Elizabeth Peters - A River in the Sky

The boy had heard the stories too. His eyes widened until the whites showed all round the pupils, and for a moment Ramses thought he would bolt. Ramses spoke gently, as he would have done to a nervous animal. “I only want to talk to him. I mean him no harm. I will wait for him here. Take this, as a gift.”

The word was “baksheesh.” It was regarded, not as payment for services actual or potential, but as a present from one equal to another. The dignity of the recipient demanded a return present, though in a good many cases the present consisted solely of thanks or freedom from harassment.

It took additional reassurance and the handing over of several more coins before the boy nodded. He went back into the house. Ramses prepared himself for a long wait, but it was only a few minutes later when the boy reappeared and held the door open. Ramses dropped a few more coins into his outstretched hand as he entered.

Cooking smells and the reek of charcoal fires mingled with the stench of too many bodies, animal and human, occupying too small a space. Ramses thought he caught a whiff of hashish too. At first glance he believed the room was unoccupied. Then the curtains covering a door at the back of the room stirred. A worried face peered out.

“I came to ask you a question,” Ramses said. “One question only, one truthful answer, and then I will go.”

The curtain parted and Mitab edged into the room.

“Only one?”

“Yes. The answer will be locked in my heart, no one else will hear it.”

“You swear?”

“By God and the Prophet, may his name be blessed, I swear.”

“I meant no harm. It was a warning.”

“It was you who threw the stones, then?”

“I meant no harm.”

“Did someone tell you to throw them?”

“They said you must all go. All the unbelievers. Yusuf and I meant you no harm. It was a warning, that you must go before greater harm came to you.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

Mitab gave him a blank stare. Ramses took out his tin of cigarettes and offered it. “Take it,” he said. “Smoke, be at ease. Who are they?”

Mitab accepted the offering with a childish smile of pleasure. “They are the Those Who Come Before,” he said simply. “One of them spoke to us in the mosque and told us of the time when we must rise up against the infidels who want to steal our land.”

“When was that?”

Mitab counted on his fingers. Notions of exact time were too difficult; he said simply, “Two…three times-and again…I do not know.” He accepted the box of matches Ramses handed him, lit up, and drew the smoke into his lungs. A blue fog of expelled smoke veiled his face. “But he was angry when he heard what Yusuf and I had done, and we had heard of the great and powerful magician who is your father, and Yusuf and I did not want his wrath to fall on our heads.”

You were in trouble enough already, poor devil, Ramses thought.

Aloud he said, “I promise you I will appease his wrath. You meant no harm, you will take no harm from him or from me. I will tell the one in the mosque the same, if you-”

“Will you? Will you?” In his excitement Mitab dropped the cigarette. “I saw that you spoke with him that day on the tell, when he was there with the lady. You know him, you have power over him. I will pray for you at the mosque today, Brother of Demons.”

He picked up the stub of the cigarette from the filthy floor before he vanished behind the curtain.

Ramses hurried back to the dig house. He’d been gone longer than he had anticipated. For once, Reisner wasn’t working. Pipe clenched in his teeth, feet on a packing case, he was reading a book whose lurid cover depicted a body with a knife protruding from its chest, lying in a pool of blood-one of his favorite mystery novels. He had decided to take part of the day off too. Looking up, he asked, “Did you find a suitable gift?”

Wrapped in thought, Ramses had forgotten his purported errand. “No,” he said.

“The local bazaar doesn’t have much of interest. But there’s one fellow, a wood-carver, who does some excellent work.”

“I didn’t see him there today.” His mother would have approved the statement; it was the literal truth.

“I understand our visitor hasn’t left yet,” Reisner said.

“Yes. I mean, no, she hasn’t.” He had been trying to think of an excuse to leave the house so that he could visit the camp. Now it occurred to him that it might be prudent to inform someone of his destination, if not his purpose. As his mother had once been heard to remark, “If a good lie won’t serve, try telling the truth.” He was wearing the same coat he had worn the day before. After some fishing about he extracted von Eine’s handkerchief. “She dropped this the other day. It would be only courteous to return it, don’t you think?”

Reisner inspected the now grubby item and burst out laughing. “She dropped her handkerchief? I thought women quit doing that fifty years ago. Fisher, what do you think of this? The lady dropped her handkerchief. Didn’t I tell you she had her eye on Ramses?”

Fisher had emerged from his room, yawning. He found the handkerchief as amusing as Reisner had; the two of them teased Ramses until he left.

As he made his way toward the camp, Ramses began to have second thoughts about carrying out his plan. Even supposing he was admitted to the lady’s quarters, the tactics he had employed with innocent Mitab and the imam, a combination of intimidation and persuasion, were unlikely to succeed with the lady and her enigmatic companion. He pictured himself demanding answers to his questions, and imagined their reactions: a contemptuous smile from the lady, a dismissive shrug from the other.

On the other hand, what did he have to lose? Humiliation was a small price to pay for the chance of satisfying his curiosity.

He came close to paying a higher price when he stepped into view from among the trees and found himself face-to-face with a guard who was pointing a gun at him. Ramses raised his hands and said quickly, “Is this how you greet visitors? I have come to see the lady. Take me to her.”

He had spoken Turkish. That, as much as the self-confident words, had the effect he had hoped for. The guard lowered the gun. It was only a slight improvement, since his finger was still on the trigger and the gun was now pointing at Ramses’s knees. He resisted the impulse to step back out of the line of fire, folded his arms, and fixed the guard with a stern stare.

“Take me to her,” he repeated.

The fellow raised a hand to caress his luxuriant mustache. “She said to keep everyone away…Wait here. I will ask.”

Ramses stood waiting, loftily ignoring the dozens of pairs of eyes focused on him. He didn’t have to wait long. The guard was back almost at once.

“The lady is seeing no one. Leave now.”

Arguing with an underling would lower his prestige. Retreating with as much dignity as he could command, he found a spot among the trees where he could see without being seen, and sat down to consider what to do. Didn’t she ever leave the tent? Behind him the sun was setting, casting long lingering fingers of light across the shaded landscape. As the shadows deepened the canvas walls of Madame’s tent glowed yellow with lamplight; he saw indistinct silhouettes move about inside, too vague to be identifiable. The tent flap opened, and two women came out carrying an object Ramses couldn’t identify at first. They tipped it up and water poured out; watching in fascination, he decided it must be a portable bathtub, made of canvas and collapsible. Porters and guards gathered round newly lighted campfires. The smell of food reached his nostrils and reminded him he was getting hungry.

So far his investigations had only raised more questions. Mitab wasn’t the most reliable of informants, but Ramses believed he had told the truth-as he saw it. He had identified Frau von Eine’s “fellow traveler” as one of Those Who Come Before-not once, but a number of times-and if poor Mitab’s interpretation of their purpose was accurate, they were stirring up antagonism toward infidels and foreigners. From what he had observed so far, it appeared to be a fairly ineffectual operation, but he would like to have found out more about the plan and what part, if any, the lady played in it.