Children of the Storm

Elizabeth Peters

CHILDREN OF THE STORM

Editor’s Note

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The Editor has been reminded that this present volume is the fifteenth of Mrs. Amelia P. Emerson’s journals to appear in print. When she was first asked to prepare them for publication, she knew it would be a formidable undertaking, and so it has proved. The discovery of additional Emerson papers, including a somewhat spasmodic diary kept by her son (Manuscript H), complicated the task even more. There are gaps in the record, since some of the journals are missing; nevertheless, it is an amazing family saga, encompassing three generations, a world war, and thirty-five years of turbulent history.

It began with the first trip to Egypt of Amelia Peabody (as she then was) in 1884. She was accompanied by a young companion, Evelyn Barton Forbes, who, like Amelia, found a career and true love in the Land of the Pharaohs. They married brothers—Amelia accepting the hand of the distinguished archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson, and Evelyn that of his younger brother Walter. Amelia’s love of Egypt almost equaled her love for her hot-tempered (but extremely handsome) husband. She joined him in his annual excavations, which, except for a few brief hiatuses, continued for the entire thirty-five years.

Inevitably, as Amelia might say, a second generation of Emersons ensued. Walter Emerson and his wife retired to her family estate in Yorkshire, where he could pursue his study of ancient languages. They became parents of six children (one of whom perished in infancy): Radcliffe Junior, Margaret, Amelia Junior (who insisted on being addressed as Lia to avoid confusion with her aunt), and twin boys, Johnny and Willy. Johnny died in France, serving his country during the First World War.

For reasons Mrs. Emerson declines to discuss (as is certainly her right), the elder Emersons had only one child, a boy named Walter Peabody Emerson. He is better known by his nickname of Ramses, given him by his father because he was “swarthy as an Egyptian and arrogant as a pharaoh.” His mother would have said (and indeed, often did say) that one like Ramses was quite enough for any woman. Precocious, prolix, and pedantic, he barely survived a number of hair-raising adventures, but he finally developed into a young man with all the qualities a mother could wish.

Further additions to both families came through adoption and/or marriage. On a trip to an unknown oasis in the Western Desert, Amelia and Emerson (who prefers to be addressed by his last name) discovered a young English girl, Nefret Forth, and brought her back to England as their ward. Ramses and Nefret were raised as brother and sister, and it took Nefret some time to realize that her feelings for him were considerably warmer than that of a sibling. (Ramses was a lot quicker to catch on.) After a considerable amount of misunderstanding, heartbreak, and frustration (particularly for Ramses), they were married and—as we will see in the present volume—produced the third generation of Emersons.

The other adopted child was David Todros, a talented young Egyptian artist, who was working in semi-slavery for a forger of antiquities when the elder Emersons found and freed him. The grandson of their Egyptian reis, or foreman, Abdullah (of whom more hereafter), he became Ramses’s blood brother and eventually his cousin by marriage, when David wed Lia Emerson. Lia and David also produced a third generation, a girl named after Evelyn Emerson and a boy named for his great-grandfather, Abdullah.

The Emersons had very little to do with Amelia’s Peabody kin, an unattractive lot who produced one of the nastiest villains they ever encountered. The only good thing Percy ever did was produce a child, little Sennia, who was adopted by the Emersons and became very dear to them. However, Amelia considered herself to have a second family in a group of Egyptians who were the blood relations of their reis Abdullah. Abdullah’s innumerable relatives worked for the Emersons on the dig and in the household; several became close friends of the Emersons, including Selim, Abdullah’s youngest son, who replaced his father as reis after Abdullah’s heroic death; Daoud, Abdullah’s nephew, noted for his immense strength, amiable disposition, and love of gossip; Fatima, Abdullah’s daughter-in-law, who became the Emersons’ indispensable housekeeper; Kadija, Daoud’s wife, the dispenser of an amazingly effective green ointment; and of course David Todros.

As Amelia mentions, Egyptians are fond of nicknames. So, it would appear, were the Emersons. Ramses and Lia are consistently referred to by those names; Amelia secretly appreciated her flattering appellation of Sitt Hakim, Lady Doctor, though she was equally appreciative of her husband’s habit of calling her by her maiden name of Peabody as a demonstration of equality and affection. Emerson detested his given name and preferred to be addressed by his surname or by his Egyptian sobriquet, Father of Curses (which, as his wife admits, was well deserved despite her effort to cure him of using bad language). Nefret was known to many Egyptians as Nur Misur, “Light of Egypt.” Her husband’s less charming Egyptian name was Brother of Demons. It was meant as a compliment, however, acknowledging his varied abilities in disguise and languages.

One other member of the family had a plethora of pseudonyms. When Amelia and Emerson first encountered Sethos, aka the Master Criminal, aka the Master, they regarded him as a deadly enemy—head of the illegal antiquities racket in Egypt and the Middle East, and Emerson’s rival for Amelia’s affections. It came as a considerable shock to them (and, the Editor must admit, to her) when they discovered he was Emerson’s illegitimate half-brother. During the First World War he redeemed himself by serving as a secret agent, a role for which he was well qualified by his skill in the art of disguise and his knowledge of the Middle East. Ramses, who had similar talents, was also recruited for the Secret Service, and carried out several perilous missions in Egypt and the Middle East. His best friend, David, served with him on one of these jobs; the Editor suspects David may have been involved in at least one other, but unfortunately the journals for several of the war years are still missing. Sethos, much to the surprise of everyone except Amelia (who claimed the credit for reforming him) became a friend and supporter.

And now, dear Readers, the Great War has ended and the family is about to be reunited. The saga continues!

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CHAPTER ONE The encrimsoned sun sank slowly toward the crest of the Theban mountains. Another glorious Egyptian sunset burned against the horizon like fire in the heavens.

In fact, I did not at that moment behold it, since I was facing east. I had seen hundreds of sunsets, however, and my excellent imagination supplied a suitable mental picture. As the sky over Luxor darkened, the shadows of the bars covering doors and windows lengthened and blurred, lying like a tiger’s stripes across the two forms squatting on the floor. One of them said, “Spoceeva.”

“Russian,” Ramses muttered. scribbling on his notepad. “Yesterday it was Amharic. The day before it sounded like—”

“Gibberish,” said his wife.

“No,” Ramses insisted. “It has to mean something. They use root words from a dozen languages, and they obviously understand one another. See? He’s nodding. They are standing up. They are going . . .” His voice rose. “Leave the cat alone!”

The Great Cat of Re, stretched out along the back of the settee behind him, rose in haste and climbed to the top of his head, from which position it launched itself onto a shelf. Ramses put his notepad aside and looked severely at the two figures who stood before him. “Die Katze ist ganz verboten. Kedi, hayir. Em nedjeroo pa meeoo.”

The Great Cat of Re grumbled in agreement. He had been a small, miserable-looking kitten when we acquired him, but Sennia had insisted on giving him that resounding appellation and, against all my expectations, he had grown into his name. His appearance was quite different from those of our other cats: longhaired, with an enormous plume of a tail, and a coat of spotted black on gray. With characteristic feline obstinacy he insisted on joining us for tea, though he knew he would have to go to some lengths to elude his juvenile admirers, who now burst into a melodious babble of protest, or, perhaps, explanation.

“Darling, let’s stick to one language, shall we?” Nefret said. She was smiling, but I thought there was a certain edge to her voice. “They’ll never learn to talk if you address them in ancient Egyptian and Anglo-Saxon.”

“They know how to talk,” Ramses said loudly, over the duet. “Recognizable human speech, however—”

“Say Papa,” Nefret coaxed. She leaned forward. “Say it for Mama.”

“Bap,” said the one whose eyes were the same shade of cornflower-blue.

“Perverse little beggars,” said Ramses. The other child climbed onto his knee and buried her head against his chest. I suspected she was trying to get closer to the cat, but she made an engaging picture as she clung to her father. They were affectionate little creatures, much given to hugging and kissing, especially of each other.

“They’re over two years old,” Ramses went on, stroking the child’s black curls. “I was speaking plainly long before that, wasn’t I, Mother?”

“Dear me, yes,” I said, with a somewhat sickly smile. To be honest—which I always endeavor to be in the pages of my private journal—I dreaded the moment when the twins began to articulate. Once Ramses learned to talk plainly, he never stopped talking except to eat or sleep, for over fifteen years, and the prolixity and pedantry of his speech patterns were extremely trying to my nerves. The idea of not one but two children following in the paternal footsteps chilled my blood.

Ever the optimist, I told myself there was no reason to anticipate such a disaster. The little dears might take after their mother, or me.

“Children learn at different rates,” I explained to my son. “And twins, according to the best authorities, are sometimes slower to speak because they communicate readily with one another.”

“And because they get everything they want without having to ask for it,” Ramses muttered. The children obviously understood English, though they declined to speak it; his little daughter raised her head and fluttered her long lashes flirtatiously. He fluttered his lashes back at her. Charla giggled and gave him a hug.

The question of suitable names had occupied us for months. I say “us,” because I saw no reason why I should not offer a suggestion or two. (There is nothing wrong with making suggestions so long as the persons to whom they are offered are not obliged to accept them.) Not until the end of her pregnancy did I begin to suspect Nefret was carrying twins, but since we had already settled on names for a male or a female child, it worked out quite nicely. There was no debate about David John; no one quarreled with Ramses’s desire to name his son after his best friend and his cousin who had died in France in 1915.

A girl’s name was not so easy to find. Emerson declared (quite without malice, I am sure) that between our niece and myself there were already enough Amelias in the family. It was with some hesitation that I mentioned that my mother’s name had been Charlotte, and I was secretly pleased when Nefret approved.

“It is such a nice, ordinary name,” she said.

“Unlike Nefret,” said her husband.

“Or Ramses.” She chuckled and patted his cheek. “Not that you could ever be anything else.”

Charla, as we called her, had the same curly black hair and dark eyes as her father. Her brother Davy, now perched on his mother’s knee, was fair, with Nefret’s blue eyes and Ramses’s prominent nose and chin. They did not resemble each other except in height, and in their linguistic eccentricity. Davy was more easygoing than his sister, but he had a well-nigh supernatural ability to disappear from one spot and materialize in another some distance away. The bars had been installed in all the rooms they were wont to inhabit, including the veranda, where we now sat waiting for Fatima to serve tea, after one such incident: looking out through the open archway I had seen Davy—who had been quietly pilfering biscuits not ten seconds before—pursuing one of the fierce feral curs from the village, with cries that may or may not have meant “dog” in some obscure language. The dog was running as fast as it could go.

Our Luxor home was an unpretentious sprawling place, built of stone and mud brick and surrounded by the flora I had carefully cultivated. The plan was similar to that of most Egyptian houses, with rooms surrounding a series of courtyards, the only unusual feature being the veranda that ran along the front. Open (before the twins) arches provided a view across the desert to the green strip of cultivation bordering the river, and the eastern mountains beyond. A short distance away was the smaller house occupied by Ramses and Nefret and the twins. The arrangement had been somewhat haphazard, with wings and additional structures added as they were needed, but in my opinion the result—which I had designed—was both attractive and comfortable.

The space would be needed, since the rest of our English family would be joining us in a few days for the first time since the beginning of the Great War. Hostilities had ended in November of 1918, but the shadow cast by that dreadful conflict was slow to pass. For those who had lost loved ones in the muddy trenches of France or on the bloodstained beaches of Gallipoli, the shadow would never entirely pass. Emerson’s brother Walter and his wife, my dear friend Evelyn, would always mourn the death of their son Johnny, as would we all; but 1919 was the first full year of peace, and I was determined to make this Christmas a memorable one. How good it would be to have them with us again—Walter and Evelyn, their daughter Lia and her husband David, who was Ramses’s best friend and an accomplished artist, not to mention their two dear little children.

That would make four dear little children. It would be a lively Christmas indeed.

As I bent my fond gaze upon the twins nestling in the arms of their handsome parents, I decided I would ask David to paint a group portrait. Photographs we had in plenty, but color was needed to capture their striking looks. Ramses’s well-cut features and well-shaped form resembled those of his father, but he was brown as an Egyptian, with a crop of curly black hair and long-lashed dark eyes. Nefret’s fair skin and gold-red locks were those of an English beauty, and the children combined the best features of both parents.