“Yes, my dear, you need not spell it out.” His hand brushed my hair.

No sooner had the door closed behind him than Ramses’s eyes opened. “I still hate this bloody war, you know,” he said indistinctly.

“Then why are you doing this?”

His head moved restlessly on the pillow. “It isn’t always easy to distinguish right from wrong, is it? More often the choice is between better and worse… and sometimes… sometimes the line between them is as thin as a hair. One must make a choice, though. One can’t wash one’s hands and let others take the risks… including the risk of being wrong. There’s always better… and worse… I’m not making much sense, am I?”

“It makes excellent sense to me,” I said gently. “But you need to rest. Can’t you sleep?”

“I’m trying.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You used to sing me to sleep. When I was small. Do you remember?”

“I remember.” I had to clear my throat before I went on. “I always suspected you pretended to sleep so you wouldn’t have to listen to me sing. It is not one of my greatest talents.”

“I liked it.”

His hand lay on the bed, palm up, like that of a beggar asking for alms. When I took it his fingers closed around mine. My throat was so tight I thought I could not speak, much less sing, but the iron control I have cultivated over the years came to my aid; my voice was steady, if not melodious.

“There were three ra’ens sat on a tree

Down a down, hey down a down…”

There are ten interminable verses to this old ballad, which is not, as persons unfamiliar with it might suppose, a pretty little ditty about birds. As soon as he was old enough to express an opinion on the subject, Ramses had informed me that he found lullabies boring, and had demanded stronger stuff. This attitude was, perhaps, not unnatural in a child who had been brought up with mummies; but I would be the first to admit that Ramses was not a normal child.

His lips curved slightly as he listened, and his eyes closed; by the time I got to the verse where the dead knight’s lover “lifts his bloody head,” his breathing had slowed and deepened.

I bent over him and brushed the damp curls away from his brow. I had been in error; he was not quite asleep. His heavy lids lifted.

“I was a bloodthirsty little beast, wasn’t I?”

“No,” I said unsteadily. “No! You never harmed a living creature, not even a mouse or a beetle. You put yourself constantly at risk in order to keep them from being hurt, by cats or hunters or cruel owners. That is what you are doing now, isn’t it? Risking yourself to keep people…” It was no use, I could not go on. He squeezed my hand and smiled at me.

“Don’t worry, Mother. It’s all right, you know.”

The tears I had held back burst from my eyes, and I wept as I had not wept since the day Abdullah died. Dropping to my knees, I pressed my face into the covers in an attempt to muffle my sobs. He patted me clumsily on my bowed head, and that made me cry harder.

When I had stopped crying I raised my head and saw that he was asleep at last. Shadows softened the prominent features and the strong outline of jaw and chin; with the cat curled up next to him on the pillow he looked like the boy he had been, not so very many years before.

I was sitting by the bed when the key turned in the lock and Emerson slipped in. “All quiet,” he whispered. “No sign of anyone about.”

“Good.”

He crossed the room and stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “Were you crying?”

“A little. Rather a lot, in fact. I don’t know that I can bear this, Emerson. I suppose I ought to be accustomed to it, after living with you all these years, but he courts peril even more recklessly than you did. Why must he take such risks?”

“Would you have him any other way?”

“Yes! I would have him behave sensibly—take care—avoid danger—”

“Be someone other than himself, in short. We cannot change his nature, my dear, even if we would; so let us apply ourselves to thinking how we can help him. What did you put in the brandy?”

“Veronal. Emerson, he cannot get out of bed tomorrow, much less work in the tomb.”

“I know. I am going to find David.”

“David.” I rubbed my aching eyes. “Yes, of course. David is here, isn’t he? That’s how Ramses managed to be in two different places tonight. David was at Shepheard’s and Ramses was… I apologize, Emerson, I am a trifle slow. What role has he been playing?”

“Think it through, my dear.” He squeezed my shoulders. “You have been under something of a strain, but I don’t doubt your quick wits will reach the same conclusion mine have reached. I mustn’t stay, if I am to get David back here before morning.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I think so. I will be as quick as I can. Try to rest a little.”

He tilted my head back and kissed me. As he walked to the door there was a spring in his step I had not seen for weeks, and when he turned and smiled at me I beheld the Emerson I knew and loved, eyes alight, shoulders squared, tall frame vibrant with resolve. My dear Emerson was himself again, intoxicated by danger, spurred on by the need for action!

The night wore on. I sat quietly, resting my head against the back of the chair, but sleep was impossible. It was like Emerson to throw out that amiable challenge, so that I would tax my wits instead of fretting. And of course, once I got my mind to work on the problem, the answer was obvious.

The business in which Ramses was presently engaged had been worked out long in advance, and with the cooperation of someone high in the Government. It would take a man like Kitchener himself to authorize and arrange the deception, sending another man to India in place of David. I had wondered why he had been imprisoned there instead of in Malta , where the other nationalists were interned; now I understood. No one who knew David could be allowed to meet the impostor. There are secret methods of communication into and out of the most tightly guarded prison, and if ever the word got back to Cairo that David was not where he was supposed to be, interested parties might wonder where he really was.

Interested parties, of whom there were, alas, only too many, might also wonder whether Ramses’s outspoken opposition to the war was a cover for the sort of clandestine activities for which he was particularly well suited. If he was playing another role, the only way in which he could disarm suspicion was to have David take his part at strategic intervals. Knowing Ramses, I did not doubt his loathing of the war was utterly sincere, but it had also been part of the plan. He had made himself so thoroughly unpopular, few people would associate with him—or, as the case might be, with David.

Emerson had been correct; the answer was obvious. If one man could be secretly removed from exile, another could be secretly sent into it. The militant nationalist for whom the British authorities were searching was not Kamil el-Wardani, but my son—and that was why Thomas Russell had taken the unusual step of inviting us to accompany him on his futile raid, and why Wardani had got away so handily. The raid had been meant to fail. Its sole purpose had been to supply unimpeachable witnesses who could testify that Wardani was elsewhere while Ramses made a spectacle of himself at the Club; and the reason for the substitution must have to do with what Russell had said that night. Something about fighting a guerrilla war in Cairo while the Turks attacked the Canal… Wardani the key… without him, the movement would collapse.

I had reached this point in my train of thought when a faint rustling sound brought me bolt upright. A quick glance at Ramses assured me that he had not stirred. The sound had not been that of the bedclothes. It was… it must have been…

Springing to my feet, I felt under the mattress and found Ramses’s knife where he had asked me to place it. I hurried to the window and slipped through the curtains, in time to see a dark form swing itself over the stone balustrade of the small balcony. It saw me. It spoke.