The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (29 page)

Efreet-Youssef poked his head into the cabin. He went barefoot on board the dahabiyah, and except for the pleasant slap of his feet when he worked on deck raising or lowering sails, she never heard him move about. “Madami,” he whispered, shyly looking down as she turned to him. He held out his hand with a letter in it. Nodding in gratitude, she took it. He disappeared as silently as if he had levitated upstairs. Flo glanced at Trout: still sleeping. She sat on the divan and ripped open the envelope.

My dear Rossignol,

We returned to Philae three days late from Aswan, where we succeeded in securing supplies and diverting ourselves. Not knowing what would be available farther downstream, we also purchased (against Joseph’s objections) a few provisions for the trip to Koseir.

The guidebook says it is a four-day walk from Kenneh to the Red Sea, but our mounts, not we, will be doing the walking. We will not, as I expected, be riding horses, but camels. (Can one sit a trotting dromedary? Do they trot? Do they gallop?) Apparently the road is poor, and water can be a problem, with dried-up and contaminated wells. (We saw a well near Edfu with the carcass of a decomposing goat draped across its mouth. The stench would have given an archbishop second thoughts about the existence of God.)

I have thought often of you in the past week, hoping that you are feeling happier and even enjoying yourself—and banishing any extreme thoughts.

I wonder if you are as preoccupied with fantasies of the Red Sea as I am—writing in the clouds, my mother used to call my daydreaming. Max, on the other hand, is sharpening his nibs and pencils. Everything is fodder for his literary ambitions, which differ from mine. I do not think he lives in the present at all, but in some frantic future packed with ink bottles and reams of paper whereon he rehashes and thus brings to due importance the events which pass for ordinary life to the rest of us poor sods not inclined to publish the existence of every stray cat of a thought that crosses our minds. I shall have to cut out his tongue if he suggests one more time that I write a travel book, as if my life, too, were a poor rag to be soaked in the fluid of adventure, then squeezed out drop by drop onto the page as words. Bollocks! I want to feel the desert sun drumming the back of my neck, count the armies of stars arrayed in the night sky. I want the hot Saharan air to parch my nose and lungs so that I may know the pleasure of quenching an immeasurable thirst. Sometimes I think Max undertakes things only so he can write about them afterward.

Twice I have promised to teach you to make a squeeze. It is now 6:30
A.M
. and we are camped in tents among the palms on the eastern side of Philae. I shall come by at ten to make good on my word. I know this is very short notice and if you are otherwise occupied, we shall make a future date.

Wear your pretty pink bonnet.

Your friend,
Gve. Flaubert

P.S. Bring drinking water if you can manage it.

Flo read the letter twice, then tucked it in her desk. She decided she would go. And though there wasn’t time for a reply, she couldn’t resist looking in
Murray,
if only for a moment. She scanned the index: “old Koseir” and then there, on page 398, “Koseir”:

ROUTE 27

The names of the landmarks sent a tingle radiating from her nape to the top of her head and looping back down her spine. Beer Amber! Beer el Ingleez! The names of the wells that would sustain their very
lives! The mileage was daunting. Five times the distance from Embley to London, among Bedouins and Ababdeh, the tribe named after the local desert. She floated in exotic precincts: herself astride a camel, rocking forward on the lumbering beast . . . herd animals wearing an orchestra of brass bells. There might be gazelles . . . there might be lions—

Trout moaned. Flo shut the book. She had still to deal with the toothache. Strings attached to door handles? Pliers? Or simple sedatives and hot soaks? Dentistry was not a true medical art but an offshoot of the barbershop. The chairs were identical. When the cottagers at Wellow were down with toothache, the usual remedy was extraction, but she was not prepared to remove Trout’s tooth—yet. Nor did she know the technique. Besides, the thought was abhorrent, for if there was something more worrisome than Trout with a toothache, it was Trout with a gaping, bloody wound so close to the brain, with the attendant risk of morbid infection. Could a person die from a toothache? How would she get to Koseir without Trout?

Charles and Selina arrived. From the stairs, Charles called out, “Good job, Flo. Excellent work,” and asked if he could be of assistance. She sent him away. Selina stayed to help and offer encouragement.

By nine, she’d finished the preliminaries. Trout, obedient, almost sweet, had taken nourishment. She was behaving bravely. She had rinsed her mouth with warm water. Flo had wrapped a forefinger in gauze saturated with whiskey and gently massaged the painful area in hopes of numbing it, which was only partially successful. Selina had brought a clean pillowslip. While she was changing the pillow, Flo stopped stock still as if she’d spotted a snake. Tucked beneath Trout’s pillow like an amulet was the iron key that had gone missing from her chatelaine. What did it unlock? Or signify? Perhaps it was just an odd talisman.

She packed the tooth in cotton wool soaked in whiskey. “No talking now for a bit,” she cautioned her patient. “Let it rest.” Trout nodded obediently, a few tears coursing down her sweaty cheeks. Selina mopped Trout’s forehead with a damp cloth.

The soup and bread sops did not mix well with the whiskey. No sooner had Flo tied up Trout’s jaw prettily, with a gauze bow under the chin, than Trout tore it off and vomited into a bowl Flo proffered just in time. “Oh, mum, I’m so ashamed,” Trout said.

“Do not think of it,” Flo said. “Illness has its own timetables, like the railroad. We simply don’t know what they are. We shall try food again later.”

The whiskey was having an effect. In a few moments, Trout dropped off. “Gilbert,” she whined in her sleep, “when shall I see you?”

“Who is Gilbert?” asked Selina.

“I don’t know. She has a married sister in Ryton. Maybe it’s her husband. Or perhaps she has a brother, too.” Flo wiped her hands on a towel. “What shall I do, Selina? Gustave will be here any moment.”

“You shall go with him,” Selina said firmly. “Trout’s toothache can wait a few hours.”

“Could you stay with her?” She knew Selina would agree, but felt obliged to ask.

Selina nodded and clasped her hand. “Do you need Charles to chaperone?”

“No, I feel perfectly safe with Monsieur Flaubert. I am sure he will protect me if necessary.”

Selina didn’t comment.

“He is a gentleman.”

The two regarded the servant in her narrow bed. Trout was a tall woman, and one bare foot stuck out from under the blanket like a chunk of granite. Flo jotted a note in her log:
Patient drowsy.
She felt Trout’s forehead.
Still no sign of fever.
She tugged the cover over the offending foot.

“Ultimately, she is as much my charge as I am hers.” Flo sat on her bed with a sigh, weaving her fingers together. “Perhaps I should stay.”

“Don’t worry. She will be fine until you return. If the pain worsens, I could dose her with a bit of laudanum.” Selina put her arm around Flo. “I shall talk to Charles right now.” Charles had charge of the opium balls and laudanum. Selina stood to leave.

“Could you . . . help me with my clothes and coiffure before you go?” At age twenty-nine, Flo had never dressed herself, nor thought of doing so, as was proper for a lady of rank whose clothing required a second set of hands.

“Yes, of course. I should have thought of it myself.”

After Flo changed into her brown cotton dress, Selina did up the long expanse of small covered buttons on the back.

“My hair,” Flo said. “Nothing fancy. There’s no time. I just want it to be neat, under control.”

She sat on the bed while Selina brushed her hair.

“Don’t trouble yourself too much,” Flo said, “I’ll be wearing my bonnet.” She reached behind to touch the lank brown hair fanned across her shoulders.

“I’ll do my best.” Selina parted the hair down the middle, then gathered most of it into a bun. “You have such lovely hair, Flo.”

“Thank you, dear Selina.” Flo began to braid the strands of hair by her ear while Selina braided their counterpart at the other ear. “It
is
just a toothache. And I do so want to learn to make a squeeze.” And I do so want an adventure with Gustave, she thought.

Selina pinned the side braids into the chignon. “And it’s a lovely way to spend the morning.” She replaced the comb and brush in the fittings of Flo’s vanity case. “I find M. Flaubert a gentleman of interest, don’t you?” she added.

Any girl over age fourteen knew the phrase “a gentleman of interest,” but it was unusual to hear it from Selina, who never played Cupid. It designated a marriage prospect—not only for Flo, but also for all womankind as surely as if Gustave’s name were inscribed in a transcontinental social roster. “Actually,” Flo said, “he behaves like a brother toward me.” She hoped she was not blushing. Though she loved Selina, Flo hated how public an event affection inevitably became. Marrying in a church while scrutinized by dozens of people struck her as a barbaric custom. At least Clarkey had had the good taste to have a private wedding, thus sparing her friends the tribal spectacle.

“Ach du . . . liebe dich,”
Trout whimpered in her sleep.

Selina said, “She will be sleeping like an infant when you return.”

Twisting around suddenly, her eyes still closed, Trout said, “Miss Florence, you must go meet your gentleman. He might be the face in the fire.”

Face in a fire? Flo reached for her log: 9:45
Delirium.
She looked at Selina as she tore the page from her journal book. “Do note any changes, would you, Selina? It’s so easy to forget. A written record is best.”

Selina picked up the paper and held it to her breast. “I shall.”

“I wonder if the tooth is loose,” Flo mused, pausing as she turned to leave the cabin. “It didn’t seem so.”

In a faint and cracking voice, Trout warbled,
“Der Mond is aufgegangen, die gold’nen Sternleinn prangen.”

“Did you know she spoke German?” asked Selina.

But Flo’s mind was elsewhere. She had heard a pleasant baritone voice abovedeck and, plucking her bonnet from its hook, took the stairs two at a time, leaving Selina standing in the cabin with her question unanswered. In Flo’s haste and distraction, she forgot to arrange to take along water.

“Bonjour,”
she called out a moment later, coming on deck.

Charles had already concocted a glass of lemon water for Gustave, and the two men sat at the table under the reed awning, conversing in French. After tramping across Philae to reach the dahabiyah, Gustave’s pelisse was full of burrs and sand. His face shone with perspiration.

“Bonjour.”
He stood, and offered her a chair. He had pushed back the hood of his robe, revealing a clean-shaven face. And what a handsome face it was without the beard (and despite the bald head)—youthful and fresh, the skin flushed from the heat, his cheeks the color of peaches, with high spots of pink and deeper rose.

“You’ve shaved off your beard,” she observed, smiling.

“Tea?” Charles asked her. “I’ve already brewed a pot.”

“Yes, please.”

“Have you breakfasted, I hope?” Gustave asked her.

“Oh, yes,” she lied. Actually, with all the hullabaloo, she’d forgotten
to eat. She spied one of his crewmen on the shore, a muscular, dark-skinned fellow. He sat cross-legged in the sand, intently picking his nose. Alongside him lay several bundles and a yoke with two buckets.

“I understand from Mr. Bracebridge that your maid is ill with a toothache.” Gustave gulped the flavored water, finishing half of it.

“Yes, but let us not talk about it. I have done nothing else for the past three hours.” Charles shot her a surprised glance, his eyes briefly widening, his brow furrowed in mild disapproval or surprise. There were times she wished she could bite her lip rather than blurt out what was on her mind.