Ramses looked up to meet a pair of hard brown eyes, the lashes darkened, the lids outlined with kohl. “Don’t be deceived,” the procurer said, his lips barely moving. “When he is drunk on brandy, he boasts of what he did. Are you aware that your first meeting with the child was no accident? That it was he who arranged it—who taught her to call you Father—who paid Kalaan to bring her and her mother to your house in order to shame you before your parents and the woman you loved? Ah. I see you are aware of that. But do you know that he had told a certain honorable gentleman who also loved the lady of what he planned to do? It was because of your cousin that the gentleman was waiting for her when she fled the house that day; he comforted her, confirmed the lies that had been told about you, and persuaded her to marry him with the promise that he would make no demands on her and would set her free if and when she wished. He had made her believe he was ill and might not live many months. An unconvincing story, to be sure, but I am told she is impetuous by nature.”

“We will not speak of her.”

El-Gharbi clapped his ringed hands over his painted mouth, like a child who has talked out of turn. His eyes were bright with malicious amusement. “So finally I have told you something you did not know. Why does he hate you so much?”

Ramses shook his head. El-Gharbi’s latest disclosure had left him stunned; he was afraid to speak for fear he would say more than he ought.

“Very well,” the procurer said. “You walk among naked daggers, Brother of Demons. Be on your guard. Your cousin has even fewer scruples than I.”

He clapped his hands. The draperies covering the door were drawn aside by a servant. The interview was over. Ramses got to his feet. “Thank you for the warning. I can’t help wondering…”

“Why I take the trouble to warn you? Because I hope you will spare me trouble. And because you are honest and young and very beautiful.”

Ramses raised shaggy gray eyebrows and the grotesque figure shook with silent laughter. “These eyes of mine see below the surface, Brother of Demons. Now go with Musa; he will show you to a less public entrance than the one you used. I trust your discretion as you must trust mine. Allah yisallimak. You will need his protection, I think.”

Ramses followed the silent servant along the dimly lit passages. His brain felt numbed as he struggled to assimilate the information el-Gharbi had flung at him like a series of missiles. For years he had agonized over that hasty marriage of Nefret’s, dismissing his suspicions of Percy’s involvement as wishful thinking and wounded vanity, and, worse than vanity, the fear that she had given herself to him that night out of pity, after he had finally betrayed his love and his need of her. Nefret did nothing by halves; affection and compassion and the wholehearted generosity that were so much part of her would have produced a convincing imitation of ardor, even to a man who had not wanted her as desperately as he had done.

But el-Gharbi’s disclosure had to be true, it had come straight from Percy himself. Unless the procurer was lying, for some obscure reason of his own…

True or false, the story had been told him for a reason, and he doubted el-Gharbi’s motives were altruistic.

Could it be true, though? He knew Nefret too well to doubt that it might have happened that way. Five minutes before they came downstairs that morning, she had been in his arms, returning his kisses. Then to be faced with the diabolically constructed web of evidence that branded him guilty of a crime she held to be worse than murder… He could remember only too well the sickening, breath-stopping effect of that accusation on himself, innocent though he knew himself to be.

And he had let her go. He’d had other responsibilities—the child, his parents, the imminent danger to the child’s mother—but he had reacted as irrationally as Nefret had done, and for the same very childish and very human reasons: hurt and anger and a sense of betrayal. They had both behaved like love-struck lunatics, but it would have come out all right in the end, if Percy hadn’t taken a hand.

What had el-Gharbi tried to tell him about Percy?

He handed the servant a few coins and slipped out into the alley behind the brothel. Gradually his steps slowed until he was standing stock-still. A single phrase had lodged in his mind. “… he would make no demands on her…”

No demands of any kind? Was it possible? It would explain so many things. Losing the baby had been the final blow that had broken her spirit. If that brief, miserable marriage had not been consummated—if she had discovered, too late, that she was carrying his child—if she still loved him, and believed her lack of faith in him had destroyed his love for her…

A flood of pity and tenderness and remorse filled him. I’ll make it up to her, he thought. If it’s true. If she’ll let me. If it’s not too late.

First, though, there was the other business.

:

The Yuletide season was fast approaching, but I was unable to work up much in the way of Christmas spirit. Small wonder, with the family scattered, and rumors of Turkish troops approaching the Sinai, and the casualty lists from the Western Front appallingly high. When I thought of those two handsome sensitive lads, whom I loved so dearly, in the mud of the trenches facing death, my spirits sank. It was even harder for their parents, of course, and for the girl to whom Johnny was engaged. What agonies she must be suffering!

However, I am never one to shirk my duty, and in my opinion the general gloom made it all the more imperative to celebrate the season and enjoy the company of those friends who were still with us. There were, alas, fewer than in other years. M. Maspero had retired as head of the Antiquities Department; he had been ailing for some time, and the wounding of his son Jean earlier that autumn had been a bitter blow to him. The young man, a fine scholar in his own right, was now back in the trenches. Howard Carter had remained in Luxor for the winter; his patron, Lord Carnarvon, had been awarded the firman for the Valley of the Kings after Mr. Theodore Davis gave it up. Howard did not agree with Davis that there were no more royal tombs in the Valley. He was itching to get at it.

Our closest friends, Katherine and Cyrus Vandergelt, were working nearby, at Abusir. Katherine would need comforting too; her son had been among the first to enlist. Bertie had been slightly wounded at Mons , but was now back in action.

So I sent out my invitations and accepted others. Emerson complained of taking time away from his work, as he always did, and when I inquired whether he would care to attend a costume ball at Shepheard’s, his indignation reached such a pitch I was obliged to close the door of my study, where the conversation was taking place.

“Good Gad, Peabody, have you forgotten what happened when last we attended a masked ball? Had I not arrived in the proverbial nick of time, you would have been carried off by a particularly unpleasant villain whom you took for me! Nobody knows who anybody is in those costumes,” Emerson continued, abandoning syntax in the extremity of his passion.

He looked so handsome, his sapphirine eyes blazing, his teeth bared, the cleft in his chin quivering, that I could not resist teasing him a bit. “Now, Emerson, you know you enjoy wearing disguises. Especially beards! It is most unlikely that any such thing could happen again. Anyhow, I had a more revealing costume in mind for you. You have such well-shaped lower limbs, I thought a Roman centurion or a kilted Scot, or perhaps a pharaoh—”

“Wearing nothing but a short skirt and a beaded collar?” Emerson glowered. “And you in one of those transparent pleated robes, as Nefertiti? See here, Peabody … Oh. You are joking, aren’t you?”