The Last Camel Died at Noon (38 page)

We owe our escape from them to Murtek,' I said, taking a date from the bowl on the table. 'Whose side is he on, anyhow?'

His own, I fancy,' said Emerson cynically. 'Politicians are all the same, in the Halls of Parliament or darkest Africa, and he is a clever man. I would guess that his sympathies lie with us and with Tarek - the triumph of Nastasen means the triumph of Amon and his high priest over Osiris and Murtek - but he is too careful of his wrinkled hide to commit himself until victory is certain.'

I expelled the seed of the date daintily into my hand and reached for another. 'I'm starved. All that exercise, and the noon meal delayed... Where have the servants gone?'

'Into hiding, like sensible people.' Emerson cocked his head, listening. From the back regions of the house came distant echoes of thuds, crashes, and exclamations of (I felt certain) a profane nature. Emerson grinned. 'Nastasen's soldiers remind me of the pirates of Messieurs Gilbert and Sullivan. "With catlike tread - thud! - upon our prey we steal. In silence dread - crash - our cautious way we feel..."'

Smiling, I joined my voice to his. There is nothing like a song, I always say, to lift the spirits. "'No sound at all - "' We brought our fists down on the table and Ramses, joining in the spirit of the thing, shouted, 'Bang!' at the top of his lungs.

We finished the verse in fine style, and burst into the chorus with Ramses's piping voice providing an unharmonious treble. 'Come, friends, who plough the sea,' and so on to the end.

Emerson mopped his brow and burst out laughing. 'Every man thinks he is a critic, eh, Peabody? We can't have been that bad.' And he gestured at the doorway, where two of the soldiers stood staring, spears poised.

'Western music must sound strange to them,' I replied. 'Perhaps they mistook the sound for that of struggle. We were making quite a lot of noise.'

Looking sheepish, the men lowered their spears. 'I am a trifle peckish myself,' Emerson said. 'Let's see if we can get the servants back.' He clapped his hands sharply.

It took a while, but eventually the servants reappeared and began serving our luncheon. The presence of the two soldiers, who lingered, looking hungrily at the food, obviously disturbed them, so Emerson dismissed the two with a pointed reminder of Nastasen's orders.

'They don't seem very enthusiastic, do they?' I said as the men shuffled off, dragging their spears.

'They are doomed men,' said Emerson placidly. 'If they have not found Tarek by now, he has got clean away.' He set his strong white teeth into a piece of bread and ripped off a chunk. 'And it may be - '

'Emerson, excuse me, but you are talking with your mouth full. It sets Ramses a bad example.'

'Sorry,' mumbled Emerson. He swallowed, grimacing. 'No wonder Murtek has lost most of his teeth. They must be grinding grain in the old way, between two stones; there is as much grit in this wretched bread as there is flour. One would have supposed Forth would have introduced them to modern methods of manufacture instead of teaching political theory and romantic twaddle... I was about to say that from the start I detected a certain lack of enthusiasm among the guards. There were more of them stumbling and staggering and falling over one another's feet than we three could have accounted for, and the pursuit of the fugitive was singularly inept.'

'I thought that myself,' I said. 'The men who attended Nastasen this time all wore leather helmets and carried spears; that must mean (and I ought to have noticed it before) that the archers, who wear the feather, are Tarek's men. He told us not all those who wore his insignia were loyal to him, and it appears the reverse is true. I don't suppose you observed which of the guards was especially clumsy?'

'No, curse it, I was too busy tripping people up.' Emerson scowled. 'That's the trouble with these conspiracies, they don't give one time for leisurely discussion. If Tarek had taken the trouble to tell us whom we can trust

He took a savage bite of the bread. I looked at the little woman who was filling my cup. Had there been a murmur, soft as a buzzing bee or purring cat, when Tarek's name was mentioned ? "ad no doubt of her sympathies, but I would not have endangered her by trying to speak to her. No doubt there were spies among the rekkit too. It would be so pitifully easy to bribe the weaker ones to betray their own people. To a starving man, a loaf of bread is riches beyond belief.

'I am glad we were able to enjoy that refreshing little tussle this morning,' I remarked to Emerson as we strolled arm in arm around the lotus pond. 'For it appears our opportunity for healthful exercise will be very limited hereafter.'

Amenit had returned, bringing with her a fresh supply of little servants. The latter looked even more miserable and depressed than the first lot; I did not doubt they and their families had been threatened with unspeakable punishments if they attempted to render us aid.

Emerson had immediately tested the new security system by marching to the front entrance and demanding to be let out. He returned with the not unexpected news that the stratagem had failed, and 'his men' were no longer on duty. 'I only hope they have not been harmed, Peabody. That disgusting young swine is quite capable of slaughtering anyone he believes sympathetic to us.'

'My dear, you don't understand Nastasen's psychology,' I said. 'He is in - what is the phrase? - the catbird seat now and able to indulge without restraint in his favourite hobby of tormenting people. I expect that as a child he pulled the wings off butterflies. He won't slaughter any of our friends without making sure we are there to watch. And you may be certain we will be the first to know if Tarek is recaptured.'

'I don't hold with this newfangled fad of psychology,' Emerson grumbled. 'At worst it is fiddle-faddle and at best it is plain old common sense. You haven't had an opportunity to chat with Amenit since she got back, I suppose.'

'Not yet. The girl is not very intelligent, Emerson; I certainly would not allow her to participate in any conspiracy I was directing. She would have given herself away if I hadn't stopped her. I thought it was best to pretend ignorance of her role.'

'Quite. It was she who betrayed Tarek, I suppose.'

'It was she, I feel certain, who discovered we were not in our rooms last night. She was suspiciously alert today for someone who was supposed to have drunk drugged wine. She must have warned Nastasen or Pesaker - probably the latter, since he is the only one who would have sense enough to draw the obvious conclusion - that we were gadding about with some member of the opposition party. If I had been managing the affair I would have set ambushes outside the quarters of all those I suspected of being in league with Tarek, and of course the palace of Tarek himself. The fact that we were not waylaid on our way back here gives me hope that they don't know how we got out of our rooms.'

'Or where we went?'

'Heaven grant that it is so.' I wiped away a tear. 'That poor, brave child! What a terrible blow this news will be to her - how lonely and frightened she must be! If we could only communicate - tell her to keep up her courage, have faith in God and in us.'

'Not necessarily in that order,' said Emerson, with one of his irrepressible smiles. 'Keep a stiff upper lip, Peabody; we may be able to send her a message when Mentarit returns to us.'

'If she returns. Thank goodness she didn't come back with us last night; it is possible that her part in this is unsuspected. Emerson, I do think it likely that Nastasen doesn't know we saw Nefret. He would have thrown that in our faces too.'

'A good point, Peabody. How long are the handmaidens' tours of duty?'

'Five days. I kept careful count. And tonight is Amenit's second day. I don't think I can stand the suspense, but I suppose I must. Unless...'

Emerson came to a stop. 'Unless,' he repeated.

A little bird burst into song on a branch above. We gazed at each other - two great minds with but a single thought.

Can you manage it, Peabody?' Emerson asked.

'Insofar as the means are concerned - yes, certainly. I have an ample supply of laudanum, but we don't want to put her to sleep, we want to render her unfit to carry out her duties. Ipecacuanha perhaps,' I said musingly. 'Doan's pills - tincture of arsenic...'

Emerson looked at me uneasily. 'Upon my word, Peabody, there are times when you give me the cold shivers. I am afraid to ask why you are carrying around several deadly poisons.'

'Arsenic clears the skin and makes the hair smooth and shining, my dear - in small doses, of course. I don't use it as a cosmetic, but it is very useful for getting rid of rats and other vermin such as often infest our expedition quarters. Fear not, I will be careful. Her illness must appear to be natural. Otherwise suspicion would fall on us.'

Emerson did not appear to be wholly convinced. He urged me not only to be careful with the dosage but to wait for a suitable opportunity - 'instead of bunging the stuff into her wine this afternoon,' as he put it. I assured him I had no intention of acting precipitately. It would take a while to overcome Amenit's ill-concealed dislike of me and find a suitable vehicle for the medicine.

This last question - that of opportunity, as criminal experts would say - presented some difficulty. Amenit did not dine with us, nor had she partaken of food or drink in our presence. Still, she had to eat sometime, someplace.

My task was made easier by the fact that Amenit was as eager to converse with me as I was with her. I knew, as certainly as if I had been present at their meeting, that she had gone off to confer with Nastasen and the High Priest of Aminreh. Perhaps she had also pleaded for Reggie (I had not yet made up my mind about the sincerity of her feelings for him), but her primary purpose must have been to ask how she should proceed now that the situation had changed so drastically. Before Tarek's exposure and capture, his influence had assured us of kindly treatment. Now the velvet glove was removed, and the iron hand of Nastasen held us in a cruel grip. So long as Tarek remained at liberty, those deadly fingers would not crush us, but I felt certain that if he were taken we would soon join him in his brother's dank, dark cells, to endure heaven only knew what hideous torments before an equally hideous death released us.

My efforts to get Amenit alone, and hers to speak with me, were frustrated by an unexpectedly comic situation. The soldiers searching the house refused to leave. I could hardly blame them, for I knew as well as they the alternative that awaited them, but they became more and more frantic as the afternoon wore on and got in everyone's way, searching places they had already searched a dozen times, and investigating such ridiculous hiding places as Reggie's knapsack and the lotus pond, which they swept from end to end with their spears. When one of them turned over a chest of linens the servants had repacked three times, Amenit lost her temper and began shouting at them. They refused to heed her orders, so she stormed out and was gone for some little time. It was while she was gone that one of the men made a sudden dash for the garden and climbed over the wall. I daresay some of the others would have emulated him had they not heard the extremely unpleasant sounds that followed. If I had had any doubts that the outside of the place was well-guarded, those doubts were now removed.

Turning to the nearest man, whose face had gone a sickly greenish-brown when he heard the screams, thuds, and groans from beyond the wall, I said softly, 'Is this how your master rewards faithful service? Is this the practice of justice (ma'at; lit. truth, right conduct)? What will he do to your wives and children when you are - '

At this point Emerson gripped me by the arm and dragged me away. 'Good Gad, Peabody, aren't we in enough trouble without you spouting sedition?'

'A little seed of sedition may bear rich fruit,' I replied. 'It was worth a try.'

When Amenit returned she was accompanied by a troop of soldiers who, by dint of proddings and blows, persuaded their brothers-in-arms to retire. The soldier to whom I had spoken shot me a piteous glance, to which I responded with a nod and a smile and a 'thumbs-up' gesture. It seemed to surprise him a great deal; I only hoped that I had not inadvertently done something rude in Meroitic.

By the time the last stragglers had been retrieved from the remote chambers where they were hiding, the shadows of evening had stolen into the room. Ramses was in the garden conversing with the cat, whose coming and going appeared to be unaffected by the presence of the guards beyond the wall. Amenit brooded like any normal housewife over the linens the soldiers had crumpled (a happy bit of serendipity for us, since the robes we had worn on our second nocturnal expedition were among them). Her mood seemed pensive, the moment propitious. I sidled up to her.

'What news?' I whispered.

She dropped the crumpled garments back into the chest and shrugged. 'How would I know? I am as much a prisoner as you. He does not trust me.'

'Your brother Nastasen?'

The muffled head moved up and down, signifying affirmation, and I smiled to myself. She had made her first slip by admitting a relationship I had only suspected until then. It had been a logical deduction, however. Mentarit and Amenit, Tarek and Nastasen, were all children of the late king and were therefore brothers and sisters, half or full. As Emerson had once jestingly remarked, it was a close-knit family. To be sure, certain of them failed to display the affectionate loyalty siblings are supposed to exhibit towards one another, but I have known so-called civilised families in which similar deficiencies are to be found.

'What have they done with Reggie?' I asked. 'Were you able to see him?'

'How could I ask, or plead for him? If my brother learned I planned to help him escape, I would die.'

I cursed the muffling veils that hid her features, for they often betray (to a keen student of physiognomy like myself) emotions that spoken words conceal. Her voice certainly failed to carry conviction; she spoke as flatly and unemotionally as if she were reciting by rote.

'It is a pity,' I said. 'You would have been happy with him, in the great outside world.'