A Grave Celebration

by Christine Trent

  “No,” Louise-Hélène answered flatly.

  “You must have been preoccupied with the villa Pasha had built for de Lesseps. Weren’t the miniature pyramids in the gardens just divinity itself? I told Napoléon that our reception in Egypt has been magnificent; there has been nothing like it in my lifetime. Oh, and did you know that there are future roads here in Ismailia to be named after us? Avenue of the Prince of Prussia, Avenue of Franz-Josef, and, of course, Avenue of Empress Eugénie. How delightful!”

  “Delightful,” Louise-Hélène repeated, almost physically ignoring the empress by turning to watch the stage with her maid.

  Julie came scurrying to join her mistress, immediately popping open a parasol over Eugénie’s head before making a fuss over whether Eugénie’s dress was still perfectly arranged. She did it quite skillfully, but not so slyly that Violet didn’t notice Julie handing her mistress a note folded into a tiny square. Eugénie turned around to open it privately, and when she turned back to them once more, the note was no longer visible, either tucked into some hidden pocket of her ensemble or handed back to Julie for safekeeping.

  “What do you think of the dervishes over there, Madame Harper?” Eugénie asked distractedly, nodding over to where the skirt-clad male dancers continued their routine. Her face was flushed, and Violet wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or anxiety over the missive she’d just read. Or perhaps it was just heightened excitement from the carnival-like atmosphere.

  “Is that what they are called? It is very impressive. There is no such equivalent in England.”

  “I am a Spanish countess, and thought nothing could match my beloved Granada. Then I traveled to Paris to be educated, then married, and believed there was nothing to equal the splendor of the Tuileries and Fontainebleau. Now I see that the desert can be opened up to offer unparalleled delights of ancient buildings, divine delicacies, and unusual animals. Have you noticed the camels, Madame Harper? What strange creatures! My senses have been assailed for weeks now. I wonder if I shall ever recover.” Eugénie stared past Violet, her thoughts having obviously drifted elsewhere.

  She then tilted her head at Violet, as though realizing the undertaker was still there. “Later this afternoon I will be giving the khedive my own special gift,” Eugénie said, that flush creeping up her face again.

  “What is that, Your Highness?” Violet asked, knowing that asking the question was what was expected of her.

  Eugénie brought her hands together. “I must tell someone—it is too much for me to keep to myself. I have had a piano most spectaculaire shipped here. It is for the khedive’s yacht. It is made of Macassar ebony harvested in the Dutch East Indies and dried for ten years, and the keys are made from an African forest elephant from the Kongo Kingdom. I am assured there is nothing like it in the world. A small gift in return for what we have experienced here the past few weeks.”

  Was it a notice of the delivery that had excited the empress?

  “That is indeed a unique gift, Your Majesty. The khedive will have the joy of hearing it played whenever he is aboard.”

  “Yes. Joy is an important thing, Madame Harper. There is so little of it these days, is it not so? One must find it wherever possible.” She motioned to Julie, who instantly produced a fan. It was far larger than the one Violet had purchased, and heavily embellished with black lace that showcased a sharply colored and evocative scene of a medieval wedding painted across the blades. So well-done was it that it might have been painted by Rossetti himself.

  However, Violet became distracted by what was happening onstage with Mott and his crew. The colonel was berating Caleb Purdy mercilessly, and even cuffed him on the ear, as near as Violet could tell for a misfiring of the soldier’s weapon. Mott was no longer the happy, carefree man she had met the previous day, but an intent and driven taskmaster. He must have been as worried about the opening ceremonies as Pasha and de Lesseps.

  The other soldiers stared ahead, intentionally ignoring Mott and his victim. The target of Mott’s wrath spoke inaudibly in response to his superior’s shouted rhetorical questions. Violet turned away, unable to watch any more of it.

  As she did so, she realized that Louise-Hélène and her maid were gone, but Eugénie and her own maid still remained. She laughed softly and offered an elegant French shrug. “Are you offended by it, madame?” the empress asked.

  Was she speaking of Mott’s tirade or Louise-Hélène’s disappearance?

  Surely the empress meant the tirade, and although Violet had certainly seen far worse in her time, it still made her uncomfortable to witness the man’s punishment. “I suppose no more than how much Monsieur de Lesseps is offended by the British delegation right now, Your Majesty.”

  Eugénie’s sophisticated, amused laugh tinkled above Mott’s voice. The scolding ceased at last, and Violet and Eugénie watched as the ex-Union officer ordered his men back into formation and they began their round of drills again. This time the thrust of their weapons and their marching were done in perfect unison together. “Ah, yes, he is most en colère over it. For myself, I found it amusing. However, you may find that little ma louloute is more outraged than her fiancé. She believes she is clever, you know, but I see inside, beneath the perfectly unmanageable mane of hair, and I know her for what she is. She is devoted to de Lesseps, and there is nothing she would not do to protect him.”

  Was that a casual observation or a warning?

  Unfortunately, there was no warning whatsoever to the Crack! Boom! that split through their conversation. Violet flinched as the soldiers fired their weapons simultaneously in the air. Once more, she was temporarily deafened by the sound. It was such a strange sensation, as though her ears were filled with cotton, and she could hear noise but couldn’t discern voices. The rifle firings were followed by the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder.

  How horrible war must be, yet how devoted men were to it, she thought, observing her husband’s enthusiastic—if inaudible—clapping. As her hearing slowly returned, Violet noticed that she was alone. Eugénie and her maid had disappeared the moment the shots were fired. Or had the empress really disappeared the moment she had delivered her warning?

  

  The long, low bellowing of horns, which sounded like an ancient call to temple and reminded Violet of the trumpeters aboard Franz-Josef’s ship, secured everyone’s attention from the entertainment. The crowds moved in droves to where the three elevated wood pavilions stood. Violet and Sam moved with the sea of people who wished to observe whatever was to come next.

  Up close, Violet now realized that the largest pavilion was dedicated to the khedive and all of his distinguished guests and their attendants; the second was for the Catholic church, recognizable by the heraldic Jerusalem cross hanging inside of it; the third, with what appeared to be Qur’anic inscriptions on the pulpit, was clearly for the Muslim scholars. All of the pavilions contained broad stairways lined with carpets and adorned with more flowers and the flags of guest nations. Golden crescents rose from the corners of each pavilion, and palm fronds covered the posts that supported the drapery-swathed trellises over the platforms. Marie Antoinette could not have done better to transform her own gardens into such enchanting delights. No wonder Eugénie was rapturous.

  Violet and Sam watched as all of the khedive’s special dignitaries made the procession up the stairway of his pavilion to greet him. Naturally, de Lesseps and Eugénie were first, with Franz-Josef close behind, then the Prussian, Russian, British, Dutch, and other royalty climbing the treads to join Pasha. Egyptian servants were onstage, guiding the guests to designated places to stand. Naturally, de Lesseps was to one side of the khedive, while Eugénie was on his other. Louise-Hélène was buried somewhere inside the platform throng.

  The fragrance from the jasmine flowers was heady, and, if possible, this setting was even more intoxicating than last night had been before the fire. Pasha was going to incredible lengths to impress this delegation.

  “Act one, scene one,”
came a rumbling baritone from behind Violet. “Elaborate stages are set for the crown princes and priests of the world to bestow bénédictions upon the poor starving peasants, while extending vénération to themselves. Enter the king of all, stage right.”

  Violet turned to see who belonged to the French-accented voice. It was quite possibly one of the ugliest men she had ever encountered, with long hair, parted to one side and not recently washed. His beard was unkempt, there were ashy gray pouches under his eyes, and his belly strained mightily against his jacket. She estimated him to be around sixty years of age, and the predatory years seemed to have settled on him like an ancient shroud, patiently waiting to claim their victim.

  However, he grinned broadly at Violet and Sam, and it removed at least a decade from his lined face. “It is theater, is it not?” he asked. “They are the performers; we are the spectators.”

  It was an interesting way to put it. “I do not believe we have met,” Sam said, extending a hand. “You are . . . ?”

  “I am many men, mes amis. An author, a playwright, a poet. Most consider me an art critic.” The man put a hand over his chest, as if humbling himself while letting them in on the joke that he had no humility at all.

  “I am Sam Harper; this is my wife, Violet. We are with the British delegation, although I’m afraid our only reason for acclaim is that my wife has provided undertaking services to the queen.” The two men shook hands firmly.

  “You also saved Her Majesty’s life from a madman intent on killing her at Windsor,” Violet reminded Sam pointedly.

  “You sound like most distinguished guests to me. I am Théophile Gautier,” the other man said, sweeping low like a courtier. “My friends know me as le bon Théo.”

  “How do you do, Monsieur Gautier—” Violet began.

  “Non, you must call me Théo, I insist.” He took her hand and pressed his rough, chapped lips to it. “You will allow me to observe the unfolding of this great drama with you, oui?”

  The ceremony began with an opening from the Muslim platform, where prayers were offered that Violet did not understand. However, listening to these prayers made her realize something very curious about the proceedings.

  “Monsieur Gau— I mean, Théo, have you also noticed that there seem to be no Muslim dignitaries present today? In fact, I have not noticed any since our arrival yesterday.”

  Sam nodded in agreement. “You’re right. Except for Egyptians and Orientals serving and performing, I see no Easterners onstage, no Mussulmen.”

  “And now we come to act one, scene two. Scene heading: Port Ismailia, opening speeches,” Gautier intoned. “The character named Isma’il Pasha says, ‘Friends, I would have invited such illustrious personages as the sultan of Morocco, the Persian shah, and the bey of Tunis, but no accommodations were available.’” The author/playwright/poet/art critic did a fair impression of the khedive. “ ‘With the best intentions on earth, and opening all of my residences, I could not possibly have had more than eighty palaces ready for all of the princes who would have wished to honor me with their presence. Knowing, though, that I desire European approval above all else, including approval from God Almighty, I had to exclude anyone not from a country north of the Mediterranean Sea.’ ”

  Violet couldn’t help it. She burst into merry laughter, and Gautier inclined his head and flourished his hand like a Shakespearean actor accepting accolades.

  As the ulema finished his practiced delivery of kneeling, bowing, and praying, the attention then switched to the Catholic stage. A man announcing himself as the archbishop of Jerusalem conducted a mass, replete with Latin readings, incense, and prayers. When he was finished and had stepped aside, the balding, clean-shaven Monsignor Bauer—Eugénie’s confessor—approached the center of the stage. Appareled in a cheap brown robe and sandals—incongruent beside the pomp and color of every other creature and object surrounding him—he commenced speaking. His speech was a short yet lofty proclamation of de Lesseps’s worthiness: a greatness not seen since Christopher Columbus himself sailed to the Americas, though de Lesseps might in fact be remembered in history as even greater than the Genoese explorer.

  “Hmm,” Gautier observed dubiously. “I shall have to inform the Spanish ambassador to France that Ferdinand and Isabella can no longer be credited with financing one of the world’s greatest expeditions; non, instead it is France.” Gautier rocked back and forth on his heels, no easy feat for a man his size. “Yes, that should sit well with His Excellency. Act one, scene—”

  Gautier ceased his acerbic comments as de Lesseps took the stage, to the now oft-chanted De Lesseps! De Lesseps! De Lesseps!

  De Lesseps reveled in the accolades for several moments before motioning to the crowd that he would like to speak. They quieted and listened attentively as he began. “As anticipated to happen, and has now been proved successful, the Suez Canal reveals itself to be of sufficient depth. We have upwards of forty—forty!—seaworthy ships here in the harbor, the largest being the Russian frigate Alexandrite, which ees drawing seventeen feet, two inches of water. Remarquable!”

  The crowd cheered, its enthusiasm like a thunderclap of approval from the heavens above.

  “The canal has just opened, yet the world knew of her importance, for only the greatest sovereigns in the world are here.” De Lesseps swept a magnanimous hand to indicate everyone onstage with him.

  “Except we know the ones who are missing, eh, Madame Harper?” Gautier said in a stage whisper.

  “Not only sovereigns, but the world’s greatest artists, poets, and writers are here, ready to paint and scribble their impressions of the unfolding events here, if it ees even possible to capture it at the tip of a brush or pen.”

  Another deafening roar of approval.

  As if Gautier simply could not help injecting his own colorful commentary at every possible point, he held out his hands, palms up, and, gazing at them in wonder, said mockingly, “Now I see that to report upon the proceedings here is the culmination of all of my dreams. What rapturous effusions will flow from my fingertips tonight in my tent! What acclaimed scripts I can create so that the world will know what has happened here. Yes, I can now die a happy man in my wife, Ernestina’s, arms.”

  Violet tried to control her amusement at the man’s tart observations. It would be most rude to laugh while de Lesseps spoke, yet she couldn’t help thinking that Monsieur Gautier must be a brilliant satirist.

  De Lesseps continued his speech, extolling the Empress Eugénie’s virtues, followed by those of Franz-Josef, Crown Prince Frederick, Grand Duke Michael, and so forth.

  “What are you telling these pitiful victims of your wit, Théo?” asked a middle-aged man. He had a wild shock of hair that stood up on end as if lightning had struck him, and it was both silver and dark in large patches, rather than a subtle threading of gray through his natural hair color. His features were grave, and his lips set in a firm, colorless line. Tiny beads of perspiration dotted his forehead.

  “Henrik!” Gautier exclaimed with delight. “Monsieur and Madame Harper, this is Henrik Ibsen. He and I are both members of the little artist colony that Pasha and de Lesseps have formed here. You have heard of him?”

  Violet vaguely recognized Ibsen’s name. Also a writer of some sort from somewhere on the Continent?

  The four of them now stood as their own oddly matched group, half listening to de Lesseps’s seemingly tireless enthusiasm for his project and for those who had come to pay him homage.

  Ibsen ran the flat of his hand upward against his forehead and into his mane of hair. “Min Gud, but it is hot here. Nothing like Norway. Are all of you not perspiring?”

  “Poor Henrik,” Gautier observed. He removed a handkerchief from a pocket and offered it with pronounced chivalry to the other man. “He is used to ice caves and snow castles. No, Henrik, it is quite balmy and comfortable here. Do not dehydrate yourself before we have an opportunity to experience what an Egyptian feast is like. I’m thinking there might be roasted c
rocodile, or maybe even fricasseed cobra. You wouldn’t wish to miss that.”

  Ibsen made a strangled noise. “Perhaps the khedive has taken all sensibilities into account, and I might be able to find some gravlaks, although I hardly see that salmon could survive a trip from Norway to this place of hellish torment.”

  De Lesseps was concluding his speech. “Tonight there shall be a grand banquet, which I call the Dinner of the Sovereigns, which will allow the world to see these illustrious leaders, once facing one another across the various chessboards of Europe, strategizing and plotting against one another, now seated side by side, sharing delicacies and dipping their crystal glasses into fountains flowing with the wines magnifiques as candelabras burn brightly overhead in illumination of a new world.”

  The Frenchman was a dreamer, without question, but Violet couldn’t deny that he had an effect on the crowd, which oohed and aahed over his rich descriptions. The crowds went wild when he was done, their cheers blotting out even the blowing horns of the ships in the harbor, whose crews also demonstrated their zeal for de Lesseps’s words.

  Now Pasha took to the center of the stage, and he and de Lesseps locked arms and kissed each other on the cheeks. De Lesseps then stepped aside so Pasha could speak.

  “Today I announce a great surprise, one unknown even to Monsieur de Lesseps, that there has been an opera conceived by my nation’s great Egyptologist, who shares his homeland with Ferdinand de Lesseps. Yes, I mean Auguste Mariette.”

  Violet started at the sound of the name. That was the third time she had heard the man’s name in the past day.

  Pasha continued. “I offer the opera, entitled Aida, as yet another way to keep the memory of what has happened here alive forever, much as our great pharaohs and kings have remained eternal in the hearts and minds of people. It will tell the story of an Ethiopian princess’s love for an Egyptian king’s general, and her willingness to die with him when he is executed. Thus is the relationship between Egypt and France that our friendship will extend beyond death.”