The Serpent on the Crown (39 page)

“Don’t yell at her,” said Nefret’s voice, distant yet distinct.

“I don’t mind if he does,” I murmured. “Ramses. Is he—”

“I’m all right, Mother. Thanks to you.”

“Excellent. What is that weight on my feet?”

“The cat,” Emerson said. “I’ll take him—ouch!”

“That’s all right, Emerson, leave him,” I whispered. “We have a great deal to talk about.”

“Not now,” Nefret said.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I have remembered.”

It was late the following afternoon before I awoke from a refreshing sleep, feeling almost myself again. I was in my own bed and the Great Cat of Re was curled up at my feet. Sunset light gilded the air and there was the scent of flowers. Emerson sat beside me. When I stirred he pounced, his big gentle hands on my shoulders.

“Don’t move, Peabody. Fatima, run and tell Nefret she’s conscious.”

Cautiously I turned my head. On the table beside the bed was an enormous bunch of flowers, jammed helter-skelter into a vase—roses, zinnias, marigolds, hollyhocks, bougainvillea, sticking out in all directions in a horrible confusion of color. Tears came to my eyes.

“Oh, Emerson! Did you pick them for me?”

The hand that brushed my cheek was covered with scratches.

E
veryone has been round to ask about you,” Nefret said. “Daoud and Selim, and Mr. Winlock and Mr. Barton, and half the village of Gurneh, including a curious goat, and Marjorie Fisher and Miss Buchanan, and a dozen others. The Vandergelts are here now.”

“How nice,” I said. “Ask them to come in, will you?”

“Mother, you mustn’t overdo. Too many visitors—”

“Will enliven me,” I declared. “And I want to see Ramses, and David, of course. And—”

“All right,” Nefret said reluctantly. “For a few minutes. Promise me you will remain quiet and not talk.”

“I must talk, I have a great deal to say.”

Nefret’s grave face broke into a smile. “Ten minutes, Mother, and not a minute longer.”

They crowded into the room, and the sight of those beloved faces would have lifted anyone’s spirits. “All right, are you, my boy?” I asked Ramses.

He nodded speechlessly. “Excellent,” I said. “I overheard much of what you said to Katchenovsky. What have you done with him?”

“He’s in hospital,” Emerson said. “Ramses damaged him rather extensively, but he’ll live—to face a charge of attempted murder.”

“I am sorry about him,” I said. “He is a talented scholar and was, I believe, a good man before temptation got the better of him. His confession clears up the remaining items on my list. Adrian Petherick is guilty of nothing except bullying his sister.”

“You mustn’t talk too much,” Nefret said, feeling my brow.

“Then let Ramses talk. What the devil—what was in that papyrus?”

“I’ve made a preliminary translation,” Ramses said. He took a paper from his pocket. “Parts of it were damaged or missing, so I have filled in the gaps as best I can. It is the confession of the original thief, describing where and how he found the golden statue.

“‘I took the image of this god from his tomb in the Great Place. Bakenamen son of Ptahmose took the other image and Sebekhotep the draftsman took rings of gold and a jeweled collar. The guards of the necropolis came upon us and seized Sebekhotep and Bakenamen, but I ran away without them seeing me. Now a sickness has seized my limbs and the gods are punishing me for my crime, and I cannot put the image of this god back. So I offer it to you, Lady of Turquoise, Lady of Mercy, that I may not profit from my crime and that I will win forgiveness in the Hereafter.’”

“Lady of Turquoise,” Nefret said. “The goddess Hathor.”

Ramses smiled at his wife. “The Golden One. He buried it near her temple, and that is where it was found, a few years ago, by a modern thief. In the last place one would expect—Deir el Medina, where the thief lived over three thousand years ago.”

“Amazing,” Bertie exclaimed. “It must be absolutely unique.”

“There are other papyri dealing with tomb robberies and the confessions of the thieves,” Ramses said. “They are Twentieth Dynasty in date. This is much earlier—Eighteenth Dynasty, if my analysis of the grammar and handwriting is correct. However, this is the only case where we have not only the confession of the thief but the actual object he stole.”

“I still don’t see why that is so important. Except, of course, from a scholarly point of view,” Bertie added, with a glance at Jumana.

“Be quiet, Mother.” Ramses placed his fingers lightly on my parted lips.

My voice somewhat muffled by Ramses’s fingers, I said, “There are two unknown royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Abdullah told me so.”

“She’s delirious,” Katherine said anxiously.

Nefret shook a thermometer under my nose. “She won’t be quiet while you are all here. Out, everyone.”

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

“How is she this morning?” Ramses asked. He was too familiar with his wife’s features to miss the faint signs of worry—the two light lines between her curved brows.

“A little feverish. That’s only to be expected. But I think I’d better stay with her today.”

Emerson pushed the food around his plate. “Of course. If someone doesn’t sit on her she’ll be up and doing. I won’t go either.”

“There’s no need for you to stay, Father,” Nefret said. “She needs to rest.”

Ramses didn’t want to go either, but he understood what Nefret had not said: that his mother stood a better chance of resting if everyone was out of the house. He was fully prepared to argue with his uncle if he had to, but Sethos went without demur. He pitched in more energetically than he had ever done, even offering to sift the debris and brushing aside Emerson’s doubts that he could do it properly.

“If I can’t spot a shaped object among the rubble I’ve wasted a good many years in the wrong profession.”

He was working in order to keep his mind off what might be happening back at the house. So were they all. Movements were slower and clumsier, voices louder. Fear was like a small, distant cloud, no matter how Ramses reassured himself. “Only to be expected,” Nefret had said. “A little feverish.” And those two faint lines on her forehead…

The only one who was unaffected was Daoud. He had absolute confidence in Nefret, and he had prayed for long hours. When they sat down to lunch he talked of nothing but the golden statue and the thief’s confession. “To think it was here all the time,” he said, waving a chicken leg in the general direction of the temple.

Emerson, enveloped in frowning silence, did not reply. “Not at this temple, Daoud, it is much later than the Eighteenth Dynasty,” David said. “There were older temples to Hathor. We worked at one of them last year, d’you remember?”

“Yes,” said Daoud, who never forgot any site where he had excavated. “And still we did not find it!”

“We may have missed it by only a few feet,” Ramses said. “But it doesn’t matter now, Daoud. There’s nothing else there. The thief mentioned only the statue.”

“Back to work,” said Emerson mechanically.

He called a halt much earlier than was his habit. Daoud and Selim went back to the house with them, the former carrying a silver charm in the shape of a hand of Fatima.

The lines on Nefret’s forehead were deeper but she welcomed them with a smile. “We’ll have tea early,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “Oh, Daoud, how thoughtful of you! It’s beautiful; I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“I will give it to her,” Daoud said.

“I’d rather you didn’t disturb her,” Nefret said. “She’s slept most of the day.”

Sethos sat down. “She’s worse,” he said heavily.

“No! Her temperature is up, but that doesn’t mean—Father, wait.”

“I want to see her,” Emerson said. “Only see her. Only for a second.”

Nefret’s face twisted as if she was trying not to cry. “All right,” she said gently. “Just for a second. Look in and don’t speak.”

Daoud rose ponderously to his feet. “I will look too. I will not speak.”

He followed Emerson into the house. “Daoud is a restful person, for all his size,” Nefret said with that painful smile. “Soft-spoken and slow moving.”

Her need of comfort was so transparent that for once Ramses didn’t give a damn about his audience, not even his supercilious uncle. He took his wife in his arms and held her close.

“It’s just that the responsibility is so enormous,” she whispered.

“It’s not your fault, you’re doing everything you can and more. If I had moved a little quicker—”

“Stop it, both of you,” Sethos said roughly. “Nefret, she couldn’t have a more competent physician or one who cared more for her. As for you, Ramses—do you suppose she would rather it were you lying there? She knew what she was doing, she always does.”

“He’s right,” David said. “This is no time to give way, Nefret, you said yourself that the wound wasn’t mortal.”

It might have been his gentle reassurance, or Sethos’s blunter variety of comfort, that made Nefret laugh even as she brushed the tears from her eyes. “Do you know what saved her life? That blessed belt of tools! The bullet was deflected by her canteen and went at an angle through that leather belt, so that it penetrated her side instead of going straight into her intestines.”

Emerson and Daoud came back to find Sethos pouring the whiskey. “She’s asleep,” Emerson reported. “Fatima is with her.”

Daoud did not speak at all. After a few minutes of profound cogitation he left.

Carla and David John knew Grandmama was sick and that they must be particularly quiet and well behaved, but thanks to the strenuous effort of the adults they remained unaware of how ill she really was. Sethos was magnificent. He lost again and again at knife, paper, rock, and got the cat’s cradle into a hopeless tangle. But it was a relief when the children went off to bed. No one ate much at dinner. Ramses let his father take the place at his wife’s bedside, as was his right. The rest of them stood outside her door until Nefret ordered them off to their rooms.

“You’ll call me if there’s any change?” Ramses couldn’t help asking.

“She’s tough as a lion,” Sethos muttered. “She’ll fight it off.”

Ramses went back to his house, to be near the children. He flung himself fully clothed onto the bed, but he didn’t sleep. Staring open eyed at the shadowy ceiling, he knew Sethos and David—and Fatima and the other servants—were doing the same. The night seemed to last an entire year. There was no summons from Nefret. When the first pallor of dawn entered the room he got up.

Anxiety and cowardice pulled him in opposite directions. He wanted to hear good news and he was afraid to face a bad report. He walked slowly along the paved pathway, under the trees, while the light strengthened and the night-blooming datura lifted great white trumpets toward the sky. It was going to be a beautiful morning.

The house was silent. From the back he heard the clatter of pots and pans. Fatima was preparing breakfast. His stomach turned over at the thought of food.

As he stood outside the door of the veranda, with his cowardly hand unable to turn the handle, he saw someone coming around the house. That giant form was unmistakable.

“Salaam aleikhum,” Daoud said. “I have found it.” He held out his hand.

Gleaming against his broad brown palm was a small object, less than an inch long. The cobra raised its hooded head, defying enemies. Its eyes glittered an impossible green.

As Ramses stared, struck dumb, Daoud said, “We will give it to her now. Come.”

To my extreme vexation, it was several days before Nefret would allow me to sit up and talk as much as I wanted. On the Friday, Emerson carried me to the veranda and it was like a kind of rebirth to be back in those familiar surroundings, with all those I loved around me. The Great Cat of Re stood by the outer door glowering at Amira; he had abandoned his vigil on my bed as soon as I was out of danger.

“It is the nature of cats,” Emerson had said, “to seek out a warm, comfortable nest. So don’t wax sentimental about the creature, Peabody.”

He had been sneaking treats to the cat ever since.

Foremost on my mind was the uraeus serpent I had found tightly clasped in my hand when I woke free of fever. Insignificant this might seem to others; but to me the image of Daoud’s large patient form squatting by the holes he had dug, sifting by lamplight, was a supreme token of friendship.

“Your fever was already going down,” Nefret said. “But I wouldn’t for the world disabuse him of his belief that the uraeus saved you. He worked so hard!”

“How does he reconcile that heathen image with his religion?” Sethos asked, eyebrows lifted.

“It was an answer to his prayers,” Ramses said. “A somewhat indirect answer, granted, but God, whatever his name may be, works in mysterious ways. And you must admit it was something of a miracle that Daoud located that small object.”

“Except for the eyes, which had fallen out of their settings,” I said, laughing. “Even Daoud couldn’t find objects that tiny.”

“So he chipped off bits of green glass from one of Khadija’s ornaments and rammed them into the empty holes.” Nefret shook her head in wonderment. “He said that without eyes the great serpent could not be effective.”

“Let’s drink to him.” Emerson handed round the whiskey. It was the first I had been allowed, and after I had lifted my glass I drank, reveling in even that small pleasure. I doubted that spirits were available in the afterlife.

“More important,” said Emerson, “Daoud’s discovery proves beyond the shadow of a doubt, had there been a doubt, that the statuette was found at Deir el Medina. You will be glad to hear, Peabody, that we’ve closed down there. No more sifting rubble for you.”

“Even sifting rubble will be a pleasant change from my recent inaction,” I declared. “I am ready to take up the reins again. We must finish with KV55, if only for the sake of thoroughness.”

“There’s no ‘we’ about it,” Emerson declared. “You won’t be dashing round the Valley for a while yet, Peabody. I have been waiting with breathless anticipation for your analysis of the problem that was our first concern, before we became distracted by other events. Where, specifically, did the ancient thief find the statuette?”