The Sacred River

by Wendy Wallace

  Fifty yards or more out into the river, Fouad clicked his tongue and nodded his head toward the shore. Harriet followed the direction of his eyes. Eyre Soane was walking in the direction of the Luxor Hotel, his paintbox under his arm. His step reminded Harriet of the way he’d approached their table on the steamer. Then it had been Louisa who was the object of his purpose. Now it was herself. She still didn’t know what that purpose was.

  Harriet had thought once that she wanted more than anything to be painted by Mr. Soane. It was hard to admit to herself that she wasn’t enjoying it. She watched as he dropped his cigar in the dust, ground it out with his heel, then walked through the gate. She’d left a note in the gazebo apologizing for her absence and assuring him that she would be there the following day.

  Harriet looked again at what she had copied onto the paper. A sickle shape, an oar, the sign for the sound kh, and the name of the god Osiris, giver of breath, followed by a flag, the sign of a male god, and something like a sword that made the sound ahk, and meant great. Then the feather of Maat, that for Harriet stood for Aunt Yael but for the ancient Egyptians meant order and balance and rightness of all kinds.

  Suddenly, the signs fell into place. Harriet let out a shout of pleasure and the tapping from farther down the passage ceased as Dr. Woolfe came hurrying to where she worked.

  “Miss Heron? Are you—”

  “Look!” She pointed at the hieroglyphs. “This means Her voice has been justified before Osiris, the great god. Or at least I think it does.”

  “That is most helpful,” Dr. Woolfe said, examining her drawings. “In fact, it is marvelous.”

  He smiled at her, then went back to his station by the blocked entrance and for some time they worked in silence.

  “How is your mother?” he called through the darkness.

  “Well, thank you.”

  Louisa hadn’t been herself for days but she wasn’t ill in the way one could describe to another person. She had taken to haunting the garden, veiled against the sun, shaded by her parasol, her hands hidden in white gloves. At lunchtime, when Harriet met her in the hotel dining room after the sittings, she was anxious, her appetite poor. She was still urging that they leave for Alexandria, and then London.

  “I wondered . . .” came Dr. Woolfe’s voice in the darkness. “That is, I thought . . . Will you join me for dinner on Friday evening, Miss Heron? With your mother, of course.”

  “I would like to, Dr. Woolfe, but I can’t.” In the silence that followed, Harriet added an explanation. “Mr. Soane is holding a dinner party.”

  “Ach, I see. Yes, I do see.” The tapping resumed.

  “I am certain he would be pleased to see you there, Dr. Woolfe, at the dinner.”

  “How are you certain, Fräulein?” he called over the hammering.

  “Well, I would be glad if you attended,” she called back. “I know that.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Yael sat in the front pew at St. Mark’s. She attended the weekly service regularly, opening the clinic late that day. The women understood that it was her holy day. On Sundays, the crowd around the little door did not begin to gather until midday. Today she might be later than that in arriving. The women would still be there. They had a talent for patience.

  After the service, Yael waited until every member of the congregation had departed. She removed her spectacles and rubbed the lenses on her handkerchief before returning them to her nose. It was as she suspected. Ernest Griffinshawe looked tired. His shoes were dusty and his surplice gray. He had lost weight since the days when he conducted divine service on the Star of the East. The man needed a shave and a haircut, she noted with satisfaction.

  He hadn’t seen her, sitting on in the empty church. People didn’t see Yael. She had come to understand it as one of God’s blessings. And it was because he hadn’t seen her that when she called out his name, he jumped and let out a startled cry.

  “I am so very sorry,” Yael said, rising from the pew and walking toward him, peering at him through the glasses just as if she had not been observing him closely throughout the service and after it. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

  “It is you, Miss Heron,” he said.

  “Yes. It is me. Reverend . . .” Yael paused, as if what she was about to say was the source of some difficulty.

  “Well?”

  “Reverend, I am, despite my years and spinsterhood, a member of the female sex.”

  The Reverend looked alarmed, as if he might be about to contradict her.

  “And,” Yael continued, “as is well known, women are prone to changing their minds.”

  Ernest Griffinshawe looked at her with doubt in his eyes. “About what have you changed your mind?”

  Yael sighed.

  “You had the notion some time ago that an Englishwoman could train your cook, your maid, to do things in the way they’re done at home. Of course, having run my dear father’s house for many years, I am accustomed to such duties. I well understand the inconvenience of poor housekeeping.”

  Yael paused and looked up at him, her eyes fastening on the grubby surplice, traveling down to the dusty footwear, in which, she saw, string had taken the place of shoelaces.

  “And, Miss Heron?” said the Reverend, sounding hopeful.

  “I believe that I could find the time, on two afternoons a week, to make a contribution to the smooth running of your household.”

  Reverend Griffinshawe beamed.

  “Could you, Miss Heron?”

  “I could, Reverend. Or rather, I would.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes.” Yael paused again, blinked, and looked around the church, assuming her vaguest expression. “If you would be so kind, Reverend, as to do something for me.”

  Reverend Griffinshawe’s voice took on a more guarded tone. “What might that be, Miss Heron?”

  Yael cleared her throat and spoke in a businesslike manner, looking the Reverend straight in the eye. “My families need food. I need money to purchase it for them. I will oversee your household affairs, if you will launch a weekly collection among your congregation to feed the hungry children of this city.”

  Reverend Griffinshawe paused only briefly. “Done, Miss Heron.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  A hum of voices was coming from the bar off the lobby. The day had been hot and the heat still lingered; it was 112 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the thermometer on the wall in the hotel lobby. The talk ceased as Harriet and Louisa walked in. All the other guests were already present. The Simpsons; the Misses Fleury, two English sisters who were staying at the hotel while they waited for a paddle steamer to carry them back down the river to Cairo; elderly Mrs. Treadwell, who had a home in Luxor and believed herself in a previous incarnation to have been one of the wives of a great pharaoh; and Dr. Woolfe, who was standing next to Jim Simpson. Harriet smiled at him and he nodded, his eyes lingering on her. She was wearing a tea dress in a deep poppy color and had pinned a marigold in her hair, dabbed on some of the scent Louisa had given her for Christmas.

  “Good evening, Miss Heron.” Eyre Soane’s eyes flicked over Harriet’s costume before fastening on Louisa. “And Mrs. Heron,” he said, making an exaggerated bow. “Delighted that you could join us.”

  He and Jim Simpson both wore dark jackets over their white shirts; Effie Simpson wore a gown of pink silk, her breasts raised out of the bodice like two white apples. The Fleury sisters, their faces powdered white, were in evening dresses, limp satins that looked as if they’d expired from the heat.

  The sisters began conversing about the warmth of the day, the certainty of hotter weather to come, their relief that they would be departing shortly for cooler climes. Harriet stole a look at Dr. Woolfe. He appeared ill at ease, his hair still damp from washing, his white shirt crisply ironed, and a glass in his hand in place of a trowel.

  As s
he began to detach herself from the sisters, to go to greet him, Monsieur Andreas emerged from behind the bar with a napkin over one arm. Monsieur Andreas had been busy all day, in and out of the kitchens at the back of the hotel, calling instructions in a mixture of French and Arabic, sending the boy who cleaned the shoes on errands to the market. He bowed to Louisa, then clapped his hands in the air in a triumphant gesture.

  “Messieurs-dames. Dinner is served. Please be seated.”

  Dr. Woolfe offered his arm to Mrs. Treadwell, helping her rise from her chair, and the guests made their way into the dining room. Several tables had been pushed together to make one long one, covered with a white cloth, laid with silver that shone by the light of many candles. The pink roses from the garden had been cut and were set in a glass vase in the center of the table. The Fleury sisters insisted in turn on bending their noses to the open blooms.

  “You simply must smell them, Mrs. Heron,” said Annette Fleury, the younger woman. “The scent takes you straight back to England.”

  She lifted the little vase and held it under Louisa’s nose. Louisa sniffed deeply.

  “They have no scent,” she said, handing back the vase.

  She turned away, tugging up her gloves toward her elbows, smoothing the dark satin against her forearms. Harriet felt worried about her. Earlier, she’d sat on the bed watching as Louisa prepared herself for the evening. Louisa lifted sections of hair, tore through them with the teeth of the comb without her usual care, then pinned the thick coils in the chignon at the back of her head. It was a ritual Harriet had watched for as long as she could remember; Louisa had always prided herself on being able to dress her own hair better than any maid could do it.

  “Are you sure you wish to attend this charade?” Louisa asked, looking at her in the mirror, a couple of hairpins between her lips.

  “What do you have against Mr. Soane?”

  “I have told you before, Harriet, that he isn’t a suitable acquaintance.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Louisa shook her head, secured another coil of hair, her eyes fixed on her own face in the mirror. “I am your mother, Harriet.”

  Louisa was her mother, but not in the way she always had been. Harriet was beginning to feel as if it was Louisa who needed looking after. Walking behind her as they made their way along the landing, she noticed that Louisa’s chignon was lopsided, the coils looser on one side than the other. It made Harriet feel oddly lopsided herself.

  Miss Fleury proffered the vase of roses to Dr. Woolfe, who sniffed at it politely and agreed that he believed he could perhaps detect some fragrance. He was seated too far away from Harriet for her to be able to speak to him. Eyre Soane had seized the neck of the bottle that Monsieur Andreas had placed in the silver bottle holder and was making his way around the table, splashing red wine into glasses.

  “Eat, drink, and be merry,” he said as Miss Hannah Fleury covered her wineglass with her hand.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “Really, Mr. Soane, I couldn’t.”

  Mr. Simpson stood up and cleared his throat. He made a solemn toast to the Queen and the guests raised their glasses to their lips, then began to eat. The first course was chicken liver pâté, smooth and peppery, served with the flat brown local bread, toasted and cut into triangles.

  Harriet took a sip of dark wine. Eyre Soane was sitting at the head of the table, from where he could see all the diners. At the opposite end of the table, Dr. Woolfe was engaged in conversation with Miss Annette Fleury, although perhaps conversation didn’t describe it, Harriet thought, since Miss Fleury appeared to be doing all the talking.

  “We shot the fellow. Did Eyre tell you?”

  Harriet looked across the table at Jim Simpson. For a moment, she couldn’t think what he meant.

  “No?”

  “Been after him all this time. Then yesterday, we found him lazing on the bank, bold as you like. A monster. Fifteen feet long, I’d say. Hit the fellow right between the eyes.”

  “Oh.” Harriet swallowed a mouthful of toast. Jim Simpson and Effie had been making expeditions with the crew on the dahabeah, farther upriver, while Eyre Soane stayed behind to paint her. She wondered whether the pâté might be made from the tail of a crocodile. It was a delicacy, according to Champollion. But he was a Frenchman. They ate all manner of strange things.

  “The ancient Egyptians considered crocodiles sacred,” she said.

  “Blasted thing slid back into the water before the Abdullahs could get a rope around it.”

  “Not even dead, Mr. Simpson?” Louisa’s voice was high. “Only wounded? That really is unforgivable.”

  “There’s no knowing if it was dead or otherwise, dear lady,” Mr. Simpson said. “It got itself down the bank and vanished. Only a cloud of blood left behind in the water.”

  Harriet put down the silver fork. Its tines were bent, almost touching at their tips, like a mouthful of crooked teeth. She’d lost her appetite for pâté.

  “Didn’t you have time to get dressed?” Effie Simpson, sitting to her right, was scrutinizing her with a look of discontent.

  “I did get dressed, Mrs. Simpson.”

  “I feel sorry for him.”

  “For whom?”

  “He’s gone to all this trouble to make a party for you and you arrive late. Don’t even make an effort.”

  Harriet took another mouthful of the wine. It was Louisa who’d made them late. Harriet had found her in a dark room, lying on the bed under a sheet, when she knocked at the door.

  “I did make an effort,” she said.

  “He’s told me how your mother’s against him, how you begged him to come here, and now that he has, you spend all your time with a foreigner scraping about in the catacombs. It’s a disgrace.”

  Harriet hoped Dr. Woolfe hadn’t heard. Her face felt as if it were on fire.

  “I didn’t beg, Mrs. Simpson,” she said under her breath. “And Dr. Woolfe is not a foreigner. He’s from Germany.”

  The waiters moved around silently, clearing the plates, delivering new ones. Harriet felt Eyre Soane watching her and glanced up at him. The look on his face was not amorous or even affectionate. It was calculating. Almost unfriendly. His expression shifted to a bland, cool smile and she dropped her eyes to her plate, to a bony fish steamed with herbs, and occupied herself with trying to detach the delicate flesh that clung to the skeleton. Sometimes she felt that Mr. Soane didn’t care for her at all. But if that was the case, why had he pursued her all the way to Luxor? Why was he so determined to paint her?

  “When we met on the steamer, you claimed to have no interest in painting.”

  Eyre Soane spoke loudly, as if it were obvious whom he was addressing, as if no one else was present in the room. Harriet had the sense that Louisa was the true object of his interest, just as she had been on the last occasion when they sat down to dinner together. Under the cotton gown, Harriet’s skin prickled with unease. Louisa looked up.

  “Did I, Mr. Soane?” she said. “I don’t recall.”

  “Evidently, it is true,” said Eyre Soane, “or you would have wished to view the portrait of your daughter.”

  “She will see the painting when it is complete,” Harriet said.

  Louisa dabbed her lips with her napkin, laid it down on the table. “I have been spoiled, Mr. Soane, by long years of admiring the work of the masters. Modern painting means little to me.”

  Eyre Soane looked away, and Mrs. Simpson began talking to Hannah Fleury about the sights at Abu Simbel. Mrs. Treadwell announced suddenly that she had spent some years there, as senior wife of the god-king, and Miss Fleury began to laugh behind her hand. Her sister caught the contagion and the two giggled helplessly as the waiters cleared away the plates, the fish knives and forks, and served roast lamb and dishes of rice and spinach and the little hairy vegetable that they called ladies’ finge
rs.

  Harriet felt on edge. Eyre resented Louisa’s disapproval of him, she supposed. It occurred to her that it was mutual. Louisa and Mr. Soane disliked each other. Now that she thought about it, they’d disliked each other from the first night they’d met. She would not allow Mr. Soane to bully her mother. Louisa was so unlike herself these last few days.

  “The trouble is, you see—”

  Jim Simpson began a lecture on the state of the Egyptian economy, on the twin evils of the greed of the pashas and the laziness of the fellaheen, their inbred unwillingness to pay their taxes unless persuaded to do so by a flogging. New pink skin was growing shinily on his nose and cheeks, where he’d been burned by the sun, and his wedding ring gleamed. Harriet felt a sudden pity for Effie Simpson, yoked to Jim for the rest of her life.

  “I cannot agree with you, Mr. Simpson,” said Dr. Woolfe. “The cruelty of the Ottomans and the greed of our own financial institutions have much to answer for.”

  “What greed?” said Jim Simpson.

  “Where do you suppose the taxes go?” said Dr. Woolfe. “Straight to London and Paris. Peasant farmers will be in hock to your bankers for generations, for a canal that benefits them not at all. If they are revolting, we should not be surprised.”

  The Fleury sisters stopped laughing. At the other end of the table, Eyre Soane snorted.

  “You surprise me, Dr. Woolfe,” he said. “I understood from Miss Heron that your concern was only with the dead.”

  “I am much concerned with the dead,” Dr. Woolfe said before Harriet had a chance to object. “That is correct.”

  “Death and taxes,” said Jim Simpson. “They come to us all.”

  A cut-glass dish of fruit salad—watermelon and pomegranate and mango—arrived at the table, borne by a waiter. Another man followed behind, carrying a tray of rice puddings. Monsieur Andreas entered the room and surveyed the table, hovering behind Louisa’s chair, rubbing his hands together.