The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (19 page)

Her hands reached toward the contents, fluttering over them like a hummingbird in a sea of blossoms. Arranging her kit was the closest thing to play since childhood. She enjoyed it the way other women took pleasure organizing their jewelry, folding their shawls and pelerines, organizing toiletries on the bureau top. Pride of ownership, the glass and steel in her hands, the orderliness—all were deeply gratifying.

On the top tier in compartments lay salves and implements: tar and camphor ointment, mint liniment, balm of arnica, scissors, golden-eyed straight and curved sailmakers’ needles, and last, wrapped in a green velvet square, three surgical needles along with silk thread for sewing up wounds. Satisfied with the inventory, she proceeded to the drawers. Here were metal tubes of smelling salts as well as the boxed set of perfumes she’d bought as souvenirs in Italy
the year before, four diminutive glass bottles: orange-blossom from Spain; attar of roses from Smyrna; French lavender; and her favorite, frangipani, from India. She never
wore
perfume. In warm weather it attracted bees, and in winter overpowered the shuttered rooms. Also, she did not wish to advertise herself. But in the bedroom at home, with only Parthe to see, she sniffed it, or daubed it on the hem of her pillowcase, added a drop to the washbasin.

She’d longed to ease suffering for as long as she could remember. At first it was childish play. Then, when she was eleven years old, the sheepdog, Cap, had broken his leg. The shepherd—grizzled old Stennis, was it?—had come to the house to ask for a gun and a single bullet to put the dog away. Flo had interceded. “Let me set the leg,” she had begged WEN, tearful. She remembered the burning in her face and neck, how she had felt she might die, too, if they shot the whimpering animal. She’d watched the doctor set broken bones in the village, but she’d only set the cloth limbs of Parthe’s dolls. WEN had yielded and Flo had splinted Cap’s paw, wrapped it up with clean rags, and covered the whole with an old stocking doused with oil of peppercorns to discourage chewing. She fixed him a bed in the kitchen and brought him milksops and scraps. The dog had recovered.

Since then, her doctoring had grown more sophisticated. In Italy and Egypt she applied leeches to Charles, poultices to both Brace-bridges, and cured the servants of stomachaches, headaches, sunstroke, and housemaid’s knee. She was familiar with the standard remedies, compelled, as a youngster, to memorize what she overheard when the doctor came around.
James compound: 16 grains for an old woman, 11 for a young woman, 6 for a child.
Homeopathic curatives in tiny glass bulbs stoppered with rubber filled the second drawer of her kit. So little was needed to ameliorate a host of conditions, everything from bad appetite to scurvy. She had the country remedies by heart: Saint John’s wort for melancholy, chamomile for nervous agitation, witch hazel for rashes, cider vinegar for bowel distress. They lived in her mind, along with favorite poems and hymns, things that required no effort to memorize because she loved knowing them; they’d become
a part of her, and only death would take them from her. What was that Egyptian spell?
I am the woman who lightens darkness and look, it is bright! I have felled the evil spirit, I have—

A loud thump followed by a shout: Trout lay sprawled on the floor between the two beds, just in front of Flo’s feet. Twisted up in her levinge, she thrashed like a butterfly struggling to break out of its cocoon. Flo kneeled at her side. “Are you hurt, Trout?”

“What a question! You have eyes.”

A flicker of rage licked at Flo’s heart. “Let me help you up.” How dare Trout speak to her in such a fashion! She took a deep breath. She would counter with kindness. “You must have fallen in your sleep.” She picked gingerly at the tangled net of the levinge. Lately, their roles had reversed.

“I can manage on my own.” Trout ripped the netting of the levinge loose from the ceiling, wadded it up, and tossed it to one side.

The violence of the gesture offended Flo. She stood and backed away, fury rising once more in her craw. She fantasized sailing off in the dahabiyah without Trout, leaving the sourpuss asleep over her needlework at the temple. She’d send a punt when they reached Philae, then book passage for Trout to England, meanwhile writing Fanny to dismiss her. But what would Fanny do? Likely berate Flo for ineptitude, maybe take Trout’s side. Either way, she’d never let the matter alone. It would join the collection of distortions that passed for Nightingale mythology, already chock full of Flo’s worst moments in the bosom of her family reduced to epithets. Homeric ones, now that she thought about it. But nothing beautiful, like
wine-dark sea
or
rosy-fingered dawn
. Not flattering, like
swift-footed Achilles
and
owl-eyed Athena
. No. It was
Flo of the terrible table manners, Flo the queen of melancholy.
And now,
Flo flummoxed by a servant
and
Flo who lost herself on the Nile.
Feeling the ire coloring her neck, she said, “I think it would behoove us to talk about our present situation.”

Trout had managed to gather herself together on the edge of the divan. Her face was the red of uncooked mutton; she kneaded her skull absently. “Hmph,” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon. Did you speak?”

“What’s the use, mum? I wish I’d never come here. If it was up to me, I’d of stayed home where I belong.”

Flo heard desperation in Trout’s words. Her heart softened a bit. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” She wondered if Fanny had been aware of Trout’s reluctance. “Did you tell my mother?”

Trout lowered her gaze. “That’s a purely ridiculous question.”

“You didn’t?”

“Oh, no, mum, I did.” Trout stood, turned her back to Flo, and changed into an old shift. “There was no one else, Mariette being indisposed and the other girls inexperienced. Besides, Mrs. Nightingale told me this place was—how did she put it?—a jewel, mum.” She sat back down on the bed. “Perfumy and busting with Turkey carpets and velvet drapes. And the creatures, she said, would be straight from the London Zoo. Camels and lions and zebras.”

Since Fanny had never set foot in Egypt, it was hard to know if she believed what she had told Trout or was simply inventing enticements. “I’m truly sorry for my mother’s inaccuracies,” Flo said, hoping that a ready apology would placate Trout and feeling, too, that she should not be held responsible for Fanny’s half-truths. “I must say that explains things to a degree.” There, she had kept her head and responded kindly. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“You don’t know much about me, mum, truth be told.”

Flo was at a loss, pulled one moment to sympathy, the next to anger. “But we are here now, and you have a job to do as do I, dear Trout.”

Trout rolled up a stocking and plunged her foot into it. “No need to dearie me.” She smoothed the stocking on her leg. “You don’t even rightly know my name, I’d wager.”

Flo was beside herself. She was trying to be accommodating and getting nowhere. They had always called her Trout. The image of a fish no longer entered her mind, though at first it always had—a sleek fish sporting a rainbow and a silky black fin. “Of course I know your name.” She reached across the divide between the two divans and
patted Trout’s hand. “It’s Troutwine. How could you think you could be in my employ without—”

“I mean my given name, not my family name.”

Flo froze. Who was this impossible person who caused her to feel abashed and ashamed when she had done nothing wrong? Whatever else she was, Trout was not forgiving, she saw that now. She seemed bent on asserting her malcontent and forcing Flo to acknowledge it.

She had never heard anyone, not even other servants, call Trout anything else. The Nightingales did not make a habit of renaming their servants, unlike many of their acquaintances. Fanny considered it demeaning and bad for morale to dub a girl “Mary” or “Jane” simply because it was easier. Perhaps Trout’s name was a sore subject with her because in a previous household she’d refused to answer to a fake name, insisting on her real one. Florence was horrified to realize that she had no earthly idea what Trout’s name might be. Nor had she seen any of Trout’s travel documents. Charles took charge of all that. “What is it, then?” she asked timidly. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes.

“Christa,” Trout said, looking up.

“Christa,” Flo repeated, leaning against the wall of the dahabiyah. How fitting that her servant bear the feminized name of her Lord, as if the woman were yet another obstacle in her path to discover God’s plans for her. She looked into Trout’s eyes still puffy from sleep. “May I call you Christa then?”

Trout blew her nose into her handkerchief and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear while she considered. Her dress drooped off one blotchy shoulder. “No, I prefer Trout, mum. Only my family, what-ever’s left of them, called me Christa.”

In the small cabin, Flo felt trapped. Trout would concede nothing for the sake of her feelings. The orderly surface between them had ruptured, and Trout did not wish it repaired. “All right then, Trout, it’s time to get up. I’ll have my cotton day dress. You may begin with my hair.”

Flo took her place on the carpet-covered stool. In a moment,
Trout rose and picked up the hairbrush. Flo felt her fingers moving roughly against her scalp. At first, the brushing was too vigorous, but soon enough, the strokes softened, the touch of the hands lightened. Trout would go no further for the time being. Flo relaxed into the pleasure of her morning coiffure.

• • •

At eight o’clock, when Flo went on deck, the Bracebridges had not yet appeared. The crew was engaged in cooking and cleaning the boat when the muezzin’s call to prayer rang out from the shore.
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar!
—God is great, God is great!—the voice plaintive and piercing, an imprecation edged with dolor. The crew stopped what they were about, washed with a bucket of river water, and pulling prayer mats from every crack and crevice, dropped to their hands and knees, facing east. Flo watched the familiar sight of their rumps rising as their heads grazed the floor in the required humility. Up and down they bobbed for several minutes before returning to their chores. What, she wondered, if Englishwomen and -men prayed with their bums to the sky? Women with hooped skirts might be stranded and scandalous, unable to right themselves, rolling in circles like enormous tops.

A crewman crept toward her with an envelope in hand. She thanked him and smiled. He was the man she called Efreet-Youssef, to distinguish him from the other Youssefs among the crew. Why did the Egyptians use the same few names repeatedly? He had been her efreet weeks before in Cairo. In the narrow city streets, he had run in front, holding the halter of the ass on which she rode bouncing up and down as the tiny burro hurtled forward. Otherwise, Paolo had explained, the animal would bolt for his stall or the nearest shade.

Turning the letter over, she felt a pang of disappointment: it was not from Gustave but from Max, a note of thanks for the dinner party. Rather effusive, she thought. Except for the last lines, where he spelled out their itinerary. They’d remain another week at Abu Simbel, photographing and collecting squeezes. Next, as he’d mentioned
at dinner, would be Philae. After that, they planned an extra excursion—overland from Kenneh to Koseir on the Red Sea. Then, north again, toward Cairo. He closed with polite regards.

Flo consulted the foldout map in
Murray
. Kenneh lay just north of Karnak and Thebes, where the river jigged to the east, forming an elbow that poked into the eastern Sahara.

How she envied the Frenchmen! They would gallop horses or lope on camels in a caravan, and visit the Red Sea. Who knew what adventures might lie in wait for them in the desert?

With their frail constitutions, the Bracebridges weren’t up to an overland trip. It was a wonder they managed any travel. For a good part of every journey, they remained indoors, reading esoteric books, writing letters, and resting—resting hour upon hour. Charles’s big, whiskered face beneath the London papers as he dozed on one foreign sofa after another, Selina napping away the afternoons in bed, always in a dress, her hair loose on the pillow like sunrays. And her face, which Flo loved in all its idiosyncrasy, plump and pink, the features clustered too closely together in the center, as if they had stopped growing before the rest of her. The face of a happy child.

Now Selina appeared, slightly dazed, holding and reading a book in one hand as she climbed the steps from her cabin, her skirts swept up in the other hand. As she stepped into a patch of sunshine, she looked up. “Darling Flo,” she called in her light soprano. Her face broke into a smile and she closed her book on its scarlet satin page-marker. Charles, she said, was having a tray belowdecks, something about a scrabbling sensation in his chest. They decided to breakfast together.

They ordered eggs and tea while a sailor laid the table, bowing and offering guttural sounds of apology as he whisked between their chairs. The teapot arrived first, aswim with loose pekoe leaves. Efreet-Youssef offered a cinnamon stick, but the women politely refused it. He returned to the brazier on the bow.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Flo said.

“And I, you,” said Selina. Selina was never without her fan, and now she wagged it slowly, like a dog’s tail in greeting. “If we don’t talk,
whatever we’ve done or seen doesn’t seem quite complete. I always need my Florence addendum.” Selina raised one eyebrow, anticipating. “Is it about last night, the Frenchman?”

“I do want to talk about that. But no”—Flo smiled shyly—“I’ve been wanting to ask you why it is you decided to travel without a maid. You had one in Rome. You don’t mind the question, do you?”

“Why would I mind? I have no secrets from you, and in any case, there’s no secret involved. I didn’t bring a maid because I have Charles and you, and I am more comfortable in close quarters doing things for myself. Our lodgings in Rome were spacious, but here . . .” Selina hugged herself tightly.

“Who fixes your hair, then? Charles?” Flo’s chair scrooped as she dragged it into the shade of the reed awning.