The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [99]
“We need camels, water,” I began.
“They will be found.”
“When?”
“After…” He paused.
Aha, I thought; I rather suspected there would be an “after.”
“What do you want from us?” I asked.
“Today you save two of my people. They die, they suffer. You help them to be?”
“I do not know that word.”
“To go, to come, to do what they wish.”
“Ah!” In my excitement I had spoken too loudly. His hand clapped over my mouth. When he took it away, I breathed, “I understand. Yes, we will help. What can we do?”
“Wait. A messenger will come, carrying the ——. Trust only the one who carries the.”
“The what?”
“Ssssh!”
“I do not know that word! It is important,” I added—an understatement if ever I made one.
His breath came quick and uneven. After an interval he said in English, “Book.”
“Book?”
“Book!” The exasperation in the muted whisper sounded so like Emerson I almost smiled. “Book. English book.”
“Oh. Which—”
“I go.” He spoke in Meroitic.
“Wait! I have questions, many questions—”
“They will be answered. I go. The guards change(?) at the turning of the night.”
“What is your name? How can I find you?”
“No one can find me. I live only because no one knows my name.” He rose lithely to his feet, featureless as a carved column in the darkness. Then he bent to my ear again, and there was a hint of what might have been laughter in his voice when he whispered, “They call me the Friend of the Rekkit.”
“B——H——!” said Emerson.
I did not remonstrate, though Ramses sat cross-legged at our feet, his ears pricked like those of the huge cat that overflowed his lap. Emerson’s outrage was so vast that the effort to contain it in a whisper made him quiver like a teakettle on the boil. To exasperate him further would have been dangerous to his health.
“First I find myself dropped into a plot that might have been concocted by your favorite author Rider Haggard,” Emerson went on in the same hoarse whisper. “Now I must contend with another character out of fiction—or, what is worse, English fairy tales. Robin Hood! Defending the poor against the oppression of the nobles—”
“I don’t know what you are complaining about,” I replied. “That is exactly what you did yesterday, and now we understand what the little woman meant. No wonder she was awed; she must have taken you for the valiant and mysterious defender of her people. You see what that implies, don’t you, Emerson? No one knows who he is, or even what he looks like. It is a very romantic—”
“Rrrrrr,” growled Emerson. (The cat flattened its ears and growled back at him.) “Why did you wait until this morning to tell me this, Peabody? Why didn’t you come to me at once?”
Here, of course, was the true cause of his discontent. Emerson knows better, but he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females who unfortunately typify our society, and fling myself squealing at him whenever anything happens. He really would not care for it, but like all men he clings to his illusions.
“Because, my dear, the guard changed at midnight,” I replied.
“Midnight? There is no such—”
“I translate freely. Whatever time he meant, it was imminent, and his haste to depart suggested that the replacements were not sympathetic to him. I did not want to alert possible spies by doing anything out of the ordinary.”
“But you got out of bed and went looking for Amenit—Mentarit—whichever cursed female it was.…”
“My getting out of bed, for one reason or another, was not out of the ordinary. I could hardly help finding Mentarit—for it was she—since I fell over her on my way to the—er. She was sleeping so soundly that she did not even stir.”
“Drugged,” Emerson muttered.
“She must have been. When I say I fell over her, I mean that I literally fell on top of her. She woke at the usual time, though, and seems quite normal.”
Emerson fingered his chin thoughtfully. Ramses fingered his. The cat rose with oiled grace and stood alert, tail twitching and eyes fixed on a bird that swung, singing, from a branch.
The air was still cool and sweet; the lilies in the