The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [150]
Daoud did not speak at all. After a few minutes of profound cogitation he left.
Carla and David John knew Grandmama was sick and that they must be particularly quiet and well behaved, but thanks to the strenuous effort of the adults they remained unaware of how ill she really was. Sethos was magnificent. He lost again and again at knife, paper, rock, and got the cat’s cradle into a hopeless tangle. But it was a relief when the children went off to bed. No one ate much at dinner. Ramses let his father take the place at his wife’s bedside, as was his right. The rest of them stood outside her door until Nefret ordered them off to their rooms.
“You’ll call me if there’s any change?” Ramses couldn’t help asking.
“She’s tough as a lion,” Sethos muttered. “She’ll fight it off.”
Ramses went back to his house, to be near the children. He flung himself fully clothed onto the bed, but he didn’t sleep. Staring open eyed at the shadowy ceiling, he knew Sethos and David—and Fatima and the other servants—were doing the same. The night seemed to last an entire year. There was no summons from Nefret. When the first pallor of dawn entered the room he got up.
Anxiety and cowardice pulled him in opposite directions. He wanted to hear good news and he was afraid to face a bad report. He walked slowly along the paved pathway, under the trees, while the light strengthened and the night-blooming datura lifted great white trumpets toward the sky. It was going to be a beautiful morning.
The house was silent. From the back he heard the clatter of pots and pans. Fatima was preparing breakfast. His stomach turned over at the thought of food.
As he stood outside the door of the veranda, with his cowardly hand unable to turn the handle, he saw someone coming around the house. That giant form was unmistakable.
“Salaam aleikhum,” Daoud said. “I have found it.” He held out his hand.
Gleaming against his broad brown palm was a small object, less than an inch long. The cobra raised its hooded head, defying enemies. Its eyes glittered an impossible green.
As Ramses stared, struck dumb, Daoud said, “We will give it to her now. Come.”
To my extreme vexation, it was several days before Nefret would allow me to sit up and talk as much as I wanted. On the Friday, Emerson carried me to the veranda and it was like a kind of rebirth to be back in those familiar surroundings, with all those I loved around me. The Great Cat of Re stood by the outer door glowering at Amira; he had abandoned his vigil on my bed as soon as I was out of danger.
“It is the nature of cats,” Emerson had said, “to seek out a warm, comfortable nest. So don’t wax sentimental about the creature, Peabody.”
He had been sneaking treats to the cat ever since.
Foremost on my mind was the uraeus serpent I had found tightly clasped in my hand when I woke free of fever. Insignificant this might seem to others; but to me the image of Daoud’s large patient form squatting by the holes he had dug, sifting by lamplight, was a supreme token of friendship.
“Your fever was already going down,” Nefret said. “But I wouldn’t for the world disabuse him of his belief that the uraeus saved you. He worked so hard!”
“How does he reconcile that heathen image with his religion?” Sethos asked, eyebrows lifted.
“It was an answer to his prayers,” Ramses said. “A somewhat indirect answer, granted, but God, whatever his name may be, works in mysterious ways. And you must admit it was something of a miracle that Daoud located that small object.”
“Except for the eyes, which had fallen out of their settings,” I said, laughing. “Even Daoud couldn’t find objects that tiny.”
“So he chipped off bits of green glass from one of Khadija’s ornaments and rammed them into the empty holes.” Nefret shook her head in wonderment. “He said that without eyes the great serpent could not be effective.”
“Let’s drink to him.” Emerson handed round the whiskey. It was the first I had been allowed, and after I had lifted my glass I drank, reveling in even that small pleasure. I doubted that spirits were available