The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [3]
But that was not the worst. It was yet to come.
Yes, indeed, if I were to resort to contemptible devices of the sort the young person suggested, I could a tale unfold… I refuse to insult the intelligence of my (as yet) hypothetical reader by doing so, however. I now resume my ordered narrative.
As I was saying: “What mad pursuits! What struggles to escape! What wild ecstasy!” Keats was speaking in quite another context, of course. However, I have been often pursued (sometimes madly) and struggled (successfully) to escape on more than one occasion. The last phrase is also appropriate, though I would not have put it quite that way myself.
Pursuits, struggles and the other sentiment referred to began in Egypt, where I encountered for the first time the ancient civilization that was to inspire my life’s work, and the remarkable man who was to share it. Egyptology and Radcliffe Emerson! The two are inseparable, not only in my heart but in the estimation of the scholarly world. It may be said—in fact, I have often said it—that Emerson is Egyptology, the finest scholar of this or any other era. At the time of which I write we stood on the threshold of a new century, and I did not doubt that Emerson would dominate the twentieth as he had the nineteenth. When I add that Emerson’s physical attributes include sapphire-blue eyes, thick raven locks, and a form that is the epitome of manly strength and grace, I believe the sensitive reader will understand why our union had proved so thoroughly satisfactory.
Emerson dislikes his first name, for reasons which I have never entirely understood. I have never inquired into them because I myself prefer to address him by the appellation that indicates comradeship and equality, and that recalls fond memories of the days of our earliest acquaintance. Emerson also dislikes titles; his reasons for this prejudice stem from his radical social views, for he judges a man (and a woman, I hardly need add) by ability rather than worldly position. Unlike most archaeologists he refuses to respond to the fawning titles used by the fellahin toward foreigners; his admiring Egyptian workmen had honored him with the appellation of “Father of Curses,” and I must say no man deserved it more.
My union with this admirable individual had resulted in a life particularly suited to my tastes. Emerson accepted me as a full partner professionally as well as matrimonially, and we spent the winter seasons excavating at various sites in Egypt. I may add that I was the only woman engaged in that activity—a sad commentary on the restricted condition of females in the late-nineteenth century of our era—and that I could never have done it without the wholehearted cooperation of my remarkable spouse. Emerson did not so much insist upon my participation as take it for granted. (I took it for granted too, which may have contributed to Emerson’s attitude.)
For some reason I have never been able to explain, our excavations were often interrupted by activities of a criminous nature. Murderers, animated mummies, and Master Criminals had interfered with us; we seemed to attract tomb-robbers and homicidally inclined individuals. All in all it had been a delightful existence, marred by only one minor flaw. That flaw was our son, Walter Peabody Emerson, known to friends and foes alike by his sobriquet of “Ramses.”
All young boys are savages; this is an admitted fact. Ramses, whose nickname derived from a pharaoh as single-minded and arrogant as himself, had all the failings of his gender and age: an incredible attraction to dirt and dead, smelly objects, a superb disregard for his own survival, and utter contempt for the rules of civilized behavior. Certain characteristics unique to Ramses made him even more difficult to deal with. His intelligence was (not surprisingly) of a high order, but it exhibited itself in rather disconcerting