The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters [8]
The only persons who knew Nefret’s true story were Emerson’s younger brother Walter and his wife, my dear friend Evelyn. It would have been impossible to conceal the truth from them even if we had not had complete confidence in their discretion, and indeed I counted on Evelyn to advise me in the proper care and rearing of a young female. She had had considerable experience, being the mother of six children, three of them girls, and she had the kindest heart in the world.
I well remember one beautiful day in June, when we four adults sat on the terrace at Amarna House, watching the children at play upon the lawn. The great Constable might have captured the idyllic beauty of the landscape—blue skies and fleecy white clouds, emerald grass and stately trees—but the talents of quite another sort of painter would have been necessary to limn the laughing children who adorned the scene like living flowers. Sunlight turned their tossing curls to bright gold and lay caressingly on limbs pink and plump with health. My namesake, little Amelia, followed the toddling steps of her year-old sister with motherly care; Raddie, the eldest of Evelyn’s brood, whose features were a youthful version of his father’s gentle countenance, attempted to restrain the exuberance of the twins, who were tossing a ball back and forth. The image of innocent youth blessed with health, fortune, and tender love was one I will long cherish.
Yet I fancy mine were the only eyes fixed upon the charming figures of my nieces and nephews. Even their mother, whose youngest child lay sleeping on her breast, looked elsewhere.
Nefret sat apart, under one of the great oaks. Her legs were crossed and her bare feet peeped out from under the hem of her dress—one of the native Nubian garments in which I had clothed her, for want of anything better, while we worked at Napata. The background color was a strident parrot-green, with great splashes of color—scarlet, mustard-yellow, turquoise-blue. A braid of red-gold hair hung over one shoulder, and she was teasing the kitten in her lap with the end of it. Ramses, her inevitable shadow, squatted nearby. From time to time Nefret looked up, smiling as she watched the children’s play, but Ramses’s steady dark eyes never left her face.
Walter put his cup down and reached for the notebook he had refused to relinquish even upon this social occasion. Thumbing through it, he remarked, “I believe I see now how the function of the infinitival form has developed. I would like to ask Nefret—”
“Leave the child alone.” It was Evelyn who interrupted her husband, her tone so sharp I turned to look at her in amazement. Evelyn never spoke sharply to anyone, much less to her husband, on whom she doted with (in my opinion) uncritical adoration.
Walter glanced at her in hurt surprise. “My dear, I only want—”
“We know what you want,” Emerson said with a laugh. “To be known and honored as the man who deciphered ancient Meroitic. Encountering a living speaker of that supposedly dead language is enough to turn the brain of any scholar.”
“She is a human Rosetta Stone,” Walter murmured. “Certainly the language has changed almost beyond recognition over a thousand years, but to a trained scholar the clues she can offer—”
“She is not a stone,” Evelyn said. “She is a young girl.”
A second interruption! It was unheard of. Emerson stared at Evelyn in surprise and some admiration; he had always considered her deplorably mild-tempered. Walter gulped, and then said meekly, “You are quite right, my dear Evelyn. Not for the world would I ever do anything to—”
“Then