The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [166]
Though my parasol was fastened to my wrist by its little strap I made no attempt to prevent him from sweeping me up into his arms. I am a strong-minded woman, but even the best of us is not always able to resist temptation. When he started toward the stairs, I said firmly, “Just carry me directly to a donkey, if you please. You may as well spare yourself time and trouble, Emerson, for no method you employ will suffice to keep me in that room if I choose to leave it.”
Emerson deposited me on the donkey and stormed off, shouting at Abdullah, since he knew there was no use in shouting at me. Abdullah glanced at me. If he had been English he would have winked.
We were soon on our way. Bertha and I rode donkeys. After considering its options with an uncanny air of deliberation, the cat chose to ride with me. The others walked, including Kevin, over his piteous objections. Our path led us almost due north along the bare desert track that passes through the mountain defile at one end of the Amarna plain and runs parallel to the river before rising again over the hills to the south. Nothing marked it except the prints of men and donkeys; on either side the waterless waste lay empty under the sun. Yet once this had been the royal road of a great city, lined with fine houses and painted temples. From the Window of Appearance of the king’s palace he had thrown collars of gold to favored courtiers. Now only low mounds and sunken hollows remained; time and the ever-encroaching sand had destroyed the evidences of man’s ephemeral presence, as they would one day destroy all traces of our own.
The distance from Haggi Qandil to the northern boundary is a little over three miles. Already the sun was hot. Kevin puffed and groaned and mopped his streaming brow. I offered him my parasol, but he refused it; some silly notion of appearing unmanly, I suppose. I only hoped he would not inconvenience me by collapsing with heat prostration. Unlike the others he was unused to the climate, and Emerson moderated his pace for no man—or woman.
To the right, several miles distant, were the northern tombs and the boundary stela we had seen on the first day. Emerson did not turn aside. As we went on, the cliffs curved more sharply toward the river, until only a narrow space a few hundred yards wide separated them from the bank. The shade they offered was welcome, but I began to feel the same sense of oppression that had overshadowed me while we were camping in the royal wadi. The rock face was even more broken here (or so it seemed to my anxious eyes), not only by crevices and innumerable small wadis but by the remains of ancient quarries.
At last Emerson came to a stop and looked up. Anubis jumped down from my lap and went to stand by him.
High above on the stony wall I saw fragmentary reliefs and rows of hieroglyphic signs. So there was a stela. I would not have been surprised to find that Emerson had invented one. This was a new one—new to archaeologists, I mean, for it was certainly very old and worn—and far north of any of the others. A brief tremor of archaeological fever ran through me, but it quickly passed. I felt sure Emerson had not come here to add a few more hieroglyphs to the texts of the boundary stelae.
Cyrus managed not to swear aloud, though he choked on the unuttered word. “Holy—er—Jimminy. All this way— for that!”
“The text is probably identical with the others,” I replied. “But you know how battered they all are; we may find a portion here that has not survived elsewhere, and fill in some of the missing sections.”
“Well, you sure aren’t going to find anything,” Cyrus declared. “Only a lizard could slither up that cliff. Come and sit down here in the shade, my dear—what there is of it.”
He lifted me off the donkey and placed me on the