He Shall Thunder in the Sky taps-12 Read online

  “Sssh. Behave normally and follow my lead. Ah, there you are, Nefret, my dear. How pretty you look.”

  Like the rest of us she was informally dressed, in a neat tweed walking skirt and matching coat. The golden-brown cloth, flecked with green and blue, set off her sun-kissed face and bright hair, which she had twisted into a simple coil at the back of her neck.

  “You have a button off your coat,” she remarked, inspecting Ramses. “And cat hairs all over the shoulder. Stand still, I’ll brush them off.”

  “You are a fine one to criticize my appearance, with that big purple lump on your forehead,” Ramses jeered.

  “Damn. I thought I’d arranged my hair to cover it.” Her fingers played with the waving locks framing her brow.

  “Not quite.” He watched her for a moment, and then put out his hand. “Let me.”

  She stood facing him like an obedient child with her chin lifted and her arms at her sides, while his thin, deft fingers gently loosened the gold-red strands and drew them down over her temple. One long lock curled round his hand and clung. He had to unwind it before he took his hand from her face.

  “I’ve made it worse,” he said. “Sorry. Excuse me for a minute.”

  “Go and tell the Professor we are ready,” I said to Nefret, and waited until she had started up the stairs before I went after Ramses, who had disappeared behind the statue. I found him leaning against the wall, staring intently at nothing that I could see.

  “You are as white as a sheet,” I told him. “What is wrong? Sit down. Let me get you—”

  “Nothing is wrong. A passing dizzy spell, that’s all.” His eyes came back into focus and the color began to return to his face. “I’m hungry,” he said in surprised indignation.

  “Nothing surprising about that,” I said, greatly relieved. “You only had a few sandwiches for lunch and it has been a hard day. Here, take my arm.”

  “I thought you wanted us to behave normally. Mother, why are you… I appreciate your concern, but I don’t understand what…”

  I knew what he meant and why he could not say it. Perhaps we were more alike than I had believed. “It has cost me a great deal of mental and physical effort to get you to your present age,” I explained. “I would hate to have all that effort go to waste.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  A bellow from Emerson ended the discussion. “ Peabody ! Where have you got to? We are waiting, damn it!”

  “Just having a look at the statue,” I said, coming forth with Ramses at my heels.

  There were three of them waiting—Emerson, Nefret, and the cat. They looked rather comical lined up in a row, with Seshat as expectant as the others. She was sitting bolt upright with her tail curled prettily around her front paws.

  “I think she wants to come with us,” Nefret said.

  Seshat confirmed her assumption by approaching Ramses. Looking up at him, she let out a peremptory mew.

  “You will have to wear your collar,” he informed her. The response was the equivalent of a feline shrug.

  “I’ll get it,” Nefret offered. “Where is it?”

  Ramses looked blank. “I don’t know.”

  “ Fatima has it,” I said. “I gave it to her to keep, since you were always losing it.”

  Nefret darted off.

  In fact, the collar was seldom used since Seshat was not fond of travel. When she was not hunting hapless rodents in the garden or climbing around the exterior of the house, she spent most of her time in Ramses’s room. She seeemed to consider it her duty to watch over his possessions—or else (which is more likely) she considered it her room, and Ramses only a congenial and rather incompetent roommate, who required a great deal of looking after. I had never understood what prompted her occasional forays away from the house, and her determination to accompany us that night, of all nights, roused certain forebodings. Did she know something we did not?

  Nefret came back with the collar and gave it to Ramses, who knelt to buckle it around Seshat’s neck. Emerson moved to my side. “If you so much as shape the word with your lips, Peabody ,” he said softly, “I will—er—”

  He did not finish the threat, since he could not think of one he would be able to carry out.

  “Which word, ‘premonition’ or ‘foreboding’?” I inquired as softly.

  “Neither, curse it!”

  “You must have felt it too, or you would not—”

  “Superstition is not one of my failings. I do wish you would get over your—”

  “Now what are you quarreling about?” Nefret asked. “Can we join in?”

  “Emerson is just being obstreperous,” I explained. “He always behaves this way when he wants his dinner or his tea or his breakfast or—”

  “Hmph,” said Emerson. He stalked out of the room, leaving me to follow. Ramses lifted the cat onto his right shoulder and offered me his other arm.

  “Do you go on, my dear,” I said. “Managing that cat is trouble enough. Nefret and I will follow, like obedient females. And try to prevent your father from driving the motorcar!”

  “Not much chance of that,” said Nefret, as Ramses started for the door with the cat draped over his shoulder. “Aunt Amelia, does it ever occur to you that this family is a trifle eccentric?”

  “Because we are taking the cat to dinner with us? I suppose some might consider it eccentric. But we always have done, you know; the cat Bastet went everywhere with Ramses.”

  “She always rode on his shoulder too,” Nefret said reminiscently.

  “He needed both shoulders then,” I said with a smile.

  “Yes. He has changed quite a lot since those days.”

  “So have you, my dear.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a note in her voice that made me stop and look searchingly at her. “Nefret, is something worrying you? Something you might wish to confide to me?”

  Nefret looked away. When she spoke, her voice was so soft the words were barely audible. “What about you, Aunt Amelia? I would like to help—to help you—with whatever is worrying you—if you would let me.”

  I did not at all like the direction the conversation had taken. Evidently my anxiety had not escaped her notice. Was my famed self-control failing? That must not happen!

  “How kind of you, my dear,” I replied heartily. “If something of the sort does arise, I will certainly request your assistance.”

  She did not reply, but hastened on. Intervention was called for; I could hear Emerson and Ramses arguing, more or less amiably, about who was to act as chauffeur. Nefret entered into the discussion with all her old zest; her laughter-bright face was so untroubled I wondered if I could have imagined that look of pain and appeal.

  Nefret has her own ways of managing Emerson; this time she got round him by declaring that she meant to drive the motorcar. Though Emerson is a firm believer in the equality of the female sex, he has some secret reservations, and one of them involves the car. (There is something about these machines that makes men want to pound their chests and roar like gorillas. I speak figuratively, of course.)

  In the end it was Emerson who proposed, as a compromise, that Ramses should drive. Nefret agreed with a grumble at Emerson and a look of triumph at her brother. He raised his hand to his brow in a surreptitious salute.

  Nothing could have been more normal than that exchange, and it put everyone in a merry mood. Emerson thought he had won, and the rest of us knew we had.

  Once we had traversed the Muski and its continuation, the Sikkeh el-Gedideh, our progress slowed, since the thoroughfares (bearing various names with which I will not burden the Reader) were narrower and crowded with people. The sun was setting and I was increasingly anxious to reach our destination but I did not urge Ramses to go faster. We made better progress than some might have done, since people tended to scamper briskly out of the way when they recognized the vehicle. Nodding from side to side, as regally as a monarch on progress, Emerson acknowledged the greetings of passersby. I wondered if
there was anyone in Cairo he did not know. Most of them knew him, at any rate.

  “Perhaps we ought to have come on foot,” I murmured in his ear. “Our presence certainly will be noted.”

  “It would be noted in any case,” said Emerson. “Do you suppose we could go ten yards without being observed? Look at that.”

  Ramses had slowed almost to a stop in order to give the driver of a particularly stubborn camel time to drag it out of our path. A pack of ragged urchins now hung from both doors, exchanging comments with Ramses and paying compliments to Nefret. The compliments had, I admit, a certain financial element. “O beautiful lady, whose eyes are like the sky, have pity on a poor starving…”

  Ramses made a remark in Arabic that I pretended not to hear, and the assailants withdrew, grinning appreciatively.

  The motorcar had to be left on the Beit el Kadi, since it could not enter the winding ways that surround the picturesque sprawl of the Khan el Khalili. Emerson helped me out and started off without so much as a backward look; he assumed, probably correctly, that none of the local vagabonds would dare touch an object belonging to him. Ramses lingered briefly to speak to a man who had come out from under the open veranda on the east side of the square. Something passed from hand to hand, and the fellow nodded, grinning. Goodness, what a nasty suspicious mind the boy has, I thought.

  He must have got it from me.

  “Wait a moment,” I said, tugging at Emerson. “We should all stay together.”

  “What? Oh, yes, of course.” He turned. “Get hold of Nefret, Ramses, and hurry up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The archway on the east side of the square leads into the narrow lanes of the Hasaneyn quarter and to one of the entrances to the Khan el Khalili. Emerson led the way through this maze without a pause or a false step, despite the increasing darkness. The old houses have enclosed balconies jutting out from the upper stories, almost bridging the narrow street. This made the lanes pleasantly cool during the day and dark as pitch during the night. There are seldom any windows on the lower floors of these houses, and the only illumination came from an occasional lantern hanging over the doorway of a considerate householder.

  “Didn’t you bring your electric torch?” I asked, thankful that I was wearing stout shoes instead of low slippers.

  “Do you really want to see what you just stepped into?” Emerson inquired. “Hang on to me, my dear, we are almost there.”

  The restaurant was near the Mosque of Huseyn opposite the eastern entrance to the Khan el Khalili. Mr. Bassam, the proprietor, rushed to embrace us and heap reproaches on our heads. All these weeks we had been in Cairo and we had not visited his place! Every night he had hoped to entertain us, every night he had prepared our favorite dishes! He began to enumerate these.

  “It is as God pleases,” said Emerson, cutting him off. “We are here now, Bassam, so bring out the food. We are all hungry.”

  As it turned out, this was the one night Mr. Bassam had not prepared food in advance. He had quite given us up. After all, we had been in Cairo …

  “Anything you have, then,” Emerson said. “The sooner the better.”

  First a table had to be placed for us at the very front of the restaurant, near the door. This suited me very well. It also suited Mr. Bassam, who wanted such distinguished customers to be seen. He even dusted off the chairs with a towel. I hoped it was not the same one he used to wipe the dishes, but decided I would feel happier if I did not ask.

  “And what will she have?” he inquired, as Ramses put Seshat down on a chair.

  “She is omnivorous,” Nefret said gravely, in English.

  “Ah? Ah! Yes, I will prepare—uh—it at once.”

  “Don’t tease him, Nefret,” I scolded. Seshat sat up and inspected the top of the table. Finding nothing of interest there except a few crumbs, she jumped down onto the floor.

  “Put her on the lead, Ramses, and tell her she must stay on the chair,” I instructed. “I don’t want her going out on the street to eat vermin.”

  “She eats mice all the time,” said Emerson, as Ramses returned the cat to her chair and began searching his pockets—a token demonstration, as I well knew, for I had forgotten to mention the lead and he would never have thought of it himself. The collar was primarily for purposes of identification; it bore our name and Seshat’s.

  “They are our vermin,” I said.

  “Use this.” Nefret unwound the scarf from her neck and handed it to her brother.

  Seshat accepted the indignity without objection after Ramses had explained the situation to her. The other diners, who were watching us with the admiring interest our presence always provokes, looked on openmouthed.

  Mr. Bassam began heaping food, including a dish of spiced chicken, on the table. Seshat was not really omnivorous, but her tastes were more eclectic than those of many cats; she licked the seasoned coating off the chicken before devouring it, with more daintiness than certain of the other patrons displayed, and joined us in our dessert of melon and sherbet.

  By the time we finished, darkness was complete. Across the way the gateway of the Khan was hidden in the shadows, but there were lights beyond it, from the innumerable little shops and stalls. The shoppers and sightseers passing in and out of the entrance included a number of people in European dress and a few in uniform.

  “Nothing yet,” I whispered to Emerson, while Ramses and Nefret argued amiably over how much melon Seshat should be allowed to eat. “It isn’t that far away. We would hear a disturbance, wouldn’t we?”

  “Probably. Possibly. Cursed if I know.” Emerson’s curt and contradictory remarks told me he was as uneasy as I had become. Sitting on the sidelines is not something Emerson much enjoys. “Let’s go over there.”

  “Go where?” Nefret asked.

  “To the Khan,” I replied, with my customary quickness. “I suggested we stroll a bit before returning home. Have we all finished?”

  At one time the gates of the Khan were closed before the evening prayer. An increasing number of merchants were now “infidels”—Greeks or Levantines or Egyptian Christians—and the more mercantile-minded of the Moslem Cairenes had seen the advantage of longer hours, especially when the city was bursting with soldiers who wanted exotic gifts and mementos. (Some of them spent their pay in quite another quarter of the city and took home mementos that were not so harmless. But that is not a subject into which I care to enter.)

  The Khan el Khalili is not a single suk, but a sprawling collection of ramshackle shops and ruinous gateways and buildings. The old khans, the storehouses of the merchant princes of medieval Cairo , were architectural treasures, or would have been if they had been properly maintained. A few had been restored; most had not; mercantile establishments occupied the lower floors and huddled close to the flaking walls; but one might catch occasional glimpses of delicately arched windows and tiled doorframes behind the shops.

  The smells were no less remarkable. Charcoal fires, donkey and camel dung, unwashed human bodies, spices and perfumes, baking bread and broiling meat blended into an indescribable whole. One may list the individual components, but that gives the reader no sense of the composite aroma. It was much more enjoyable than one might assume, in fact, and no worse than the sort of thing one encounters in many old European towns. There were times, when the fresh breeze blew across the Kentish meadows carrying the scent of roses and honeysuckle, when I would gladly have exchanged it for a whiff of old Cairo.

  As we wandered along the winding lanes, past the tiny cubicles in which silks and slippers, copper vessels and silver ornaments were displayed, I knew that Russell had not yet made his move. The whole place would have been buzzing with gossip had the police descended on a shop anywhere in the Khan. Many of them were closing, the shutters drawn down and the lamps extinguished, for the hour was growing late and the buyers were leaving to return to hotels and barracks. My anxiety could no longer be contained, and I pushed ahead of the others, setting a straight course for As
limi’s establishment. Had Russell been unable to make the necessary arrangements? Had he failed me? Curse it, I thought, I ought not have trusted him. I ought to have handled the matter myself—with a little assistance from Emerson.

  Then it occurred to me that Russell might be waiting until the crowds had thinned out. Strategically it was a sensible decision. The fewer people who were about, the less chance that a bystander might be injured or that Aslimi’s fellow merchants might be tempted to come to his aid. I hastened on, determined to be in at the kill. Then Emerson caught me up and I moderated my pace. Actually it was Emerson who moderated it for me, grasping my arm and holding it tightly.

  “Proceed slowly or you will ruin everything,” he hissed like a stage villain.

  “Why are you in such a hurry, Aunt Amelia?” Nefret asked.

  I turned. We were not far from Aslimi’s now; his place was around the next curve of the lane. My ears were pricked. So, I observed, were those of Seshat, perched on Ramses’s shoulder. Her eyes reflected the lamplight like great golden topazes. I forced a smile.

  “Why, my dear, what makes you suppose I am in a hurry? That is my normal walking pace.”

  Seshat’s tail began to switch and she leaned forward, sniffing the air. Her eyes had lost their luster; the lamp behind me had been extinguished. The shutter of the shop went down with a bang. The steel grille of the establishment next to it slammed into place. All along the lane, lights were going out and doors were closing.

  “What is happening?” Nefret demanded. She moved closer to Ramses and took hold of his sleeve. He detached her fingers, gently but quickly, and caught Seshat in time to prevent her from taking a flying leap off his shoulder. Lowering her to the ground, he handed Nefret the scarf. “Hold on to her.”

  “Damnation,” said Emerson under his breath. “They know. How do they know?”

  It did smack of witchcraft, that unspoken recognition of danger that runs like a lighted fuse through a group of people who live with uncertainty and fear of the law. The mere sight of a uniform, or even a too-familiar face, would be enough of a warning.