The Sacred River

by Wendy Wallace

  Louisa sat beside her, her face covered, her white hands hidden from view. Suraya had borrowed a second veil for her. Only their feet, swinging over the ground from the back of the cart, were visible under the hems of the black robes. Fouad had dirtied ­Harriet’s boots with earth from the garden. Louisa’s light summer shoes, ruined already, needed no disguising.

  Behind them, piled high on the cart, was a heap of green animal fodder. Harriet leaned her back against its damp bulk, breathed in the scent, sour and fresh against the lingering smell of ash in the air. Mustapha’s curved sword was hidden underneath the clover and they were under strict orders to keep quiet if anybody at all stopped the cart, on any pretext whatever.

  “You must be dumb,” Mustapha had said before they left. “Deaf and dumb.”

  Mustapha urged on the ass with a stick, his voice tense; Fouad sat next to him, with Dash under his arm, the dog’s collar removed. Harriet and Louisa had spent the night hiding in Mustapha’s ­quarters; Suraya had woken them before dawn with tea, wrapped them in the black veils.

  They traveled on through the city to the sea, where the cart pulled up. After a few words with one of the fishermen on the shore, a chink of coins, Mustapha helped them into a boat. Fouad hoisted the sail, avoiding Harriet’s eyes, moving it around until it caught the air. The boat was low in the water, sea slapping its sides. The gentle sounds contrasted strangely with the shouts and shots of the previous day and night. Yael had not returned but Mustapha had been informed by his cousin that a number of Europeans had taken shelter at the church and were waiting out the trouble there. God willing, he’d said, Sitti Yael was among them.

  Harriet and Louisa sat close to each other on the plank seat laid across the rowing boat. Louisa had her handbag on her lap, containing the tickets for the journey. Harriet had her journal in her pocket and, at Louisa’s insistence, held the medicine chest on her lap. They’d left the trunks behind for Yael to send on.

  The steamer came into view. It was the SS Tanjore, Harriet saw, the ship whose china they had used on the way out. She felt a movement in her chest, at the strangeness of life, its large patterns.

  She squeezed her mother’s fingers and, for an instant, laid her shrouded head on Louisa’s shoulder.

  When they were within twenty yards of the ship, a man dressed in sailor’s uniform leaned over the railings, a speaking trumpet held to his mouth.

  “Declare yourselves.”

  Louisa threw back her veil. Her head was bare and her shorn hair in the morning light gave her face a naked, vulnerable look. The boat lurched as she stood up and waved her hand in the air.

  “Please let us aboard,” she shouted. “We are English people, going home to England. Myself and my daughter. We have tickets for the passage.”

  There was some commotion on deck; figures moving to and fro, shouts exchanged. A rope ladder was thrown over the side, hitting the water with a splash, the bottom rungs floating out toward them as the rowing boat bumped the iron hull of the SS Tanjore.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” came a voice with the accent of an officer. “The two ladies may come aboard. But not the Arabs.”

  “Thank the Lord,” Louisa said, her voice flat. “Climb up, Harriet.” Dash crouched in the bottom of the boat, whimpering, as Fouad slackened the sail, pulled on the oars to bring the boat to the end of the ladder. He leaned over and grabbed it, then looked at Harriet, his face impassive.

  “Kwayis, Miss Harry?”

  “Kwayis, Fouad.”

  Louisa gestured for Harriet to begin the ascent. Harriet pulled the veil from her own face.

  “You first, Mother.”

  “Would you rather?” Louisa said.

  Harriet could not speak. She stood to embrace Louisa, pressing her cheek against her mother’s, feeling the softness of her cheek and inhaling her familiar scent, the scent that lay under her cologne, of her own skin and self. Taking hold of her hands, she squeezed them, kissed their backs.

  “Go carefully.”

  “I shall.” Louisa turned to Mustapha. “Thank you, Mustapha, for all you have done for us. Please take care of my sister-in-law when she returns.”

  “God bless you, madame,” said Mustapha. “And thank you, Fouad, for accompanying us.”

  “Good, madame,” Fouad said.

  Louisa grasped the sides of the ladder, put one shoe on the bottom rung, and pulled herself upward. Her foot slid sideways on the wooden tread and Harriet grasped the end of the ladder, held it steady as Louisa got both her feet on the rungs. Clinging to the ropes, she began to ascend, her traveling coat billowing in the sea breeze, the veil streaming out from her shoulders.

  “Up yer come, lady,” shouted a sailor’s voice over their heads. “Steady as she goes.”

  At the sound of the voice, Harriet’s resolve weakened. It was London and every man in it. It carried her brothers and her father, the husband she might have had. The voice was home. Every instinct commanded her to follow her mother, to grasp the sides of the ladder and begin climbing.

  “Easy does it,” said the voice.

  The man reached over and caught hold of Louisa’s arms, pulled her safely onto the deck.

  High up above, Louisa stood looking down over the railings, the black folds of the veil still lying on her shoulders.

  “Your turn, Harriet. Don’t be afraid. It’s not as difficult as it may appear.”

  Harriet let go of the end of the ladder and sat down again on the plank seat. She opened her arms to Louisa in a gesture she didn’t fully understand, as if to say that things were as they were and couldn’t be helped, as if to embrace nothing and everything.

  “I’m not coming with you, Mother.”

  Louisa’s face changed. Harriet had the sense of it disintegrating. Her mother’s voice floated down.

  “Harriet, you must . . . You cannot . . . Please, hurry . . .”

  “I’m staying here with Aunt Yael. Tell Father I’ll write.”

  “I am ordering you, Harriet.”

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Harriet, I am begging you.”

  Pulling the veil back over her head, Harriet gestured toward the shore.

  “Tell him, Fouad,” she said as Dash crouched at her feet.

  Fouad spoke to Mustapha in Arabic and Mustapha looked at her. “Sure?”

  “I shall remain with my aunt, Mustapha. The trouble is over now. You needn’t worry.”

  Using the oar, Fouad pushed the boat away from the steamer. In minutes, they were back in open water, the sail taut. If Louisa cried out for her again, Harriet did not hear her. Facing the harbor, she pulled the dog onto her lap and hugged his warmth against her, feeling with her other hand for the pocket tied around her waist, the soft, solid promise of her journal. She would stay for a while with Yael and, when she could, as soon as the time was right, find a way to return to Thebes.

  She did not look back and no sound reached the boat from either the ship behind or the land in front. There was only the sound of the wind in the patched sail, carrying them toward the shore, where the outlines of the city were becoming clearer with every minute that passed.

  Harriet inhaled the warm, salty air, breathing it not just into her lungs but into her whole self, so deep she felt she might float up into the atmosphere, released to float on the currents of her own life and fate. “One, two, three,” she counted aloud. “Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . .”

  Her heart beat slow and strong in her chest, marching at its own curious pace into the years ahead.

  Arriving back at the villa, she found not, as she had expected, one woman waiting for her but two men. Eberhardt Woolfe and the Reverend Griffinshawe had arrived at the gate of the villa at the same time and both stood in the drawing room, each with the air of having urgent news to impart. She looked from one to the other, joy and fear rising in her in equal me
asure.

  Reverend Griffinshawe spoke first.

  “Your aunt,” he said. “I should say—do take a seat, Miss Heron—your late aunt.” He drew a handkerchief out of his pocket, blew his nose. “Forgive me, I considered her a friend, you see.”

  Dr. Woolfe sat next to Harriet on the striped sofa.

  “I am here, Harriet,” he said. “I have come for you.” He laid down his hat, took her hand in both of his. “Tell us, Reverend,” he said. “Tell us what has happened.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  Louisa allowed the sailor to lead her belowdecks; he showed her into a cabin with six bunks.

  “The other ladies’ll be ’ere soon enough,” he said. “Make yerself comfortable.”

  Louisa sat down on the only bunk that had no personal items on it. She reached automatically to the back of her head, felt for the falling coils, and found, for the thousandth time, their absence. She had only her handbag and the old green dress she stood up in, the traveling coat that she had worn on departing England. Feeling in the pocket of her coat for a handkerchief, she discovered something hard and sharp and smooth. She drew it out. It was the carved green beetle that Dr. Woolfe had presented her with. The symbol of rebirth. She held it on the palm of her hand, looked at its humble, industrious form.

  Louisa had a curious sense of lightness, as if a part of her had been amputated. She looked around the cabin, unable to believe that Harriet was not there. Was elsewhere. She hugged her arms over her chest, as if healing a wound. She barely knew how she felt. Alongside the shock, the pain, she had another feeling. It was relief. Harriet had moved into her own life.

  The door of the cabin opened and a dark-haired woman stepped in. Louisa put the scarab back in her pocket. Glancing up at the woman, she felt even more odd, as if she had so deeply immersed herself in remembering, examining the past, herself as she had once been, that she was now conjuring her own ghost, in pale flesh and warm blood. She had the most curious feeling, as she stood up, held out her hand for shaking, of coming face-to-face with herself.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” said the woman. “Did I startle you?”

  “Not at all,” said Louisa, as the woman moved to the basin and poured water into it from the ewer, began to splash her cheeks.

  “It’s rather cramped,” said the woman, looking around, drying her face on a towel. “But we will manage, I’m sure. We are so fortunate to be going home, safely.”

  She removed her hat and began to adjust her hair, pulling the pins out of a chignon on the back of her head.

  “Yes,” said Louisa. “Yes, indeed.”

  Sitting on the edge of the bunk, watching as the woman brushed out her long hair, stroke after stroke, Louisa felt overcome with tiredness. The collapse she had felt coming for so long had arrived. Perhaps this was the moment of her death. She lay down, pulled the rough blanket over herself, and fell asleep.

  By evening, the weather deck was shrouded in a sea mist, the temperature fresh. Louisa moved to the railing, gripped it with both hands, and looked in the direction of the sea, invisible in the vaporous atmosphere. She might have been at the very birth of the world.

  Two figures were walking toward her out of the mist, close by each other, their heads bent. It took Louisa a minute to see that they were man and woman. Another to understand that one of them had an arm in a sling, inside a brown velvet jacket. Louisa moved toward them until she came within a yard of Eyre Soane. Like his father before him, he was a little man. Unremarkable. With no power over her.

  “Good evening, Mr. Soane.”

  Louisa spoke without fear. She turned to the woman and saw the one who had entered the cabin earlier, who for most of the day had rested on a nearby bunk.

  “Mrs. Heron,” said Eyre Soane. “Allow me to introduce my sister. Mrs. Julia Summers.”

  Louisa reached out for her hand. “I believe we have met before.”

  “Probably.” Mrs. Summers smiled, taking Louisa’s hand, shaking it. “I’ve met so many people in the last twenty-four hours that my head is spinning.”

  She was the same height as Louisa. Dark-haired and red-lipped, slender as a reed, but with her father’s broad, flat face. Her dark hair was parted to show an irregular peak on the right of her forehead. Louisa looked down at her own body, in the old green dress, under the traveling coat. She had the curious sensation that her breasts were leaking milk. That it ran wetly down over her belly, trickled past her legs, would at any moment begin to drip on the tops of her shoes, spill over the deck, flood the sea, and turn it white.

  “Julia!” she said. “I have always been fond of that name.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Heron?” Julia Summers said. “What an awful time we’ve all been through. But we must count ourselves fortunate to emerge alive.”

  “Indeed,” said Louisa, making herself let go of the warm hand, raising her head. She looked at Eyre Soane. “You can have no idea how I’ve longed to meet your sister.”

  “Really?” he said.

  Louisa stared at him, locking her eyes onto his.

  “I have the strangest feeling,” she said slowly, “as if I have always known her. Isn’t that the most peculiar thing, Mr. Soane?”

  Eyre Soane looked at her. His eyes turned back to Julia. Then again to Louisa.

  His face blanched. His mouth opened.

  Louisa continued to speak. “And do you know, Mrs. Summers, that I once met your mother. It was just around the time you were born. She showed me a kindness that day and I have never forgotten her grace.”

  “That sounds like Mother,” said Julia Summers. “She has a sense of what’s right.”

  “Will you take my arm, Mrs. Summers?” Louisa peered past her into the mist. “We can walk for a little way together.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m deeply grateful to everyone who helped me with The Sacred River. Special thanks to my agent, Ivan Mulcahy; my editor, Jessica Leeke; and Egyptologist Olive Hogg.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  FICTION

  The Painted Bridge

  NONFICTION

  Daughter of Dust:

  Growing Up an Outcast in the Desert of Sudan

  Oranges and Lemons:

  Life in an Inner City Primary School

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  N/A

  Wendy Wallace is a writer and award-winning journalist. Her journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers, including the Times, the TES, the Guardian, and the Telegraph. In 2001, she was Education Journalist of the Year. Her book on life in an inner-city school, Oranges and Lemons, was published by Routledge in 2005. Daughter of Dust: Growing Up an Outcast in the Desert of Sudan was published by Simon & Schuster in 2009. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies published by Methuen and Iron Press. She is also the author of The Painted Bridge, a novel set in Victorian London, published by Scribner in 2012 and longlisted for the 2013 Desmond Elliott prize. She lives in London and has two sons.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’
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  Copyright © 2013 by Wendy Wallace

  First published in 2013 in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd.

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  First Scribner hardcover edition July 2014

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  Interior design by Erich Hobbing

  Jacket design by Matthew Johnson

  Jacket photographs: background © Jill Battaglia/Arcangel Images, woman © Lee Avison/Arcangel Images

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014001520

  ISBN 978-1-4516-5812-5

  ISBN 978-1-4767-6472-6 (ebook)