Nefret had remained modestly silent; her Arabic was less fluent than mine. I wondered what Ramses would think of the transformation in her appearance. She had darkened her skin a shade or two, and her hair was now a pretty shade of russet brown. The cornflower-blue eyes could not be concealed, but they could be explained by the assumption that she was of light-skinned Circassian or Berber ancestry. There were a good many girls of that complexion in Turkish harems.

“You certainly look like an old man’s darling,” I remarked in French. We had decided it was safer to use that language, even in private conversation, in case we were overheard.

Nefret made a face and plucked at the embroidered gibbeh that covered several other layers of garments. “I don’t smell like one. I’d give anything for a bath and a change of clothing.”

“So would I. It will have to wait. But you may as well remove the gibbeh and freshen up a bit. Curse it, here are some of the women come back.”

They had brought our luggage, including the mats on which I intended we should sit and sleep. Emerson had howled at the amount of baggage I had considered necessary – he would have gone off to Timbuktu with only the clothes on his back – but I absolutely refused to share my bed with the interesting variety of insect life that I had good reason to expect. The women spread the mats over the divans and unpacked a few more things, including my traveling tea set, which included a silver kettle and a spirit lamp. (This had produced a particularly sarcastic string of remarks from Emerson.)

I was preparing an emphatic speech of dismissal for the ladies when the appearance of Emerson spared me that effort. The women at once fled, drawing folds of their garments over their faces, and closed the doors.

Hands on hips, feet apart, Emerson inspected the room and us with a lordly sneer. He looked magnificent! I repressed the thrill of admiration that ran through my limbs, since it was unlikely I could do anything about it for some time. Regret was mitigated by the presence of the beard. It looked splendid, but I knew how it would feel – like a bramble bush.

“Well, this is very pleasant,” he remarked.

“French, Emerson,” I said.

“Merde,” said Emerson, whose command of that language is limited. He does know most of the swearwords, though.

“I have ordered dinner to be brought here,” he went on. “It is a condescension on my part, but I am an uxorious, indulgent husband. You will serve me kneeling, of course.”

“Don’t get carried away, Emerson,” I warned.

“En français, ma chérie, s’il vous plaît,” said Emerson, grinning broadly. He went on in his version of that language, with occasional lapses into English when his vocabulary failed him. “Selim is in a condition because of the motorcar. He injured the – er – bonnet when he passed it between the gate.”

Through the window I could hear Selim’s voice, raised in vehement commentary, and understood enough to comprehend that he was trying to sort out the servant situation. I deduced that dinner would be late.

“Well, we are here,” I remarked, “and although some of our habits will undoubtedly strike the servants as peculiar, they won’t think much about it. But how is Ramses to reach us? He can’t come here as himself.”

“He knows that,” Emerson said. “Give the boy credit.”

“We must do something about the mashrabiya screens, Emerson. I cannot see an infernal thing out the window.”

“Vous êtes en la harem, ma chérie,” said Emerson, smirking. “Les dames non pouvait – pourraint – (curse it!) voir dans le aperture.”

I understood his meaning, despite his atrocious grammar. Some of our windows opened onto the courtyard; it would not have been proper for strangers to see a woman looking out.

After his little exercise of wit, Emerson admitted we would be well advised to get the screens loose, so that we would have warning of unexpected visitors. It took all three of us to do the job, since we did not want to remove them entirely. With the aid of strips of fabric cut from the hangings, we managed to secure them so they would not flap but could be opened without difficulty.

Dinner finally arrived. It was very bad, so I assumed Selim had not been able to find a skilled cook. We ate sitting cross-legged round the platter of rice and mutton. Though mats had been placed in the adjoining cubicles, we decided to spend the night in the ka’ah. What the servants thought of this I cannot imagine (or rather, I prefer not to imagine). Emerson considered it best that we should not separate, however.

Next morning Selim, now in undisputed charge of the household, relegated the extraneous members of the family to the house they had originally occupied, and went off to hire several more servants, including a cook. The patriarch of the small clan we retained in the post of doorkeeper.

After breakfast (warmed-up rice and mutton) Emerson went out to visit the coffeeshops and listen to the local gossip. I saw no reason why we could not have visited the suk, properly veiled and escorted, but Emerson declared it would be an unnecessary risk, and Nefret produced an even more conclusive argument.

“What if he should come while we were out?”

She was right, but the morning dragged on, with nothing to do except bully the servants and familiarize ourselves with the rooms of the harem. We were able to bathe for the first time since we had left Cairo, and a great relief it was.

In the course of my exploration, I discovered several secret passages with peepholes in the walls, used by the master to spy on his women. Many of the older mansions in the region had such devices, as well as escape tunnels and hidden rooms. There were three of the latter in the haremlik, two mere cubbyholes in the wall and the third a large hiding place under the floor. The trapdoor covering it was concealed by matting. It had been designed for hiding objects, not people, since it was less than four feet high and there was no means of ventilation, and it was, as I had expected, empty. Mahmud would not have left anything of value.

Emerson returned with nothing to report, except that the town was full of soldiers, which we already knew. We were lingering over luncheon when there were sounds of a disturbance without. Emerson hurried to the door; when it opened I heard someone say in Arabic, “There is a person here, lord – I could not keep him away -”

Emerson let out a strangled cough, and a voice I knew well murmured deprecatingly, “Lord, your slave begs your mercy, it is not his fault he did not come before this, he was detained by the cursed British and made to dig holes – see, see how his hands are bleeding!”

A thump followed, as if of knees hitting the floor.

My curiosity could not be contained. Nefret was already at the door, peeping out.

Emerson stood staring down openmouthed at the form crouching at his feet. Ramses’s curly black head was bare and what I could see of his skin was almost as dark as his hair. I could see quite a lot of it.

His voice rose in a wail. “They took my clothes, lord, the fine clothing you gave me, my gibbeh and my sudarayee and my tarboosh and my shoes, and my -”

“God curse them,” said Emerson, recovering himself. “Come in, then, and tell me.”

Ramses straightened, smirking like a favored servant who has talked his way out of a beating; but the old man who had escorted him there croaked, “Into the harem, Effendi?”

Emerson drew himself up and skewered the presumptuous fellow with a fierce stare. “Did not the Prophet say, when he brought to his daughter the gift of a male slave, that she need not veil herself, for there was none present save her father and a slave?”

This interesting theological reference may have been too abstruse for the servant, but Emerson’s stare got the point across. “Come,” he added to Ramses.