Guardian of the Horizon (2 page)

Ramses sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. Another day had passed without his having got the courage to tell his father the truth. He looked up at the sound of a tentative knock at the door. "Come in, damn it," Ramses said. "Some people might interpret that as less than welcoming," said David, standing in the doorway. "Would you rather be alone?" "No. I'm sorry. Come in and close the door before Nefret takes it into her head to follow you." "You can't go on treating her like this, Ramses. You've been avoiding her as if she were a leper and snapping back at her whenever she speaks." "You know why." David sat down next to him. "I know that you love her and you won't tell her so. I don't understand why you won't." "You aren't usually so obtuse, David. How would you feel if a girl you thought of as a dear little sister sidled up to you and told you she was desperately in love with you?" David smiled his slow, gentle smile. "She did." "But you were already in love with Lia when she spoke up," Ramses argued. "And her announcement can't have come as a complete surprise; don't tell me there weren't sidelong looks and blushes and--well, you know the sort of thing. Supposing you hadn't returned her feelings--then how would you have felt?" "Embarrassed," David admitted after a while. "Sorry for her. Guilty. Horribly self-conscious." "And that is exactly how Nefret would feel. She thinks of me as a rather amusing younger brother. You heard her just now, teasing me about that confounded girl, laughing at me . . ." He propped his chin on his hands. "I've got to get away for a while. Away from her." "It's that hard?" David asked. "Being with her?" "It's bad enough seeing her every day," Ramses said despondently. "If only she weren't so damned affectionate! Always patting and hugging and squeezing my arm--" "She does that to everybody. Including Gargery." "Exactly. It doesn't mean a damned thing, but I can assure you that it doesn't affect Gargery as it does me." He couldn't tell David the worst of it--the burning jealousy of every man who talked to Nefret or looked at her--because at one time he had thought she was beginning to care for David. He had dreamed of killing his best friend. A peremptory pounding on the door brought him to his feet. "It's Nefret," he said. "Nobody else knocks like that." He opened the door and stood back. "Shouldn't you be changing for dinner?" he asked pointedly. Nefret flung herself down in an armchair. "Shouldn't you? I'm sorry I teased you about that wretched girl, but really, Ramses, you're losing your sense of humor. What's the matter?" Ramses began, "I don't know why you should suppose--" She cut him off with a word she would not have used in his mother's presence. "Don't you dare lie to me, Ramses Emerson. You and David have been eyeing each other like conspirators-- Brutus and Cassius, creeping up on Caesar with daggers drawn! You're planning something underhanded, and I insist on knowing what it is. Don't stand there like a graven image! Sit down--you too, David--and confess." She was enchanting when she was angry, her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide and her slim form rigid with indignation. A lock of hair had come loose; it curled distractingly over her forehead. Ramses clasped his hands tightly together. Then her eyes fell. "I thought we were friends," she said softly. "We three, all for one and one for all." We three. Friends. If he had had any doubts about what he meant to do, that speech dispelled them. After all, why not tell her? She wouldn't care. Friendship can endure separation. A friend wants what is best for her friend. Only lovers are selfish. "I want to go to Germany this year to study with Erman," he said abruptly. Nefret's jaw dropped. "You mean--not go to Egypt with us this autumn?" "Obviously I can't be in two places at once." She put out her tongue at him. "Why?" "I need some formal grounding in the language, formal recognition. A degree from Berlin would give me that." The speech came glibly; he had practiced it a number of times, preparatory to delivering it to Emerson. "I've learned a lot from Uncle Walter, but Erman is one of the best, and his approach is different. He thinks I can earn a doctorate in a year, given my past work. I enjoy excavating, but I'll never be as good as Father. Philology is my real interest." "Hmmm." Nefret stroked her rounded chin, in unconscious imitation of Emerson when deep in thought. "Well, my boy, that is a stunner! But I don't understand why you've been so secretive. It's a reasonable ambition." Ramses hadn't realized until then that he had been hoping against hope she would object. Obviously the idea of a long separation didn't disturb her unduly. Friends want what is best for friends. "I'm glad you agree," he said stiffly. She raised candid blue eyes and smiled at him. "If it's what you want, my boy, then you shall have it. You haven't got up nerve enough to tell the Professor, is that it?" "Yes, well, cowardice is one of my worst failings." David's elbow dug into his ribs and Nefret's smile faded. "I didn't mean that. You're afraid of hurting him. That's what I meant." "Sorry," Ramses muttered. "We all feel that way," Nefret assured him. "Because we love him. But sooner or later he's got to accept the fact that you--and David and I--are individuals with our own ambitions and wants." "What is it you want?" Ramses asked. She shrugged and smiled. "Nothing I don't have. Work I love, a family, the best friends in the world ... I'll help you persuade the Professor. We'll miss you, of course, won't we, David? But it's only for a year." She got to her feet. "Just leave it to me. I'm going to break it to Aunt Amelia first. Then it will be all of us against the Professor! If worse comes to worst, I'll cry. That always fetches him." He had risen when she did; they were standing close together, only a foot apart. She put out her hand, as if to give him a friendly pat on the shoulder. He took a step back and said, "Thank you, but I don't need anyone else to do my dirty work for me. I'll tell Father tonight, at dinner." She let her hand fall, flushed slightly, and left the room. "Ramses," David began. "Shut up, David." "Damned if I will," David said indignantly. "She was offering tohelp, in her sweet, generous way, and you froze her with that cold stare and speech. What did you expect, that the idea of being parted from you for a year would miraculously arouse latent passions? It doesn't work that way." After a moment he added, "Go ahead and hit me if it will make you feel better." Ramses uncurled his fists and turned to the desk. He opened a drawer, looking for a cigarette. "I'm sorry," David said. "But if you don't get over your habit of bottling up your feelings, you're going to explode one day. For God's sake, Ramses, you're barely twenty, and the family wouldn't hear of your marrying anyhow. Give it a little more time." "Always the optimist. You don't see it, do you? You wouldn't, though; you don't want anything more from her than she is capable of giving you. What I want may not be there at all." He offered the packet to David, who took a cigarette and leaned against the desk. "Are you still harping on that? Far be it from me to deny that you have to beat women off with a club, but there must have been a few who didn't react. Nefret is one of them--so far. It doesn't mean she's incapable of love." Ramses felt himself flushing angrily. "Believe it or not, I'm not that egotistical. Maybe you're right. I hope so. But doesn't it seem strange to you that a woman of twenty-three has never been in love, not even once? Lord only knows how many men have been in love with her. She flirts with them, practices her little wiles on them, makes friends with them, and then turns them down flat when they get courage enough to propose to her. All of them! That's not natural, David. And don't tell me I wouldn't have known. Nefret's not the sort to hide her feelings. The signs are unmistakable, especially to the eyes of a jealous lover--which, God help me, I am. After all, we don't know what happened to her during those years before ..." He broke off and David gave him a curious look. "The years when she lived with the missionaries in the Sudan? What could have happened, with them looking after her?" It was the story they had concocted to explain Nefret's background when they brought her back to England. Not even to Davidhad Ramses told the true story--of the Lost Oasis with its strange mixture of ancient Egyptian and Meroitic cultures, and Nefret's role as the priestess of a heathen goddess. Like his parents, he had sworn to keep the very existence of the place secret. "You're on the wrong track, I tell you." David leaned back, long legs stretched out, face sober. "I believe that in this case I can claim to understand her better than you. I had to make the same transition, from one world to another, practically overnight--from a ragged slave, beaten and filthy and starved, to a proper young English gentleman." He laughed. "There were times when I thought it would kill me." "You never complained. I didn't realize ... I ought to have done." "Why should I complain? I had to wash more often than I liked and give up habits like spitting and speaking gutter Arabic and going about comfortably half-naked, but I was at least familiar with your world, and I still had ties to my own. Can't you imagine how much more difficult it was for Nefret? Growing up in a native village, completely isolated from the modern world ... It must have been like Mr. Wells's time machine--from primitive Nubia to modern England, in the blink of an eye. Perhaps the only way she could manage it was to suppress her memories of the past." "I hadn't thought of that," Ramses admitted. "No, you are obsessed with her--er--sexuality. If I may use that word." "It's a perfectly good word," Ramses said, amused by David's embarrassment. "I think you've gone a bit overboard with the English-gentleman role, David. Perhaps you're right, but it doesn't help. Being away from her for a while will let me get my feelings in order." "Maybe you'll fall in love with someone else," David said cheerfully. "A pretty little fraulein with flaxen braids and a nicely rounded figure and . . . All right, all right, I'm going. Just think about what I've said." Ramses put down the vase he had raised in mock threat and sat on the edge of the bed, with his chin in his hands, remembering. David's words had brought it all back--the strangest adventure of his life. They didn't speak of it, but he thought about it often. How could he not, with the daily sight of Nefret to remind him of how she had come to them? They had made plans to work in the Sudan that autumn. The region south of Egypt, from the second cataract to the junction of the Blue and White Niles, had been for ten years ruled by the Mahdi and his successors--religious fanatics and reformers. The Europeans who had not managed to flee were imprisoned or killed, along with a good many of the local inhabitants. Emerson had wanted for years to investigate the little-known monuments of the ancient civilizations of Nubia--or Cush, to give the region another of its many names. He believed that the Napatan and Meroitic kingdoms had been more powerful and vibrant than most Egyptologists admitted, genuine rivals to the ancient Egyptian monarchy instead of barbarian tribesmen. When the reconquest of the Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces began in 1897, he talked his wife into following the troops as far as Napata, the first capital of the kingdom of Cush. Then came the appeal on behalf of Willoughby Forth, a friend of Emerson's, who had vanished with his young wife during the conflagration of the Mahdist revolt. Emerson had scoffed at the message, which purported to be from Forth himself and gave directions to a remote oasis in the Western Desert filled with treasure. For once Emerson had been wrong. The message was genuine, and the map correct. After Reginald Forthright, Forth's nephew, set off into the desert in search of his uncle, the Emersons followed, accompanied by a mysterious stranger named Kemit, whom they had hired to work for them. It had been a disastrous trip from start to finish--the camels dying one by one, his mother falling ill, all their men except Kemit abandoning them in the desert without water or transport. Ramses had been ill too--sunstroke or heat prostration or dehydration, he supposed. One of his last memories of the journey was the sight of his father, lips cracked and tongue dry, plodding doggedly through the sand with his wife in his arms. They would never have made it if it hadn't been for Kemit, who went ahead to bring a rescue party. As they learned when they reached the isolated oasis, ringed in by cliffs, Kemit's real name was Tarek, and it was he who had carried the message from Forth to England. It was some time before they found out why. He would never forget his first sight of Nefret, wearing the white robes of the High Priestess of Isis, with her hair flowing over her shoulders in a river of gold. She had been thirteen, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Now that he was older, he was better able to assess the flagrant romanticism of that image and its effect on a ten-year-old boy; but he still thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, as brave and clever as she was lovely. Tarek had been in love with her, he had as good as said so: "For who could see her and not desire her?" Yet he had kept his word to her dead father, who had wanted her to return to her own people. Realizing he could not get her away without help, Tarek had made the long, perilous journey to England in order to bring the Emersons to the Lost Oasis. In doing so he had risked his life and his throne. He had been a fine-looking young man, chivalrous as a knight of legend; it wouldn't be surprising if Nefret still cherished his memory. Goddamn him, Ramses thought; how can I or anyone else compete with a hero like that? Tarek had fought like a hero too, sword in hand, to win his crown. They had repaid part of their debt to him by helping him in that struggle, each in his or her own way. Emerson had been at the height of his powers then--not that he had lost many of them--and some of his exploits rivaled the achievements of Hercules and Horus. Another hero, thought Emerson's son. And now I've got to tell him I won't go with him this year.

So vehement was Emerson's initial reaction to Ramses's news that his shouts brought Gargery, John the footman, Rose, and several ofthe housemaids rushing in to see what had happened. Our relationships with servants are somewhat unusual, thanks to Emerson's habit of treating them like human beings and their profound affection for him; once they learned what had occasioned his wrath, every single one of them felt entitled to join in the conversation, on one side or the other. Rose, of course, supported Ramses, and so did Gargery (offering himself as Ramses's replacement, which infuriated Emerson even more). The housemaids were swept off by Rose before they had a chance to say very much. Still, the consensus was clear, and Emerson had some justice on his side when he shouted, "You are all against me!" Nefret had warned me in strictest secrecy of what Ramses meant to do, so I had had a little time to get used to the idea. I was somewhat surprised at the strength of my initial disappointment. I had got used to having Ramses around. He was a great help to his father. However, a mother wants what is best for her child, and at least the news explained why Ramses had been behaving so oddly. So I had promised Nefret I would help persuade Emerson, and of course my arguments carried the day. "He'll get himself in trouble all alone over there, you know he will" was Emerson's final attempt to sway me by appealing to my maternal instincts. "He always does." He always did. However, as I pointed out to Emerson, he did anyhow, even when he was with us.