I ended up, as I usually did, with the rubbish heap.
I do not mean to minimize the importance of this task, for it is the aim of a good excavator to find every scrap, however uninteresting it may appear to be. Our men were very well trained, but when one is scooping up sand and rubble it is easy to overlook something. It was my task, therefore, to put the contents of the baskets brought me by the men through a sifter. It turned out to be a more interesting task than was often the case, since the previous excavator had been careless. I found quite a few interesting ostraca, scraps of limestone all scribbled over with hieratic. I puzzled over a few, while no one was looking, but could make out only a few signs. When we stopped for luncheon I handed them over to Ramses.
The ancient language was his specialty, as excavation was Emerson’s, and he reacted with as much enthusiasm as Emerson had done over his wretched huts. We got not a word out of him during luncheon. Nefret had to keep jogging his elbow to remind him to eat.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Hmmm?” was the only response.
Nefret brushed a lock of curling hair away from his forehead, and he gave her an abstracted smile before returning his attention to the scrap he held. I understood why she had been moved to that tender gesture. Absorbed in a task that challenged and delighted him like no other, he looked as happy as a child over a new toy. This was what he was meant to do. This was what he ought to be doing for the rest of his life, undisturbed by crime and war.
Knowing Ramses as I did, I realized there was not much chance of that, and I consoled myself with the thought that it was not my fault that he got in so much trouble – not entirely. According to the latest psychological theories, he must enjoy a certain amount of danger, or he wouldn’t go out of his way to invite it. It made a change from hieratic, at any rate.
We put in a long hard day, removing Kuentz’s rubbish dump, and Emerson began the survey of the site. This was an onerous and time-consuming procedure, which some archaeologists neglected, but which Emerson considered absolutely necessary. If Kuentz had done such a survey, he had left no record of it. (Emerson would have done it again anyhow.)
Jumana was back to her normal self, cheerful, interested, and willing, and even Ramses admitted she was of considerable help. All she had to do, really, was hold a stick level while the measurements were made, but it was a rather tedious task and she followed orders meticulously.
Naturally I kept a close eye on her. There were two possible explanations for her recovered good spirits: either she was not as attached to her brother as I had believed, and had dismissed him from her thoughts – or she was more devious than I had believed, and expected to hear from him again.
When we returned home I had several more nice ostraca for Ramses.
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
The windows of their bedroom faced the stables, but that building was some distance away and they would not have heard the soft noises if they had not been awake. They had been late getting to bed, since Ramses had to be pried away from his “nice ostraca.” Once Nefret had got his attention she had no difficulty holding it, but it was he who heard the sounds, not she. Responding to the slow movements of his lips and hands, she was jarred out of her state of drowsy pleasure when he suddenly jumped up and went to the window.
“Hell and damnation,” she began.
“Sssh. It’s Jumana. She’s leading one of the horses.”
He started to climb out the window. “Put on some clothes,” Nefret said, rising in her turn and fumbling in the dark for various discarded garments.
“Well, then, damn it, find – I don’t care what – something. I can’t let her get too far ahead.”
He snatched the trousers from her hand and put them on, and then he was gone, over the sill and into the darkness. Nefret pulled a caftan over her head and found a pair of boots that turned out to be hers. She would need them; her feet were not as hardened as his. She caught him up as he was leading Risha, unsaddled and unbridled, out of the stable.
“Wait for me,” she gasped.
“No time.” He vaulted onto Risha’s back, and in spite of her excitement and worry, the sheer beauty of the movement stopped her breath. She could do it sometimes, but never like that, never in a single seemingly effortless flow of muscle and sinew. He turned Risha with a touch of his knee and the stallion responded instantly, breaking into a canter. They looked like figures from the Parthenon frieze, the slender strength of the rider at one with his mount.
“Damn,” said Nefret under her breath. She’d lost an additional few seconds gaping after him like a lovestruck girl. It was his fault for being so bloody beautiful on horseback.
And if she couldn’t catch him up she wouldn’t be there to help if, as seemed likely, Jumana was on her way to meet Jamil. What other reason could she have for stealing out at this hour of the night?
Moonlight stretched an inquiring head over the door of her stall; she was accustomed to go where Risha went, and wondered what was happening at this strange hour. Nefret led her out of the stall.
No acrobatics for her tonight, not in a long robe with nothing under it. She used the mounting block, grimacing as her bare thighs gripped Moonlight’s hide, and tucking part of the robe under her.
Moonlight was too adult and well-behaved to prance with anticipation, but as soon as Nefret gave her the word she was off. Hands twisted in the mare’s mane, Nefret let her have her head, knowing she would follow her sire.
The road was in fair enough condition the first part of the way, rising and falling and curving round the hills that rose out of the plain. She was nearing the edge of the cultivation, and the ruined temples that fringed it, before she saw Risha. Ramses had dismounted and was waiting for her. He greeted her with a grin.
“I hate to think what Mother would say about that ensemble, but I rather like the effect of the boots and the bare -”
“Where is Jumana?”
“Gone ahead, on foot.” He gestured, and she saw another horse, the mare that had been assigned to Jumana. “We’d better leave the horses here, too.”
“Thank you for waiting for me.”
“If I hadn’t, you’d have gone thundering by in hot pursuit,” said her husband, lifting her off Moonlight and politely adjusting her skirts. “She doesn’t seem to be aware that she is being followed, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Catch him and put an end to this nonsense once and for all so we can get on with our work. Let’s see if we can get close enough to overhear their conversation.”
The walls of the Rameseum raised shadowy outlines ahead and to their right. The temple was half ruined, but it was in better condition than the tumbled piles of stone and mud brick stretching off to the north – all that remained of the once-proud mortuary temples of other pharaohs. West of Ramses’s temple the ground was broken by extensive brickwork, probably the former storage areas of the temple.
“How are we going to find them in this maze?” Nefret breathed, trying to step lightly.
“Sssh.” Ramses stopped and listened, his head raised. He must have heard something, for he took her arm and led her on, toward one of the piles of rubble. They had almost reached it before Nefret heard the voices.
“You’re late,” Jumana whispered. “Are you well?”
“Did you bring the money?”
“All I could. It isn’t much.”
“It is not enough. I need more. Get it from the Inglizi and bring it to me tomorrow night.”
“Steal from them? No, I will not do that. Jamil, the Father of Curses has said he will help you. Go to him, tell him you -”