The Sacred River (34 page)

Mrs. Heron ran her hands over her covered head.

“She was here. She came to say goodbye to you, Dr. Woolfe.”

Eberhardt began pacing the room while he readjusted what he thought he knew and tried to reconcile two feelings that rose in him: exultation, at the idea that Harriet had not run away with the Englishman; dread, that some accident had befallen her.

“I returned last night, late,” he said. “I’ve been away for two days.”

Monsieur Andreas put down the untouched cup of coffee.

“The boy Fouad isn’t back either. Nor the dog.”

Eberhardt had a strange sensation in his body, as if everything around him, his papers, his tools, the grand piano, had altered, moved from the foreground to the background, become less solid and real than the urgency that was coursing through him, making it impossible to be seated, causing his palms to sting. He knew where Harriet was.

“I shall go ahead to the dig,” he said, bowing to Mrs. Heron. “You can follow. My foreman will conduct you to the site when he arrives.”

“It is too late,” Mrs. Heron said, her voice flat. “She has perished, Dr. Woolfe. It was all foreseen, before she even left London.” She began to cry. “I don’t want to live. It should have been me. I believed it was me.”

Eberhardt Woolfe felt another spurt of anger. This was a crisis, undeniably, but to give up hope when hope could remain was wrong. It was morally wrong. It hindered fate. His eyes fell on the scarab. It had proved perfect when cleaned, the green malachite divested of its casing of dirt and mortar and bat droppings; by the look of it, it might have left the manufactory last week. He picked it up from his desk and went to where she sat, pressed it into her hand, closed her cold fingers around it.

“Please, Mrs. Heron. This symbolizes rebirth. You must not despair.” He left the house on the hillside, leaving the door hanging open. Unable to wait for the foreman to bring up his horse from the pasture, he went on foot, running along the narrow path made by the horse’s hooves, toward the valley. By the gathering light of dawn, the landscape of limestone mountains and valleys looked blue, unearthly as the moon.

Harriet’s black donkey stood in the entrance to the passage, its head hanging. Next to it, Fouad was sitting on the ground. He scrambled to his feet and saluted. The boy looked frightened out of his wits.

Eberhardt took his hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said in Arabic. “Where is she?”

Fouad gestured toward the passage.

“Miss Harry inside.”

“Why didn’t you come for me?”

“She said I must stay here,” Fouad said.

The dog appeared and began springing at Eberhardt’s knees in a frenzy of recognition, the shrill bark echoing up and down the valley.

He reached down and rubbed its head, trying to think clearly. She must have gone through. The opening was too narrow for him but it must have admitted her. She was inside, he was sure of it. The dog continued to yap as Eberhardt Woolfe lit a lamp, grabbed the pickax, and ran along the passage to the blocked doorway. He tried first to force his own broad shoulders through the opening and, failing to do so, began swinging the pick with all his might at the edges of the aperture, smashing through rock and rubble, careless of the amulets and shabtis and scarabs that flew through the air.

•  •  •

Harriet woke to the sound of hammering. For a minute, she remained where she lay, quite still. The sound was faint, so slight and distant, it might have come from inside her own head. Sitting up, she took a drink from the tin bottle and listened again. She could hear another noise. The faint strains of a bark, recognizable by its rhythm, its persistence, still overlaid by the sound of demolition.

Getting to her feet, shaking out her skirt, Harriet wound her scarf around her neck. Holding her journal to her chest with one hand, putting the other straight out in front of her, taking one cautious step after another, she followed the source of the sound. She walked into a stone pillar, bruising her elbow, then moved away from it and continued, inching forward, until she tripped on an obstruction. It was a step. The step led to another, moving upward. As she crawled up them, on her hands and knees, the sound grew louder, almost deafening.

“Dr. Woolfe?” she called, as the faintest glimmer of what was unmistakably light appeared before her.

The hammering ceased. “Miss Heron? Is it you?”

“Yes. It is me.”

“Come, Miss Heron.
Ach
, please come to me.”

Reaching the top of the steps, shaking all over, Harriet crawled back through the opening. A pair of hands reached for her, helped her to stand, and in the bright light of a lamp she found herself blinking, looking at Eberhardt Woolfe.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I thought you were inside. I should not have entered the tomb before you. It is beautiful in there. Miraculous.” Eberhardt Woolfe shook his head, then stepped forward and took hold of her, enveloped her for a long, enduring moment in his arms.

FIFTY-THREE

Sitting on the wooden chair, with a table beside her bearing a bowl of water, a bar of soap, a pile of clean white rags torn from a nightdress brought from England, Yael was humming. She encircled the squirming body on her lap with one arm and with the other reached for a scrap of cotton, dipped it into the water, and squeezed it out, dabbing a corner on a thinning oval of translucent soap. “Send her victorious,” she said, drawing the cloth over the child’s forehead.

She plunged the rag back into the water, squeezed it out again, and applied it to the little girl’s right eye, cleaning it from the inside corner to the outside. The lashes were long and lustrous, each one thick and black as a miniature quill.

The infant sent up a scream. “There, there,” said Yael.

Wiping the other eye in the same way, she rinsed out the cloth, gave the girl’s nose and mouth a rub with the damp, soft cotton. Cleaned her cheeks and ears, dabbed her dry. She looked like a child again. She’d ceased crying, was looking at Yael curiously from between the long lashes. Her eyes were still healthy, the iris clearly defined, delicate as a watercolor. Only the youngest children, and animals, did not know that one was foreign. Or, at any rate, gave one the benefit of the doubt.

Yael experienced a sudden yawning ache inside, that she would never experience her own baby wriggling and warm on her lap. She wanted to tell the mother that her child was beautiful, a miracle, that she
trailed clouds of glory
. She could not, knew better, understood that such remarks risked bringing down the evil eye. “God save the Queen,” she said, dropping the cloth back into the bowl, lifting the child up underneath her arm, handing her back to the mother. “Clean water, Suraya, please. Another rag.”

Suraya put the other bowl down on the table, took away the used one. Yael added the alum herself, one teaspoonful per half bowl of boiled water, stirring it in until the white powder dissolved. The mothers only wanted her to treat the children who were already affected by eye disease but Yael was trying through Suraya to teach them the value of prevention. She had spent long hours speaking to her, with Mustapha acting as translator, at the villa. Washing the hands and faces of their children. Explaining the meaning of hygiene.

She and Suraya had developed a rhythm for the mornings at the clinic. First, Yael treated the children. Afterward, Suraya demonstrated to the women the washing of the doll, explained the connection between dirt and disease. Only then did they distribute the rations bought with the donations from the congregation of St. Mark’s.

Yael heard a knock and looked up. Through the crack in the door she saw a long robe, draped on a tall, upright figure. Sheikh Hamada. He had never been to the clinic. She handed back the child she was about to treat and hurried toward the door, held it open.

“What a surprise. An honor. Welcome, Sheikh Hamada. Come in, please.”

He remained outside, his eyes flickering over the inside of the room, then resuming their gaze down the alley. The women were dragging their veils back over their faces and had fallen silent. Suraya was scrambling for her burka. Yael understood that the sheikh could not come in. She removed her apron, dried her hands on it, and dropped it on the wooden bed. Picking up her umbrella, she stepped outside.

“I am honored that you have come to visit us, Sheikh.”

He stood a couple of paces away, his bearing as proud as on the first occasion she had met him, his gaze as elusive, fixed on a spot beyond her shoulder. She put up the umbrella, feeling a sudden need for some form of shelter. Not from the sun but from the scorch of the sheikh’s presence, his unwillingness to engage in social niceties.

She answered the question he had not asked.

“Yes, all is going well. You see that the women attend,” she said. “They listen. They take the rations we’ve been able to find since the vicar’s welcome change of heart. You were right, Sheikh, about the food. Some of the children are improving now, in their health. In everything. The next thing will be to get them to school.”

He nodded. His silence was unnerving her.

“I am grateful to you,” she said. “Without your encouragement, they might never have come.”

“The time is finished for this work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your work here is over, Sitti.”

Yael peered at him. She could understand the words he spoke but not what he meant by them. Half a dozen more little children played in the dust close to where they stood, the corners of their eyes studded with flies, their hands sticky with dirt. She felt a surge of indignation, like heat.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “The work is not over, Sheikh. Far from it. It has only just begun.”

“You must close your clinic. It is time to go home.”

Putting down the umbrella, she looked him straight in the face. “Don’t you care for your people?”

“We care for them, and for those who would help them. I am trying to inform you of something.”

“I do not care to hear it, Sheikh Hamada.”

Yael went back inside, controlling her urge to slam the door, closing it quietly behind her. Shaking with anger, she tied her apron strings behind her back and resumed her seat, holding out her hands to receive a little boy. He seemed not to see Yael as he arrived on her lap. His swollen eyelids were stuck together with dried yellow secretions and his ribs, clearly visible, narrow as matchsticks, rose and fell with each breath. He sat still, not, Yael sensed, from an absence of fear but from a state of weakness too great to allow for bawling.

“Claptrap, sir,” she called toward the door to the street, baptizing the fresh cloth in the clean water, squeezing it out. “Drivel, twaddle, and bunkum.” She wiped her own eyes on her sleeve and, with the greatest gentleness, began to clean the little boy’s eyes. “Jack fell down and broke his crown,” she whispered. “And Jill came tumbling after.”

FIFTY-FOUR

There was a tap on wood and Harriet jumped up. She put down her book, opened the door of her room, and looked into a pair of kind, soft-edged brown eyes. Disappointment spread through her like ink in water. She could barely get the words out.

“Monsieur Andreas. Good morning.”

“Mademoiselle.” He smiled at her over a wooden tray on which were a lace cloth, a sprig of bright flowers in a vase, and a battered teapot. “How are you this morning?”

“Quite recovered, thank you.”

He nodded.

“The
Amon-Ra
has moored. There is a cabin available. They sail this evening, Miss Heron,” he said. “I have informed Mama.”

Harriet nodded, unable to speak as she took the tray. Closing the door, she put the tray on the table by the bed and sat down. She had believed Dr. Woolfe would come. She felt he had something to say to her, something urgent.

The next knock on the door was unmistakably Louisa’s. She came in, her head wrapped in her green veil. Her body looked altered and it crossed Harriet’s mind that Louisa didn’t have on her stays, her bustle. She looked flatter and thinner. Harriet had been speechless when she first saw Louisa’s cropped head. It seemed to make her a different person. Louisa could give no explanation for why she had done it. Only said she’d thought she had no need of hair, no need of anything. “And fortunately, I was right,” she’d added.