The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (26 page)

At three o’clock, Selina knocked on the cabin door and entered. She looked refreshed, having just napped. “Are you getting ready, my dear?” she asked. With a nod, Selina acknowledged Trout, sitting on her divan, a wool stocking stretched over a darning egg in one hand, and a threaded needle in the other.

“Mum,” Trout said, barely lifting her eyes from the work.

“I can be ready in a trice,” said Flo, capping her inkwell and wiping her pen.

Selina edged closer and took stock of her friend. “You must wear more clothing.”

“Oh?”

“Once the sun sets, the temperature could drop to freezing.”

“Really? Freezing?”

“That is what Paolo said. Hoarfrost is common this time of year.”

Paolo was an excellent dragoman, precise and pragmatic. He never exaggerated to inflate his own importance. “I shall bring a cape then.” Flo set aside her travel desk and reached for the garment.

“Charles said we must wear
all
our clothes.” Selina had an impish gleam in her eye. “At the same time.”

“No!”

“I told him you and I should look like snowballs. Snowballs in the desert.” Selina giggled. She was such a jolly soul.

Laughing, Flo pictured the crew rolling them along the shore, coating them like sweet rolls in sand instead of sugar. She patted the divan for Selina to sit next to her. “I’m going to check with
Murray.
” She retrieved the book from the cabinet between her bed and Trout’s, blowing away the fine veil of grit on the cover. Selina put her arm around Flo’s neck, straightening her lace collar.

“It says the thermometer can vary between one hundred twenty in the day and thirty at night. But I believe that’s in the Sahara—”

“Those were Paolo’s words. He says the weather will be chilly tonight and we shall be exposed to it. Apparently the Lewises are living in a tent.”

“I didn’t know.” Flo imagined a soldier’s pup tent, low and insubstantial, made of scratchy Scottish wool the color of dirty drawers.

“Yes, so wear something under your dress and two pairs of stockings. And bring a blanket. Some of the amenities are lacking. They asked that we bring along chairs and carpets.”

“The conditions sound primitive.”

“Charles is worried about dyspepsia. He fears he will have to eat while reclining if there is a shortage of chairs. But he’s eager to see
Mr. Lewis and meet his bride.” Selina twisted her wedding band back and forth, a habit she frequently resorted to when discussing Charles. “I think it will be less like dinner than a hiking trip.”

It might be a lark. Flo loved it when things turned unpredictable.

“I can’t wait to see Mr. Lewis’s paintings and drawings,” Selina continued. “Did I tell you he lived in Spain after his Grand Tour? He published a folio of his Spanish drawings. Marvelous. We have it at home.” Selina rose from the divan and fluffed out her dress.

Trout said, “May I stay here then, mum? I won’t be needed, sounds like.”

Flo and Selina raised eyebrows. “Your services will not be required,” Flo said.

“Thank you, mum. I want to finish these socks. The sand eats holes through them worse than the mice back home.”

“You will remain on board with the captain and crew,” Flo added. “They will serve you whatever they cook for dinner.” Let it be a local dish, she thought. Croquettes of Nile mud. Quail’s feet. Beak of eagle in mashed lentils.

“Yes, mum.”

Selina turned to Flo. “We shall leave in half an hour. Come up when you are ready. Charles will send the men down for the carpets.” She kissed Flo on the cheek. “Bundle up, my dear.”

“I shall.”

Though Flo didn’t have woolen petticoats, high boots, or a muffler, she prepared as best she could. She wore her brown Hollands under the navy wool dress, and her black hooded cloak. In a hatbox, she packed two shawls (one wool, one lace), gloves, and a scarf. She readied a blanket, folding it and placing it at the foot of her bed with her parcels.

• • •

The stone walls of Philae cast long shadows like trenches onto the shore by the time they rounded the northern tip of the island in the late afternoon. From the dahabiyah, they boarded a small felucca with
a single furled lateen sail. Four men took up oars, one with a carpet rolled around his neck like the thick ecclesiastic collar of an exotic sect. The crew placed three folding chairs in the boat bottom and upon them cushions on which the three Europeans knelt or sat. The craft sat low in the water, laden with its cargo of household goods and clothing.

As Flo had learned on their trip up to Nubia, the cataracts of the Nile weren’t waterfalls in the strict sense, but a series of rapids, the result of an upheaval that had split the cliffs alongside, raining down treacherous boulders and slabs of granite that formed broken chains, some jutting straight out of the water, most submerged, detectable only from currents eddying and foaming around them.

As they paddled along between the rocky defiles—the last fragments of the cataracts downstream—Flo observed the sky and shore. Clouds like lambs’ tails dissipated into feathers; the sakias on land creaked as a camel or ox circled around, bringing up bucketfuls of water for irrigation. Nightfall in Egypt was often rapid, the sun a fireball so quickly extinguished at the horizon that she expected to hear it sizzle as it dipped into the river. At other times, orange and purple streamers hung in the sky long after the sun had disappeared. Tonight the dying light changed to a soft, opaline blush, the color of ascensions to heaven and the shriven eyelids of saints. The Nile parted around the boat’s prow like shirred pink silk.

In half an hour, Mahatta came into view, nestled in a cove shaped like a sickle. The crew leaped from the boat and dragged it across the shingle. Disembarking, Flo felt graceless and stiff in her swaddling of clothes. After about a quarter mile, the first habitations appeared, reed and mud huts of traders wayfaring before the tumultuous ride down the cataracts. Farther along, they encountered the stone and brick dwellings of the cataract sheiks, who lived in big, boisterous clans. Flo had met them while they negotiated with Charles to drag the
Parthenope
up the rapids.

Florence liked what she saw and heard as they entered Mahatta—civilization, Nubian-style, with its hallmark sounds and scents—the
thuds and groans of pack animals settling in for the night, the guttural chatter of merchants gathered by open-air fires, cooking spiced lamb or baking bread in clay ovens. She’d always warmed to the bustle of human beings at day’s end. At Embley, the muffled racket of pots, the chirp and hum of servants’ voices before and after supper were calming, palliative. In fact, she preferred them to the decorous volleys at the dining table. In this way, Mahatta reminded her of home. Most important, it was a
living
city. She’d spent the past three weeks among the remains of the long dead, whose culinary clatter and disagreements about seasonings hadn’t been preserved in their scrupulous engravings.

After passing an orderly kitchen garden, they came upon a tent the size of a Hampshire cottage. Its flaps were tautly fastened to the ground, a miniature turret crowning each corner. Though torches illuminated the scene, there was no apparent entrance, and no sentry to announce their arrival.

They stood about, unsure what to do. Efreet-Youssef, always the most accommodating crewman, crawled under the tent face-first on his belly, inching forward like a worm until he disappeared. Flo could hear him announce, “Effendi, Bracebridge Bey! Bracebridge Bey!”

Lifting a flap of the tent and securing it with a red swag, Mr. Lewis strode forth, looking pleased, and welcomed his guests.

Flo could not help staring, so taken was she by Lewis’s demeanor and attire, for the man had gone completely native. He had adopted the costume of an Ottoman vizier—or was it a viceroy?—blue
gubbeh,
white caftan, red turban, and a ragged white beard. Mrs. Lewis, a plain young woman clad in an English frock, stood quietly off to one side, rather like a second wife, Flo thought. She wondered why the wife wore such drabbery while her husband was tricked out like a peacock. For safety? To remind Mr. Lewis that, despite his clothing, he was not an Oriental, but an Englishman playing dressup? Selina, standing alongside, pinched Flo’s arm.
Can you believe it?

Mr. Lewis handed his guests into the tent, where a woman removed Flo’s blanket from her shoulders and folded it assiduously upon a wooden stool. She wore trousers and a veil, both of pink muslin
so transparent that it appeared less like cloth than concentrated infusions of dawn light. Her posture was as studied and impeccable as a dancer’s. Whenever this Rosy Dawn (as Flo decided to dub her) moved, her bracelets, necklaces, and fringes sewn with coins jingled. The effect was hypnotic, the sound of faeries and stardust.

The meal was standard English fare, though how the Lewises managed it, Flo could not imagine and decided not to ask. She did not wish to appear overly impressed.

Mr. Lewis was pleasant and intelligent; Mrs. Lewis remained something of an enigma. Oh, she was recognizable as an English-woman of good breeding (from Hampton, Middlesex, it turned out), but why was she here on the arm of a man more than twice her age? Had her parents shipped her out with the intent of making a match? Why else would she have traveled to Cairo at age eighteen? Had the two met beforehand? Unlikely. Mr. Lewis had not been home for decades. Had she brought a dowry that allowed Mr. Lewis to continue living abroad (and rather luxuriously), or had it been a case of love? At moments like this, Flo felt like a child too young to play a game with complicated rules, and also like a spinster so old that she’d forgotten the arcana of marriage. Clearly, she should be grateful that Fanny and WEN had not packed her off to some forsaken corner of the world! Oh, they wouldn’t have dared. Finally, she tried to imagine what Gustave would make of their hosts. Would he think Mrs. Lewis a craven seeker after security? Or a young woman who’d fallen under the spell of an older man? Flo knew the truth lay outside these pat melodramas, neither of which approached how Mrs. Lewis must
feel
so far from home, living in a tent on the Nile! And that is what Flo most wished to know: Mrs. Lewis’s
heart
.

Servants laid the borrowed carpets upon the packed earthen floor and seated the three English in chairs. (No dyspepsia for Charles after all.) The dining table was a round brass platter balanced on collapsible wooden legs, with barely enough room for plates and cutlery. Rosy Dawn passed trays and poured wine from a tall ewer.

After the food was served, Flo asked, “What convinced you to
move house from Cairo to Mahatta?” The sound of her own chewing (a piece of mutton) naturally muffled the sounds around her, but after she had swallowed, she immediately sensed from the continuing silence that everyone else knew the answer to this question. Also, that it might have been rude to ask it.

Charles started to answer, but Mr. Lewis held up his hand, patriarch-like, indicating he would entertain the query, no matter how touchy or tasteless. His robes hung down from his wrist in biblical blue and white scallops. “My dear Miss Nightingale, how kind of you to ask.” He placed his fork on the table. A lengthy reply? Loss of appetite? Everyone stopped eating.

Across the table, Flo saw that the color had drained from Mrs. Lewis’s face. Selina, sitting next to Flo, fidgeted.

Mr. Lewis sighed as he blotted his purplish lips within the fleece of his beard. “Our neighbor in Cairo, Rifat Pasha, wished to buy our property to expand his garden.”

“He wanted to plant trees,” Mrs. Lewis added in a monotone. “Almond trees.”

“Almond trees!” Charles repeated with enthusiasm. “Lovely,
lovely.
Lovely blossoms. Lovely aroma.” He fell silent, his voice petering out. He looked at Flo helplessly. Had he also not heard the story or forgotten it?

Mrs. Lewis sniffled, withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve, and dabbed at her nose.

Selina said, “Perhaps I should have told Miss Nightingale about your mishap.”

Flo felt her cheeks turning pink. Mrs. Lewis nodded and continued to hold the handkerchief in place, as though a nosebleed were pending.

“When we refused to sell,” Mr. Lewis resumed, “our neighbor finished his demitasse of Turkish coffee, went home, and sent his slave to burn our house down that afternoon. That is the method of purchase in Egypt. My dear bride lost everything she had shipped out from England.”

“How awful for you and Mrs. Lewis,” Flo said. “I am sorry to inject the memory of it into our meal. I didn’t know.” She couldn’t help thinking that Mr. Lewis’s regal garments carried no clout in Cairo. It seemed plausible that his neighbor considered Mr. Lewis an arrogant interloper or an imposter. Perhaps Mr. Lewis should have offered compensation—baksheesh of a kind—in lieu of a sale. After ten years in Egypt, could he be ignorant of the customs? Or did he know, and object to them on principle?

“A terrible loss of property,” continued Mr. Lewis. “My wife’s piano, plate and crystal, her furniture.” He shook his head. “Family items she had hoped to pass on to the next generation.”

Mrs. Lewis blew her nose as proof of the depth of her loss. Rosy Dawn approached and handed her a fresh damask napkin, then returned to her shadowy corner. Charles, seated next to Mrs. Lewis, patted her hand.

“At least no one was harmed,” Mr. Lewis said. He beckoned to Rosy Dawn to refill his wineglass. “Except the slave responsible for the fire. Several people witnessed him setting the blaze. Rifat Pasha administered a severe bastinado for his lack of stealth.” Mr. Lewis laughed and helped himself to a potato.

“So we heard,” Mrs. Lewis said, smiling. Evidently she appreciated her husband’s humor in the midst of her sadness. Flo didn’t know why, but she was taking a dislike to the woman, though in the next instant she wondered if this judgment might simply be the result of her own general bad mood Abruptly she wished she were dining with Gustave and Max. The impact of this realization made her sigh aloud.

Looking freshly alarmed, Charles turned back to Mr. Lewis. “What about your work, the watercolors and sketches?”