Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [128]
When they were able to do so, Emerson went ahead with David, and Ramses drew up beside his uncle. Sethos hadn’t spoken since they left the house. He rode with his usual ease, but his mouth was set and his forehead furrowed. Tinted glasses darkened his eyes to hazel.
“You received another private communication yesterday,” Ramses said.
“Hassan was bribed to tell no one,” Sethos said.
“I bribed him to tell me.”
“Dear me,” said Sethos, with a fair show of insouciance. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Should I?”
Sethos reached into his breast pocket and took out a folded paper, which he handed to Ramses.
The message was short and to the point. “Yours received. Do nothing more.”
“English,” Ramses said.
Sethos sneezed and swabbed his nose with a handkerchief. “Brilliant.”
“Don’t be rude,” Ramses said equably. “What’s put you in such a bad humor? The response was what we expected.”
“Precisely.” Another, louder sneeze was muffled by the folds of the handkerchief.
“Have you caught cold?”
“It would appear so.”
“You could give it to Margaret,” Ramses suggested.
His uncle turned the tinted spectacles toward him, and then, unexpectedly, burst into laughter. “What a charming idea. Will you aid and abet me when I catch her in a close embrace and breathe heavily on her?”
“She’ll probably be there this morning.”
“I know.” Sethos sighed and dabbed at his nose. “You are omniscient, so you have anticipated that I’m not looking forward to encountering her. As for the message, I would have liked something more positive. Something along the lines of ‘count on us to behave ourselves.’”
“Or a simple ‘Happy Christmas’?”
His uncle’s mouth twitched. “Point taken. I’ll do my best not to shed gloom over the proceedings. After all, we’ve no reason to assume our unknown acquaintances (who do write excellent English) mean to bother us. As for Margaret, why should I give a damn about her? She doesn’t give a damn about…about anything except her bloody newspaper.”
Ramses had been mistaken about Carter. He was at work, and so were several others of his crew. His nose in the air, Emerson strode past the tomb without so much as a sidelong look, but Ramses and the others joined the spectators, of whom there were quite a number. There wasn’t much to see; most of the activity was being carried on in the tomb chamber, deep underground.
“Yes, they are drawing pictures and taking photographs,” said one of the guards, in response to a question from David. Leaning on his rifle, he yawned.
“There is nothing much to do,” Ramses said. “It is a boring job.”
“Boring?” The man scratched his beard. “There are worse tasks, Brother of Demons. As soon as the gentlemen leave we can lie down and talk and smoke and have a sleep. Tomorrow is your holiday, yes? So we will have another day of rest.”
“Possibly two days,” David said.
“It is so?”
“On the day after Christmas the English take a holiday and give presents to those who have served them well,” David explained.
“So I have been told. But there will be none for us, I think.”
“I think he’s right,” Ramses said, as he and David turned away.
“One can hardly expect Carter to reward this entire lot,” David said.
There were certainly a large number of guards. They lined the wall around the tomb, wearing a variety of uniforms and headgear. Ramses recognized the khaki of local troops and the fezzes of the men from the Ministry. Margaret and Kevin O’Connell were not in evidence. Looking around, he realized Sethos and his father were also missing.
“Where’s Father got to?” he asked.
He got an immediate answer, though not from David. Sounds of a loud altercation reached his ears. It was safe to assume that whenever voices were raised, Emerson’s would be one of them.
He and David hurried toward the spot, which turned out to be the area in front of the remote tomb of Seti II. It was some distance away, at the far end of a path that branched off to the right from the more traveled route that led to the tomb of Thutmose III.
Only his father’s voice would have carried that far, Ramses thought. Of course the echoes