The Mummy Case - Elizabeth Peters [42]
“Monster,” he growled. “Villain! I will have my revenge; the day of reckoning cannot be far off!”
“Emerson,” I said, putting my hand on his arm.
He turned to me with a smile of artificial sweetness.
“Yes, my dear. A charming spot, is it not?”
“Charming,” I murmured.
“I believe I will just ride north and say good morning to our neighbor,” Emerson said casually. “If you, my dear Peabody, will set up camp—”
“Set up camp?” I repeated. “Where? How? With what?”
To call the terrain in this part of Egypt desert is misleading, for it is not the sort of desert the reader may picture in his mind—vast sand dunes, rolling smoothly on to infinity without so much as a shrub or ridge of rock. This area was barren enough; but the ground was uneven, broken by pits and ridges and hollows, and every foot of the surface was strewn with debris—fragments of broken pottery, scraps of wood and other, less palatable evidences of occupation. My experienced eye at once identified it as a cemetery site. Beneath the rock surface lay hundreds of graves. All had been robbed in ancient times, for the scraps littering the ground were the remains of the goods buried with the dead—and the remains of the dead themselves.
Ramses got off his donkey. Squatting, he began sifting through the debris.
“Here, Master Ramses, leave that nasty rubbish alone,” John exclaimed.
Ramses held up an object that looked like a broken branch. “It is a femuw,” he said in a trembling voice. “Excuse me, Mama—a femur, I meant to say.”
John let out a cry of disgust and tried to take the bone away from Ramses. I understood the emotion that had affected the child, and I said tolerantly, “Never mind, John. You cannot keep Ramses from digging here.”
“That nasty rubbish is the object of our present quest,” Emerson added. “Leave it, my son; you know the rule of excavation—never move anything until its location has been recorded.”
Ramses rose obediently. The warm breeze of the desert ruffled his hair. His eyes glowed with the fervor of a pilgrim who has finally reached the Holy City.
ii
Having persuaded Ramses to abandon his bones for the nonce, we rode on toward the northwest. Near a ridge of rock we found our men, who had come down the day before to select a campsite. There were ten of them in all, including Abdullah—old friends and experienced excavators, who would supervise the unskilled laborers we expected to hire locally. I returned their enthusiastic salutations, noting as I did so that the camp consisted of a fire pit and two tents. Questioning elicited the bland response, “But, Sitt, there is no other place.”
On several of my expeditions I had set up housekeeping in an empty tomb. I recalled with particular pleasure the rock-cut tombs of El Amarna; I always say, there is nothing more commodious or convenient than a tomb, particularly that of a well-to-do person. Obviously no such amenity was available here.
I climbed to the top of the ridge. As I scrambled among the stones I gave thanks for one blessing at least—that I was no longer encumbered by the voluminous skirts and tight corsets that had been de rigueur when I first took up the study of Egyptology. My present working costume had been developed and refined by myself, and was wholly satisfactory, aesthetically and practically. It consisted of a broad-brimmed man’s straw hat, a shirtwaist with long sleeves and a soft collar, and flowing Turkish trousers to the knee with stout boots and gaiters below the trousers. The uniform, if I may so designate it, was completed by an important