The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [35]
“One of them had a club. The confounded headdress was of some use, it deflected the blow. I became a trifle annoyed then, and after I had disposed of two of them, the third fled. I would have questioned them, but it occurred to me that you might be in similar straits and that I had better see what you were up to.”
I got up and went to look for my medical kit. “Why should you suppose that? Your enemies are not necessarily mine, and I must say, Emerson, that over the years you have attracted quite a number of… Where the devil did I put that box of bandages? The safragi has mixed up the luggage; nothing is where I left it.”
Emerson sat up. “What makes you think it was the safragi?”
I finally found the medicine box; it was in the original container, but not in the original place. Emerson, who had been searching his own luggage, straightened. “Nothing appears to have been taken.”
I nodded agreement. He was holding an article I had not seen before—a long narrow box of heavy cardboard. “Has something been added? Be careful opening it, Emerson!”
“No, this is my property. Ours, I should say.” He removed the lid, and I saw a glitter of gold and a rich azure glow. “Good heavens,” I cried. “It is the regalia Nefret carried away with her from the Holy Mountain—the royal scepters. Why did you bring them?”
One scepter was shaped like a shepherd’s crook, symbolizing the care of the king for his people. The materials were gold and lapis lazuli in alternating rings. The other object consisted of a short staff made of gold foil and dark-blue glass over a bronze core, from which depended three flexible thongs of the same materials, gold beads alternating with blue, and ending in cylindrical rods of solid gold. The flail represented (as I have always believed) the other aspect of rule: power and domination. It certainly would have inflicted a painful blow if it had been made of more durable materials, as the original whip undoubtedly was. No such objects had ever been found in Egypt, though they were known from countless paintings and reliefs.
“We agreed, did we not,” said Emerson, “that it would be unconscionable to keep these remarkable objects from scholars. They are unique, and they are two thousand years old if they are a day—treasured relics. They belong not to us but to the world.”
“Well, yes—we did agree in theory, and I am of the same mind still; but we cannot display them without explaining where we found them.”
“Precisely. We will find them. This season.”
I caught my breath. “It is an ingenious idea, Emerson. Brilliant, even. No one is better able than you to arrange a convincing if misleading ambience.”
Emerson fingered the cleft in his chin and looked a trifle uncomfortable. “Dishonesty goes against the grain, Peabody, I confess it; but what else are we to do? Thebes seems the most likely place for such a—er—discovery; the Cushite conquerors of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty remained there for some time. We must account in some way for the information about ancient Meroitic culture we acquired last winter. Sooner or later one of us, or Walter, will let something slip; it is not humanly possible to write about the subject without displaying information we ought not to have.”
“I agree. In fact, the article you sent to the Zeitschrift in June—”
“Devil take it, Peabody, I said nothing revealing in that article!”
“In any case,” I said soothingly, “it will not be published for some time.”
“These scholarly journals are always behind schedule,” Emerson agreed. “So you are thinking along the same lines, Peabody?”
“What lines?” I began rummaging in my box of medical supplies.
“I am surprised at you, Peabody. Usually you are the first to find portents of danger all around, and although I admit there are a number of individuals who have reason to dislike us, recent incidents are beginning to suggest quite a different theory.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. I brushed the hair from his brow and applied antiseptic to his wound. Absorbed in his theory, he ignored attentions he was not ordinarily