Baker's Woman

by Tess Enroth

  Sam smiled as he climbed up to the top deck and dropped into a chair with a satisfied sigh.

  “We’re on our way, Florrie, to explore a continent.”

  “How peaceful it is, and Cairo not yet out of sight.”

  “Indeed. It’s magic the minute you cast off.”

  Their eyes met again and again as they watched broad-winged egrets swooping above bulrushes and boys herding sheep marked with red dye on their woolly backs. In midstream a felucca glided swiftly downstream, its sails furled and decks loaded. Others heading upstream overtook the dahabiah and noggurs, and those aboard it waved and shouted.

  * * *

  Each day Sam logged their progress and recorded temperatures at noon and two hours after sunset. He described the changing hills and estimated their height and the extent of palm groves and cane fields. With the passing days and miles, the heat increased, yet it felt far from uncomfortable when Florence accompanied Sam and Achmed ashore in Asyut. In the vast market they bought fresh produce and meat and were back on board before sundown, when Sam freed the crew to go ashore in response to the muezzins’ call to the faithful.

  “Would you like to try to visit another viceroy?” Sam smiled and pointed to the east. “That’s his palace.”

  “It looks like a fortress.”

  “A grim sight. An Arab saying has it that the grass never grows in the Turk’s footprint. It looks that barren.”

  “What makes them so terrible?”

  “Power. Actually, they may be no worse than other rulers and conquerors. Abuse of power is a common trait.”

  “I don’t care to see any of them, ever.”

  “We’ll see many more petty officials. We may encounter some with bones through their noses. Oppression isn’t new to this part of the world.”

  “Let’s just stay on the boat forever. It’s perfect.”

  Sam was about to advise her to enjoy it while she might, but he didn’t allow himself to dash her contentment. This idyllic leg of the trip must end, he knew but for him the thought was not unwelcome. He looked forward to challenges. Still he was aware that Florence’s contentment wasn’t idle. She met her challenges every day in her English lessons, and to those she had added her study of the Ptolemies, Mamelukes, and Romans. At every ruin she coaxed Sam to drop anchor and row her ashore where they trekked through the dunes. They climbed mounds of sand to stand near the capitals of buried columns, imagining what might lie forty feet below them. Sometimes they found names, carved by unthinking visitors, like the prince who had incised his name and a Coptic cross eight inches tall on one column’s capital just beneath its exquisitely carved petals.

  The evening they tied up at Luxor, Sam unpacked a volume of verse in which he found “Ozymandias” and read aloud Shelley’s exhortation to the “mighty” to look on monuments and “despair.” By moonlight, they looked at the ancient obelisk and at papyrus columns in Karnak’s half-buried temples. To the west, the bare, sand-colored hills sequestered the Valley of the Kings. They would go there in the morning to visit tombs where generations of the “mighty” lay.

  Early the next morning when it was still cool, Sam launched the pinnace, handed Florence aboard, and paddled across the river. Boys whose homes were scattered on this side of the hills waited to guard their boat for them, and Sam and Florence walked up a rocky path past the workers’ village.

  At its edge, a few guides waited, and they hired one who kept flicking a horse-hair fly whisk with a braided leather handle. He used it also as a pointer while he led them through the hills to the open tombs. They had been plundered long, long before, and many more, he assured them, awaited excavation. At one open tomb they made their way down twenty-seven crude wooden steps into a dark cavern. The guide positioned sheets of polished tin at the entrance, where they caught the sun’s rays and reflected them onto the carved and painted walls. The walls and ceilings were cracked and peeling, and had been smudged by the smoke of fires.

  “Why fires? Who would build fires here?” Sam asked. “Poor people who had no other place to live, Christians fleeing persecution. Now foreigners, Christians, come and pay to look.”

  “And a good many still come to pillage, to take away the riches they find here. Isn’t that true?”

  “Indeed it is. But many others, like yourself, come with respect.”

  * * *

  Florence was a little surprised by Sam’s exchange with the guide. His talk about opening Africa to trade had seemed a bit like plundering to her, but she supposed she was wrong and would ask him about it sometime, perhaps. It was sad to see the damage done by the ignorant or desperate, and it was outrageous how the careless or greedy had emptied places of their riches. Yet many bas reliefs and paintings survived seemingly untouched by raiders or even by time.

  The place that most moved Florence was a pale relief on an otherwise unadorned wall in a small tomb. The relief was the larger-than-life figure of a handmaid, a mourner following her dead queen’s palanquin. The limestone was smooth and the carving so delicate and precise that she could not refrain from tracing with a finger the trail of a tear falling from an almond eye, and her tears filled her own eyes.

  On their last morning in Luxor, the temperature was 100° as they set out to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple in the Valley of the Kings. Passing the giant colossi not far from the river, Florence asked why they didn’t sing as legend promised.

  “It’s too hot to sing.”

  “Really, Sam, I want to know.”

  “It happens evenings when the stones cool and contract.”

  “I believe you now, but it’s a dull explanation!”

  “You’d hoped they’d sing for you? Well, obviously they don’t recognize the golden-haired Queen of the Nile.”

  “Nor her consort.”

  “Ah, Florrie, if I could make you queen, I would build you a temple of lapis lazuli.”

  “And I would put the key of life in your hand.”

  “I think you have already done that, my dearest.”

  As they continued up-river, passing more ruined temples and a row of enormous statues carved into the bluffs, Florence laid aside her book and hoped her memory could retain all she was seeing. She could read about them later.

  From the top deck, they saw the desert change from stretches of undulating sand and dunes to rubble, rocky bluffs, and canyon walls marked not with mere tourists’ names but with glyphs made centuries before. Black basalt walls rose sharply, their shadows darkening the Nile’s turbulent waters.

  For an entire day, they passed through these narrow canyons, where rocks hid beneath the surface or jutted up in the channel. In the strong currents, the boats plunged so wildly that holding a course was impossible. Sam stayed at the dahabiah’s helm while it wallowed amid looming rocks and swung through dark whirlpools. The river was deep and wide enough, however, to accommodate the shifts and turns of the dahabiah’s long hull as well as the Clumsys’ broad beams.

  Beyond the dark bluffs, the land leveled again. Cultivated areas displayed the Nile’s annual bounty—huge crops of beans, maize, clover, cotton, and sugar cane. Here and there amid the fields and palm groves, brown clay houses displayed plaques with red, blue, and gold designs.

  A few houses were white-washed, and brilliantly colored symbols decorated their doors and window frames. Men at work in the fields paused to wave as the boats passed, and when the dahabiah dropped anchor, Nubian women called from the banks. Children waded in up to their armpits, holding their baskets high. They brimmed with dates and cane sugar cakes for Florence and the crew. She returned the baskets filled with colored glass beads.

  Achmed went ashore and came back to report that a market lay little more than a day upstream.

  The next morning at a bend in the river, the water spread wide, and a jetty allowed them to tie up and go ashore for the first time in a week. Achmed talked to people who knew his brothers and cousins, and he wept for joy. They brought back fresh feed for the animals and meat for themselves
and the crew, and they acquired two more Nanny goats to provide milk.

  After another day, as the land’s ruggedness again increased, they saw no more signs of habitation. Here the Nile’s life­ bringing water, even at full flood, didn’t reach into the sere, barren stretches beyond the high banks.

  Sandstone cliffs loomed up and narrowed their passage, and the water’s roar echoed from the rocky cliffs.

  “This is it,” Sam shouted to Florence as she came to his side at the helm, “the first cataract.”

  She had brought him a flask of drinking water but knew she must keep out of his way. He and his two helmsmen fought to keep their boats away from boulders while several of the strongest men dropped over the sides and, scrambling for firm footing on the boulders, grappled with hawsers to help the boats hold their course. Florence retreated to the upper deck and braced herself against the rail where she could watch the crew’s strength and daring. She could feel the river batter the boat and rocks jar it and was amazed how durable were the wooden hulls.

  As she clung to the rail with the wind tugging at her clothes and spray striking her face, she felt the excitement she had imagined when Sam first talked of Africa. The lure of new and exotic places became tangible. She understood Sam’s hunger for adventure and, in this brief moment of wild joy, understood his anticipation of challenges. She felt an urge to rush down to tell him that she felt it, too. But she hadn’t the words for it, and she remained where she could look down and see him, lashed by wind and water, guiding them through danger.

  Above the first cataract the river again lay smooth and broad but with a current so swift they made little headway. They were twenty-six days out of Cairo and moving steadily in a light wind when Florence saw her first camel train, a long line of the beasts heading north laden with enormous tusks and bundles of hides. Before many miles they reached the village of Korosko, a cluster of walled houses and an encampment of conical tents. Beyond the farthest tents, horses and pack animals milled around within a fenced area and tethered camels ruminated nearby.

  The dahabiah approached one of four wooden moorings where a town square opened on the waterfront. As their hull bumped the pilings, the crew secured the ropes and lashed the noggurs rail­ to-rail with the dahabiah. In the village square, men sat at little tables in sparse shade from umbrella trees. Some drew on their water pipes and gestured as they talked, and others quietly played games or sipped coffee or tea. Florence noticed there were no women in the market although small children played in the dirt or ran along the water’s edge, leaping over ropes.

  Now that the boat was moored and the air still, the mid-day sun heated every surface and fell heavily on their heads and shoulders, discouraging even mild exertion. Florence remained on the upper deck, fanning herself and watching Sam, who seemed impervious to the shimmering heat. He leapt across from the boat to the rickety landing, followed by Mustafa, who would help him negotiate with merchants and camel drivers.

  “We’re going to miss this old tub,’’ Sam sighed when he returned and joined Florence on the upper deck. “There are three more cataracts beyond here, far worse than what we’ve come through.”

  “You mean that is where the river becomes impassable?”

  “For us, completely. It loops west for about five hundred miles, but we can go overland and reach the river above the rapids where it is again navigable. It will take us about a week or ten days, going straight south on a caravan route across the Nubian desert.”

  Despite the heat, Florence shivered. Like the natives, she had begun to believe in the Nile’s life-giving powers. She had not realized they’d be leaving it this soon, and she knew she’d miss the long days of gazing at spectacular landscapes, the cool nights above moon-lit water, and even the wild cataracts. But she chose to avoid mentioning her feelings to Sam and to speak only of mundane matters.

  “What about our supplies and boats?”

  “Mustafa and the sailing crew will take the boats back to Cairo, and we’ll carry all we need. And his cabin boys will be with us. Don’t worry, my dear, Achmed Camels and their drivers will take us to Abu Hamed. And then we’ll see about getting another boat.”

  For Sam, she could see that leaving the boat was a mere step along the way, and she knew she must get used to the change even though her self-confidence was a bit shaky. On their last night on board, she was lost in thought as they waited for the cooling wind when Sam spoke to her with an unexpected prescience.

  “Are you afraid, Florence?”

  “A little,” and for her own sake as well as his, she tried to name her fears, “of the heat. And the camels.”

  “The heat is formidable, you are quite right. But if the camels seem nasty, it is primarily their breath and the noises they make. And you needn’t be friends with them.”

  “Not that I think they don’t mean well,” Florence laughed, glad she had mentioned them, “I just don’t know how to ride a camel. They’re not like horses.”

  “The drivers will control them, you just hang on.”

  “Dear Sam, don’t worry. I’ll get used to them and probably feel sad when we part.”

  “I do worry, Florence. I fear I ask too much of you.”

  “‘Entreat me not to leave you or forbear following after you.”

  “So you’ve looked into the Bible.” Sam took both of her hands. “I admire both your accuracy and your sentiment.”

  His touch, as always, comforted her, easing her mind and banishing some fear. She longed to again feel the elation rather than the threat, and she told herself not to make too much of her nervousness. What could be more natural than to feel uneasy at setting out across a burning desert?

  Chapter 13

  The sun filtered through the netting around her cot, and Florence awoke to sound of men talking and animals snorting. Sam was gone, the tent flap was rolled up, and she glimpsed camels on their knees while men settled loads on their backs. She hurried to wash up and dress in a blue cotton skirt and shirtwaist and went out so the crew could strike the tent. Achmed had kept a pot of tea hot in the ashes and filled a cup for her, and he put a piece of crisp, warm atayif on a plate. She hadn’t been hungry before she tasted the honey and cinnamon. Balancing the plate, she sank to the ground and quickly devoured her breakfast. Then she went to find Sam.

  “Good morning, Florence.” Sam kissed her lightly and peered at her face. “Are you ready to meet your camel?”

  “I don’t know if he’s ready, but I think I am.”

  Slowly approaching her mount, Florence studied his placid face and hairy ears. He was chewing, his jaw working from side to side, and his long upper lip curled over the lower one.

  His eyes were half closed, and she studied the long lashes, straight and thick as a paint brush to keep sand out of his eyes. Seeing that he was busy digesting, she flung her soft woolen burnoose around her shoulders and stepped closer to his hump to examine the saddle. Sam came to help her to climb onto the big saddle that offered a high front and high and wide back that gave her support and a feeling of security. She reached forward and patted the camel’s neck while his jaw continued working and his stomachs went on rumbling.

  “He’s absorbed in his own thoughts, Sam, not interested in me. Is that a good sign or a bad?”

  “He probably hasn’t met many women. Just assume he knows his job. Are you sitting comfortably?”

  “So far I’ve no complaints.”

  Sam and Achmed made sure everyone carried a full water canteen, then mounted their own camels while the drivers checked all the packs and saddle straps. At a signal from the leader, the drivers goaded the camels, and as her beast lurched to his feet, Florence gripped the saddle horn. As the train set out across the sand, she grew accustomed to the peculiar loping gait, though in changing gaits, the camel sometimes lurched alarmingly. After the first few jolts, however, she adjusted to the roll and sway and knew why they were called the ships of the desert.

  As the sun rose toward the zenith, color bleach
ed from the sky, and the sand returned the heat, shimmering in waves. The wind picked up sand and pelted her, stinging her hands and penetrating even the fine weave of the burnoose which she drew across the lower half of her face. She wore gogglers with cup­like frames that narrowed her vision but kept the sand out of her eyes, and the smoked lenses protected them from glare.

  By noon the rocky outcroppings cast barely a shadow and created no hope of respite. The drivers urged the beasts on and on until they came upon a few stunted palms rising among rocks, a poor oasis, but it offered slight shelter from the wind and a spot of shade. They halted the caravan and the camels knelt. Florence saw she was not the only one who found it difficult to unbend and stand up, and she wallowed across the sand and lay down in the shadow of a rock.

  While the crews set up canopies and Achmed distributed food, Sam brought out his thermometer and set it in shade near the leather bags of drinking water. He told Florence it registered 124° Fahrenheit. While camels chewed their cuds, the travelers ate a light meal and drowsed for an hour, then still heavy with sleep, climbed back into their saddles to resume the trek until the sun sank beyond the dunes. The men were quick to erect some windbreaks and a tent for Florence and Sam while Achmed set about his cooking.

  The sky turned gold and red, then green and lavender as the night winds sucked heat from the sand. Sam and Florence lounged on a Persian carpet in front of their tent, and she felt grateful as she shivered and pulled a shawl around her shoulders. They sipped hot tea and watched the first stars appear. Achmed served plates of mutton and bean mash, all savory with spices, and he smiled proudly in response to their praises.