“Be back in time for tea,” Katherine ordered.

“I will stay as long as I am needed,” Anna snapped. Without excusing herself, she left the table and the room.

“Now what is wrong with her?” Katherine demanded. “She has been in a much better frame of mind lately.”

“One must expect occasional relapses when dealing with the young,” said Ramses’s mother.

It took only half an hour to reach the burial chamber. Ramses was glad of the distraction the work provided; he knew the chance of finding an undisturbed burial was slight, but it always gave him a queer feeling to penetrate a chamber that had not been entered for thousands of years. This one opened off the south side of the shaft and was almost filled by a large stone coffin. It hadn’t given its owner the protection he wanted; his bones lay scattered on the floor beside the coffin, whose lid had been shifted just far enough to enable the thieves to drag the body out. They had overlooked only a single piece of jewelry: a small scarab which one of them must have dropped.

“They made a clean sweep, curse them,” said Emerson, after he had climbed up out of the shaft. He and Ramses and Selim had been the only ones to go down; Cyrus would have disregarded his wife’s objections if there had been anything to see, but he was not inclined to risk the crude wooden ladders for a few dried bones.

“Do you want photographs?” Ramses asked.

“It can wait until tomorrow,” his mother said firmly. “No thief is going to bother with those scraps. We have done enough for today. More than enough.”

The look she gave Ramses was pointed and somewhat reproachful. If she had had her way, he would have been in Cairo at this moment, making the arrangements he had promised to make. As he had tried to tell her, it wasn’t that simple. He had rung Russell before luncheon, only to learn that Russell was out of the office and wasn’t expected back until late afternoon. There was a prearranged signal—“inform him that Tewfik Bey has a camel for him.” He had left that message, and if Russell received it he would be at the Turf Club that night.

The others went back to the house. Ramses stayed on for a bit to help Selim clean up the site and cover the shaft. When he entered the courtyard Fatima darted out of the sitting room and intercepted him.

“There is someone here, to see you,” she whispered.

Wondering why she was behaving like a stage conspirator, he glanced round. “Where?”

“In your room.”

“My room?” he echoed in surprise.

Fatima twisted her hands together. “She asked me not to tell anyone else. She said you had invited her. Did I do wrong?”

“No, it’s all right.” He smiled reassuringly. “Thank you, Fatima .”

He took the stairs two at a time, anxious to solve this little mystery. He couldn’t imagine who the woman might be. Anna? One of the village women seeking help from an abusive husband or father? It was well known that the Emersons wouldn’t tolerate that sort of thing, and some of the younger women were too much in awe of his mother and father to approach them. Obviously they weren’t in awe of him.

The smile on his lips faded when he saw the small figure seated on his bed. Reflexively his arm shot out and slammed the door.

“What the—what are you doing here?”

The child’s face was limpid with innocence. Streaks had plowed a path through the dust on her cheeks; they might have been caused by perspiration or by tears. She had got herself up in proper visiting attire, but now her pink, low-necked frock was wrinkled, and her hair was loose on her shoulders. With the cool confidence of an invited guest, she had made herself at home; her hat and handbag and a pair of extremely grubby white gloves lay on the bed beside her.

“I wanted to play with the cat,” she explained. “But it scratched me and ran away.”

A low grumble of confirmation came from Seshat, perched atop the wardrobe, beyond the reach of small hands.

“Don’t be childish, Melinda,” Ramses said sternly. “Come downstairs with me at once.”

Before he could open the door, she had flung herself at him and was hanging on like a frightened kitten. “No! You mustn’t tell anyone I’m here, not yet. Promise you’ll help me. Promise you won’t let him send me away!”

He put his hands over hers, trying to detach them, but they were clenched tight as claws, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He lowered his arms to his side and stood quite still. “Your uncle?”

“Yes. He wants to send me back to England . I won’t go! I want to stay here!”

“If he has decided you must go, there is nothing I can do to prevent it, even if I would. Melinda, do you realize what an ugly position you’ve put me in? If your uncle found out you were here with me, alone in my room—if anyone saw us like this—they would blame me, not you. Is that what you want?”

“No…”

“Then let go.”

Slowly the hard little fingers relaxed. She was watching him closely, and for a moment there was a look of cold, adult calculation in her eyes. It passed so quickly, drowned in twin pools of tears, he thought he must have imagined it.

“He hurt me,” she said. With a sudden movement she tugged the dress off one shoulder and down her arm almost to the elbow.

Her bones were those of a child, fragile and delicate, but the rounded shoulder and the small half-bared breasts were not. There were red spots on her arm, like the marks of fingers.

“Don’t send me away,” she whispered. “He beats me. He’s cruel to me. I want to be with you. I love you!”

“Oh, Christ,” Ramses said under his breath. He couldn’t retreat any farther, his back was against the door, and he felt like a bloody fool. Then he heard footsteps. The cavalry had arrived, and in the nick of time, too.

“Pull your dress up,” he snapped.

She didn’t move. Ramses grasped the handle and opened the door. “Mother? Will you come here, please?”

The girl wasn’t crying now. He had never seen so young a face look so implacable. “Hell hath no fury…?” He turned with unconcealed relief to his mother, who stood staring in the doorway.

“We have a runaway on our hands,” he said.

“So I see.” She crossed the room, heels thudding emphatically, and yanked the girl’s dress into place. “What are you running away from, Melinda?”

“My uncle. He beat me. You saw the bruises.”

“He took you by the shoulders and shook you, I expect. I cannot say I blame him. Come with me.”

She shrank back. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Give you a cup of tea and send you home.”

“I don’t want tea. I want…”

“I know what you want.” She directed a quizzical look at Ramses, who felt his cheeks burning. “You cannot have it. Go downstairs to the sitting room. Now.”

Ramses had seen that voice galvanize an entire crew of Egyptian workers. It had a similar effect on the child. She snatched up her hat, gloves, and bag, and Ramses stepped hastily out of the way as she ran past him and out the door.

His mother looked him over, from head to foot and back. She shook her head and pursed her lips. “No. There is nothing that can be done about it,” she said cryptically. “You had better stay here, I can deal with her more effectively if you are not present.”

After he had bathed and put on clean clothes, Ramses skulked in his room for an additional quarter of an hour before he summoned courage enough to go downstairs. Weeping women unnerved him, and this one wasn’t even a woman, she was only a little girl. (But remarkably mature for her age, jeered a small nasty voice in the back of his mind. He buried it under a pile of guilt.) What else could he have done, though? “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”

What a smug, self-righteous thing to say to someone whose heart you had cleft in twain. Hamlet had always struck him as something of a prig.