A River in the Sky (30 page)

“All right, are you, Mother?” he inquired. “I came as soon as I could.”

Mansur got slowly to his feet. “You killed the guards. Very civilized. The poor devils were only doing their duty.”

“Obeying orders,” Ramses corrected, with a curl of the lip. “It went against my instincts, of course, but—”

“You had to do it,” said Mansur, curling his lip. He didn’t do it as well as Ramses.

“No. I didn’t have to. I had a choice and I made it. You see, Mansur, I can’t trust you to keep your word. Now it’s between you and me. Free her and I’ll stay here.”

Mansur took a step toward me. Ramses was quicker. With two deft slashes he cut the ropes that held me. I felt the warm stickiness of blood against my wrists. I knew it was not my blood.

“A bit stiff, are you?” he asked, extending a hand to help me rise. “Go now, Mother. With celerity, as you might say.”

He smiled at me. I felt an odd pang in that region of the anatomy that is often mistaken for the heart. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed. Haste or excitement might be responsible, but I doubted it. I spun round, not toward the exit but toward the table where my little pistol…

Had lain. It was now in Mansur’s hand, and it was pointed at me.

“I’m afraid I cannot allow that,” he said, attempting to emulate Ramses’s coolness. “I will keep my word, but she must stay here until morning.”

“So it’s for tonight, is it?” Ramses inquired, trying to get in front of me.

“What?” I asked, avoiding the attempt.

“I’m beginning to get a vague idea,” Ramses said. He glanced at an object I had not noticed before—a prettily carved box that stood on a nearby table. “I see she left the job to you, Mansur. I wouldn’t recommend it. You could just as easily—”

Suddenly he flung himself at me. We both fell to the floor, with Ramses on top, and the gun went off, two, three times. I felt Ramses flinch and tried to free myself from his weight. Desperation lent strength to my limbs; I pushed him off me and sat up. His eyes were open and his lips were moving. I assumed he was swearing until he found his voice and gasped, “Run, Mother. Now!”

I snatched up the knife that had fallen from his hand and turned on Mansur. His lips were moving too, and I felt fairly certain he
was
swearing.

“There were only three bullets left in the gun,” I said. “I neglected to refill it after I used it last time. Now put your hands behind you and turn round.”

Mansur’s face was distorted with rage. Having come so close to
accomplishing his desire, he was maddened by failure. Spinning round, he dropped the gun, snatched up the carved box, and ran, not toward the entrance to the tent, but toward the back, where one of the pegs had been pulled out, leaving a space below.

“Stop me if you can!” he shouted, and ducked under the loosened section of canvas.

Ramses staggered to his feet and took the knife from me. I read his intent in his grim face and tried to catch hold of him.

“Let him go!” I shrieked. “He wants you to follow him! It is an ambush!”

“I have to finish this,” Ramses gasped. “He won’t leave us alone, it’s a matter of personal revenge now…Mother, stay here. Just for once, will you please do as I ask?”

He pulled away from me and ducked under the canvas.

Naturally I followed at once. The pistol was useless to me now, but the Reader may well believe I did not forget my parasol.

The wind had died; the stillness had an ominous quality, like some mighty force holding its breath. The sky was black except for a few streaks of violent crimson on the western horizon, but I was able to make out a column of white, in rapid movement, which could only be Mansur’s snowy robe. Ramses, in drab work shirt and trousers, was virtually invisible.

I was running as fast as I dared, over uneven and unfamiliar ground, trying to keep the moving whiteness in sight, when suddenly it disappeared. I ran faster, brandishing my parasol and shouting. Almost at once I tripped and fell.

“Haste makes waste,” said a familiar voice. I could see Ramses now, bending over me. “Are you hurt?”

“Only bruised knees,” I replied, accepting the hand he offered.

“Damn,” said Ramses, so softly I could barely hear him. I knew what he was thinking, and moved back a little in case he decided to take steps to prevent me from going on. I doubted, however, that he
would have the temerity to imitate his father, who had once struck me unconscious in the hope of removing me from the scene of the action. (It had not succeeded.)

I recognized my surroundings now. The object that had tripped me up was one of Morley’s rope barricades. Beyond, lingering light reflected off a gently moving surface. It was water. We had reached the Pool of Siloam.

“Where did he go?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer, though, and my heart beat faster with excitement.

“Back that way,” Ramses said, pointing.

“No, I would have seen him. He has gone into the tunnel! Hezekiah’s tunnel!”

We had a little discussion. Ramses was twitching with impatience to get on lest his quarry elude him, and I refused to yield, so in the end he was forced to give in.

“Stay behind me,” he said sternly. “Perhaps you are safer here with me than you would be stumbling into open pits. But please—please!—if I tell you to go back, assume that I have good reason to say so.”

The pool was low, since this was the end of summer, and owing to the lateness of the hour, water carriers and pilgrims had gone. There were only a few inches of water in the tunnel itself. It was very narrow; my outstretched hands measured barely two feet from side to side.

“Would you like a candle?” I inquired. I certainly wanted one, since I couldn’t see a cursed thing.

“I might have known you’d have one. Thank you.”

He held it while I lit it with one of the matches from my waterproof box. The wavering light gave his face an eerie look, with deep shadows framing his tight mouth and turning his eye sockets into holes of darkness.

“The roof is quite high,” I said encouragingly. “We needn’t fear bumping our heads.”

“It is lower farther on. What other useful items do you have with you?”

“In addition to my parasol, only a roll of bandages and a little bottle of brandy.”

“Is that all? Let’s hope we don’t need either.”

He sounded quite calm, but I was close enough to him to realize he was shivering. The water was icy cold and the tunnel itself dank and chilly.

“Perhaps the candle was not a good idea,” I said uneasily. “He will be waiting for you, won’t he?”

“So I assume.”

“Here.” I offered him my parasol. “If you hold this upright it will warn you when the roof begins to lower. I will extinguish the candle.”

Ramses, who had eyed the parasol askance, let out a sputter of laughter. The sound echoed uncannily and I put my finger to my lips.

“He knows we’re here,” Ramses said, taking the parasol. “If he’s standing still he will hear our movements through the water. There’s nothing we can do about it, so let us go on.”

He paid me the compliment of not bothering to advise me to keep one hand on the wall to one side. The sides were of solid rock, rough hewn and winding. I rested my other hand lightly on his back so that I would not run into him if he halted.

Had it not been for the absence of light and the fact that there was an assassin lying (or standing) in wait, I would have considered this one of the most thrilling moments of my life. I had given up hope of Emerson allowing me to explore the tunnel, and now Fate had presented me the opportunity.

Our progress was slow, for obvious reasons. Every now and then Ramses stopped, presumably to listen for sounds of movement ahead. I, too, strained my ears in vain. The water was a little deeper here, but not deep enough to produce splashing noises unless the person
was running fast. Keeping track of elapsed time was impossible. I did count my steps, which gave a rough indication of the distance we had traveled. As I recalled, the tunnel was approximately 1,750 feet long. There was quite a distance yet to go.

A low-voiced warning from Ramses informed me that the roof had lowered. It was still high enough not to incommode my five feet and a bit, but had it not been for the parasol, Ramses might have been in danger of hitting his head. On, and yet farther on; I too had begun to shiver in the dank air and my feet were icy, even through my boots. I began to hope that I had been mistaken about Mansur’s motives, that he meant to escape through the exit when a light suddenly flared just ahead. It was bright enough to blind me after that intense darkness. I flung up my hand to shield my eyes and saw that Ramses had done the same.

Standing squarely in the center of the tunnel was Mansur. One arm was folded across the breast of his robe. His hand held a torch. In the other hand was a knife. The backlight from his torch displayed a countenance fixed in a stare of disbelief. Then he let out a high-pitched cackle of laughter.

“Is that your weapon?” he asked. “A lady’s parasol?”

Ramses straightened slowly. The tunnel was only six feet high here. The top of his unkempt black head brushed the roof. “Give it up,” he said.

Mansur mistook his meaning. His arm tightened protectively over the object in the breast of his robe. When he spoke again I knew from his voice and his wild-eyed look that he had crossed the border between mania and sanity.

“Turn now, Sitt Hakim,” he crooned. “Go back. I will not follow. I am a man of honor. This is not the place I would have chosen, but I will fight fairly, man to man.”

He made a sudden rush at Ramses, who lowered the parasol and thrust, at the full length of his arm. The result proved what I have
always maintained, that as a defensive weapon a parasol cannot be too highly commended. The point struck Mansur full in the stomach while his knife hand was a foot or more from Ramses’s body. Mansur doubled over and staggered back.

I heard it before I saw it—a sound that can be described only in metaphor. A waterfall, a great wave crashing down on the shore, a flood, a torrent! I had only a glimpse of a wall of water filling the tunnel from side to side and floor to ceiling before it enveloped us all. The spring of Gihon had overflowed. The winter rains had come a month early.

I
DO NOT DISLIKE
adventure, but that was an experience I would not care to repeat. The first rush swept me off my feet. I was aware of moving rapidly back down the tunnel in the direction from which we had come and of wondering how much longer I could hold my breath. I do not think I prayed, but like an answer to prayer, my head suddenly rose above the water and I was jerked to a stop by an arm round my waist. Impenetrable darkness surrounded me, but I realized we had reached the part of the tunnel that was at its highest and that Ramses had kept hold of me the whole time, towing me along with the current. The current was still extremely swift, but the water was only up to my chest.

“Hold on to me,” he called. “We are almost out.”

When we emerged from the tunnel it was into a downpour so heavy one could scarcely distinguish the air from the pool itself. We got to the side and Ramses hauled me out. For a little time we stood without speaking, holding each other tightly, choking and gasping, and, of course, soaked to the skin.

The darkness was almost as intense as it had been inside the tunnel. It would be futile to try to light a candle. We had to get to shelter,
as quickly as possible. I squinted, trying to make out a landmark—when what should I see but a light, like that of a torch—what should I hear but a voice whose sheer volume rose over even the thunder of the rain.

“Peabody! Peeeeabody! Curse it, where are you?”

T
HE BODY WAS FOUND
next morning, floating in the Pool of Siloam. The news reached us via the usual channels (gossip and the village grapevine) at about eight. We were breakfasting late, an indulgence to which at least some of us were entitled. Safika, the maidservant, delivered the news along with the eggs and toast.

“Wait,” I said as Ramses put down his fork and rose. “There is no need for you to go there. You don’t look well, and furthermore—”

“The police will want an identification,” Ramses said. “I am one of the few who can provide it. Excuse me, Mother.”

The argument was logical, but I knew he had another reason. He wanted to be sure his nemesis was dead.

In point of fact, he had a third reason, which I did not learn until he returned an hour later. He found the rest of us still at table waiting. It was impossible to go on with our daily tasks until doubt had been removed.

“Well?” I said anxiously.

“It was he. The police have removed him.” Ramses put an object down on the table. “This was still inside his robe.”

At first I did not recognize the carved box, it was so warped and battered. Cracks ran the length of the sides and base, but the ornate brass clasp had held.

“What is it?” Nefret asked.

“The motive behind Mansur’s actions,” Ramses said. He wrenched the lid open. We crowded round, heads together, inspecting the
contents. For those of us who still had hopes of a jeweled reliquary or golden ornaments, the result was, to say the least, disappointing. The entire box was filled with a layer of mud or clay less than two inches deep.

“A box filled with mud?” Nefret said.

“Clay,” Ramses corrected. “Until a thorough soaking dissolved it, this was a clay tablet like the ones found at Amarna and in the Hittite archives. It bore a long inscription in cuneiform. I found a broken-off corner at Frau von Eine’s campsite at Sebaste, with a few signs intact.”

Emerson’s expressive countenance displayed a degree of distress it had not shown at the news of Mansur’s death. “It was a valuable artifact, now lost forever.”

“No,” Ramses said. “It was a forgery. My discovery of that scrap, which Mansur found on my person, made it necessary—at least in his opinion—for him to silence me.”

“Do you mean that all this,” Nefret said incredulously, “your kidnapping, his remorseless pursuit, his attempt to kill you—all because of a miserable scrap of clay tablet?”

“Not initially. Initially they reeled me in because I had learned a little too much from Macomber. Mansur was quite candid about that. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to make a solid case against them, but it might have interfered temporarily with their plans. Once they had accomplished their aim I could pass on the information without damaging them. But that aim had everything to do with the clay tablet. We assumed they wanted to find some talisman or icon under the temple. What they wanted to do was
plant
an artifact there—a written record dating from the period of Abraham. It might even have contained a prophecy, mentioning a kindly emperor from across the sea who would eventually free the land from its oppressors. Morley would find it, the location verified not only by Madame but by Morley’s workmen.”