The Serpent on the Crown Read Online Free PDF

helpless to prevent the humiliation of being passed from hand to greedy hand, and exposed to the gaze of the curious.”
    The only person who responded to this poetic statement was Emerson. “Stop talking nonsense, Peabody.”
    After the Vandergelts had left and Ramses and Nefret had gone to their house, Emerson dropped off to sleep immediately. I never allow fatigue to keep me from my nightly routine, so I sat before my dressing table giving my hair its customary one hundred strokes. Candles on either side of the mirror lent a ghostly softness to my reflected face, and the soothing effect of the repeated strokes allowed my mind to wander.
    The astonishing events of the evening had postponed a serious discussion about our future plans. In previous years Cyrus had shared with us the site of the workmen’s village at Deir el Medina; while we excavated in the village itself, Cyrus and Bertie investigated the tombs on the hillside. We were shorthanded this year, and it had become increasingly evident to me, though not to my stubborn and self-centered spouse, that we were on the verge of momentous changes.
    Hitherto we had depended on friends and kin to assist us in our archaeological labors. Selim, the son and successor of our dear reis Abdullah, could be depended upon for many more years, and the younger members of his family were filling the positions left vacant by death and retirement. It was a different matter with David, Abdullah’s grandson, whom we had freed from his cruel master when he was still a child. He had amply repaid that favor, if it could be called such, with years of loyal and skilled service; but he had built a successful career of his own as a painter and illustrator. He and his wife, Lia, Emerson’s niece, now had four children. I need not explain to any mother of four why Lia had given up her career as an archaeological assistant. Her father was a philologist, not an excavator, and he had finally confessed that the arduous life of a field archaeologist had become too much for him. His wife, Evelyn, preferred her role as grandmother to that of staff artist.
    That left us with Nefret and Ramses, neither of whom had uttered a word of complaint; but I foresaw a time when they would want more freedom from the bonds of family and from Emerson’s dictatorial control. Nefret was able to employ her medical skills in the clinic she had opened in Luxor, but I suspected she secretly yearned for a more specialized practice, such as the one she would have in Cairo in the women’s hospital she had founded some years earlier. Too many “buts”! The children’s needs for schooling, Ramses’s interests in other areas of Egyptology—everything pointed to the same conclusion. We must let our dear ones go their own ways, and that meant we must hire a new staff. How I was going to convince Emerson of this without a battle of epic proportions, I could not imagine. However, I rather looked forward to the argument. Emerson is at his most imposing when he is in a rage—and I had never yet lost an argument that really mattered.
    A breeze swayed the candle flame. I leaned forward, peering more closely at my image. Was that…
    It was. They seemed to be occurring more frequently these days, the silvery strands in the black of my hair. Well! That was another argument I did not mean to lose. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Emerson still slept, I took out the little bottle of coloring liquid.
     
    FROM MANUSCRIPT H
----
    The children woke at dawn. Dragged out of heavy slumber by the piercing voices of his dear little offspring, Ramses groaned and pulled the blanket up over his head. He hadn’t had more than two hours’ sleep. It wasn’t entirely his father’s fault; there had been an additional distraction, once he and Nefret were alone.
    The blanket didn’t help. Lowering it, he turned over and looked at his sleeping wife. And, as usual, his bad humor was dispelled by the very sight of her: golden-red hair spread