Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [41]
“Fatima is with her beggar,” Kareem announced.
“I know,” I said. “She has a good heart.”
“Is he a holy man?” Kareem inquired.
Nefret took the coffeepot from him. “Very holy,” she said. “He wishes to be left alone in order to meditate and recover.”
We paid Sethos the courtesy of waiting until he had had time to breakfast and tidy up before we returned to his room, though in the opinion of several of us it was a courtesy he did not deserve. We found him sitting up in bed, pillows plumped and blankets smoothed, holding a coffee cup. Fatima and his breakfast tray had discreetly vanished.
As I might have expected, he went on the offensive before any of us could speak. “I feel naked without some sort of disguise,” he grumbled. “Ramses, can you oblige?”
It was not an unreasonable request. Though unshaven and hollow-cheeked, without hirsute adornment he was the image of Emerson, even to the cleft in his chin.
“What were you wearing when you arrived?” I asked, sitting down on the side of the bed.
“A voluminous if somewhat wispy gray beard and a patchwork galabeeyah. Fatima wouldn’t let me have them back.”
“Ah, the old beggar disguise,” I said. “She has probably burned it.”
“There were a few insects inhabiting the beard,” Sethos admitted. “Authenticity is very important in—”
“Never mind. Ramses will see to it,” I said. “Later. Start talking, if you please.”
“What about?”
Ramses emitted a growling noise, as his father was wont to do when exasperated. “What have you done? Who is after your blood?”
“Quite a lot of people, I expect” was the cheerful reply. He caught Nefret’s eyes and looked a trifle shamefaced. “It’s rather a long story…”
“We have all morning,” I replied, settling myself in the overstuffed chair with a pad of paper on my knee and a pencil in my hand.
“You all know…” Sethos began. Then he stopped speaking and eyed me askance. “Amelia, what are you doing?”
“Taking notes, of course.”
Thanks to those notes and my excellent memory, I am able to give the Reader an accurate account of his long and rather rambling explanation.
“You all know what the situation in the Middle East is like since the war. The Great Powers have carved up the parts of the Ottoman Empire to suit themselves. France won’t give up her interests in Syria, Britain has a mandate over Palestine, and Gertie Bell and her crowd have cobbled together a new kingdom of Iraq from an unholy mixture of warring factions, with a king none of them wanted on the throne and a British commissioner in actual charge. The Kurds were promised independence, but Gertie won’t let them have it, since Iraq without Mosul and its oil can’t stand. That old fox Ibn Saud is arguing about borders and hoping for control over Syria. If that weren’t bad enough, Britain, under pressure from the Zionists, has come out in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Arabs are afraid the Zionists will take their land, the Jews are divided between Zionists and those who oppose a temporal state, the Arab League demands the independence Lawrence promised them, and Fuad of Egypt is playing backstairs politics in the old Ottoman style.
“There have been rumors about…” The hesitation was so brief, only one who knew Sethos well would have noticed it. “About a shadowy group that is bent on stirring up mischief, for reasons that remain obscure. Not a difficult task, given the situation. I was sent to Baghdad and Damascus to see what I could find out. By the way,” he added with genuine feeling, “the archaeological sites are being torn to pieces. There’s no control over illicit digging and some marvelous pieces are being sold to collectors.”
Ramses’s black eyebrows drew together. “So you decided to ‘rescue’ some of them? And you are being hunted by competitors?”
“If I had done, it would have been an act of rescue,” Sethos retorted. “But as it happens, the—er—object I made off with was not an antiquity. I found it in the private files of a certain official in Baghdad—”
“Don’t be coy,” Ramses