Eyebrows rising, he said, “Thank you, Mother, but I haven’t come back from the dead, only from Cairo . Yes, Fatima , fresh tea would be very nice.”

I waited, twitching with impatience, until after she had brought the tea and another plate of sandwiches. “Talk quickly,” I ordered. “Nefret has gone to the hospital, but she will soon be back.”

“She didn’t go directly to the hospital.” Ramses inspected the sandwiches.

“You followed her?” It was a foolish question; obviously he had. I went on, “Where did she go?”

“To the Continental. I presume she was meeting someone, but I couldn’t go into the hotel.”

“No,” Emerson said, giving his son a hard look. “Has she given you any cause to believe she was doing anything she ought not?”

“Good God, Father, of course she has! Over and over! She—” He broke off; his preternaturally acute hearing must have given him warning of someone’s approach, for he lowered his voice and spoke quickly. “I need to attend that confounded costume ball tomorrow night.”

“What confounded costume ball?” Emerson demanded.

“I told you about it several weeks ago, Emerson,” I reminded him. “You didn’t say you would not go, so I—”

“Procured some embarrassing, inappropriate rig for me? Curse it, Peabody —”

“You needn’t come if you’d rather not, Father,” Ramses said somewhat impatiently.

“We’ll come, of course,” Emerson said. “If you need us. What do you want us to do?”

“Cover my absence while I trot off to collect a few more jolly little guns. I got the message this afternoon.” The parlor door opened, and he stood up, smiling. “Ah, Nefret. How many arms and legs did you cut off today? Hullo, Anna, still playing angel of mercy?”

Chapter 12

Over the years we had become accustomed to take Friday as our day of rest, in order to accommodate our Moslem workmen. The Sabbath was therefore another workday for us, and Emerson, who had no sympathy with religious observances of any kind, refused even to attend church services. He had often informed me that I was welcome to do so if I chose—knowing full well that if I had chosen I would never have felt need of his permission—but it was too much of a nuisance to get dressed and drive into Cairo for what is, after all, only empty ceremony unless one is in the proper state of spiritual devotion. I feel I can put myself into the proper state wherever I happen to be, so I rise early on Sunday morning and read a few chapters from the Good Book and say a few little prayers. I say them aloud, in the hope that Emerson may be edified by my example. Thus far he has displayed no evidence of edification; in fact, he is sometimes moved to make critical remarks.

“I do not claim to be an authority, Peabody , but it seems to me that prayer should take the form of a humble request, not a direct order.”

My prayers that Sunday morning may have had a somewhat peremptory tone. Emerson was dressing when I rose from my knees.

“Finished?” he inquired.

“I believe I covered all the necessary points.”

“It was a comprehensive lecture,” Emerson agreed. He finished lacing his boots and stood up. “I was under the impression that you believed that God helps those who help themselves.”

“I am doing all I can.”

My voice was somewhat muffled by the folds of my nightdress, which I had started to remove. Emerson put his arms round me and pressed me close. “My darling, I know you are. Don’t cry, my love, it will be all right.”

“I am not crying, I have several layers of cloth over my nose and mouth.”

“Ah. That’s easily dealt with.”

After a time Emerson said, “Am I hurting you?”

“Yes. I have no objection to what you are doing, but perhaps you could do it a little less vigorously. All those buttons and buckles—”

“They are also easily dealt with.”

“I presume you’ve got some tomfool costume for me to wear this evening,” Emerson said. He finished lacing his boots and stood up.

“I have a costume for you, yes, but I shan’t show it to you until it is time to put it on. You always complain and protest and bellow and—”

“Not this time. Peabody , is there any way you can conceal my absence as well as that of Ramses? This is the first time they have left the weapons to be picked up later instead of delivering them directly. I want to be there.”

“Do you think it’s a trick—an ambush?”

“No,” Emerson said, a little too quickly. “Only I—er—”

“Want to be there. Are you going to ask Ramses if you may go with him?”

“Ask him if I may…” Emerson’s indignation subsided as quickly as it had arisen. “I can’t do that. The boy is a trifle touchy about accepting my assistance, though I don’t see why he should be.”

“Don’t you?”

“No! I have the greatest respect for his abilities.”

“And you have, of course, told him so.”

Emerson looked uncomfortable. “Not in so many words. Oh, curse it, Peabody , don’t practice your bloody psychology on me. Make a practical suggestion.”

“Very well, my dear. Let me think about it.”

I did so, at intervals during the day. We had got the second chapel cleared down to floor level; the walls had all been painted and there was a delightful little false door, with a rock-cut half-length (from the waist up) statue of the owner, looking as if he were emerging from the afterworld with hands extended to seize the foodstuffs placed on the offering table before him. Ramses rambled about the room reading bits and pieces of the inscriptions and commenting on them: “ ‘An offering which the King gives of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, alabaster and clothing… a thousand of every good and pure thing… ’ They had such practical minds, didn’t they? An all-inclusive ‘every thing,’ in case some desirable item had been overlooked. ‘One honored before Osiris, Lord of Busiris… ’ Nothing new, just the usual formulas.”

“Then stop mumbling over them and help Nefret with the photography,” Emerson ordered.

This was a more complex process than it might appear, for photographs were the first step of the method Ramses had devised for copying reliefs and inscriptions. They had to be taken from a carefully measured distance in order to allow for overlap without distortion. A tracing was then made and compared with the wall itself. The final version incorporated not only the reliefs but every scratch and abrasion on the surface. Ramses did not suffer from false modesty regarding his talents as a linguist, but he would have been the first to admit that some future scholar might find something he had missed in those seemingly unreadable scratches. It was an extremely accurate method, but it took a long time.

Ramses began setting up his measuring rods. I went out to watch Emerson, who was directing the men who were clearing the section south of the mastaba. The intervening space between ours and the one next to it had been filled in, by extensions and/or later tombs. There were bits of wall everywhere, looking like an ill-organized maze. Emerson’s scowl would have told me, had I not already realized, that he had a hard task ahead trying to sort them out.

“Come here!” he shouted, waving at me.

So I went there, and began taking notes as he crawled about measuring spaces and calling out numbers and brief descriptions.

My mind wandered a bit. I had managed to draw Ramses aside long enough to squeeze a little information out of him. He would not tell me where he had to go that night, but he did give me a rough estimate of how much time he would need. Not less than two hours, probably not more than three.

“Probably,” I repeated.

“To be on the safe side, we had better allow for more. What I propose…”

What he proposed was that I plead fatigue or indisposition and ask Emerson to take me home during the supper break. Cyrus and Katherine would be happy to look after Nefret, and when Ramses failed to turn up, the others would assume he had gone with us. Given the crowds and the confusion and a certain amount of alcoholic intake, there was a good chance it would work.