The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 15

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 bra.s.s 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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sistance. 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 ma.s.saged 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.u.t.tons 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 blus.h.i.+ng. 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 gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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, finis.h.i.+ng 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.

Gustave seemed unperturbed by her directness. He lifted his gla.s.s and turned it in the striped shade of the reed awning. Splinters of sunlight swarmed there, like fireflies in a jar. "As you wish, Rossignol."

Hearing the nickname, Charles looked up, his features sharpening. It occurred to Flo that her nickname suggested a greater intimacy between her and Gustave than Charles would have been aware of. The truth was, she liked it when he called her "Rossignol." The word had the physicality of a touch, as if he had taken her hand or tapped her shoulder. Also, no one else had ever thought to call her by a nickname. Was that because she appeared too serious, too stern?

The three sat sipping at their beverages, Charles observing them, Flo noticed, as intently as a man expecting rain with his hand out the window. Gustave was apparently oblivious to the alarm he had raised. Finally, as if satisfied that nothing more would be revealed to him, Charles spoke: "And where will you make these squeezes? You will be staying on the island, will you not?"

Good grief, Flo thought, did he expect her to run off with Gustave? "I would not worry you by going far afield," she replied.

"I'll look after your charge," Gustave a.s.sured him. "We shall be at the Temple of Isis with my man, not fifteen minutes' walk from here."

"Good, good," Charles said, tamping his pipe with tobacco. "I shall be interested to see the results of your expedition." He struck a match and inhaled, sucking furiously.

"Oh, Charles," Flo said, once again not quite in control of her emotions, "you make it sound as if we are going to Timbuktu. We shall be back by luncheon. Not to worry."

Charles rose and planted a kiss on top of her head, then offered his hand to Gustave. "I shall see you later, then."

Gustave half rose from his seat. "Oui, monsieur."

Flo raised her hand in farewell.

After Charles was out of earshot, Gustave said, "I think he suspects us of something."

"That is what I thought, too." She finished her tea. "He's being protective of me, that's all."

"But it will be a shame to disappoint him."

The making of squeezes turned out to be simple and repet.i.tious, rather like hanging wallpaper.

It was ironic, Gustave pointed out, that the archaeologist's record of carved stone should be so flimsy and inimical to permanence. The ma.s.sive pylons of the Temple to Isis would become thin, translucent sheets with the texture of old newspaper.

"So a stone and its squeeze," Flo said, "are as unlike a pair of objects as a candle and a flame."

"True. I've been thinking of a death mask and the living human, but I like your a.n.a.logy better."

They began with the pylon on the eastern side of the temple. Aouadallah placed the implements wrapped in a linen roll on the rocky earth. With a small knife, he slit the string on a bundle of folio-size paper. "Five hundred sheets," Gustave said, fanning the edge of the pile with his thumb. "A ream. Can you guess how many reams we brought on our trip?"

"Twenty?"

"More than two hundred."

Flo was silent.

"Max arrived at this number, I believe, by multiplying his ambition by his insanity."

She laughed. What a splendid time she was going to have on the desert trip listening to the Frenchmen cleverly bait each other.

"There are three steps in the manufacture of squeezes," he explained. "The first is to remove debris from the reliefs." He picked up one of several brushes and began to sweep the stone surface. She watched as he inserted the bristles into each incised line. He handed her an identical brush and indicated where she should begin.

Kneeling at the base of the pylon, Flo sensed the magnitude of the job. On close inspection, the stone was thick with the grit and grime of the ages. "Do you think we are the first to clean these stones since they were carved?" she asked. "That would be at least a millennium." She loved the idea; it endowed her hands with the wise golden light of history.

He stopped his brus.h.i.+ng to beam at her. "I see you have a penchant for the dramatic, Rossignol."

Her cheeks were suddenly warm. Rossignol was the tolling of a bell that she wished for and waited to answer. She had felt the same eagerness in the library at home as a child. A hidden door in the shelves led to a secret room that WEN allowed her to enter when she performed recitations especially well or answered a difficult question. How fervidly she had craved her father's approval, his pride in her intellect. "The dramatic? Is it dramatic to imagine that the last hand that touched this surface belonged to an ancient artisan?"

"I am certain the priests of the temple kept the place presentable. So perhaps it has been half a millennium. Would that please you as well?" He changed brushes, selecting a narrow one with stiffer bristles. She watched as he loosened dirt caught in the kilt of an Egyptian soldier. Or did only royalty wear the white linen skirts? "We must be careful," he said, grunting between strokes, "when using the harder brush. It abrades the stone. Just flick it back and forth, like so."

They continued to broom the surface for half an hour. Aouadallah, clad in only a loincloth and turban, joined them, working at a faster pace than either of them. Flo marveled at the rich hue of his skin, identical to the walnut chiffonier in her bedroom at Lea Hurst. The sound of the whisking was pleasant, like a servant methodically sweeping a walkway.

The sun crept higher. Flo reached an area where the carving was obliterated, hacked out like the name of a friend fallen from favor. She touched his sleeve.

"Change of regime, I bet," he said.

"Yes." The redactors, she knew, had been impa.s.sioned, executing their erasures violently. They especially detested Pharaoh Akhenaten, who had decreed that the Egyptians wors.h.i.+p only the sun G.o.d Aten. Everywhere his name was carved, they'd axed it out, a death sentence on a man already deceased.

Aouadallah retrieved a goatskin from his pack. "Wine, effendi?"

"Yes. Merci." Taking the skin, he dispatched Aouadallah to the riverbank. They would need water for the next step in the process.

She watched him raise the goatskin above his head and, without spilling a drop, squeeze it until a red stream arced gracefully into his open mouth. She'd never manage that on the first try. She was no Saracen, no Bedouin, but a woman from Hamps.h.i.+re. The thought deflated her. She sighed as he repeated the performance.

"I shall help you," he said, reading her thoughts. How much he communicated with his eyes!-the pleasure he'd take in teaching her, his certainty she'd succeed, the deep satisfaction of cool wine in a dry throat.

"All right."

"I shall shoot the wine directly into your mouth."

Was that a leer on his face?

"Do you still feel safe?" He pointed with one hand to the dark square of Aouadallah's burnished back retreating down the hillside and lifted the goatskin with the other.

Why should she not feel safe? Safe if he squeezed the wine into her mouth (which proposal seemed mildly obscene)? If he were teasing, making fun of her, she didn't care for it one bit. Just then, a globule of sweat fell from her nose onto her bodice. She withdrew a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and blotted it, turning away from him. What time was it? The sun was still aslant-11 A.M.? Nearly time to return, though they'd hardly begun. "I have no idea what you are talking about," she snapped.

"I meant only that our chaperone has left us."

She said nothing, still unsure of his meaning.

"I thought perhaps you hadn't noticed we were alone," he continued. "And then I thought it might amuse you to realize it." His tone lent no closure to the words, which hung light as a bird in the air, as if he were prepared to continue flying explanations until she accepted one. "Have I offended you?" He looked crestfallen.

Had she once again overreacted? She worried that her brief flashes of temper were harbingers of imminent bitterness and pettiness-the fruits of a stifled and vague ambition. "I am not offended. I was merely confused. And"-she decided to follow his example of candor-"a bit frightened. I thought you were joking at my expense."

He stared at her and she stared back, two birds that had just landed on the same branch. "I know that feeling," he said at last, "of not knowing another's intention and thinking it-"

"Thinking it," she interrupted, "a weakness in yourself?" This, too, was bolder than she'd intended.

"Exactly." He looked pleased, as if in light of the edginess of the subject, he admired her ability to identify it. He wiped his wet forehead with the sleeve of his robe. "We should stop cleaning now. Here comes the water."

Bowed under a yoke with two buckets of river water, Aouadallah trudged toward them. He was breathing hard as he set the yoke down. The water looked like lime aspic.

From a knapsack, Gustave withdrew a sponge and submerged it. "This is the messy part!" he shouted with glee. Working rapidly with the sopping sponge, he wet down the stone, flinging small jeweled arcs and scattered beads of water. Flo followed suit with the enthusiasm of a child. In their wake, Aouadallah pasted sheets of paper onto the wet surface. Using a stiffer wire brush, Gustave pushed the paper into the reliefs until it adhered. Together, the three established a smooth, mechanical movement, working until they'd papered the lower third of the wall. "That's good," said Gustave.

Wiping her brow, she stepped back to regard the result.

In the thin sliver of shade cast by the temple wall, Aouadallah dropped to the ground and lit a short-stemmed pipe. "Now we simply wait," Gustave said. "This is the boring part."