The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [55]
Well, of course I knew what he was thinking, even though he had refused to discuss the matter. For one thing, he was afraid I would remind him of his careless jest concerning Reggie’s earlier injury. “The ghost of one of the Bowmen of Cush,” he had said; and here, before our very eyes, was a fragment of an arrow that might have been carried by one of those very archers. Mayhap the bow had not been used in this area for a thousand years—I was willing to take Emerson’s word for that—but one of the ancient names for Cush was “Land of the Bow,” and “Commander of the Bowmen of Cush” was a military title of the Late Egyptian Empire.
I fell asleep at last, and when I awoke I was alone. An unnatural silence prevailed. No shouted commands, no sound of the tuneless singing with which the men lightened their labors.… Then I remembered that it was the day of rest, and that the men were gone. Still, it was strange that Emerson had taken pains not to waken me; stranger still that Ramses had managed to leave the tent without making a racket of some kind. A hideous foreboding seized me, and I hastened to rise.
For once my foreboding portended nothing in particular. I found Emerson seated in a chair before the tent calmly drinking tea. He greeted me with a cheerful good morning and the hope that I had slept well.
“Better than you,” I said, remembering my last glimpse of him the night before, and noting the shadows of sleeplessness that darkened his eye sockets. “Where is Ramses? How is Reggie getting on? Why didn’t you wake me earlier? What—”
“The situation is under control, Peabody. I will make you a cup of tea while you change into more suitable attire.”
“Really, Emerson—”
“Mr. Forthright will be joining us shortly. His injury was less severe than you believed. Curious, isn’t it, that his injuries always are less severe than you believed them to be? I don’t blame you for exposing yourself to him last night in that fetching but flimsy garment—I make all due allowances for your understandable state of agitation—but a repetition of the error might be taken amiss.”
“By you, you mean.”
“By me, my dear Peabody.”
Torn between annoyance and amusement, I retired and followed his suggestion. When I returned I found them all assembled—Ramses squatting on the rug, Reggie seated in a chair next to Emerson. He leapt to his feet with an alacrity that went far to support Emerson’s assessment of his condition, and insisted on offering me a chair before he reassumed his own.
“It is a great relief to see you looking so well,” I exclaimed, taking the cup Emerson handed me. “You had lost a great deal of blood—”
“Obviously the blood was not his,” said Emerson. (Lack of sleep always makes him short-tempered.)
“Quite right,” Reggie agreed. “As I told you, I grappled with the fellow—”
“A most courageous act,” said Emerson. “For you were unarmed, were you not? A man going for a peaceful moonlight stroll does not ordinarily carry a weapon.”
“No, not ordinarily. I—er—”
“Is the knife yours, Forthright?” Emerson whipped it out of his pocket and brandished it under Reggie’s nose.
“No! That is…”
“For heaven’s sake, Emerson, stop interrupting him,” I exclaimed. “How can he explain what happened when you won’t let him finish a sentence?”
Emerson glowered at me. “The implications of my questions must be obvious to you, Amelia. And to Mr. Forthright. If he—”
“They are indeed obvious, Emerson. It is your tone to which I object. You do not ask, you interrogate, like—”
“Curse it, Amelia—”
A burst of hearty laughter from Reggie ended the discussion. “Please don’t quarrel on my account, my friends. I understand what the professor is getting at, and I don’t blame him for having doubts. As he says, a man bent on a peaceful errand does