Julie had not seen this coming. Neither had Ramses, who h
ad laid down his bread and was staring at the Earl with a blank expression on his face. There came those dancing points of colour beneath the smooth skin of his cheeks.
"Well, yes, there is that aspect of it," Julie struggled. "And then we're going to Luxor, and to Abu Simbel. I hope you're all in fine form for an arduous journey. Of course if you don't want to continue ..."
"Abu Simbel," Alex said. "Isn't that where the colossal statues are of Ramses the Second?"
Ramses broke off half the fish with his fingers and ate it. Then he ate the second half. A curious smile had broken out on Elliott's face, but Ramses didn't see it. He was staring at Henry again. Julie was going to start screaming.
"Statues of Ramses the Great are everywhere, actually," Elliott said, watching Ramses mop up the sauce with the bread. "Ramses left more monuments to himself than any other Pharaoh."
"Ah, that's the one. I knew it," said Alex. "The egomaniac of Egyptian history. I remember now, from school."
"Egomaniac!" Ramses said with a grimace. "More bread!" he said to the waiter. Then to Alex: "What is an egomaniac? If you please?"
"Aspirin, Marxism, egomania," Elliott said. "These are all new ideas to you, Mr. Ramsey?"
Henry was becoming positively agitated. He had drunk the second glass of Scotch and now sat plastered to the back of his chair, merely staring at Ramses' hands as he ate.
"Oh, you know," Alex said blithely. "The fellow was a great braggart. He built monuments to himself all over the place. He bragged endlessly about his victories, his wives and his sons! So that's the mummy, and all this time I didn't realize."
"What in the world are you talking about!" Julie said suddenly.
"Is there any other Egyptian King in history who won so many victories," Ramses said heatedly, "and pleasured so many wives, and fathered so many sons? And surely you understand that in erecting so many statues, the Pharaoh was giving to his people exactly what they wanted."
"Now, that's a novel view!" Alex said sarcastically, laying down his knife and fork. "You don't mean the slaves enjoyed being flogged to death in the burning sun to build all those temples and colossal statues?"
"Slaves, flogged to death in the hot sun?" Ramses asked. "What are you saying! This did not happen!" He turned to Julie.
"Alex, that's merely one theory of how the monuments were completed," she said. "No one really knows ..."
"Well, I know," Ramses said.
"Everyone has his theory!" Julie said, raising her voice slightly and glaring at Ramses.
"Well, for heaven's sake," Alex said, "the man built enormous statues of himself from one end of Egypt to another. You can't tell me the people wouldn't have been a lot happier tending their flower beds...."
"Young man, you are most strange!" said Ramses. "What do you know about the people of Egypt? Slaves, you speak of slaves when your slums are filled with starving children. The people wanted the monuments. They took pride in their temples. When the Nile overflowed its banks there could be no work in the fields; and the monuments became the passion of the nation. Labour wasn't forced. It didn't have to be. The Pharaoh was as a god, and he had to do what his people expected of him."
"Surely you're sentimentalizing it a bit," said Elliott, but he was plainly fascinated.
Henry had turned white. He was no longer moving at all. His fresh glass of Scotch stood untouched.
"Not in the least," Ramses argued. "The people of Egypt were proud of Ramses the Great. He drove back the enemies; he conquered the Hittites; he maintained the peace in Upper and Lower Egypt for sixty-four years of his reign! What other Pharaoh ever brought such tranquillity to the land of the great river! You know what happened afterwards, don't you?"
"Reginald," Julie said under her breath, "does this really matter so much!"
"Well, apparently it matters to your father's friend," said Elliott. "I suspect the ancient Kings were perfect tyrants. I suspect they beat their subjects to death if they didn't work on those absurd monuments. The pyramids, how for example--"
"You are not so stupid, Lord Rutherford," said Ramses. "You are ... how do you say ... baiting me. Were Englishmen whipped in the streets when they built your St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey? The Tower of London, this is the work of slaves?"
"No one knows these answers," Samir said meekly. "Perhaps we should attempt to--"
"There's a great deal of truth in what you say," Elliott said, ignoring Samir. "But with regard to the great Ramses, you must admit, he was an exceptionally immodest ruler. The stele which brag of his accomplishments are laughable."
"Sir, really," Samir said.
"They are nothing of the sort," said Ramses. "This was the style of the times, the way the people wanted their ruler to represent himself. Don't you understand? The ruler was the people. For the people to be great, the ruler had to be great! The ruler was the slave of the people when it came to their wishes, their needs, their welfare."