Elizabeth Peters - A River in the Sky

With a shrug, Ramses put the handkerchief into his pocket.

He went back by way of the village. As he passed the mosque he saw a tall white-clad form slip into the door. None of the villagers was that tall. The man was Mme von Eine’s taciturn fellow traveler. He must have slipped away while Ramses was spying on the lady.

Stop looking for mysteries, Ramses told himself. Why shouldn’t the fellow take advantage of the opportunity for formal prayers? It was almost midday, and Madame obviously had no intention of moving on that day.

The thin voice of the muezzin came to his ears as he reached the tower. The men had been dismissed and Reisner and Fisher were seated in the shade, eating a frugal lunch. It was the same every day, unleavened bread, cheese, grapes and figs and olives.

“Did you get rid of the lady?” Reisner asked, offering the basket of food.

“I walked her back to her camp. What the devil was she doing here?”

“Damned if I know,” Reisner said placidly. “People do drop in for a variety of inexplicable reasons.”

“Is she really an archaeologist?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Her name is familiar,” Fisher said, digging into the basket. “One of the Germans mentioned it, I think-Winckler or Schumacher.”

The name of his predecessor at Samaria brought a scowl to Reisner’s face. He had been horrified at Schumacher’s sloppy excavation methods, and his vehement criticism had led to Schumacher’s dismissal from the site.

“She did seem to be interested in the Hebrew ostraca,” Ramses offered.

“Maybe she’s a philologist,” Fisher said.

“Modesty prevents me from mentioning that if that were her field I would have recognized her name,” Ramses said.

“Forget the damned woman,” Reisner said irritably. “I couldn’t care less who or what she is; we’ll never set eyes on her again. Unless,” he added, with a sidelong look at Ramses, “she invited you to call on her?”

“Why should she?”

Reisner chuckled. “That little byplay, pretending not to recognize you? She knew, all right. She asked for you.”

“You’re joking.”

“Well, not by name. But she asked if my ‘youthful assistant’ could show her around. How would she know I had one if she didn’t know who it was?”

“Don’t distinguished archaeologists always have youthful assistants hanging about?” Ramses inquired.

“Hmm. Well, back to work. You can start the men on that next section.”

Ramses went back to the dig in a thoughtful mood. Reisner had enjoyed teasing him, but his syllogism made a certain amount of sense. And Madame had known who his parents were.

Later that afternoon, Ramses took a short stroll toward the stream. He didn’t venture close to the camp, but from what he could see from a distance there was no indication that a move next day was contemplated. There was no sign of the lady. The tent flap was still closed.

The sun was setting as he went back. Passing the mosque on his way to the village, he was moved by a sudden impulse. He stopped and looked into the courtyard. It was almost time for evening prayers, but the number of worshippers who were assembling was larger than the usual crowd. As far as he could remember, this was not a particular holy day; it wasn’t even Friday.

When he reached the dig house he found the others already there. He expected a reprimand-he’d been ordered not to wander off alone-but Reisner greeted him with a cheerful announcement. “The mail’s just come. Several for you.”

The arrival of mail was a cause for celebration, since its delivery was spasmodic at best. After arriving at Jaffa, the nearest port, it sat around until someone, for reasons known only to himself, decided to send it on. Ramses’s pleasure was muted by the recollection that he hadn’t responded to the last batch of letters. In fact, he couldn’t even remember what he had done with them. Anticipating a forcible rebuke, he was about to open the first of several from Nefret when Reisner let out a loud groan. The envelope he had just ripped open was directed in a hand with which Ramses was only too familiar.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, expecting the worst.

“He wants,” Reisner said in hollow tones. “He says…”

His voice faded out. Wordlessly he handed over the piece of paper.

As Ramses had expected, his father didn’t waste words. “Will arrive Sebaste shortly to take Ramses with me to assist my forthcoming excavations in Jerusalem. Regards, R. Emerson.”

“It can’t be true,” Ramses gasped. “What excavations, where? Are there any others letters from him?”

He began looking through his own accumulation. A few frenzied moments later they had managed to sort the letters into sequence. Finally Reisner let out a gusty sigh of relief. “This one from your mother seems to be the most recent. She says instead of coming here to collect you, they want you to meet them in Jaffa on…Good Lord, that’s less than a week away.”

“She’s written the same to me,” Ramses said. “At least she had the decency to apologize, and gave us more information than Father deigned to do. Have you ever heard of this fellow Morley?”

“No, but he wouldn’t be the first to follow some biblical will-o’-the-wisp and rip an archaeological site to shreds,” Reisner replied. “Your father will make certain that doesn’t happen, at any rate.”

He had resorted to his pipe early in the procedure, jaws clenched on the stem. Now he leaned back in his chair and gave Ramses a friendly grin. “You’d better start getting your gear together.”

Ramses finished reading Nefret’s latest-it wasn’t so much reproachful as threatening-and handed it to Fisher, who had been collecting them. “I won’t simply walk out on you, sir. They have no right to expect it.”

“That’s quite all right,” Reisner said, looking off into space.

“You mean you want me to go?”

“I don’t want you to go. But if you don’t…” Had he only imagined it, Ramses wondered, or had Reisner’s tanned countenance paled? “If you don’t, they’ll come here.”

GARGERY IS SECRETLY THRILLED at the prospect of “another of our criminal investigations,” as he deems them, but he feels it his duty as our butler to be offended by the presence of vulgar policemen in our home. (I would not like to imply that we frequently entertain police officers, vulgar or otherwise, but it has occurred on a number of occasions.) In this case his snobbishness was particularly obnoxious, since the police person in question turned out to be our local constable, George Goodbody. Gargery had left him standing in the hall, and one would never have supposed from Gargery’s frozen stare that he and George often enjoyed a convivial glass of ale in the bar of the White Boar. Observing poor George’s hurt expression, I put myself out to be agreeable.

“How nice to see you, Constable. I trust your family is well?”

George whipped off his helmet and clasped it to his large breast, like a mother cradling a baby. “Yes, ma’am, thank you. Them pills you gave Mariah for her catarrh worked just fine.”

“Good Gad,” Emerson burst out. “Have you been dosing the local population, Peabody? You might at least confine your dubious medical experiments to Egypt.”

“They worked just fine, sir,” George insisted. “Mariah said-”

“Never mind, never mind.” Emerson waved a dismissive hand. “What do you want, Goodbody?”

Emerson makes George very nervous. (He has that effect on most people.) The constable maintained a convulsive grip on his helmet, and began to stutter. “Well, sir, it’s a peculiar sort of thing, to tell the truth, and I am sorry, sir, indeed, to bother you, but I couldn’t see what else to do, since there was nothing on the body except your-”