his whip and would have run me down. For many hours we stood by the gate, my brother and I, discussing what to do. There was no one about; the rain had stopped and the lights in your house burned late. ‘Go to them,’ my brother urged. ‘The men of Egypt say that Emerson is great and good, not like the other Inglizi. He was the friend of our father Forth. He will listen. We do not know what lies the others may have told him.’
“At last he won me over. The lights still burned in your house. But when we approached the gate, there was a sharp cracking sound. My brother cried out and clapped his hand to his arm. It was only a small hurt, but as we ran away— for I had no weapon and I knew the sound of the bullets that can strike from afar—there were more shots, and my brother would have fallen had I not caught him up and carried him away. I laid him upon the ground while I went to get the cart and horse we had hired. When I came back he was… I heard your voices, calling, but I could not leave him like a dead animal, without the rites of burial. I took him away; and later I stole a spade from a farmhouse and buried him deep in the woods, near a great standing stone. When you return…”
“Yes, of course,” I said gently. “I know the place. No wonder you did not trust us! You must have thought we fired those shots.”
“I saw no one else. Later,