The Sacred River (26 page)

The Nile was changing color, turning brown with the mud that it carried from the south. The inundation had begun early, the river rising by five or six centimeters each day. The ancient Egyptians had set their calendar by the rising waters, dividing the year into three parts. Akhet, the time of the flood; Peret, for the growing season; Shemu, harvest time. It was a decent way to divide any length of time, Eberhardt Woolfe thought. A day. A year. A life. He was moving from Shemu
to Akhet. But what had he harvested, in this last hard year? What would he sow, this year or next, when the dig was completed and the floodwaters receded, leaving behind the layer of rich silt that sustained and created the country?

Four eggs bumped gently in a pan on the charcoal stove, steam rising from the water. Eberhardt had no servant at the house, only assistants at the tomb. Standing at the table in his kitchen, he sawed into a loaf of black bread by the light of the oil lamp and added another slice to the ones already cut. In the near darkness, he wrapped two plates and two cups in a linen cloth, then selected two knives, their bone handles rounded from use. It was a particular pleasure, to take out items in pairs.

He removed the pan from the fire and retrieved the eggs with a spoon, left them to cool. Rinsed a branched vine of red tomatoes that made him think of a robust, young family, so firmly attached they were to each other. So alike one to the other.

“
Ach
, Kati. What am I doing?”

The eggs were cool enough to touch. Egyptian eggs were white-shelled, all yolk inside. They were either too small, as these were, or too large, like the ostrich eggs that Professor Kranz had considered a delicacy and that Eberhardt found an abomination. Miss Heron, he was certain, would not like to eat an ostrich egg.

What did women eat? He could barely remember anymore. They ate the things one couldn’t find here. Sacher torte
and strudel. Soup. White meat. That was women in Germany, he reminded himself. In England, everyone had drunk tea. He shook salt into a tin, screwed down the lid. He had packed a cloth bag of dates and dried apricots. An enamel pot. The coffee was ground, ready to brew at the site.

Did Englishwomen drink coffee? His landlady in Holborn, when he had studied at the British Museum, had served beer with every meal including breakfast, a flat, warm tankard of it that left rings on the table. Whether the woman offered it because it was her own custom, or because she believed it must be his, he’d never discovered. On the first morning, he had requested coffee; Mrs. Brown brought something unrecognizable, so much like ditchwater in appearance and taste that he had waited until she left the room, then—unable to open the filthy window—poured it into a plant pot.

Harriet was not like the Englishwomen he’d met when he was passing those dingy, intense months under the great dome of the Reading Room, treading in front of the stacks of books along perforated iron landings, through which you could see the balding heads of the scholars underneath.

The few women he’d met in London had struck him as constrained by living on their island. Short in stature and limited in their horizons. Harriet was more like he was. Not properly allied to her own country. A wanderer by nature. He sensed it. She would drink coffee. Eat black bread. March into a bat-ridden tomb without fleeing.

He wondered whether she was ill again. Her health was delicate; that was why she had come here with her mother. She had not arrived at the dig the previous day, although he had expected her. He’d thought her delayed, had been disappointed to realize, at midday, that she wasn’t coming. She would be present today, he was certain. Her interest was serious. She had the feeling, the feeling he had, of tending the legacy of living people and having a responsibility toward them. She would arrive on her black donkey, with the boy walking beside her, the dog on her lap. Wearing the orange scarf that she wrapped around her head like a turban, with her hair loose underneath it. She was tall. When they spoke, he could look her in the eye, not regard the top of her head. He liked that. The thought provoked a stab of guilt. Kati had been small; she barely measured five feet and her hips were narrow. Too narrow for life. Their daughter had survived only hours, long enough for Eberhardt to recognize his own features mirrored in her face, to feel the grip of her hand around his finger. He had named her Rosa, insisted against the doctor’s advice that before she was buried with her mother she be christened. He was not a believer except in the importance of ritual, of offering to the dead every paltry assistance available to mortals.

Eberhardt walked into the large salon that was study and drawing room, and picked up the framed photograph balanced on the Bösendorfer. Kati’s mouth was open as if to speak. Her eyes watched him, with a wry understanding he hadn’t been aware of during their life together. Sometimes he felt that it was he who had abandoned her, he who had disappeared out of their shared life, while she had remained faithful to a moment, her lace shawl draped around her sloping shoulders, her expression steadfast, as unchanging as the cameo at her neck. He had absconded into alteration, who and what he had been dying more with every day that passed.

The basket was full, the oranges nestled on the top, the last of the plum cake Mutti
insisted he bring from Heidelberg neatly slid down the side. He lifted the bag by its leather handles, felt its weight. It was an offering to take into the tomb. Not for the dead but for the living. For Harriet Heron, the white woman with the red hair, who had walked into the catacomb with him and stayed there, in the darkness. He wanted to share something with her. He was not sure what.

Picking up the basket, he walked toward the door, then turned back and looked again at the photograph.

“Is it wrong, Kati?
Ich muss nun Abschied nehmen
. The time has come to say farewell.”

FORTY-ONE

The British consul’s agent inhabited one of the few two-story houses in Luxor; it was narrow, built of mud bricks, with curled iron grilles over the ground-floor windows. A pot of marigolds stood to one side of a faded red door, which opened to a dark hallway scented with a musky incense. The smell transported Louisa, as she stepped inside, to Mr. Hamilton’s house in Greenwich.

She glanced around her, half expecting to see Mr. Hamilton’s plump, leaking wife, to breathe in the scent of cats and cabbage, be invited to make her own way to the back parlor. She found herself instead looking at a neat, dark-haired woman with an olive complexion, gold hoops dangling from the lobes of her ears. Louisa removed her glasses.

“Good morning. Is Ahmed Bey present?”

The woman shook her head and showed Louisa into a cool, square study. She brought in a pile of letters on a salver. Looking through the envelopes, Louisa found three addressed to her. One was in Blundell’s strong, methodical hand, the second in Yael’s forward-leaping script that made her think of a horse taking a fence. The third was in handwriting she didn’t recognize.

The housekeeper left the room and Louisa sat down on the visitor’s chair by the side of the agent’s desk. The silence in the room was broken by the light, scurrying tick of a carriage clock on the top of a bookcase. Its urgency seemed redundant in this place of stillness, this place where time had dwarfed itself.

Blundell’s letter was addressed to her in Alexandria, care of the Anglo Ottoman Bank, and had been forwarded by Yael. Louisa opened it with the jeweled paper knife that lay on the desk, shearing through the crease on the top of the envelope. She got out the letter and for a minute held it without unfolding it. It was communication enough, that what had been in Blundell’s hand was now in hers. How long had she been away from her husband? She hardly knew anymore and no counting of days or miles could quantify how far she’d traveled from their life together.

Opening out the sheet of paper, she read the contents. He’d received the letter she had written on the journey upriver, was glad to hear they had enjoyed the trip, and hoped the climate in Luxor was proving beneficial to Harriet. Their sons were in good health, although he himself had suffered a minor bout of Russian influenza, which was no cause for concern. The weather was wet for May and hardly seemed like spring, although the cherry blossom in the garden was splendid. He was sorry she was missing it, since she appreciated beauty better than he. On a more serious note, the news from Egypt concerned him. He suspected that it might be a good idea for them all to return home soon and would sign off now in the hope of being reunited with his beloved wife.

The housekeeper returned and set down a tray on which was a small glass of spirits, a saucer of Turkish delight. Louisa raised her eyes from the letter, blinking away a tear. She waited until the woman had left the room before opening the next letter. Yael trusted that dear Harriet’s health was improving and Louisa was keeping well. She was busy with her charity work. The weather in Alexandria was surprisingly comfortable, not unlike Boscombe in July, and the evenings cool. Louisa scanned the lines, barely absorbing their contents, folding the sheet back into the envelope.

She contemplated the script on the front of the third letter. The initial
L
was embellished at both ends with curling loops. The envelope was coarse, with a dirty-looking thumbprint on one corner. Her surname had been misspelled.
Mrs. L. Herron
. Whenever she received a note in an unfamiliar hand, Louisa knew its provenance. Malachi Sethe Hamilton had so little time and so many calls on it that he always sent missives written by one scribe or another. She tore open the envelope, impatient suddenly to know what message it contained.

Glancing at the letter, taking in its brevity, Louisa first thought that Mr. Hamilton had no news to communicate to her. It wasn’t more than a line. Then she read it.

Antigua Street, SE

Mrs. Herron,

Yr mam came through again. Death is coming for sure.

M. S. Hamilton (Mr.)

Picking up the glass from the tray, Louisa downed the brandy in one burning swallow.

As she walked back by the river, Louisa’s feet hurt. She stopped to rest, sat down on a great gray boulder, lifting one foot and then the other out of the thin summer shoes that she had purchased for the trip and that had proved quite hopeless for the terrain, watching the coruscant water, its smooth eternal flow. The Nile appeared wider than it had when they arrived in Luxor. Everything changed. Even the oldest river in history, on which Moses had floated in a cradle sealed with pitch, was altering with every moment that passed.

As she sat, the meaning of her mother’s message at last became clear to her. Harriet was in better health than she had been for years. She was blooming in the dry heat, breathing freely, had never looked or been stronger. If it wasn’t Harriet who was in danger, it must be herself. It was her own death that was near. Amelia Newlove—Louisa never thought of her as
Mam
, that was Mr. Hamilton’s term—had tried to warn her. Was trying still. Warn her or welcome her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before.

She stopped under one of the trees that grew by the edge of the river. Leaning on it, she felt steadied. A tree was a tree, in whatever soil it grew. The dry rustle of leaves over her head sounded for a moment like the sea, and she felt a sudden longing for the sensation of rain on her face and the sight of a cloudy sky. Walking on, she found herself thinking again of Dover, the place she still called home if taken unawares. The place that Augustus had robbed her of because the flint house where they’d lived, the turf-covered cliff, the night music of the sea as it murmured and roared to itself in the darkness, had come to seem the same as innocence.

“I am homesick,” she said aloud.

On the far side of the river, the pink hills stared back, impassive. A noise cut through the air, sounding like a wounded animal. Louisa walked a few more steps and, beyond the line of bushes at the edge of the field, saw a woman. She was on her knees by a short, low mound of earth, scooping handfuls of dust from the ground and raining them down over her head, rubbing them into her grief-ravaged face and her exposed breast, her wails rending the air. She lowered her face to the ground, rubbing her forehead on the earth as if she would crawl into it. At the end of the grave was a bowl of water with a small brown bird perched on the rim. Louisa bowed her head. She felt a pain in her own breast, for all the agony that lived in the world like wind or sun, moving about, falling at random on its human subjects. If she was to die, she must first get Harriet safely back to Blundell. At the thought that she might never see her husband again, she began to weep.

FORTY-TWO