The Golden One Read online

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?” Nefret asked, waving aside a carriage that had stopped.

  “About Jamil? The literal truth, yes. He did not deny he had seen the boy. My warning – for so it was meant, and so Mohassib took it – caught him by surprise, but it did not, as I had hoped, startle him into an indiscretion or worry him much. He is safe in his house, behind those stout walls, and well guarded. Ah, well, it was worth a try.” We strolled on, acknowledging the greetings of passersby, and I continued, “What I found interesting was his opinion of Mr. Albion. We keep running into them, don’t we? Do you think they are following us because they are up to no good?”

  Nefret laughed and slipped her arm through mine. “Don’t sound so hopeful, Mother. They are an oddly matched couple, though.”

  “What do you think of young Mr. Albion?”

  She answered with another question. “Did Ramses tell you what he said at Cyrus’s soiree – about Jumana?”

  “No.”

  She repeated the young man’s remark. I shook my head. “Disgusting, but not surprising. I trust Ramses put the young man in his place?”

  “Ramses almost put him on the carpet,” Nefret said. “You know that look of his – white around the mouth, and eyes almost closed? I made a leap for him and grabbed his arm, in time to stop him; but he uttered a few well-chosen words. Let’s take a felucca, shall we? It’s such a nice day.”

  “It has been a very pleasant day, my dear. I hope the others have had as nice a time as we.”

  FROM MANUSCRIPT H

  That’s got rid of her,” said Emerson in a satisfied voice, watching his wife and daughter-in-law walk away from the house. He and Ramses had been skulking – there was no other word for it – in a secluded corner of the garden. “We can get our gear together now.”

  He had sent Jumana on to Deir el Medina, telling her to warn the others that they might be late. Selim and Daoud were there; they could explain the site as well as he.

  Since Emerson did not believe anyone could do anything as well as he, Ramses knew his father was up to something. He didn’t need to ask what it was. As they loaded themselves with knapsacks and several heavy coils of rope, he said only, “We’re going on foot? It’s a long way to the Cemetery of the Monkeys.”

  “A brisk hour’s walk,” Emerson declared. “No point in taking the horses, we’d have to leave them somewhere along the way, and I don’t want the poor brutes standing round in the sun.”

  “You mean you don’t want to go near Deir el Medina for fear Cyrus will spot us and ask where we’re going. Father, what’s the point of this?”

  “I only want to make a preliminary survey.”

  The evasive tone would certainly have aroused his wife’s suspicions. Ramses said, “Preliminary to what? You don’t mean to give up Deir el Medina and Medinet Habu in favor of the western wadis, do you? And what about Cyrus? He isn’t going to settle for workmen’s houses while we’re looking for queens’ tombs.”

  Emerson’s face took on a look of noble self-righteousness. “Cyrus is not up to the kind of survey we’ll be doing. He might injure himself. Can’t have that.”

  “We’re doing him a kindness, really.”

  Emerson glanced at his solemn face and burst out laughing. “Glad you agree, my boy. I haven’t made up my mind yet where we will be working. I just want to have another look round. Without,” he added indignantly, “half a dozen people, including your mother, getting in my way.”

  Emerson moved at a rapid pace; he had insisted on carrying the heavier load, but it didn’t slow him in the slightest. Though he did not pause, he greeted everyone he met and responded cheerfully to their questions. Several passersby asked where they were going. Emerson told them. Matching his father’s long strides, Ramses realized Emerson didn’t really expect to find Jamil’s tomb by himself. He was hoping Jamil would show himself again.

  “Do you think he’ll be there?” he asked.

  “Who? Oh. Hmph. He has been. He’s bound to make a mistake sooner or later, and when he does we’ll be ready for him.”

  “You don’t know that the masked demon was he.”

  “Who else could it have been? The Gurnawis don’t play silly tricks like that.”

  “Mother will find out, you know – especially if Jamil succeeds in bashing one of us with a boulder.”

  “Unlikely in the extreme,” Emerson declared. “However… No one is a better companion than your mother – when she is in a friendly state of mind – but women do get in the way at times. Especially your mother.”

  Ramses grinned but saved his breath. He did not suffer from false modesty about his physical fitness, but keeping up with his father taxed even him. Emerson must have decided to take one of his famous “round-about-ways,” for they were already climbing, along a steep, winding path that would eventually lead them behind Deir el Medina and the Valley of the Queens.

  They had got a late start and Emerson was in a hurry. Once they had reached the highest part of the path they made good time over relatively level ground. Absorbed in thought, Ramses followed his father without speaking.

  He didn’t want to be here, or at Medinet Habu. If he’d had his way they would settle down for the season at Deir el Medina. He hadn’t explained himself very eloquently, and apparently his father’s fascination with temples prevented him from seeing what Ramses saw: a unique opportunity to learn about the lives of ordinary Egyptians, not pharaohs, not noblemen, but men who worked hard for a living, and their wives and children. The scraps of written material he had found contained work schedules and lists of supplies, and tantalizing hints of family relationships, friendly and not so friendly, extending over many generations. He was certain there were more papyri to be found; one of the men had mentioned coming across a similar cache some years earlier, near the place where this one had turned up. If his father would let him dig there…

  He didn’t want to be here, but he’d had no choice. Once Emerson got the bit in his teeth it was impossible to turn him aside, and wandering the western wadis alone was dangerous, even for an old hand like his father. Paths wound all over the place, marked in some places by tumbles of stone that marked the ruins of ancient huts, used by the necropolis guards or by workmen. Ramses could only marvel at his father’s encyclopedic memory of the terrain; he did not pause before turning into a track that led downhill, following the eastern ridge of a deep wadi. When he finally stopped, they were only twenty feet from the valley floor, and Ramses saw a flight of rough stone stairs going down.

  “Rest a bit,” Emerson said, unstrapping his knapsack. He removed his coat, tossed it onto the ground, sat on it, and took his pipe from his pocket. Ramses followed his example, except for the pipe. He took advantage of the lull while his father fussed with the pipe to look round and try to get his bearings.

  For the past half hour they had been going roughly southwest, and must now be near the mouth of one of the wadis that spread out northward from the plain. It wasn’t the one they had visited twice before; this configuration was quite different from that of the Cemetery of the Monkeys. There was ample evidence of ancient occupation: several deep pits, too obvious to have been overlooked by modern tomb robbers, and more remains of ancient stone huts.

  Once he had his pipe going, Emerson opened his knapsack and began fumbling in it. “Hmph,” he said, as if the idea had just struck him. “I suppose I ought to have thought of bringing some water. Are you thirsty, my boy?”

  “A little.” It was the understatement of the day; his mouth was so dry it felt like sand. He unstrapped his own knapsack. “I asked Fatima for a few bottles of water. And a packet of sandwiches.”

  “Good thinking. No, no -” Emerson waved the bottle away. “You first.”

  Ramses took a long pull and watched, with the admiring vexation his father continued to inspire, as Emerson went on rooting round in his knapsack. He had flung his pith helmet aside and the sun beat down on his bare black head. His pipe lay beside him; it
was still glowing, and Ramses remembered a story his mother had once told him, about Emerson putting a lighted pipe in his pocket. She had thought it very amusing.

  “Ah,” said Emerson, removing a long roll of paper from his knapsack. “Here it is. Hold this end.”

  Once the paper was unrolled and held flat by rocks, Emerson said, “I did this some years ago. Very rough, as you can see.”

  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 -”

  “Hmph, yes,” Emerson said guiltily. “The damned young fool! You’ve seen no sign of him?”

  “No. I looked and I called him, over and over.” She stood up and straightened her skirt. “We must find him. He may have fallen. Hurry!”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Emerson abstractedly. “No sense in rushing off in all directions. What do you think, Ramses?”

  He didn’t have to tell them what he thought, they were as familiar with the terrain as he was. There were hundreds of square meters of broken country, around and above and below, split by crevices of all sizes and shapes. Locating one man in that wilderness would be hellishly difficult, especially if he had fallen and injured himself.

  “I don’t think he’d have gone over the gebel as Jumana did,” Ramses answered. “He’d have come the way we came the other day; it’s the only route he knows. He didn’t enter this arm of the wadi or we’d have seen him. Unless he arrived long before we did… Father, why don’t you sing out?”

  Emerson obliged. Not even a bird answered. Jumana was dancing up and down with impatience, but Emerson’s monumental calm kept her quiet. After calling twice more, without result, he said, “He’d have heard that if he were within earshot. All right, we can go on.”

  “The Cemetery of the Monkeys,” Ramses muttered. “Yes, that’s where he’d go. I could kick myself for making those clever remarks about missing queens. Which way? I can climb up and go across, while you -”