He Shall Thunder in the Sky Read Free

up skirts in favor of trousers and stout boots. The only occasions on which I require assistance are those for which I assume traditional female garb, and Emerson is always more than happy to oblige me.
         Neither of us spoke until he had completed the task. I could tell by his movements that he was not in a proper state of mind for the sort of distraction that frequently followed this activity. After hanging the garment neatly on a hook, I said, “Very well, Emerson, out with it. What is the trouble?”
         “How can you ask? This damned war has ruined everything. Do you remember the old days? Abdullah supervising the excavations as only he could do, the children working happily and obediently under our direction, Walter and Evelyn joining us every few years . . . Abdullah is gone now, and my brother and his wife are in England, and two of their sons are in France, and our children are . . . Well, hmph. It will never be the same again.”
         “Things” never are the same. Time passes; death takes the worthy and unworthy alike, and (on a less morbid note), children grow up. (I did not say this to Emerson, since he was in no fit state of mind for philosophical reflection.) Two of the children to whom Emerson referred, though not related to us by blood, had become as dear to us as our own. Their backgrounds were, to say the least, unusual. David, now a fully qualified artist and Egyptologist, was the grandson of our dear departed reis Abdullah. A few years earlier he had espoused Emerson’s niece Lia, thereby scandalizing the snobs who considered Egyptians a lower breed. Even now Lia awaited the birth of their first child, but its father was not with her in England or with us; because of his involvement with the movement for Egyptian independence, he had been interned in India, where he would have to remain until the war was over. His absence was keenly felt by us all, especially by Ramses, whose confidant and closest friend he had been, but — I reminded myself — at least he was out of harm’s way, and we had not given up hope of winning his release.
         Our foster daughter Nefret had an even stranger history. The orphaned daughter of an intrepid but foolhardy English explorer, she had passed the first thirteen years of her life in a remote oasis in the western desert. The beliefs and customs of ancient Egypt had lingered in that isolated spot, where Nefret had been High Priestess of Isis. Not surprisingly, she had had some difficulty adjusting to the customs of the modern world after we brought her back to England with us. She had succeeded — for the most part — since she was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and, I believe I may say, as devoted to us as we were to her. She was also a very wealthy young woman, having inherited a large fortune from her paternal grandfather. From the beginning she and David and Ramses had been comrades and co-conspirators in every variety of mischief. David’s marriage had only strengthened the bonds, for Lia and Nefret were as close as sisters.
         It was Nefret’s sudden, ill-advised marriage that had destroyed all happiness. The tragedy that ended that marriage had brought on a complete breakdown from which she had only recently recovered.
         She had recovered, though; she had completed her interrupted medical studies and was with us again. Look for the silver lining, I told myself, and attempted to persuade Emerson to do the same.
         “Now, Emerson, you are exaggerating,” I exclaimed. “I miss Abdullah as much as you do, but the war had nothing to do with that, and Selim is performing splendidly as reis. As for the children, they were constantly in trouble or in danger, and it is a wonder my hair did not turn snow white from worrying about them.”
         “True,” Emerson admitted. “If you are fishing for compliments, my dear, I will admit you bore up under the strain as few women could. Not a wrinkle,