It was a map of the area, annotated in Emerson’s decisive handwriting, and although it was obviously not to scale, it made the general layout of the wadis clear. They resembled the fingers of a hand that stretched out to the north, penetrating deep into the rising cliffs; below the flatter “palm” was a common entrance, very wide and fairly level, opening onto the plain below. Emerson had labeled the separate wadis with their Arabic names.
“We’re here,” Emerson went on, jabbing at the paper with the stem of his pipe. “We’ll have a look at Wadi Siqqet e Zeide first. Hatshepsut’s tomb is at the far end of it.”
“What are these x’s?”
“Spots I thought worth investigating.”
“You never got round to doing it?”
“There isn’t enough time!” Emerson’s voice rose. “There never will be. If I had ten lifetimes I couldn’t do it all.”
“Have a sandwich,” Ramses said sympathetically. “I know how you feel, Father. We must just do the best we can.”
“Don’t talk like your mother,” Emerson growled. He accepted a sandwich, but instead of biting into it he stared at the ground and said rapidly, “I’ve come round to your way of thinking, you know. The most important aspect of our profession is recording. At the rate the monuments are deteriorating, there won’t be much left by the time your children are grown.”
Considering that they aren’t born yet, that will be a long time, Ramses thought.
The subject of children was one he and Nefret avoided, and so did everyone else in the family. Some of them, including his mother – and himself – knew that her failure to conceive again after the miscarriage she had suffered a few years earlier grieved her more than she would admit. He wanted a child, too, but his feelings weren’t important, compared with hers.
His father appeared not to have noticed the gaffe, if it could be called that. He went on, in mounting passion, “But, confound it, leaving undiscovered tombs to the tender mercies of thieves is inviting further destruction. Finding them first is a variety of preservation, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t agree with everything I say!” Emerson shouted.
“No, sir.”
“You do agree, though.”
“Yes…” He cut off the “sir.” Emerson’s morose expression indicated that he was not in the mood for raillery. Ramses went on, “In this case we have an additional, equally defensible motive for exploring the area. One might even call it self-defense.”
He hadn’t succeeded in cheering his father. Emerson’s brow darkened even more. “It’s ridiculous,” he grumbled. “I resent having to waste time tracking down a miserable little rat like Jamil.”
Ramses understood how he felt. They had faced a number of formidable enemies in the past. To be defeated, even temporarily, by such a feeble adversary was what his father would call a damned insult. It is easier to trap a lion than a rat, though. He decided not to voice this comforting adage aloud. It sounded like something his mother might have said.
“We’ll find him, Father,” he said.
“Hmmh. Yes. Er…” His father patted him awkwardly on the arm. “You’ll get a chance at your chapels, my boy. I promise.”
“But, Father, I don’t want -”
“This way.”
They located two pit tombs which had been ransacked in antiquity, many shards of pottery, and a number of hieratic inscriptions scratched onto the rock by necropolis inspectors who had visited the area in pharaonic times. Several of the names were known from similar graffiti in the Valley of the Kings. It was additional evidence that there were tombs, probably royal tombs, in the wadis. To Emerson’s extreme annoyance, they found modern graffiti next to many of them: the initials “H. C.” and the date “1916.”
“Carter, curse him,” he muttered.
“You shouldn’t hold it against him just because he got here before you,” Ramses said.
“I was here thirty years ago,” Emerson retorted. “But I didn’t scratch my name all over the scenery.”
“It is a courtesy, Father, telling any who may follow that he has copied these inscriptions. I presume he did?”
“I would ask him if I could lay hands on him,” Emerson snarled. “He wasn’t in Cairo, he isn’t in Luxor. Where the devil is he?”
“Off on some errand for the War Office, I presume. He said he was working for the intelligence department.”
“Bah,” said Emerson. “Ramses, I want copies of these graffiti. Carter doesn’t understand the language. Yours are bound to be more accurate.”
“You want me to do it now?” Ramses demanded.
“No, there won’t be time. Another day.”
Another day, another distraction, Ramses thought, concealing his annoyance. There was no man alive – or dead, for that matter – whom he admired more than his father, but sometimes Emerson’s obstinacy rasped on his nerves. I’ll try again to explain about Deir el Medina, he thought. Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough. Perhaps if I tell him… He was thinking how to put it when he heard a strange sound. Clear and high, it might have been a bird’s trill, but it was unusual to find a songbird this far from the cultivation.
He got to his feet and turned slowly, raking the cliffs with narrowed eyes. The sun was high, reflecting off the barren rocks, dazzling the vision.
“What -” Emerson began.
“Listen.”
This time Emerson heard it too. He jumped up.
“There,” Ramses said, pointing.
The figure was too far away and too high up to be distinct. Without taking his eyes off it, he knelt and got the binoculars out of his pack.
“Jamil?” Emerson asked hopefully.
“No.” The small figure jumped into focus. “Goddamn it! It’s Jumana. What the hell -”
Emerson cupped his hands round his mouth and let out a bellow whose reverberations brought down a shower of rock from the cliff.
“Did she hear me?” He picked up his coat and waved it like a flag.
“The entire Western Desert heard you,” Ramses said. “She’s seen us. She’s coming. Good God, she’ll break her neck if she doesn’t slow down. Let’s go and meet her.”
Leaving their belongings, they hurried up the path they had recently descended. She descended even faster, slipping and sliding, waving her arms to maintain her balance. When she was ten feet above them she glissaded down the last slope, straight into Emerson’s outstretched arms.
“Hurry,” she gasped. “Quick. We must find him.”
Her face glowed with heat and exertion. Scowling blackly, Emerson held her off at arm’s length, and Ramses saw that she was wearing a belt like that of his mother, hung all round with various hard, lumpy objects. The only one he could identify was a canteen.
“Who?” he asked, since his father seemed incapable of speech. “Jamil?”
“No.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I followed… I didn’t know… you were here…” Her breath gave out.
“Curse it,” Emerson said. He swung her up into his arms and swore again as something – possibly the canteen – jabbed him in the ribs. He carried her back to the place where they had left their knapsacks, put her down on his coat, and offered her the water bottle.
“I have this,” she said proudly, unhooking the canteen. “And other useful things. Like the Sitt Hakim.”
“Wonderful,” said Emerson, rubbing his side. “Now tell us who you followed. Cyrus?”
“Bertie.” She wiped her chin and hung the canteen back on her belt. “I don’t know how long he was gone before I realized. I asked one of the men; he said he saw Bertie walking very fast down the road away from Deir el Medina and -”
“How do you know he wasn’t going home?” Emerson asked.
“Without telling his father or Reis Abu? He stole away, like a thief!”
“But why here?”
“He had been talking of how he wished he could find something wonderful for Mr. Vandergelt. When you did not come, we were wondering why, and Mr. Vandergelt said…” She stopped and thought, and when she went on, it was in Cyrus’s very words and in a fairly good imitation of his accent. “ ‘… he’d durned well better not find out you had snuck off looking for queens’ tombs behind his back.’ He was joking, but -”