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By Root 1246 0

a child. He had amply repaid that favor, if it could be called such, with years of loyal and skilled service; but he had built a successful career of his own as a painter and illustrator. He and his wife, Lia, Emerson’s niece, now had four children. I need not explain to any mother of four why Lia had given up her career as an archaeological assistant. Her father was a philologist, not an excavator, and he had finally confessed that the arduous life of a field archaeologist had become too much for him. His wife, Evelyn, preferred her role as grandmother to that of staff artist.

That left us with Nefret and Ramses, neither of whom had uttered a word of complaint; but I foresaw a time when they would want more freedom from the bonds of family and from Emerson’s dictatorial control. Nefret was able to employ her medical skills in the clinic she had opened in Luxor, but I suspected she secretly yearned for a more specialized practice, such as the one she would have in Cairo in the women’s hospital she had founded some years earlier. Too many “buts”! The children’s needs for schooling, Ramses’s interests in other areas of Egyptology—everything pointed to the same conclusion. We must let our dear ones go their own ways, and that meant we must hire a new staff. How I was going to convince Emerson of this without a battle of epic proportions, I could not imagine. However, I rather looked forward to the argument. Emerson is at his most imposing when he is in a rage—and I had never yet lost an argument that really mattered.

A breeze swayed the candle flame. I leaned forward, peering more closely at my image. Was that…

It was. They seemed to be occurring more frequently these days, the silvery strands in the black of my hair. Well! That was another argument I did not mean to lose. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Emerson still slept, I took out the little bottle of coloring liquid.

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

* * *

The children woke at dawn. Dragged out of heavy slumber by the piercing voices of his dear little offspring, Ramses groaned and pulled the blanket up over his head. He hadn’t had more than two hours’ sleep. It wasn’t entirely his father’s fault; there had been an additional distraction, once he and Nefret were alone.

The blanket didn’t help. Lowering it, he turned over and looked at his sleeping wife. And, as usual, his bad humor was dispelled by the very sight of her: golden-red hair spread across the pillow, white arms and shoulders bared by the narrow straps of her nightdress. It seemed impossible that they had been married for six years. He had worked longer than that to win her, almost as long as the fourteen years Jacob had served for his beloved Rachel.

He lifted a tangled strand away from her eyes. They opened. After a moment the hazy look of sleep was replaced, not by the appreciation he had come to expect, but by consternation. “Oh dear,” she groaned. “It can’t be morning already.”

“Stay in bed,” Ramses said, wishing he could do the same. “I’ll tell Father you’re a little under the weather.”

“No, don’t do that. He’ll think…you know what he’ll think.”

“Yes.” The twins were four years old and his father had taken to dropping not-so-subtle hints about another grandchild. Oddly enough, his mother had not.

“There’s no need for you to get up,” Ramses insisted. “Today is Friday. The men won’t be working anyhow. If I know Father, and I believe I do, he’s planning one of two things: tracking Sethos down, or calling on Mrs. Petherick. I’ve never seen him so fascinated by an artifact.”

Nefret sat up, knees raised, arms wrapped round them. “I wouldn’t miss that for the world!”

“Which?” Ramses asked, returning her smile.

“Either.” She flung the covers back. “Though I can’t imagine how he hopes to get on Sethos’s trail.”

Leaving the children eating—and dropping bits of egg and buttered toast into the waiting jaws of the Great Cat of Re—they made their way along the winding tree-shaded path that led to the main house, where they found the parents at their breakfast. Emerson greeted them with his habitual complaint: