The Golden One (35 page)

‘Sugar water. It is not delirium, but nervous excitability. Speak to him, Emerson.’

Emerson hesitated for only a moment. Like another, he is not above quoting Scripture for his own purposes. His sonorous voice rolled out in the words of the fathah, the first sureh of the Koran,
from which Yusuf had quoted. ‘In the name of God, the merciful and gracious. Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds.’

Yusuf sat up with a galvanic start. His wild eyes gleamed like those of an animal. ‘So,’ he said. ‘It is you, Father of Curses. Have you come to punish me because my silence
might have caused your death and that of the Sitt Hakim?’

‘Good Gad, no,’ exclaimed Emerson, shocked into English.

‘The Father of Curses is also merciful and gracious,’ I explained, hoping this did not sound blasphemous. ‘We are here to help you – and Jamil, if we can. Where is
he?’

‘Is it the truth? It is the truth, you do not lie. You do not seek his life?’

We had to listen to quite a lot of this sort of thing and repeat the same reassurances several times. In psychological terms it was quite therapeutic for Yusuf, though rather tiresome for us. My
diagnosis had been correct; his indisposition was not physical but mental, and the news of Jamil’s latest assault on us, which he had undoubtedly heard that morning, had left him torn between
loyalty and affection, unable to decide what to do.

‘I will take you to him,’ Yusuf quavered. ‘We meet, at different times, in the cemetery near the mosque. He will be there tonight, when the moon rises.’

‘Abdullah’s tomb,’ I said. ‘Praying at that holy place was an excuse for meeting your son?’

My resentment must have shown in my voice. The old man shrank back. ‘It was not an excuse. I prayed there. That my cousin Abdullah would forgive me and ask God to forgive me.’

He had ignored Jumana as if she were invisible. This did not seem the proper time for a little lecture on the subject of forgiving one’s daughter.

The cemetery was on the north side of the hill, on a space of level ground. Over the cliff floated a silver orb, flooding the landscape with light. Abdullah’s monument shone like snow.

On the edge of the cemetery, still in the shadow of the hill, Yusuf stopped. ‘Let me go ahead. Let me talk to him. I will tell him he must give himself up.’

‘Go on then,’ said Emerson.

He waited until the old man was out of earshot before muttering, ‘I don’t share Yusuf’s confidence in his power of persuasion. Peabody, give me that pistol of yours – I
know you have it, so don’t pretend you don’t.’

I did not hesitate to do so. I had been practising with the confounded weapon for years without attaining the degree of skill Emerson possesses.

‘No,’ Jumana whispered. ‘Please, you said you would not kill him.’

‘Couldn’t kill a rabbit with this thing,’ said Emerson contemptuously. ‘If he bolts, a few warning shots should stop him. Worst comes to worst, I’ll shoot him in
the leg.’

Yusuf made no attempt to conceal himself. Standing full in the moonlight several yards from the tomb, he called out, ‘It is I, Jamil, your father. Come out and speak with me.’

Though he spoke softly, we heard every word. The cemetery was silent and deserted. Few people came there at any time, and none came after nightfall. It was one of the safest places Jamil could
have chosen.

After a moment the boy emerged from the entrance to the tomb. ‘Are you afraid to come closer, my father? The spirits of the dead do not trouble the living.’

He was in Egyptian clothing, a dark robe and carelessly wound turban. His face was the image of his sister’s now that he had shaved off his moustache; he looked very young and very
harmless. But there was a knife thrust through his sash, and in his right hand he carried a long stick.

‘The spirit of my revered cousin Abdullah troubles
me
,’ the old man retorted. ‘We have dishonoured him, Jamil, but it is not too late to seek forgiveness. Come with me
to the Father of Curses, who will help you.’

Jamil’s pretty face twisted into a grimace of pure hate. His head turned from side to side, his eyes searching every shadow. Whether he saw us or only deduced our presence I will never
know; but he raised the stick to his shoulder, holding it as one might hold a rifle. It
was
a rifle – Yusuf’s antique weapon, his most prized possession.

Yusuf cried out. ‘No, Jamil! You said you would not fire it unless one attacked you. Put it down.’

Emerson stepped out into the moonlight. ‘Drop it, Jamil,’ he called. ‘Yusuf, get away from him.’

Aiming my pistol at the ground in front of Jamil, he took a long step forward. If he meant to say more or do more, he did not have the chance. A loud explosion rent the air and the darkness was
reddened by fire. Somewhat belatedly I tried to fling myself in front of Nefret.

‘Dear God,’ Ramses whispered. ‘The damned gun exploded. I was afraid it would someday, he must be – ’

Emerson was running towards the crumpled form. By the time we reached Jamil there were two crumpled forms. Yusuf had bent over his son, shrieked, and dropped like a stone.

Jamil was still alive. When I saw the ruin that remained of his face I could only pray he would not live long. His one remaining eye rolled from side to side and focused. Sounds whistled through
his broken teeth.

‘Jumana. Sister. Is our father – ’

After one horrified look at Jamil, Nefret had known there was nothing she could do. Kneeling by the old man, her hand on his bared breast, she said, ‘It is his heart. We must get him to
the house.’

‘Heart,’ Jamil said faintly. ‘I killed him. My father. Sister – listen – the tomb – ’

Jumana leaned closer. Shock had deprived her even of tears. ‘Do you want to tell me where it is? Speak, then, and go to God having done that last kindness.’

‘Kindness.’ I think he was trying to laugh. It was a dreadful sound, bubbling with blood. Then he said, with a last burst of strength, ‘The fools. It was there, before their
eyes. In the hand of the god.’

Yusuf lived only long enough to take the hand of his daughter (placed in his by me) and murmur a few unintelligible words. A sentimentalist might say he had died of a broken
heart. In scientific terms he had succumbed to the same heart ailment from which Abdullah had suffered in his last years. We left Ramses to stand guard over Jamil, and Emerson carried Yusuf’s
wasted body back to his house. I looked back as we walked away. The lovely shape of Abdullah’s tomb was outlined by moonlight and shadow. In the deeper shadows of the doorway, nothing
moved.

There was not much we could do for the afflicted family. Indeed, the angry looks directed at us by some of its members indicated that our best course was to leave them alone.

The whole ghastly business had taken far less time than I had realized – less than half an hour from start to finish – but explanations and changes of clothing delayed the longed-for
moment when we could settle down on the veranda.

Ramses was the last to join us. Though the tightness of his mouth betrayed his distress, he was his usual phlegmatic self when he replied to our questions. ‘I left him with his cousins.
They made it clear I was not wanted. Where is Sennia?’

‘I sent her to bed,’ I replied, as Emerson pressed a glass of whiskey into his son’s hand. ‘She made quite a fuss, and Horus tried to bite me.’

‘Jumana?’ was Ramses’s next question.

‘She finally broke down, but not until Fatima took her in a motherly embrace. Perhaps,’ I mused, ‘I emphasized too strongly the virtue of a stiff upper lip.’

‘What a pity,’ Nefret said softly. ‘The family was once so strong and proud and united.’

‘The greater pity,’ said Ramses, ‘is Jamil. If he had turned his unique talent to archaeology he might have been happy and successful. How does one account for such
men?’

‘Don’t start a philosophical discussion,’ Emerson growled. ‘I cannot account for them and neither can your mother, though she will try if you give her half a chance. The
family will get over this in time, and so will Jumana. Time heals . . .’ Realizing he had been on the verge of committing an aphorism, he caught himself and went on, ‘Was he trying to
tell us, at the end, where the tomb is located, or was he still taunting us? “In the hand of the god!” ’

Yusuf’s funeral took place next day, as Moslem custom decreed. Naturally we all attended. When we saw the second shrouded body, Emerson muttered, ‘They
wouldn’t have the audacity to put him in Abdullah’s tomb, would they? By Gad, the old fellow would rise up and forbid it.’

I didn’t doubt that he would. Had he not said, ‘Leave him to me’? Call it fate, call it accident; yet vicious as the boy had been, I was glad he had not met his death at our
hands.

Selim had seen to the arrangements, as he told us later. Father and son were interred in another of the family sepulchres – an underground chamber where they could sit upright, awaiting
the call of the angels of death. We took our departure before the opening was closed.

Cyrus got all fired up, as he admitted in his quaint American slang, by Jamil’s last words. ‘It was there, before our eyes? In the Cemetery of the Monkeys? What hand of what
god?’

‘One cannot place much credence in the words of a dying man,’ I informed him. ‘Especially a man who spent his entire life trying to deceive.’

So we went back to work at Deir el Medina – all of us except Jumana. The horrors of that night had been too much. She took to her bed, and refused to eat or respond to my attempts to
reason with her. The only person who could rouse her was Sennia. She knew that Jumana had lost both brother and father, though of course we had spared her the dreadful details, and the good little
creature spent hours reading to her and talking with her.

It was on the Tuesday, if memory serves, that we received a message from Howard Carter, asking us to join him for dinner that evening at the Winter Palace.

‘So he’s back in Luxor,’ Emerson said. ‘We’ll go. I have a number of questions for him.’

It was a diversion we all needed, and I must confess that my spirits lifted as I assumed my favourite crimson evening frock and fastened on my diamond earrings. The pleasure derived from
dressing in one’s best may be a weakness of women; in my opinion men would be better off if they could indulge in it.

No shadow of foreboding darkened my thoughts as the boat bore us smoothly across the shimmering water. It ought to have done. The first person we saw when we entered the elegant lobby of the
hotel was the man we had known as ‘Smith’ – the Honourable Bracegirdle-Boisdragon, who had tried on several occasions to get Ramses back into the intelligence services.

There was no way of avoiding him without downright rudeness. This consideration might not have deterred Emerson but for the fact that ‘Smith’ was accompanied by an attractive lady of
a certain age, wearing elegant mourning. Smith introduced her as his sister, Mrs Bayes, who was visiting Egypt for the first time, and she immediately burst into raptures about the country, the
antiquities, and the great honour of making our acquaintance. She had heard so much about us.

‘Have you indeed?’ I said, giving Smith a sharp look.

‘She is reading the Professor’s
History
and has reached Volume Three,’ said Smith blandly.

‘It was Algie’s excitement about Egypt that induced me to come,’ Mrs Bayes explained. She gave her brother a sickeningly fond look. She is putting it on, I thought to myself;
that cold fish of a man is incapable of inspiring such adoration.

‘It was courageous of you to risk the sea voyage at this time,’ I said.

The lady’s face took on an expression of gentle melancholy. ‘When one has lost that being who is all the world to one, one becomes resigned to whatever fate may offer.’

Emerson let out a loud ‘Hmph,’ turned it into a cough, and glanced at me. He objects to my ‘pompous aphorisms’, as he terms them, and this was certainly in the same
category. I could have put it better, though.

‘I am very sorry,’ I said. ‘Was it a recent loss?’

‘Fairly recent. But,’ said Mrs Bayes, smiling at her ‘brother,’ who was patting her hand with a look of concern, ‘I promised Algie not to dwell on that. I am
determined to enjoy these new experiences to the full, and they have been delightful. Algie has been a splendid guide. He knows the antiquities so well!’

‘A sister’s fondness exaggerates,’ said Smith with a modest cough. ‘I may claim, however, to be exceedingly keen. My interest was aroused during my first visit to Luxor
– perhaps you do me the honour of remembering our meeting at that time . . .’

He transferred his gaze to Ramses and Nefret.

‘Very well,’ said Ramses. Nefret, her lips forming a line almost as thin as Smith’s, said nothing.

‘We must not keep you from your dinner,’ I said. ‘It has been a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Bayes. Enjoy the rest of your stay.’

‘Aren’t you dining here?’ the lady asked innocently.

‘No,’ I said, and took Emerson’s arm. ‘Good night.’

I led our little party out of the hotel.

‘What about Carter?’ Ramses asked.

‘I would be very much surprised to find that Howard is here. Smith sent the message.’

‘I wonder what he wants,’ Nefret muttered. She had very tight hold of Ramses’s arm. ‘If he thinks he can – ’

‘Not now, Nefret,’ I said firmly.

‘Where are we going?’ Emerson asked. ‘I want my dinner.’

‘The Luxor will suit, I believe. We must have a little chat before he tracks us down again.’

Emerson waved away the carriages that sought our custom. It is only a short walk from the Winter Palace to the Luxor, and it was a lovely evening, the dark sky star-strewn and the air fresh. The
scent of night-blooming jasmine tried (in vain) to counter the other scents of Luxor, but even these had a certain charm – the smell of cooking fires and camel dung; of unwashed donkeys,
camels, and humans.

We were greeted with pleasure and seated at one of the best tables in the dining salon. After consulting with Ramses, Emerson ordered a bottle of wine and then shoved his plate aside and planted
both elbows on the table, a habit of which I have given up trying to break him.