The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 17

Rossignol

She folded the note in half and handed it to Joseph.

She decided to wander around the colorful quarters of the harbor before returning to the houseboat. As when she rode a donkey, Youssef trotted in semicircles around her, persistent as a housefly, a man determined to be in two places at once. In the midst of his flurry, she could walk unhampered by tradesmen and beggars. They pa.s.sed all manner of shops-a local pottery; a dark, narrow booth beneath a palm-leaf canopy vending oil, olives, and dried herbs; a bakery; a saddlery.

As she made her way through the glare and dust, she noted a warm sensation in her belly and, with alarm, felt it spread into her face and limbs-the beginning of an attack of nerves. These episodes inevitably caught her off guard, as if her body knew something her brain had not yet realized. Today's anxiety, she guessed, was a measure of how eagerly she was antic.i.p.ating the trip to Koseir, and how much she dreaded its going by the wayside.

Her hands and knees beginning to shake, she tried to quicken her step lest the nervousness escalate. Her head felt light, as if it might detach from her body and float off, like a soap bubble. She stopped to collect herself, looking for something to lean upon. There was nothing but Youssef. In Egypt, everyone sat upon the ground. She bent forward into her own shade, clutching his arm.

"Madami, madami," he whispered, looking terrified.

It was h.e.l.lish to have a mind divorced from her will, a mind that in a frantic instant leaped from ember to consuming flame, from a singular concern to every worry at once. She had never told anyone about this affliction (or was it merely another character flaw?)-it would sound insane. At home, she took refuge in the bedroom and locked Parthe out. In Egypt, however, there was nowhere to hide to regain composure. Suddenly it felt to her that not just Koseir was at stake, but also the rest of her life. When the trip ended in five months, she'd be trapped again in the bosom of her suffocating family.

Her face was burning now, her head abuzz. The battle would resume, with endless arguments over her appet.i.te for government reports, her desire to learn statistics, her unseemly projects. Every single thing she wished to do made Parthe sick and f.a.n.n.y scream and slam doors and throw cus.h.i.+ons to the floor. Even WEN would desert her-good, mild WEN!-because she was monstrous. It was hopeless, utterly hopeless. She had no future at all.

Oh, but there was one light on the horizon-Kaiserswerth, near Cologne, which she planned to visit on the way home. For years, Baron Bunsen had kept her abreast of this inst.i.tute of deaconesses, the only Protestant equivalent to a convent. Two years ago, he'd arranged a weeklong sojourn for her. f.a.n.n.y had given her grudging permission. As far as she knew, Flo's visit was merely a side trip from a family jaunt to Carlsbad, where WEN would consult an eye specialist. When, at the last moment, f.a.n.n.y canceled both trips, Flo became despondent, saying she wished to die, but careful not to reveal to her mother the source of her distress in case another chance for Kaiserswerth arose in the future. And now it had, though she'd not allowed herself to fantasize about it in any detail in case her hopes were shattered again.

Youssef looked frozen in place, afraid to move. For she had touched him-which was strictly taboo under Mahometan law-and he, in return, was touching her. If anything befell her, he would pay the penalty, perhaps with his life. She looked up, offering a thin little smile that did nothing to rea.s.sure him. Sweat acc.u.mulated in the furrows of his brow. His face had gone ashen.

"I am all right," she said. She straightened up and left off gripping him. Certainly he would not wish to be seen with her holding his arm!

"Madami?"

"We shall go now." She adjusted her bonnet, and tugged both cuffs over her wrists. She felt wretched.

"You are safe with me, madami."

"Yes. Merci beaucoup." The very sky felt oppressive, a pitiless blue, devoid of a single puff. Daylight on the Nile was as startling as the flare of a match, and as revealing.

He extended his forearm to her as if they were going into a formal dinner. She gladly took it. Thus they promenaded slowly down the beach. Please G.o.d, she thought, let Charles and Selina not be above-decks to see how rattled I am. She slowed her pace, nearly creeping, her feet so heavy her shoes might have been filled with sand. Despite this caution, the panic was unabated.

Trembling, she continued stiffly down the beach.

When she was younger, she'd tried simply to bury her disappointments. Then, too, she had suffered physically-the same breathless panic, weeping so strenuous that it left her exhausted and speechless. In her twenties, it occurred to her it might be better to cling to her losses, to cherish them like relics. Wasn't that the purpose of history? To remember triumphs and defeats? And if she didn't have any triumphs, shouldn't she catalog the losses? When f.a.n.n.y canceled the first Kaiserswerth trip, a new tactic had occurred to her: deceit. At twenty-eight, she'd taken up outright lying. It was so simple-she would tell f.a.n.n.y about Kaiserswerth, but only after she had done it. She'd conspired with the Bracebridges before they left for Egypt. Charles and Selina wouldn't flaunt defying f.a.n.n.y, but f.a.n.n.y would be far away in England while they toured Europe. "We shan't be lying," Selina had told Charles at Flo's prompting, "so much as not paying attention to Flo's daily doings." Since then, Flo had pondered Kaiserswerth the way one ponders a sliver of light under a door one dares not open-yet.

The voices of children had replaced the low mutter of tradesmen. She turned to see youngsters naked in the river noisily splas.h.i.+ng, hacking at the water with their elbows so that it broke apart in great liquid slabs. At her side, still supporting her arm, she felt Youssef's presence, the bodily solace of it. He stared ahead with a cool formality, his movements graceful, his robes fluttering in a steady ripple just above the sand. The surf crashed, then crashed again. They pa.s.sed tea and water vendors.

Back in the days when the sisters discussed such private matters-before Flo turned Richard down, thus das.h.i.+ng Parthe's hopes of floating through life like a feather on her bonnet-Parthe had tried to lift her from her funks. Out of love, for if there was one certainty in Flo's life it was that Parthe loved her without limit, a love so overwhelming that it mystified Flo. It was dutiful, to be sure, an unchanging affection based on blood. But it never wavered, even when Flo behaved badly, ungratefully. Did Parthe depend on Flo as a cure for her own loneliness? Was it jealousy turned inside out? Parthe herself was unable to elaborate on the subject, and no one held her accountable for her actions. Flo loved Parthe and at the same time considered her completely exasperating. One might as well be vexed at a puppy.

They were walking more smoothly now. A light breeze swept the sh.o.r.e. Flo glanced back at the chain of footprints on the sand; it hardly seemed possible she had placed her feet there. Her legs felt remote, disconnected. Beside her, Youssef breathed calmly. She turned to him and smiled. He cast his eyes down, too modest, she thought, to acknowledge her grat.i.tude. He stopped and gently withdrew his forearm from her hand, removed a clay jar from his pack, and offered her a drink of water. She had the sudden urge to embrace him, to clasp him to her breast. He might allow her to hold him, rigidly, not knowing what else to do, while she wept freely, luxuriantly, without the need or expectation of understanding.

She took the jar from his hand and drank. The water was cool, and smelled like the garden at home in early morning, the scent of dew on soil. He watched, pleased, as she swallowed.

He pointed down the beach toward the dahabiyah, as if to warn of its proximity. She nodded. "Merci. You are a good man." He smiled shyly and offered his arm again. She took it, at ease in their newfound sympathy.

The houseboat was seesawing gently in the shallow water. Aside from the captain lounging near the brazier, paring his nails, it seemed deserted. In the middle of the afternoon everyone was asleep or resting.

She curtsied her thanks to Youssef and quietly went belowdecks, still wis.h.i.+ng to cry and exhausted from not allowing herself to. Her throat ached as if she had swallowed an apple whole. Trout was asleep, her needlework in a pile on the floor beside her bed.

Lowering herself on the divan, she stared at her small hands.

Twice in the past two years she believed she'd found a way to pursue G.o.d's calling-two crippling disappointments in her cabinet of relics, both set in motion by kind men trying to help.

The first was Dr. Fowler, a family friend who ran the Salisbury Infirmary. They had become confidants, discussing the latest medical treatments, from bandages and surgical procedures to homeopathy. While they ambled through the park among the giant rhododendrons, she explained how one could convert Embley into a hospital. She'd thought of everything, from how to dispose of the sewage to installing dumbwaiters to reduce the time orderlies spent on the stairs delivering meals.

Miraculously, Dr. Fowler found nothing repellent in her ideas, and invited her to work alongside him, tending patients, writing their letters, managing supplies. For the first time in her life, she had a plan with a sponsor. But after three screaming debacles in as many days, f.a.n.n.y crushed it. Flo's aspirations, she said, were so unappetizing as to const.i.tute a blemish on the family's name. Only slatterns and opium smokers, tipplers and laudanum addicts hung about hospitals. She banished Dr. Fowler from the house. Flo went to bed for a week.

Dr. Samuel Howe, world famous for his work in America with the blind and deaf, set the second crisis in motion. After several afternoons of talking, he suggested that she, too, devote herself to the handicapped. Of course, he lamented, no formal curriculum existed for such work. He recommended nursing. No, that was not his word. What was it? Caretaking? A caretaking career? She could not recall.

She had plunged into the subject up to her neck, reading government blue books on the education of the deaf and blind in Europe and Canada. And then-she could still remember the s.h.i.+ver of excitement as she wrote the letter-she arranged to visit a boys' academy for the deaf while in Rome with Selina and Charles. She had barely slept the night before her appointment. But when she arrived, clear-eyed and articulate, immaculately garbed in a modish lavender bodice and skirt, the headmaster denied her entrance. He had thought Florence was a man's name. Undeterred, the next day she returned with Charles, who conspired to pa.s.s her off as his personal secretary. Or had he said "a.s.sistant"? Or was it "attendant"? Charles had pulled himself up to his full height, spewing his best flourishes in Italian to no avail. The headmaster, a self-righteous Benedictine, proudly informed them that no woman had ever set foot in the inst.i.tution. Her presence, he observed in a tone suggesting she had offered to perform the dance of the seven veils, would have a deleterious effect on the boys. Devastated, she had returned to the hotel and retired for the rest of the day. That evening, she gave the purple dress to Mariette. She would no longer be a public embellishment. She wished to work, not brighten a dim room.

When she returned from Italy, she found Parthe, whose health had always been delicate, a confirmed invalid. This was the height of what the blood mob dubbed "the Parthe situation," of which Flo was believed to be the root cause. The doctor declared it a case of hysteria and predicted that Parthe would never thrive without her sister's steady companions.h.i.+p. f.a.n.n.y immediately ordered Flo to devote the next six months to Parthe. What had she written in Lavie? "I feel myself peris.h.i.+ng when I go to bed. I wish it were my grave." She obeyed f.a.n.n.y, staying home with Parthe even though she found her sister's debilitation a frightening harbinger of her own future. Parthe worsened anyway, suffering a complete collapse within three months. When the Bracebridges intervened with the invitation to Egypt, f.a.n.n.y had reluctantly agreed. Though the Bracebridges were rather reclusive, they knew important people. In Italy they had introduced Flo to the Herberts, a couple powerful in government circles. People had talked about Sidney Herbert being a prospect for prime minister from the time he reached his majority. f.a.n.n.y probably considered Egypt a potential matchmaking excursion. In any case, all her attention was focused on Parthe.

The aromas of food preparation tinged the air, the piquancy of raw chopped onions, the charred odor of the brazier heating up.

As Flo prepared herself for dinner, she spotted a letter at the foot of her bed, and on top of it, artfully arranged, a twig with two supple green leaves-a gift, no doubt, from Youssef, who could enter and leave a room without displacing a molecule.

5 p.m., Tuesday My dear Rossignol, We have found an ally, a Christian gentleman who will help present our brief for the Koseir trip. Do not fret. Max and I and our new friend will be persuasive. All you will have to do is smile and keep Trout topside.

Yours until tomorrow at 7:30,

Gve.

What impressed her most about Gustave was his liveliness. And now he would put it to use to help her sway Selina and Charles and, most especially, Trout!

But what if Trout exerted her will? What rights did a servant have? At home, she was free to quit. Oddly, when f.a.n.n.y hired her, Trout had set two conditions of employment, neither of which suggested that she would be put off by the hards.h.i.+ps of travel. The first was her preference for the filthiest, most arduous jobs-blacking the grates, scrubbing the flags on the stoop, polis.h.i.+ng boots. While other maids took a bashful pride in their feminine limitations, Trout had the unself-conscious bearing of a draft animal as she moved trunks and furniture about the house. The second condition was a special curfew. Without providing a reason, she had asked permission to come home at ten instead of nine in the evening.

The real question, Flo knew, was this: how deep was Trout's loyalty? Flo thought she had ingratiated herself to a degree during the toothache ordeal, but the threat remained that even if Charles and Selina agreed to the caravan, Trout might not.

17.

PeRE ISSA.

Flo hated the thought of conspiring against the Bracebridges, especially as they were willing to conspire with her for the upcoming Kaiserswerth visit. Nevertheless, she pondered her strategy all day. Though loving, permissive, and endearingly absentminded, Charles and Selina bore in loco parentis the responsibility for her safety. This was no mere formality: they would require a.s.surances about the trip that she, Gustave, and Max would have to provide. The discussion must be unfettered, logical as a clock. Her only chance for success was to dull with the semblance of rationality an enterprise that in truth glittered like a jeweled dagger with the perils of the unknown.

Selina in particular knew the strength of Flo's determination, though she had never tested it. After dinner, she surprised Flo by expressing her reservations. Trout had gone to retrieve her needlework, and Charles to fetch his brandy, leaving the two women alone on deck as they waited for the Frenchmen.

"I cannot help worrying that there will be many opportunities for mishaps," Selina said, unfastening the catch on the mosaic bar pin she'd bought in Rome the year before. "It's crooked," she explained, stabbing the pin afresh into one side of her collar.

Flo was about to reply when Selina hurried on. "Oh, I trust M. Flaubert implicitly. It is the wilderness that concerns me."

"But you read the guidebook, didn't you?" Flo had pressed it into Selina's hands that morning.

"Yes, Sweet, I did-"

"Then you know that our own military use the route our caravan will take. As do diplomats and missionaries."

"Certainly, Flo. I read it all." Selina worked the pin back and forth at her throat, attempting to level it.

"I'm only saying that if missionaries use it, surely the route is safe." Flo folded her hands and wove her fingers together until they whitened. She feared no eventualities except being denied permission to go or, to a lesser degree, offending her dear friends.

"There!" Selina announced. "Is it straight now?"

Flo appraised the long, narrow brooch. Pliny's doves, encircled in black, held between them a blue garland of flowers. "It is."

Selina poured herself a gla.s.s of orange-flavored sugar water. "Something to drink, dear?"

Flo shook her head.

"As I understand it," Selina went on, "it is not the preferred pa.s.sage. Too rugged, I believe." She sat down at the table. "And I saw no mention of families taking it out to India." Avoiding Flo's eye, she stared at the liquid in her gla.s.s.

Surely this was a bad sign. For the first time Selina was clearly discomfited by Flo's intensity. They had never argued, never adamantly taken sides about anything. Selina had never been flint or fuel for Flo's fire but always the snuffer, the damper, the cool ration of water.

"Yes, but the caravan route is shorter and quicker," Flo said. Was that actually true? What was short was the description of it in Murray- just a page, not counting the list of landmarks. In fact, Murray, wis.h.i.+ng to sell guidebooks, rarely sounded a note of alarm. A traveler would be hard-pressed to find mention of death or danger, save for ubiquitous warnings about the importance of respecting the honor and independence of Bedouins. As for the terrain, it was always "majestic." Treacherous ravines and steep defiles became "echoing choirs for travelers who would give voice to their desert delight."

Selina fussed with the damask tablecloth, tugging it over the corners of the wobbly table. "Flo, dear, I have no wish to argue. You know I have only your welfare at heart."

An infuriating tear made its way down Flo's cheek. "I'm counting on this trip, Selina, really I am." Dabbing at her nose with a monogrammed linen handkerchief withdrawn from her sleeve, she lowered herself into one of the chairs. "It may be arduous, but I am equal to it. I'm sure I am."

Charles had emerged from his cabin by now and stood at the stern, chatting with Paolo. Flo could hear the two reminiscing again about Greece. Twice Paolo had been Charles's cicerone in Greece, so that, though Paolo was, in fact, from Malta, to Charles, he was Greece. Surely, Charles missed his club in London-the smoky, tweedy, liquor-tinged press of other h.e.l.lenophiles who wors.h.i.+pped at the altar of the Golden Age. Indeed, some (though not Charles) had joined the battle for Greek independence as young men.

Selina took Flo's hand. "I just want you to be safe."

"Is Charles so worried, too?"

Selina lowered her voice to a near-whisper. "I'm not certain. I haven't raised the issue with him. I didn't want to draw his attention to it."

Flo sometimes forgot how clever Selina was, her jackdaw intellect cloaked in a fabric of pleasantries, smiles, and melodic speech. She and Charles loved each other more than any couple Flo knew, but that didn't stop Selina from leading Charles around to her point of view like a bull with a nose ring. Brava, Selina!

"In any case, I doubt he's given it much thought since you first mentioned it." Selina tried to straighten the well-used tablecloth with the heel of her hand, Sisyphus clearing dust from the path of his rock.

"Perhaps he's more concerned about the company I'm keeping. My honor and all that." She regretted it instantly. Why could she not keep a civil tongue?

Selina shook her head, looking pained. "That's hardly fair, Flo, and you know it." She let go of Flo's hand, leaned back in her chair. "Charles adores you. And he trusts your judgment as much as I do."

"I'm sorry, Selina. I'm just so eager for this trip." It was true: she didn't doubt Charles's loving regard. But it was infuriating to have her fate rest even in his benevolent hands. "You know how much I cherish you both." Selina looked away from her. Was she reluctant to convey bad news? "Has he said anything at all about the trip?"

A breeze stirred, lifting the hair off Selina's forehead.

"I believe he'll want to know what your plans are. You know Charles-he thinks in terms of schedules and tactics." Selina paused, her face full of pleasure. "My quartermaster. Wonderful trait in a husband, to be so practical."

Indeed. Where would they be without Charles's zest for organizing? It was Charles who insisted on lugging supplies from home. Without his foresight and insistence, they would have had no jams, no milled soaps and hairdressings, no laudanum, lye, oatmeal, or cocoa. Without gregarious, calendar-crazed Charles, there would have been no afternoon teas with consular agents, no lunches with delegates, no picnics with slave-mongering wives of watercolorists on remote islands. Left to Flo, they would not have met a single Englishman during the two-thousand-mile journey on the Nile. And would such isolation really have been wise or advisable? Not all the meetings had been boring; not every English tourist was an insensitive dolt.

How easy it was to complain about a thing when one had no shortage of it. f.a.n.n.y was right: sometimes Flo was a selfish brat no better than Marian Lewis. Worse-a brat on the outside; on the inside, a monster. And forever at war with herself.

"Don't fret, Sweet," said Selina. "Let us see how things unfold. Just let people speak their minds. Have faith, dear Flo."

If only Selina knew! Flo had faith enough for a dozen women, one for each year since G.o.d had so decisively if mysteriously put her under His thumb. How could she tell Selina that she not only wanted what she wanted, but also what G.o.d wanted for her.

Selina cupped Flo's chin. "You shall be happy, I know it. We both wish it more than anything."

There was movement on the beach, four men ambling toward the houseboat. In the uncanny pink light of dusk, their footprints were steeped in violet shadows and the Nile stilled to a vast deposit of jade. No such hue ever bathed the lawns or beaches of England.

Joseph led the way, followed by a stranger wearing a dazzling white gubbeh and tarboosh. Gustave and Max, for their parts, were dressed, ridiculously, a la Nizam- like Egyptian infantrymen-in baggy pants with tall boots, wide belts, and scarlet jackets.

The mere sight of their costumes lightened Flo's mood. It struck her then that she was not simply drawn to Gustave; she was also drawn to herself as she might be in his company, to the freedom he elicited in her, his wildness perhaps unleas.h.i.+ng its equivalent in her. She, too, might dress outrageously, pull pranks, tell jokes. He more than tolerated her moodiness; he embraced it. Little wonder that she burned to go to Koseir! Not so much for the place or the adventure as for a different self, a Florence driven not by selfishness or monstrosity, but by the simple prospect of joy.

Charles hailed the quartet and, with Paolo, handed them aboard. Introductions followed, cemented with handshakes, curtsies, the brus.h.i.+ng of lips on hands. Max, Charles, and the stranger laid on courtesies and compliments in a thick impasto, tossing out verbal flourishes like bandalores in a game of "around the world." Flo envisioned herself and Gustave parodying them later. They would bow to each other and knock heads, melt to the floor laughing, pleased with their private whimsy.

The stranger, Pere Issa, was a Christian from Bethlehem who served as the French consular agent in Kenneh. A tall, immaculate man of indeterminate race with olive skin and green eyes, he wore a gold hoop in his ear, like a storybook pirate. Flo was struck by his long, slender fingers and glossy, almond-shaped nails. Overall, he cut the elegant figure of a man who had just emerged clean and pleasantly scented from a Turkish bath. Yet, for all this splendor, he was the farthest thing from an English gentleman she could imagine. The word exotic jumped to mind. Alluringly foreign.

But what was that at the end of the pinky finger of his right (but not his left) hand? A tapered fingernail grown beyond all utility flitted about him like a winged insect as he gesticulated. A weapon? Decoration? Mark of rank? She scrupulously avoided staring, but there it was, again and again, nearly two inches long. Following her covert gaze to the weird appendage, Gustave nodded, ever so slightly. Yes, I see it, too.

Selina welcomed everyone to the table, and Efreet-Youssef, always at the ready, pulled out chairs for each guest in turn, then blended into a nearby shadow. Charles poured two fingers of brandy from his crystal decanter for the men, while Selina and Flo took sugared water. Appearing on deck, Trout waved away the offer of a beverage before installing herself decisively in a chair several paces behind Selina, where she proceeded to count out crochet st.i.tches.

"Ah, my dear Madame Trout, allow me to introduce to you Pere Issa, our distinguished guest," Gustave said, his voice a rich tapestry of regard, the words plumped in gold. Paolo translated perfectly.

Forty-two doubles and turn work, Flo heard her mutter. Would Trout stop crocheting? Finally, she rose with a little sigh and set her bundle on the chair. "How do you do, Mr. Issa."

"Enchante." Following the French custom, the consul reached for her hand, which was not offered. Trout retreated a step. "I beg your pardon, sir. I do not parlay-voo."

Rebuffed but still smiling, Pere Issa bowed to Trout, then returned to his hosts.

Trout coiled yarn around her index finger and resumed her place behind Selina.

"We are gathered to discuss the excursion I spoke of last week," Flo told her maid. She had mentioned Koseir in pa.s.sing, only to stress that Trout would be going, for when given the option, Trout preferred to remain on the boat. There had been so many side trips to tombs, temples, bazaars, and ruins that Trout had stopped asking for details, and Flo had ceased providing them.