Elizabeth Peters - A River in the Sky

Emerson returned in time for tea, his arrival heralded by his usual slam of the front door and his hearty halloo: “Peabody, where are you? I am back. Peabody!” I was reading in the drawing room, but I had no difficulty in hearing him.

“Well!” I said, returning his friendly embrace. “You are in a much better frame of mind than you were when you left. I take it all went well at the War Office?”

“I cannot imagine why you should assume otherwise.” Emerson removed his coat and tossed it in Gargery’s general direction. “Why isn’t tea ready, Gargery? I am famished.”

“I suppose you didn’t take time to eat lunch,” I said, after Gargery had stalked off and Emerson and I had returned to the drawing room.

“Lunch? Oh.” Emerson pondered. “No, I can’t recall having done so. That bastard Spencer kept me cooling my heels for a good half hour, and then persisted in arguing with me.”

“What about?”

“It was more or less along the lines you had suggested,” Emerson admitted. He took a seat next to me on the sofa and put his arm round my shoulders. “The bloody idiot said that since we had already agreed we would follow Morley to Jerusalem, he couldn’t see that it made any difference when we went, so long as we were there in good time. So I told him-”

“That he was a bloody idiot?”

“More or less. He took it quite well,” Emerson said in mild surprise.

“He was trying to get you out of his office, I expect. Did you ask about the firman?”

“It hasn’t arrived yet, but he promised we would have it by the time we reach Jaffa. Ah, there you are, Nefret. And-er-Papadalopous. He follows her about like a puppy,” he added, in what he probably believed to be a whisper.

“He has been telling me about the fall of Jericho,” Nefret said, giving Emerson a reproachful look.

“Ah,” said Emerson, perking up. “He was Joshua?”

“He explained that it didn’t happen quite as the Bible describes it,” Nefret said.

“It didn’t happen at all,” said Emerson, his mood improving even more at the prospect of argumentation, and the sound of the tea cart rattling along the hall. “The excavators of 1907 concluded that the latest remains dated from 1800 B.C., a thousand years, give or take a century, before your apocryphal Joshua.”

The reverend paid no attention to any of this. His attention was fixed on the tea cakes which Gargery placed on the table.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at Jericho myself,” Emerson went on. “But the Germans still hold the concession, and we must be nearer Jerusalem.”

Panagopolous looked up. “When shall we depart?”

BY DINT OF HERCULEAN efforts on my part we were ready to depart in less than a week. I was busy from morning till night telegraphing Selim, sending final orders to Ramses, purchasing supplies, packing, and of course making lists. Emerson offered to make our travel arrangements, which I accepted because I didn’t suppose he could locate a disreputable old friend in London who happened to own a steamer. He had perpetrated that indignity several times before, but that was in Egypt and the Sudan, where Emerson had only too many disreputable old friends. I took comfort in the fact that he could not have many old friends in Palestine.

The reverend had come to us with only the contents of a single valise, so another of my chores was to outfit him for a prolonged stay in the Middle East. My inquiries as to where he had left the rest of his luggage were met with a blank stare and a murmured reference to the House of David. Sometimes I got quite impatient with him, but Nefret always leaped to his defense. Amnesia was unpredictable. An individual’s memory might return, or it might not. Certain parts of it might be lost forever.

Emerson’s continual mispronunciation of his surname didn’t seem to bother Panagopolous, but Nefret began to find it unacceptable. “It suggests you don’t care enough about him to remember his name,” she complained to Emerson.

“I don’t,” said Emerson, surprised that she should have thought otherwise.

“Call him ‘Reverend,’” I suggested.

“If he is a reverend of any recognized church, I am Attila the Hun,” said Emerson. “I refuse to give him a title to which he is not-er-entitled.”

“Use his first name, then,” said Nefret, losing patience. “He wouldn’t mind.”

Emerson shook his head. “How can I contemplate that vacant countenance and address it by the name of one of the greatest of the Greeks? Impossible.”

“It strikes me as an excellent solution,” I said.

Emerson, of course, dismissed this solution with a few ill-chosen words and from then on tried to avoid addressing Mr. Plato directly. However, he accepted Plato’s accompanying us with more grace than I had expected. He had managed to have a talk with him, and found him “uncharacteristically coherent,” to quote Emerson himself. “He claims to have memorized the information on the notorious scroll,” Emerson explained. “Not that I believe for a moment that it has any value, but the fellow does seem to be familiar with the former excavations near the Temple Mount, including those of Warren and Bliss.”

“Doesn’t that indicate that there is some basis for his claims?”

“Are you determined to provoke me, Peabody?” Emerson inquired with perfect good humor. “It indicates that he took the trouble to read up on the subject, as any clever charlatan would do. However, I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter. We can’t expect Gargery and Rose to be responsible for him, and if we abandoned him on a street corner in London, he would only find his way back here.”

So Mr. Plato was at the rail with us the day we set sail from London. Our family had come to see us off, as they always did. The weather was fine, and the sun, only slightly dimmed by the perpetual haze of smoke, illumined the beloved faces: Emerson’s brother Walter and his wife, my dear friend Evelyn; their eldest son Raddie; and their daughter, my namesake. Lia’s pretty face was set in a forced smile as she blew kisses to David, who stood next to me at the rail of the steamer. His expression was scarcely more cheerful, though he strove as valiantly to smile.

They had been engaged for two years. Her parents had been opposed to the match initially. Their objections were based solely on prejudice of a nature that is unfortunately only too common in our society, for David was the grandson of our late and greatly lamented foreman Abdullah. He was also a fine young man and a talented artist. I had pointed out the illogic and injustice of their position to Walter and Evelyn, and naturally my arguments had prevailed. The young people had several more years to wait, since Lia was only just nineteen and David was determined to establish himself in his career before marrying. This brief interruption of that career, as Emerson insisted, would not be a serious impediment, since archaeological copying was one of David’s specialties, and we were certain-said Emerson-to make important discoveries. I had serious doubts about this. We weren’t likely to discover exquisitely painted tombs like those in Egypt, or monumental temples covered with carved reliefs. Nothing of the sort had ever been found in Palestine.

There had been no letter from Ramses. I could only hope that he had received ours, and that he would act upon our instructions.

FROM MANUSCRIPT H

Ramses wasn’t surprised that Reisner wanted to be rid of him as quickly as possible. Not only did he face the dire alternative of Emerson’s critical presence, but the rock-throwing incidents had never been explained. There had been no further attacks, but that might be accounted for by the fact that Ramses had obeyed orders and avoided nocturnal strolls. Mme von Eine’s visit might be regarded as another untoward occurrence. Reisner didn’t like untoward occurrences interrupting his work, and Ramses really couldn’t blame him for suspecting his assistant was somehow responsible for all of them.