Tomb of the Golden Bird Read Free

had immediately diagnosed the cause of the boy's malaise. "It doesn't feel very nice, does it? Put him to bed, Daoud, and let him sleep it off." "I'll do it," said Ramses, taking the limp little body from Daoud, whose face was a picture of guilt. Daoud is a very large man with a very large face, so the guilt was extensive. Ramses gave him a slap on the back. "It wasn't your fault, Daoud." From the quirk at the corner of his mouth I knew he was remembering the time he had returned from the village after a similar debauch, though not in a similar condition. He had prudently rid himself of the liquor all over the floor of Selim's house before leaving the village. "Are Selim and Fatima downstairs?" I asked. "They were afraid to come up, I suppose. Tell them it's all right, Daoud. I expect you were all busy watching Charla." "But I was good," Charla informed us. She ran to her mother, who had sunk into a chair. "Wasn't I, Mama? Not like David John." In a way I couldn't blame her for gloating a trifle. Usually she was the one who got in trouble. Nefret patted the child's dusty curls. "No, you weren't. Climbing the palm tree was not a good plan. She got halfway up before Daoud plucked her down," she informed us. "But I didn't get drunk, Mama." "You must give her that," said Emerson, chuckling. "Come and give Grandpapa a kiss, you virtuous young creature." "She is absolutely filthy, Emerson," I said, catching hold of Charla's collar as she started to comply. "Come along, Charla, we will have a nice long bath and then Grandpapa will come in to kiss you good night. No, Nefret, you sit still. You look exhausted." The advantage of having the children spend the day with Selim and Daoud's kin at the nearby village of Atiyeh was that the enterprise usually left them so tired they went to bed without a fuss. David John was already asleep when I turned Charla over to Fatima, assured the latter that we did not consider she had neglected her duty, and returned to the sitting room to join my husband and son. Emerson was pouring the whiskey. Owing in part to our early departure from England, we four were the only members of our staff in Egypt. In fact, we were currently the only members of the staff. Ramses's best friend David, our nephew by marriage, had finally admitted he would prefer to spend the winter in England with his wife, Lia, and their children, pursuing his successful career as an artist and illustrator. (He had admitted this under pressure from me, and over Emerson's plaintive objections.) Emerson's brother Walter and his wife, my dear friend Evelyn, who had been out with us before, had given up active careers in the field; Walter's chief interest was in linguistics, and Evelyn was fully occupied with grandmotherhood. She had quite a lot of grandchildren (to be honest, I had rather lost track of the exact number), from Lia and their other sons and daughters. Other individuals whom we had hoped to employ the previous season had turned out to be murderers or victims of murder—a not uncommon occurrence with us, I must admit. Selim, our Egyptian foreman, was as skilled an excavator as most European scholars, and his crew had learned Emerson's methods. Still, in my opinion we needed more people, particularly since I was determined to carry out my scheme of allowing Ramses and Nefret to spend the winter in Cairo instead of joining us in Luxor. I hadn't proposed this to Emerson as yet, since I knew he would howl. Emerson is devoted to his son and daughter-in-law, as they are to him, but he tends to regard them as extensions of himself, with the same ambitions and interests. The dear children had given us loyal service for many years, and they were now entitled to pursue their own careers. I assumed that Emerson and I would be going on to Luxor, though Iwasn't certain of that. Emerson had reverted to his infuriating habit of keeping his plans secret, even from me, until the last possible moment. That moment, in my opinion, had come. "Very