Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [37]
Fatima burst into tears. He’d been afraid she would. He put his arm round her shaking shoulders, patted her, made soothing noises, and waited patiently until her sobs subsided into broken exclamations of self-reproach. She had deceived them, she had concealed the truth, she had done wrong. The object she clutched was a bottle containing pills of some sort.
All at once Ramses had what his mother would have called a foreboding or premonition. It was, in fact, a sudden coming together of miscellaneous bits of knowledge. Fatima did not resist when he took the bottle from her.
Quinine.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I understand. Where is he?”
They all knew Fatima fed the local beggars. Occasionally one of these unfortunates was given a bed for a night or two, in a room in the servants’ wing. (They could always tell when this had happened because Fatima scrubbed and disinfected the room next day.) Still sniffing, she led him to a small chamber next to her own comfortable quarters.
She’d put him to bed and drawn the curtains over the single window. The room was dim and stuffy. It smelled of carbolic and lye soap.
Ramses stood by the bed looking down at the sleeping man. What he had looked like when he arrived at the house Ramses could only guess; Fatima must have cleaned him up, for he was now beardless and pale, his prominent nose jutting up between hollow cheeks. For only the second time in his life, Ramses saw the basic Sethos, stripped of disguise, his features undistorted. His resemblance to Emerson was unnerving—it was like seeing his father aged and ill and defenseless.
“How long has he been this way?” Ramses asked.
“Last night he came,” Fatima whispered. She was crying again. “He was very sick with fever.”
“Malaria,” Ramses said. “He’s had it before. Did he send you to get the pills?”
“When he woke this morning.” She wiped her wet face. “He wrote the word so I would know what to look for. He did not want you to know he was here. I did not have a chance to get away before now. I am sorry, Ramses.”
“He’s the one who should be sorry. He had no right to put you in this position!”
“Oh, but he is my friend. And he needed my help.”
That would do it, Ramses thought. Sethos had gone out of his way to ingratiate himself with Fatima, treating her with the same courtly charm he bestowed on “real” ladies, and paying her extravagant compliments. An appeal to her large sympathies would have tipped the scale of divided loyalties.
Malaria wasn’t curable. Once infected, the victim was subject to recurrent bouts whose onsets were unpredictable. Ramses tried to remember what Nefret had told him about the disease when she had nursed Sethos through his first attack. In this form the sufferer was coherent and fairly comfortable in the morning. In late afternoon chills set in, to be followed by high fever and, sometimes, delirium.
“We’d better wake him up and get him to take this,” Ramses said. He bent over Sethos, who was wearing one of Emerson’s nightshirts, and shook him, none too gently.
Sethos opened his eyes. He showed no surprise at the sight of Ramses, though his expression was not welcoming.
“I didn’t suppose she’d be able to hold out for long,” he said resignedly.
“She didn’t tell me. I caught her stealing your quinine.” Ramses opened the bottle. “How much are you supposed to take?”
“One grain three times a day. I’ve been on the run for weeks. No chance to replenish my supplies.”
“I will bring food,” Fatima said, and bustled out.
“This was a filthy trick to play on her,” Ramses said. “Why didn’t you come to Father or me?”
A spark of unregenerate amusement lit the pale eyes in the sunken sockets. “I didn’t want Nefret to get her hands on me when I was weak and helpless.”
“I’m in no mood for humor.”
“Give me credit for a faint residue of decency, then. I wouldn’t have come near the place if I hadn’t been laid low by this damned malaria. I heard—Oh, thank you, Fatima. That looks delicious.”
He pulled himself to a sitting position and took the tray from her. His hands weren’t too steady. Was the