Amelia Peabody Omnibus 1-4 (121 page)

‘Like all men, Emerson, you have no sense of style. I admit the gown was a trifle extreme, but it was lovely. I must ask Miss Debenham–’

Emerson interrupted my speech by planting his lips firmly on mine, removing them to murmur, ‘You require no such artificial adornments, Peabody. You never look lovelier to me than in your working trousers and shirtwaist, with a strip of sunburn across your nose and your hair straggling out of its net. No, allow me to revise that. You are even lovelier when you are not wearing–’

I placed my hand over his mouth to prevent the completion of the sentence, for I felt again the tingling that preceded Ramses’ advent. Sure enough, I heard the familiar voice: ‘May I come in now, Papa?’

‘Yes, come in,’ I replied, stepping away from Emerson.

‘I wished to ask, Mama, what I should wear,’ said Ramses.

‘I had intended you should wear your black velvet suit.’

Ramses’ countenance, which seldom displayed emotion of any kind, darkened visibly. The wearing of the black velvet suit was one of the few things that stirred him to open rebellion. I could not imagine why the boy felt so strongly about it; with its pretty lace collar and ruffled shirt, it was a perfectly appropriate costume for a lad his age. (Though I must admit it did not suit Ramses’ swarthy, aquiline face and black curls as it would have done had his colouring been more typically English.)

I was forced to give way on this occasion, since the havoc that would have been wreaked on black velvet be an ascent of the pyramid would ruin the suit. A thoughtful expression crossed Ramses’ face when I expressed this opinion, but he did not, as I had half-expected, offer to wear the suit after all.

M
ENA
House, at the foot of the Giza plateau, had been open only a few years, but its exceptional location had made it one of the most popular hotels in the environs of Cairo. It had been designed to look like an old English manor house on the outside, but the Oriental style prevailed within. A web of soft lights, suspended from the high domed ceiling of the dining salon, created an aura of mystery and magic. Mr and Mrs Locke, the owners, had purchased a number of the beautiful antique mashrabiya screens, which added appreciably to the charm of the room.

We were the only guests not in full evening dress, and several people stared rudely as we were escorted to our table by Mr Locke himself. ‘Good Gad, how people gape,’ Emerson remarked. ‘I don’t know what has happened to good old-fashioned manners. One would think there was something peculiar about our appearance.’

‘You and Mrs Emerson are well known,’ Mr Locke said tactfully. ‘People always stare at celebrities.’

‘Ha,’ said Emerson. ‘No doubt you are right, Locke. But it is still bad manners.’

I had hoped we might encounter some of our archaeological friends, but I saw no one we knew. Not until I was studying the menu in order to select a sweet for Ramses did I hear a diffident voice murmur my name. I looked up to see a familiar face smiling down at me. It was young Howard Carter; he was happy to accept my invitation to join us for coffee. After greeting Ramses and paying his respectful homage to Emerson, he explained that he had come to Cairo on business and had taken the opportunity to run out to Giza in order to enjoy the moonlight over the pyramids.

‘Don’t tell Professor Naville,’ he added, with his amiable grin. ‘I am supposed to be working.’

‘Are you still at Thebes with Naville?’ I asked. ‘I thought the excavations at Hatasu’s temple were finished.’

‘The excavations, yes. But we have a good deal of recording and restoring yet to do.’

‘I can well believe that,’ said Emerson. ‘By the time Naville finishes an excavation, it would require a psychic to make sense of the mess.’

‘You sound like my old mentor Petrie,’ said Carter with a smile.

From the chagrin on Emerson’s face I could see he had forgotten the feud between Naville and Petrie. Emerson had been in a quandary as to which side to take (it would have been against his nature to remain neutral). He shared Petrie’s poor opinion of Naville’s qualifications, but he hated to agree with his chief rival. He subsided, scowling, as the young Englishman rattled on cheerfully, ‘Petrie is a splendid teacher, and I will always be grateful to him, but he is too hard on M. Naville. The latter’s methods are sometimes a trifle hasty–’

Emerson could contain himself no longer. ‘Hasty!’ he cried. ‘Is it true that he has used the old quarry as his dump site? Well, he is a bloo-er-ooming idiot, then, for there are undoubtedly tombs in the quarry which he has buried under tons of dirt.’

Mr Carter thought it advisable to change the subject, a decision with which I heartily concurred. ‘Congratulations on obtaining the firman for Dahshoor,’ he said. ‘It was the talk of the archaeological community when de Morgan gave it up to you. Petrie has speculated endlessly as to how you accomplished it; he tried several times to get Dahshoor, but was not successful.’

I carefully avoided looking at Ramses. Emerson stroked his chin and smiled complacently. ‘All that was required was the application of a little tact, my boy. Petrie is an admirable fellow in some ways, but he lacks tact. He is at Sakkara this year?’

‘His assistant, Quibell, is there, copying tomb inscriptions,’ Carter said. He smiled at me. ‘There are several young ladies on his staff this year. You will have to share your laurels with others of your delightful sex, Mrs Emerson. The ladies are coming into their own at last.’

‘Bravo,’ I cried heartily. ‘Or, to be more precise, brava!’

‘Quite so,’ said Carter. ‘Petrie himself has gone on to Karnak, where the others will join him later. I saw him before I left; and I am sure he would have sent his regards had he known I would have the pleasure of encountering you.’

This polite statement was so patently false, it failed to convince even the speaker. He hurried on, ‘And Mr Cyrus Vandergelt – he is another of our neighbours. He often speaks of you, Professor, and of Mrs Emerson.’

‘I am sure he does.’ Emerson shot me a suspicious glance. Mr Vandergelt’s roughhewn but sincere American gallantry toward members of the opposite sex (opposite to his, I mean) had always annoyed Emerson. He suspects every man who pays me a compliment of having romantic designs upon me. I cannot disabuse him of this notion, which has, I admit, its engaging qualities.

‘Perhaps you ought to consider working for Mr Vandergelt, Howard,’ I suggested. ‘He is a generous patron.’

‘He did approach me,’ Carter admitted. ‘But I don’t know that I would like to work for a wealthy dilettante, however keen his interest in Egyptology. These fellows only want to find treasure and lost tombs.’

Carter refused our invitation to join us in climbing the pyramid, claiming he had work to do before retiring. So we bade him good night, and, leaving the pleasant gardens of Mena House behind, we started up the slope toward the pyramids.

Words fail me when I attempt to describe the grandeur of the scene. The swollen orb of the full moon hung in the sky, resembling the disks of beaten gold that had crowned the queens of this antique land. Her radiance flooded the landscape, silvering the mighty pyramids and casting eerie shadows over the enigmatic features of the Sphinx, so that he seemed to smile cynically at the insignificant human creatures crawling around his base. The sand lay white as fallen snow, broken only by ebon shadows that betokened the presence of a vandalized tomb or sunken shrine.

Unfortunately this magnificent spectacle was marred by the presence of the vociferous insect Man. Flaring torches and crawling human bodies spotted the pale sides of the Great Pyramid, and the night echoed with the shouts of travellers who ought to have remained reverently silent in the presence of such wonders. The voice of one visitor blessed with a mighty set of vocal chords rang out above the rest: ‘Hey, Mabel, looka me!’

Mabel’s response, if any, was lost in the night, but there came a peal of scornful laughter from near at hand. A carriage had drawn up – the same open carriage I had seen leave Shepheard’s earlier. Miss Debenham had changed to an evening frock of white satin. Her bare arms and breast glowed like ivory in the moonlight, and as she turned to address her companion, diamonds flashed in the ebony darkness of her hair. Kalenischeff was a study in black and white. The ribbon of some (probably apocryphal) order, cutting across the front of his shirt, had been robbed of its colour by the moonlight, and looked like a bar-sinister.

Impulsively I started toward them, but before I had taken more than a few steps Kalenischeff whipped up the horses and the carriage continued along the dusty road toward the top of the plateau.

‘Imbeciles,’ said Emerson. ‘I am sorry we came, Peabody. I might have known every ignorant tourist in Cairo would be here tonight. Shall we make the attempt, or return to the hotel?’

‘We may as well go on now we are here,’ I replied. ‘Ramses, you are to stay with us. Don’t stir so much as a step from my side.’

The self-styled guides, antiquities peddlers and miscellaneous beggars were out in full force. They came pelting toward us with offers of assistance, and of dubious scarabs. The usual ratio of assistants is three to each tourist – two pull from above and one pushes from below. It is an awkward and quite unnecessary procedure, since few of the steplike blocks are as high as three and a half feet.

The assault halted as soon as the sheikh in nominal charge of the horde recognized Emerson, whom he greeted with the ‘
Essalâmu ’aleikum
’ generally reserved by Moslems for others of their faith. Emerson replied in kind, but refused Sheikh Abu’s offer of men to drag him up the pyramid. He was quite capable of giving me a hand whenever necessary, but we did hire two men to hoist Ramses from step to step, his short legs making such an expedient advisable.

After a lazy summer doing little except riding, gardening, hiking and bicycling, I was a trifle out of condition, and was glad of Emerson’s strong hand from time to time. Although it had appeared from below that the slope was crowded with people, it was not really a populous thoroughfare. We passed one or two other groups, several of whom had paused to rest along the way. From time to time I heard the voice of Ramses, carrying on an interminable, if breathless, conversation with his guides.

The pyramidion and the upper courses of the monument have been removed, leaving on the summit a flat table some thirty feet square. Upon the blocks scattered here and there, a number of the successful climbers sprawled in various positions of collapse. Instinctively avoiding them, we moved to one side.

I had climbed the pyramid before, but never at night. The view, spectacular at any time, is simply magical under the spell of moonlight. To the east, the Nile glimmered like a ribbon of dark crystal beyond the still meadows, where the silhouettes of the palms stood black against the sky. Far beyond sparkled and flickered the myriad lights of Cairo. But it was southward that our eyes turned, to see beyond the snowy stretch of silent sand the remains of the ancient cemeteries of the once mighty capital of Memphis. There lay our season’s destiny – two tiny points of pale stone, marking the pyramids of Dahshoor.

Such emotion filled me that I was incapable of speech, a condition assisted by a distinct shortness of breath – for Emerson’s strong arm clasped me tightly. We stood in silence, ensorcelled by the magic of the night.

I lost all track of time as we gazed. It might have been ten seconds or ten minutes before I let out my pent breath in a long sigh, and turned to address Ramses.

He was gone.

My first reaction was to doubt the evidence of my senses. Ramses excels in losing himself, but it hardly seemed possible that he could have vanished off a small platform four hundred and fifty feet in the air without some sort of commotion. Emerson noted his absence at the same time and was unable – or, what is more likely, disinclined – to repress a bellow of alarm.

‘Peabody! Where is Ramses?’

‘He must be here somewhere,’ I began.

‘I thought you were watching him. Oh, good Gad!’ He threw his head back and shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘Ramses! Ramses, where are you?’

When pronounced in such peremptory tones, Ramses’ name never fails to attract attention, particularly in Egypt, where it inevitably suggests the summoning, not of a small disobedient English boy, but of the ghost of the most famous of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. One of the stouter ladies fell off the block on which she was sitting, and several others sprang to their feet with cries of alarm and outrage. Emerson began dashing around the platform, looking behind blocks of stone and ladies’ skirts, to the increasing annoyance of the persons concerned.

One gentleman had the courtesy to approach me and offer assistance. He was a portly, round-cheeked American with a bristling white moustache and hair of the same shade, as the prompt removal of his hat disclosed.

‘I can’t quite make out what it is you’re after, ma’am,’ he said politely. ‘But if Caleb T. Clausheimer can be of any assistance–’

‘What I am after, sir, is a small boy.’

‘A small boy name of Ramses? Thunder and lightning, ma’am, but that’s a curious name for a youngster! Seems to me I did see a boy here a while back…’