The Sacred River

by Wendy Wallace

  “Of course I will visit you and the baby. I’m so glad for you, Sarah.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Yael had altered. The sleeves of her dress were loose on her arms and her waist had emerged from its long hiding. Her face, framed by the coils of silver hair, looked older and more serious. Arriving at the villa the previous day and finding her in the drawing room, writing letters, Louisa had wondered for an instant who this dignified-­looking person was who rose from the table, pen in hand. From the look on her sister-in-law’s face, Louisa had remembered that she too was not immediately recognizable. They had embraced, then stepped back to look at each other again. Louisa couldn’t think of a time when she had been so glad to see Yael.

  The air in the garden was still, heavy with the scent of the white mulberry blossom on the branches over their heads. Louisa unclenched her fingers from the arms of the wicker chair and patted the short ends of hair on the nape of her neck. She’d taken to going without the head covering while she was in the house and garden. Yael had appeared barely to notice that her hair was gone and Harriet insisted that it became her. Harriet was with Suraya in the hovel at the back of the kitchen yard, helping to prepare supper.

  Louisa lowered her voice. “We’re in June. It’s been five months, Yael. If you’re not prepared to go home now, when will you be?”

  Yael’s chair creaked. “I cannot say. The situation deteriorates by the day, Louisa. Most of the children are surviving on the ration of beans and rice we give out at the clinic. Nearly all our families are in the same situation. I cannot leave them at present.”

  Louisa straightened herself in the chair. She might embark on the steamer and then die on the journey home. She had to get Yael to return with Harriet, see her safely back to London.

  “They are Egyptians, Yael. There are millions of them. You cannot save them all. You must come back with us.”

  Since Harriet had been found alive, Louisa’s certainty that it was her own death that was near had been reconfirmed. For those hours when Harriet had been missing, she had believed—despite herself, unable to suppress the realization—that she’d had a reprieve; along with that came the terrible understanding of the price of her renaissance, that she would be condemned to live a blighted life, a life against nature, in which she outlived her own daughter. When Harriet had been found, brought back to Dr. Woolfe’s strange house on the mountainside, Louisa had sent up weary prayers of thanks that it was indeed she whose days were numbered. She who would soon go to meet her maker and her mother.

  The heavy scent of the blossom reached her again on a current of air and for a moment she had a vision of growing a mulberry tree herself, in the south-facing spot in the corner of the garden. Then she remembered that things of the future were in the past for her now. Only the present moment was available to her. She rose from the chair and snapped off a twig of white flowers, held them to her nose. The scent of flowers had always been one of life’s sweetest pleasures.

  “Miraculous,” she said, holding the stem out to Yael. “But we must go home now.”

  Yael blinked at her. “Our work at the clinic is important, Louisa. It matters to me and to our families. This is their hour of need.”

  If Yael refused to come with them, it might be only Harriet who arrived back in England. Louisa pictured Blundell on the quay, meeting one woman in the place where he had dispatched three. It would break his good heart. She flopped down again into the chair, her legs weak.

  “I cannot return without you, Yael. Blundell would never forgive me.”

  “It’s not your decision, Louisa, dear. I have made that clear in the letter I have already written to my brother. I sent it before you arrived.”

  Despite her smaller form, Louisa could not escape the sense that Yael had grown larger. Her sister-in-law had a presence and authority that were never apparent before. For some minutes, the women sat in silence. Yael’s face in the moonlight appeared distracted when she spoke again.

  “Our friend Mr. Soane is back in Alexandria.”

  Louisa laid the sprig of blossom on the table. “Oh?”

  “He attended the service last Sunday, with a young lady. Reverend Griffinshawe informs me that she is his sister.”

  Louisa felt faint. She thought for a moment that she might be about to die now. Here. This moment.

  “Did you . . . Did you have the opportunity to speak with them?”

  Yael shook her head. “I didn’t seek it, dear.”

  The lump in Louisa’s throat threatened to close it. She swallowed.

  “Did Mr. Soane’s sister look well? Does she . . . resemble her brother?”

  “Not altogether.”

  They sat in silence again, the wicker chairs creaking as they moved, until Yael began to speak.

  “Once upon a time, Louisa, when I was still very young, another girl told me a story. She shouldn’t have done so, because it was not her story to tell. But nonetheless, she did. She told me of a girl she knew who had fancied herself in love with a man. A powerful man used to having his way in all matters. The man did what many would. He seduced her and afterward he went away. He left her and her family to try to cover up what had happened, put things right.”

  “There are so many foolish girls.” Louisa’s voice was a squeak. She didn’t recognize it. “Foolish and immoral.”

  “Do you believe so?” Yael rocked backward and forward, in a leisurely way, as if the question might occupy her thoughts for some time. She sighed. “I always felt pity for that girl. I had sympathy for what befell her when she was little more than a child herself.”

  Louisa’s hands were clenching the arms of the chair so tightly that her fingers hurt. The scent of the mulberry flowers was overpowering, the sawing of the crickets louder than she had ever noticed before.

  “Who told you the story?”

  Yael hesitated. She held her chair at the farthest incline of its backward tilt, then allowed it to roll forward again, and came to rest.

  “It was Lavinia.”

  “My own sister? I don’t believe you.”

  “She meant no harm, Louisa. I was a child myself at the time, of twelve. She made me swear on the Bible never to repeat the secret to another living soul and I never have done. Except one.”

  Louisa rose from her chair in a single rapid movement, as if pulled up by a string. “You mean me? Now?”

  Yael sighed. She rocked for some moments without speaking. “On the same day as I heard it, I told my older brother the whole story. I believed that before he married, he had a right to know.”

  Louisa cried out as if she had been struck. Then there was silence.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Harriet stood next to her aunt, in the front pew of St. Mark’s. The church was pleasantly dim and cool, the air permeated by a faint, woody aroma, the walls lined with stone plaques to memorialize English people who had died in Alexandria. Some of the tablets were inscribed in both English and Arabic; the curling, fluid lines of the Arabic looked graceful, more fitting to eternal spirits, Harriet thought, than the straight lines of the Roman letters.

  Yael’s voice was off-key, sharp in Harriet’s ear. The last strains of England’s green and pleasant land died away and Yael put the hymn­book on the slanted wooden rest. As they sat down, side by side, Harriet glanced over her shoulder at the men of business and their wives, the bespectacled administrators and palm-helmeted hunters, the military families en route to India. Even here, she could not help searching for Eberhardt Woolfe, her eyes scanning the rounded, stooped, and stout figures for a tall angular one. She breathed in the smell of incense and closed her eyes, praying to God, briefly and urgently, to let her see Eberhardt Woolfe again.

  She wanted to apologize to him for her stupidity in entering the tomb. Explain that she’d been intending to ask him a question. Let him know that she had wanted to stay.

  The tho
ught was too painful to pursue. She and Louisa were leaving that night, for London. Aunt Yael was remaining in Alexandria. Harriet opened her eyes and looked up. In front of them, set high in the wall, was a stained-glass window. Jesus was on the cross, his head hanging, his pale limbs drooping with a balletic grace, toes pointing down toward the brow of the hill of Calvary. Below, a blue-cloaked Mary kneeled on the ground, her face upturned. The light poured through the gold and red and blue glass, each splintered piece jewel-like and translucent.

  At the lectern, the Reverend Griffinshawe raised his arms in the air. Harriet hadn’t seen him since the day he called at the villa. The Reverend looked well, his face filled out and his surplice starched and spotless.

  “As many present here today know,” he said, “we have in recent weeks launched a collection for our less fortunate neighbors in Alexandria. People cannot apply themselves to the study of the Bible or the English language when their stomachs are empty. Our sister Miss Heron”—he gestured in the direction of Yael—“has taken it upon herself to distribute rations to the poor mothers and infants in her ophthalmia clinic. If you’d care to say a few words, Miss Heron, for the benefit of those who are new.”

  “Thank you, Reverend.” Yael stood up, holding her prayer book in her hands, and turned to face the congregation. She peered at them through the thick spectacles and Harriet had a momentary vision of her aunt, depicted in stained glass, looking down at the congregation through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, her feathers forever aloft over her head.

  “As Christians, it befits us to love our neighbors as ourselves. It makes no difference if those neighbors are Mohammedans, who, after all, worship the same God as we. And before spiritual hunger can be met, bodily needs must be furnished. Through no fault of their own, the mothers I’ve been fortunate to become acquainted with are unable to feed their children at the present moment. They feel the same hunger that we feel. Suffer the same frailty of the flesh. If our Christianity is worthy of its name, I hope we will all do what we can to come to their aid. Thank you.”

  She sat down, unflustered, as the worn blue velvet pouch began to make its way along the pews, passed from hand to hand, the chink of coins audible as the Reverend began his last reading. Aunt Yael had been a figure of fun in London, in her comical bonnet, setting off for out-of-the-way church halls, volunteering at the home for fallen women. Harriet thought that her parents, not through words, had told her an untruth about her aunt and what she was made of. Until now, she hadn’t had eyes to see the truth for herself.

  • • •

  It was past noon by the time they stepped out of the doors of the church. The sun was high, white in a white sky, the light blinding, the heat radiating up from the sandy ground. A line of carriages waited outside the church, their drivers stretched out on the seats, the horses’ heads hanging, motionless apart from ears that twitched, tails that flicked over their haunches.

  Two black-shrouded figures standing in a doorway called out greetings to Yael; she lifted her hand in a wave. She turned to her niece, took her hand, and drew her under the shade of a spreading tree.

  “Harriet, dear,” she said, looking at her through her thick lenses, raising her voice over the rattle of the wheels of a passing carriage. “Is it your wish to return to London with your mother?”

  Harriet shook her head. “No, Aunt Yael, it isn’t.”

  “You know that I shall be staying on in Alexandria for the foreseeable future. I shall be moving to the house where we hold the clinic. I could provide a home for you, a modest one, if you feel your health and spirits are better here.”

  “Could you, Aunt? Do you mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  Harriet felt a great rush of hope spring in her chest. Almost as soon as it arrived, it began to subside. She pictured Louisa’s sun-browned face, the shorn hair that had given her mother the air of a martyr, the alteration in her, so absolute since their departure from London. Louisa had cast off her stays and bustle, her high standards of housekeeping, her concern for Harriet’s every breath. She wanted only to gaze at the flowers in the garden of the villa or watch Suraya’s children playing. Sometimes she sang.

  “Mother isn’t herself, Aunt Yael. I have to look after her.”

  Yael did not disagree. She fingered the crucifix she wore around her neck, holding the two outstretched arms of the cross between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Don’t make the mistakes I made, Harriet. If you are not to marry, then don’t spend your days doing what the world wishes you to do. Find out what the Lord wants for you, dear, now that you are well again. And do it with thy might. Did you care for Mr. Soane?”

  Again, Harriet shook her head. “I thought I did. I care for someone else. Do you remember the man with his piano, Aunt?”

  “Indeed. Did it arrive safely? Very difficult items to transport, pianos.”

  “I think of him day and night.”

  “Does he wish to marry you?”

  Harriet averted her eyes.

  “I believe he has a wife already.”

  “I see. Well then, you must put him out of your mind entirely, Harriet.”

  Harriet nodded, unable to meet the gray eyes that mirrored her own.

  Yael patted her hand.

  “Marriage is not the only way to a life. And you know that what I have will one day be yours.”

  “Thank you, Aunt. But that is a long way off.”

  “I daresay.”

  Yael raised her hand for a cab and a brougham drew up beside them. It was their final farewell. Yael was going to distribute rations at the clinic; she opened the place every day. She and Louisa had said their goodbyes after breakfast; Harriet had been surprised by the affection that seemed to have grown between them.

  Yael spoke to the driver in Arabic and helped Harriet up onto the seat. As the driver cracked his whip on the ground, the horse raised its blinkered head and moved away from the church, under a thin avenue of trees, their leaves unmoving, drooping with thirst. Harriet turned and waved.

  Sitting alone in the cab, passing on into the old part of the city, Harriet stared out. Merchants sat cross-legged in front of empty shops and children played marbles in the dust; veiled women stood in twos and threes in dark doorways; beggars slept on straw mats in the shadow of the mosque. The city looked strangely lifeless, as if in wait for something.

  • • •

  In the Cairo railway station, Eberhardt Woolfe stood in a place from which he could keep an eye on the great clock. He had a cup of Turkish coffee in his hand and his suitcase was on the ground at his feet. It was empty. He had not been able to think of anything that he required, other than to find Harriet. The train for Alexandria departed in fifteen minutes and his ticket was in his pocket. On arrival he intended to go directly to the office of the Anglo Ottoman Bank, find out the whereabouts of the villa, and go to her.

  The clock struck the half hour and he finished the coffee and hurried toward the platform.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Yael stood at a table, running the last of the round green lentils through her hands, feeling the seam at the bottom of the sack. It was mid-afternoon and the rations were almost finished. The women and children had come in a rush, departed without lingering for their usual chat with her and one another, the stories for the children. Only a few of them remained, including Um Fatima, helping out, as she sometimes did, in Suraya’s place. Her husband had been released and was close to being able to walk again.

  Yael felt subdued. Bidding farewell to Louisa at breakfast time, and then to Harriet after the service, she had put on a cheerful enough face. It was her choice, made of her own free will, she reminded herself, to stay on alone. But she felt daunted nonetheless.

  “ ‘Thy kingdom come,’ ” she said silently. “ ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ ” She poured the last scoop of lentils into a cloth bag, added
a dozen papery-skinned onions from the wooden crate at her feet. She heard a rumble from outside that sounded like thunder, and wondered if there was a summer storm brewing.

  Spooning rough gray salt into a cone of newspaper, she twisted the top shut, then dropped the salt into the bag on top of the onions. Yael had torn pages from the Arabic version of the Bible and was using them to wrap the slivers of soap that she gave to the women with the food. Cleanliness was next to godliness.

  She looked up at the last of the mothers waiting for rations. It was Nur, her child standing next to her, her feet bare on the floor. When Yael had begun the clinic, the women who walked through the doors had been indistinguishable to her. They had all looked the same, in their black veils held between blue-tattooed lips, black-and-blue-striped gowns, slippered feet. She knew each one of them now by name. Nur’s name meant light, and when she smiled, she radiated light, a dignity in the face of adversity that Yael found Christlike.

  The child’s face was clean and so was her loose cotton garment. Her hair was combed and divided into two fine plaits, her face curious. Yael leaned forward over the table and touched the little girl’s cheek.

  “Sacrebleu. Abracadabra. Here, Sitti Nur.”

  She pushed the bag across the table and the woman dipped her knees in a kind of curtsy, reached for Yael’s hand, and touched it to her forehead, saying something in Arabic. Yael did not recognize the words but she understood the sentiment behind them.

  She nodded. “Greenwich Mean Time. Polly, put the kettle on. Forever and ever. Amen.”

  The distant rumblings outside the window intensified and the woman, instead of hurrying away with her provisions as the others had, spoke to her again, more urgently, in a stream of Arabic.