The Twelve Rooms of the Nile

13

MAHATTA

The next day, as promised, a letter from Gustave arrived before breakfast. His plans had changed. They were relocating the cange to the eastern side of Philae to camp there later in the week. In the meantime, he and Max would trek overland past the cataracts to Aswan to replenish their stores. He would return in a few days and write again.

Flo was disappointed. She wondered why the crew could not shop for him and suspected other reasons were at play. (Brothels immediately came to mind.) Also, he made no more mention of making squeezes together. Had he formed no attachment to her, no special affection after their talk yesterday? Did he not at least pity her? Perhaps he did, and that was the problem.

She pushed these questions from her mind and decided to resume work on the long letter she had started to Parthe. Another diversion presented itself later in the morning when Charles announced that he and Selina had been invited to dinner at Mahatta, a village on the eastern bank of the river, a short ride by boat from Philae. Flo could come along if she wished.

She did wish. If she stayed busy, she might keep at bay her desolate thoughts as well as new fantasies of Gustave—brief flashes intense as lightning. (Gustave leaning forward to wipe dust from her brow; the two of them rambling hand in hand; removing a smudge from his earlobe after licking her finger . . .) The word lover glittered in her mind, like a stage marquee. Richard had never been a candidate for anything but wedlock. In retrospect, she found his frivolity and his determination never to feel dejection, except as it could be conveyed in rhyme, limiting.

That was unkind. Surely he’d felt miserable the day she refused him, a bright afternoon the previous October sharply etched in her mind. They’d been chatting in the parlor at Embley. Curled up in a corner of the sofa, Richard was paging through a sheaf of poems, preparing to read to her. She loved the way he lolled and lounged against the furnishings. He was no taller than she, and she theorized that he adopted these postures partly to prevent easy comparison. Whatever the motive, the way he dispensed with the strict horizontals and verticals of his surroundings was catlike and comforting.

He stood and walked to the fireplace, leaning on the mantel, one foot braced against the wall.

She often listened with pleasure to his poetry as well as drafts of his biography of Keats. He read without histrionics, his voice smooth and intimate, completely different from the voice he used in Parliament, which was quavering and too effusive for the setting. She’d heard him speak there several times, dismayed once to observe an opponent parodying his florid diction.

“This one is called ‘Familiar Love,’” he announced.

She sat on the sofa in front of him, attentive if somewhat alarmed by the title. A proposal had been in the air for weeks. Had he come to demand an answer at last? He was thirty-nine and she was twenty-nine. She’d known him for seven years.

“Familiar Love,” he repeated, clearing his throat.

We read together, reading the same book

Our heads bent forward in a half embrace . . .

Her mind wandered, taking stock again of how she felt, preparing what she might say (nothing came to mind!) if he asked. By any logical measure, her equivocation was irrational, for from the beginning they had a natural affinity for each other. She’d been considering him for years, because his asking seemed inevitably keyed to the rhythm of life, like bird migration or the falling of leaves.

Their backgrounds couldn’t have been more similar unless they were siblings. Both came from privilege, the Milnes having made their fortune in the wool trade in the previous century. Like her, he was one of two children. Both came from Dissenter Unitarian families and had been educated at home, she because women were not permitted to attend the public schools and because the academies for girls weren’t intellectually rigorous enough to meet WEN’s standards; and Richard because he was a frail child, prone to lung ailments. They’d both sojourned during their youth in Italy with their families.

Her parents had made it clear that they found Richard an ideal match for either sister, with charm enough to impress Parthe, and a wit that passed muster with Flo. He was a pleasant-looking man, with an open gaze, fair brown hair, and a broad forehead. He had published several volumes of verse and was an important figure in Mayfair. The lively breakfasts he threw at 26 Pall Mall when Parliament was in session attracted everyone of note—politicians, scientists, artists, writers, and socialites.

Had he ever seriously considered Parthe? At first, Fanny had set both daughters on display like auction items in the cunningly appointed public rooms at Embley: propped up like costumed dolls upon the horsehair sofa, their skirts arranged just so, their feet clad in glove-leather slippers; or ranged around the dining table along with the silver epergnes overflowing with flowers and fruit. Parthenope needed no persuasion to enter the fray. She ached for a life spent in the service of a husband and children. She was perfectly happy en famille, while Florence was utterly downcast to the point of madness at home. Had her family been Mahometans, Florence thought grimly now, they could have offered a bargain—two wives for the price of one.

“We had experience of a blissful state,” Richard read. She remembered the line; it was stiff and airless, not like Richard at all. She forced her attention back to the poem. He’d be expecting her to comment on it.

Richard’s voice rose with pride as he continued.

The beauty of the Spirit-Bride,

Who guided the rapt Florentine . . .

Oh, the Spirit-Bride! She couldn’t bear it. Yet, she thought she loved Richard. She couldn’t imagine a more empathetic soul; he was more like her than any man she had met. Only WEN had treated her with such equality and gaiety.

She loved to hear him describe his years at Cambridge, where he was a member of the exclusive Apostles society, though he’d never taken his exams, his nerves being inflamed. He had let her read the journal he kept during the three years he spent in Europe after university. In Italy he’d read poetry and soaked up the Mediterranean until it had tinged his soul with sunlight. He often spoke with Flo of his plan to make prolonged visits there, and when she returned from her trip to Italy with the Bracebridges, he’d been her keenest listener.

Once, he’d taken her (chaperoned by WEN) to Cambridge. The library was splendid, with its black-and-white checkered floor, its busts of great thinkers, and portrait medallions on the walls. Oriel windows spilled morning sun on row after row of bookshelves. A strange thought had occurred to her there, which she had whispered to him: “If I began reading now,” she lamented, “I would not live long enough to read all these books.” Richard had wiped away a tear from her cheek and guided her back outside.

He arranged for tea that afternoon in the dormitory of a friend who kept a tame bear cub. For Flo, the main attraction had been the room itself. What she would have given for a place she didn’t have to share, a room that was a shrine to learning, with walnut bookshelves surrounding a sturdy old desk on whose scarred top a ream of white foolscap lay like a pool of cream.

She’d tried to mesmerize the cub, but it waved its paws at her. Richard had intervened, tenderly returning the animal to its cage, where, after a few moments, she succeeded and the bear lay down, purring like a cat. What other man would have trusted her with the creature, or come to her aid more gallantly without making her feel foolish? Since that visit, the dorm room at New College had appeared, altered, in her dreams, furnished with a globe, a fur throw (the bear, she wondered, made docile?), and three young men listening raptly to her.

Yes, she admired him. Surely that was part of love.

She sensed from the slight rise and crackle of Richard’s voice that the poem was ending:

To braid Life’s thorns into a regal crown,

We passed into the outer world, to prove

The strength miraculous of united Love.

Still clutching the sheaf of paper, he lunged toward the sofa and dropped down on one knee, a worried expression on his face. “Marry me, Florence?”

“I do love you, Richard,” she said, taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek.

“So you say.” He was staring at the Aubusson carpet on the floor. “Repeatedly.”

“If I cannot agree, it is not a judgment on you, my dear friend,” she told him. “Please trust me and try to understand.”

“You can’t spare my feelings, even if you want to,” he replied, his voice low, more hiss than whisper. “If you refuse me, so be it.” He sat back on his haunches, letting his hand slip from her grasp. He looked like a child who had been slapped.

“I am not certain it is you I am refusing.” As soon as she said it, a contradictory image came to mind: Richard’s monogram embroidered on every towel, tablecloth, pillowcase, shirt, and bathrobe, the graceful M’s like so many waves rushing toward her in a storm of Milnes-ness. Her own initials would vanish except on lawn handkerchiefs with which she might dab away a tear on difficult days, days when the M’s dictated every moment, even if Richard did not plan it to be so.

“Not me?” His face had gone a deep crimson.

It was a ridiculous thing to have said. She stumbled on. “I couldn’t bear to lose our friendship.”

“But you don’t care for me enough to marry me. I don’t understand.” He rested his head on his knees. Was he weeping?

Had she any doubts before of her monstrosity, there could be none in that instant. “I am not sure I shall ever marry. I think I should be lost as a wife. To any man.”

“No winters in Rome for you, then?” He rose and retrieved the glass of wine he’d set on the mantel and drained it, his back to her.

If only she could have spared him this pain. Perhaps more candor would soften the wound. “Darling Richard,” she said, “please wait here a moment. I must show you something.” She rushed up to the bedroom to retrieve her diary. When she returned, she thrust it into his hands, a book no other eyes had seen. “I beg you, Richard, read this. You have been generous to share your journal with me.”

As in the poem he’d just recited, they bent their heads over Flo’s neat handwriting and read together silently:

I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction, and that would find it in Richard. I have a passional nature which requires satisfaction, and that would find it in him. I have an active moral nature which requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in his life. . . . I could not satisfy this nature by making society and arranging domestic things. . . . To be nailed to a continuation and exaggeration of my present life would be intolerable. Voluntarily to put it out of my power ever to be able to seize the chance of forming for myself a true and rich life would seem to me like suicide.

Richard gasped and took a step back from her. “I am your suicide?” he shouted. He turned and walked from the room, glaring at her from the hallway. That his sadness had flared into fury, Flo thought, was probably better for him because it left him with the satisfactions of indignation, while despair held no satisfactions at all.

Every day that had passed since, she’d missed his company. And though they’d never done more than peck on the lips or place a hand on the other’s arm, she sensed he, too, had a passionate nature, a molten core just waiting to be ignited by the right partner. Now she’d never know the pleasure of that unbridled warmth.

After her refusal, Richard stopped coming to visit, his absence as palpable as his presence had been. In company together, he avoided her, gliding casually to the other side of the room, dining, by conspiracy with his hosts, out of earshot at the other end of the table, dancing at the opposite side of the ballroom. And always refusing her glance, as if she were invisible. It made her weep to think how much he must loathe her for rejecting him.

• • •

That afternoon, she continued writing to Parthe about Philae. There was no one she liked writing to more than Parthe, for the two of them shared so much that it was easy, almost like writing in her diary. Like the earlier letter about Abu Simbel, this one threatened to stretch into a religious tract. She’d spent many hours in the chamber of Osiris, whose life shared much with Old and New Testament stories. Osiris’s jealous brother, Set, had chopped him into thirteen pieces and scattered them in the Nile. But Isis, Osiris’s wife, aided by crocodiles, found all the pieces but one—her husband’s penis. So she fashioned him a penis of gold that allowed him to father their son, Horus. Afterward, Osiris descended to the infernal river of the underworld. There, in the seventh room of the night, he judged the worthiness of souls to pass to the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian heaven. Hieroglyphs in the chamber depicted Osiris’s severed body parts in caskets and containers of all shapes—here a foot, there an arm, his entire trunk and legs in a shallow drawer. A Nilometer that measured the height of the river bore his severed head. In another panel, he lay fully assembled on a cow-legged bed. Was it not resurrection, piece by bodily piece? As for the penis—a word Flo had never spoken that made her color to see it on the page—perhaps it stood for nature’s regenerative powers. Or male resolve. She’d never seen an adult human penis. Those of the donkeys she rode were embarrassing when they emerged, the length of their bellies, red and slick. It was distressing to imagine WEN naked, and impossible to picture how the organ produced her and Parthe. Better to focus on the face and hands of a man; that was her policy.

She decided to omit the golden penis from her letter.

• • •

John Frederick Lewis was a friend of the Bracebridges who had lived and painted in Egypt for nearly a decade, most of it in Cairo. Now he and Mrs. Lewis (he had recently married) had set up housekeeping on the Upper Nile, in Mahatta. “Mr. Lewis is a world traveler,” Selina had told her that morning. “He has hardly lived in England since coming of age.”

“How I envy him that,” said Flo. She fancied traveling to India and the Holy Land, but without a husband, future tours were unlikely. The Bracebridges were not as adventuresome or energetic as she was. The Egypt trip would probably be the most daring and the last of her life.

At three o’clock, Selina knocked on the cabin door and entered. She looked refreshed, having just napped. “Are you getting ready, my dear?” she asked. With a nod, Selina acknowledged Trout, sitting on her divan, a wool stocking stretched over a darning egg in one hand, and a threaded needle in the other.

“Mum,” Trout said, barely lifting her eyes from the work.

“I can be ready in a trice,” said Flo, capping her inkwell and wiping her pen.

Selina edged closer and took stock of her friend. “You must wear more clothing.”

“Oh?”

“Once the sun sets, the temperature could drop to freezing.”

“Really? Freezing?”

“That is what Paolo said. Hoarfrost is common this time of year.”

Paolo was an excellent dragoman, precise and pragmatic. He never exaggerated to inflate his own importance. “I shall bring a cape then.” Flo set aside her travel desk and reached for the garment.

“Charles said we must wear all our clothes.” Selina had an impish gleam in her eye. “At the same time.”

“No!”

“I told him you and I should look like snowballs. Snowballs in the desert.” Selina giggled. She was such a jolly soul.

Laughing, Flo pictured the crew rolling them along the shore, coating them like sweet rolls in sand instead of sugar. She patted the divan for Selina to sit next to her. “I’m going to check with Murray.” She retrieved the book from the cabinet between her bed and Trout’s, blowing away the fine veil of grit on the cover. Selina put her arm around Flo’s neck, straightening her lace collar.

“It says the thermometer can vary between one hundred twenty in the day and thirty at night. But I believe that’s in the Sahara—”

“Those were Paolo’s words. He says the weather will be chilly tonight and we shall be exposed to it. Apparently the Lewises are living in a tent.”

“I didn’t know.” Flo imagined a soldier’s pup tent, low and insubstantial, made of scratchy Scottish wool the color of dirty drawers.

“Yes, so wear something under your dress and two pairs of stockings. And bring a blanket. Some of the amenities are lacking. They asked that we bring along chairs and carpets.”

“The conditions sound primitive.”

“Charles is worried about dyspepsia. He fears he will have to eat while reclining if there is a shortage of chairs. But he’s eager to see Mr. Lewis and meet his bride.” Selina twisted her wedding band back and forth, a habit she frequently resorted to when discussing Charles. “I think it will be less like dinner than a hiking trip.”

It might be a lark. Flo loved it when things turned unpredictable.

“I can’t wait to see Mr. Lewis’s paintings and drawings,” Selina continued. “Did I tell you he lived in Spain after his Grand Tour? He published a folio of his Spanish drawings. Marvelous. We have it at home.” Selina rose from the divan and fluffed out her dress.

Trout said, “May I stay here then, mum? I won’t be needed, sounds like.”

Flo and Selina raised eyebrows. “Your services will not be required,” Flo said.

“Thank you, mum. I want to finish these socks. The sand eats holes through them worse than the mice back home.”

“You will remain on board with the captain and crew,” Flo added. “They will serve you whatever they cook for dinner.” Let it be a local dish, she thought. Croquettes of Nile mud. Quail’s feet. Beak of eagle in mashed lentils.

“Yes, mum.”

Selina turned to Flo. “We shall leave in half an hour. Come up when you are ready. Charles will send the men down for the carpets.” She kissed Flo on the cheek. “Bundle up, my dear.”

“I shall.”

Though Flo didn’t have woolen petticoats, high boots, or a muffler, she prepared as best she could. She wore her brown Hollands under the navy wool dress, and her black hooded cloak. In a hatbox, she packed two shawls (one wool, one lace), gloves, and a scarf. She readied a blanket, folding it and placing it at the foot of her bed with her parcels.

• • •

The stone walls of Philae cast long shadows like trenches onto the shore by the time they rounded the northern tip of the island in the late afternoon. From the dahabiyah, they boarded a small felucca with a single furled lateen sail. Four men took up oars, one with a carpet rolled around his neck like the thick ecclesiastic collar of an exotic sect. The crew placed three folding chairs in the boat bottom and upon them cushions on which the three Europeans knelt or sat. The craft sat low in the water, laden with its cargo of household goods and clothing.

As Flo had learned on their trip up to Nubia, the cataracts of the Nile weren’t waterfalls in the strict sense, but a series of rapids, the result of an upheaval that had split the cliffs alongside, raining down treacherous boulders and slabs of granite that formed broken chains, some jutting straight out of the water, most submerged, detectable only from currents eddying and foaming around them.

As they paddled along between the rocky defiles—the last fragments of the cataracts downstream—Flo observed the sky and shore. Clouds like lambs’ tails dissipated into feathers; the sakias on land creaked as a camel or ox circled around, bringing up bucketfuls of water for irrigation. Nightfall in Egypt was often rapid, the sun a fireball so quickly extinguished at the horizon that she expected to hear it sizzle as it dipped into the river. At other times, orange and purple streamers hung in the sky long after the sun had disappeared. Tonight the dying light changed to a soft, opaline blush, the color of ascensions to heaven and the shriven eyelids of saints. The Nile parted around the boat’s prow like shirred pink silk.

In half an hour, Mahatta came into view, nestled in a cove shaped like a sickle. The crew leaped from the boat and dragged it across the shingle. Disembarking, Flo felt graceless and stiff in her swaddling of clothes. After about a quarter mile, the first habitations appeared, reed and mud huts of traders wayfaring before the tumultuous ride down the cataracts. Farther along, they encountered the stone and brick dwellings of the cataract sheiks, who lived in big, boisterous clans. Flo had met them while they negotiated with Charles to drag the Parthenope up the rapids.

Florence liked what she saw and heard as they entered Mahatta—civilization, Nubian-style, with its hallmark sounds and scents—the thuds and groans of pack animals settling in for the night, the guttural chatter of merchants gathered by open-air fires, cooking spiced lamb or baking bread in clay ovens. She’d always warmed to the bustle of human beings at day’s end. At Embley, the muffled racket of pots, the chirp and hum of servants’ voices before and after supper were calming, palliative. In fact, she preferred them to the decorous volleys at the dining table. In this way, Mahatta reminded her of home. Most important, it was a living city. She’d spent the past three weeks among the remains of the long dead, whose culinary clatter and disagreements about seasonings hadn’t been preserved in their scrupulous engravings.

After passing an orderly kitchen garden, they came upon a tent the size of a Hampshire cottage. Its flaps were tautly fastened to the ground, a miniature turret crowning each corner. Though torches illuminated the scene, there was no apparent entrance, and no sentry to announce their arrival.

They stood about, unsure what to do. Efreet-Youssef, always the most accommodating crewman, crawled under the tent face-first on his belly, inching forward like a worm until he disappeared. Flo could hear him announce, “Effendi, Bracebridge Bey! Bracebridge Bey!”

Lifting a flap of the tent and securing it with a red swag, Mr. Lewis strode forth, looking pleased, and welcomed his guests.

Flo could not help staring, so taken was she by Lewis’s demeanor and attire, for the man had gone completely native. He had adopted the costume of an Ottoman vizier—or was it a viceroy?—blue gubbeh, white caftan, red turban, and a ragged white beard. Mrs. Lewis, a plain young woman clad in an English frock, stood quietly off to one side, rather like a second wife, Flo thought. She wondered why the wife wore such drabbery while her husband was tricked out like a peacock. For safety? To remind Mr. Lewis that, despite his clothing, he was not an Oriental, but an Englishman playing dressup? Selina, standing alongside, pinched Flo’s arm. Can you believe it?

Mr. Lewis handed his guests into the tent, where a woman removed Flo’s blanket from her shoulders and folded it assiduously upon a wooden stool. She wore trousers and a veil, both of pink muslin so transparent that it appeared less like cloth than concentrated infusions of dawn light. Her posture was as studied and impeccable as a dancer’s. Whenever this Rosy Dawn (as Flo decided to dub her) moved, her bracelets, necklaces, and fringes sewn with coins jingled. The effect was hypnotic, the sound of faeries and stardust.

The meal was standard English fare, though how the Lewises managed it, Flo could not imagine and decided not to ask. She did not wish to appear overly impressed.

Mr. Lewis was pleasant and intelligent; Mrs. Lewis remained something of an enigma. Oh, she was recognizable as an English-woman of good breeding (from Hampton, Middlesex, it turned out), but why was she here on the arm of a man more than twice her age? Had her parents shipped her out with the intent of making a match? Why else would she have traveled to Cairo at age eighteen? Had the two met beforehand? Unlikely. Mr. Lewis had not been home for decades. Had she brought a dowry that allowed Mr. Lewis to continue living abroad (and rather luxuriously), or had it been a case of love? At moments like this, Flo felt like a child too young to play a game with complicated rules, and also like a spinster so old that she’d forgotten the arcana of marriage. Clearly, she should be grateful that Fanny and WEN had not packed her off to some forsaken corner of the world! Oh, they wouldn’t have dared. Finally, she tried to imagine what Gustave would make of their hosts. Would he think Mrs. Lewis a craven seeker after security? Or a young woman who’d fallen under the spell of an older man? Flo knew the truth lay outside these pat melodramas, neither of which approached how Mrs. Lewis must feel so far from home, living in a tent on the Nile! And that is what Flo most wished to know: Mrs. Lewis’s heart.

Servants laid the borrowed carpets upon the packed earthen floor and seated the three English in chairs. (No dyspepsia for Charles after all.) The dining table was a round brass platter balanced on collapsible wooden legs, with barely enough room for plates and cutlery. Rosy Dawn passed trays and poured wine from a tall ewer.

After the food was served, Flo asked, “What convinced you to move house from Cairo to Mahatta?” The sound of her own chewing (a piece of mutton) naturally muffled the sounds around her, but after she had swallowed, she immediately sensed from the continuing silence that everyone else knew the answer to this question. Also, that it might have been rude to ask it.

Charles started to answer, but Mr. Lewis held up his hand, patriarch-like, indicating he would entertain the query, no matter how touchy or tasteless. His robes hung down from his wrist in biblical blue and white scallops. “My dear Miss Nightingale, how kind of you to ask.” He placed his fork on the table. A lengthy reply? Loss of appetite? Everyone stopped eating.

Across the table, Flo saw that the color had drained from Mrs. Lewis’s face. Selina, sitting next to Flo, fidgeted.

Mr. Lewis sighed as he blotted his purplish lips within the fleece of his beard. “Our neighbor in Cairo, Rifat Pasha, wished to buy our property to expand his garden.”

“He wanted to plant trees,” Mrs. Lewis added in a monotone. “Almond trees.”

“Almond trees!” Charles repeated with enthusiasm. “Lovely, lovely. Lovely blossoms. Lovely aroma.” He fell silent, his voice petering out. He looked at Flo helplessly. Had he also not heard the story or forgotten it?

Mrs. Lewis sniffled, withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve, and dabbed at her nose.

Selina said, “Perhaps I should have told Miss Nightingale about your mishap.”

Flo felt her cheeks turning pink. Mrs. Lewis nodded and continued to hold the handkerchief in place, as though a nosebleed were pending.

“When we refused to sell,” Mr. Lewis resumed, “our neighbor finished his demitasse of Turkish coffee, went home, and sent his slave to burn our house down that afternoon. That is the method of purchase in Egypt. My dear bride lost everything she had shipped out from England.”

“How awful for you and Mrs. Lewis,” Flo said. “I am sorry to inject the memory of it into our meal. I didn’t know.” She couldn’t help thinking that Mr. Lewis’s regal garments carried no clout in Cairo. It seemed plausible that his neighbor considered Mr. Lewis an arrogant interloper or an imposter. Perhaps Mr. Lewis should have offered compensation—baksheesh of a kind—in lieu of a sale. After ten years in Egypt, could he be ignorant of the customs? Or did he know, and object to them on principle?

“A terrible loss of property,” continued Mr. Lewis. “My wife’s piano, plate and crystal, her furniture.” He shook his head. “Family items she had hoped to pass on to the next generation.”

Mrs. Lewis blew her nose as proof of the depth of her loss. Rosy Dawn approached and handed her a fresh damask napkin, then returned to her shadowy corner. Charles, seated next to Mrs. Lewis, patted her hand.

“At least no one was harmed,” Mr. Lewis said. He beckoned to Rosy Dawn to refill his wineglass. “Except the slave responsible for the fire. Several people witnessed him setting the blaze. Rifat Pasha administered a severe bastinado for his lack of stealth.” Mr. Lewis laughed and helped himself to a potato.

“So we heard,” Mrs. Lewis said, smiling. Evidently she appreciated her husband’s humor in the midst of her sadness. Flo didn’t know why, but she was taking a dislike to the woman, though in the next instant she wondered if this judgment might simply be the result of her own general bad mood Abruptly she wished she were dining with Gustave and Max. The impact of this realization made her sigh aloud.

Looking freshly alarmed, Charles turned back to Mr. Lewis. “What about your work, the watercolors and sketches?”

“Miraculously, nothing was lost.”

Furtively, Flo studied Rosy Dawn—the purple silk sash, the blue jacket that ended just beneath her bosom with a fringe of gold coins that left her midriff visible through the pink gauze. She wore her hair in lustrous black ringlets that reached her shoulders. A painter would have had to use every pigment in his box to capture the shadings on her silks, which were as iridescent as scarab wings. When the woman raised her gaze from the floor, Flo saw that her eyes were a luminous and flickering green. At that moment, the woman returned Flo’s glance with a look so searing that Flo felt rebuked. The sensation was identical to how she’d felt when she and Trout had argued. She felt again the sting of Trout’s words: You don’t know much about me, mum, truth be told.

A servant appeared carrying a wooden platter of sweets. Another carried a kettle of tea brewed at the brazier outside. “Bird’s nest pastries,” Mrs. Lewis said. “And Turkish delight. It’s a Turkish delicacy made of—”

“We know,” Flo said, taking one of each, not wanting to appear gluttonous, though she could have easily consumed half a dozen. She watched Selina place a pale green gelatinous square dusted with sugar into her mouth. She chewed it slowly, her eyelids closing as she savored it.

After dinner, they viewed Mr. Lewis’s watercolors and sketchbooks. He had made thousands of drawings. “I have enough material here for a lifetime of painting,” he said, turning the leaves of his portfolios while his guests oohed appreciatively. He said he planned to return with Mrs. Lewis to England the next year and start a family. Charles congratulated him, shaking his hand and clapping him on the back, saying that he had captured in his work all that was foreign and flamboyant in Cairo just as he had captured Spain’s hauteur and dash. Mrs. Lewis glowed with pride.

Flo, who loved art but did not always approve of it—the Italians were too fond of the naked breast, in her opinion, and the Dutch too gloomy—was at first enamored of Mr. Lewis’s renderings, seduced by their beauty. They were scrumptious Eastern delicacies meant to be consumed by the eyes instead of the mouth. He was masterful with a brush, and his hues had a depth she’d never before seen except in oil paintings. One composition showed a street bazaar; in another, schoolboys gathered around a low, tiled table under the tutelage of colorfully garbed imams. Harem portraits featured languid women in lavishly decorated rooms with carved wooden shutters (from which, Flo mused, Rosy Dawn might have stepped). In all the work, a honeyed light poured down, picking out the brilliant white coils of turbans and the ruby stripes of pajama trousers with a fierce purity and sensuality. But there was something troubling, too, and the longer she looked at the pictures, the less she liked them. She couldn’t say why. Certainly, Lewis had captured the faces of the Orientals, from the hawk-nosed Greek sailors to the satin ebony cheeks of the Nubians. The colors were truer, if possible, than in life. The tactile billow of the textiles, the undulant curves of the camels, the brick and wooden textures were all magnificent. And then she saw what it was, or rather what was lacking. There was not a speck of dirt or disarray anywhere. Not a hint of stink. Everything had been glamorized, like a still life with flawless fruit and a smudgeless glass set upon a pristine tablecloth. If there was a beggar or cripple, his robes were not as tattered and threadbare as in life, his skin eruptions entirely omitted. Streets and alleyways lacked steaming piles of animal manure and sewage standing in open culverts. No pulpy filth smeared the ground of the markets; no spavined mules limped through the bazaars; no mangy dogs begged for scraps. Mr. Lewis had captured the splendor of Eastern fairy tales, of Aladdin’s lamp and flying carpets, but not of the Egypt she had seen. The world he had created was too beautiful, completely devoid of suffering and evil. And therefore—and worst of all—not in need of redemption.

At eight forty-five, Flo, Selina, and Charles packed up to return to Philae. The temperature had dropped, and cold penetrated every joint and exposed inch of skin. They covered themselves with blankets while walking, but it was colder on the water. Charles draped each of the women and himself with a kilim rug to cut the wind. The wool was heavy and itchy, with a smell like stale tobacco. A slow rain of dirt sifted down from it onto Flo’s clothing.

Luckily, despite going upstream, they caught a countercurrent and were back at Philae in ten minutes. Nevertheless, 9 P.M. was well past their usual bedtime, and Flo went straight to her cabin. Trout was sleeping under a quilted coverlet without her levinge. Flo wondered whether to follow suit. Murray warned severely about fleas, which cold did not discourage so much as impel to a warm body. It recommended sinking a dahabiyah after hiring it, which also took care of rats, but the Parthenope had not been doused. Nevertheless, she decided to take her chances, and for the first time curled into bed without the device.

• • •

There were numberless islands above the cataracts, some no bigger than a tabletop, others, like Elephantine, large and mountainous. Selina and Flo, once again in the felucca, were bound for medium-size Bidji, just offshore of Mahatta, where Mr. Lewis sometimes worked for greater privacy. Selina, enthused at the prospect of drawing the temple ruins on Bidji, had brought her sketchbook. “Everyone has done the Sphinx,” she told Flo as they neared the island.

Flo remembered Selina’s delicate pencil sketch of it at the start of the trip.

“But how many have sketched Bidji? Perhaps I shall be the second, after Mr. Lewis, of course.”

Mrs. Lewis, looking more festive and relaxed than the evening before, greeted them at a rickety wooden dock. She wore a white cotton dress with a yellow apron over it, like a governess. The crew helped the passengers ashore, then set off for the other side of the island. Mrs. Lewis called after them in Arabic.

“What did you say, Mrs. Lewis?” Flo asked, impressed at her hostess’s fluency in the language.

“Please, call me Marian. I said they should return in four hours.”

“I do hope they have the same notion of the hour as we do, Marian,” Selina said. She carried her drawing supplies close to her body like a banker his accounts.

“Time is more approximate in Nubia,” Mrs. Lewis said gaily. “The important thing is that they will return well before dark.”

Marian Lewis, Flo noted, was very sure of herself. She had the confidence and manner of a beautiful woman, though she was as ordinary as Parthe, who had the manner of a frightened rabbit. It was irritating to see a woman behave as if she were beautiful without actually being beautiful. Flo wondered how Mrs. Lewis managed it. Early on, someone must have convinced her of it, based, Flo reasoned, not on fact but on feeling. Her family might have constantly told her how gorgeous she was, not out of a desire to lie, but blinded by the purest love. Flo had met mothers like this, so enamored of their children that they considered others’ offspring negligible. Fanny was not such a mother, prone as she was to harping on the tiniest flaws. With Fanny as a mother, Flo did not even know if she were beautiful.

A child of about four ran from a nearby hut to greet Mrs. Lewis. She pushed up the hem of the Englishwoman’s dress and embraced her stockinged legs. “Zehnab!” Mrs. Lewis cried, petting her on the head. The child wore nothing but a bead necklace around her neck and another around her waist. She jumped up and down, clutching Mrs. Lewis’s skirts, raising them up in small handfuls, like flowers. The child’s woolly hair radiated from her head like a ring around the moon.

The little girl kissed Flo’s hand as Mrs. Lewis introduced her. Flo was so taken with her that she immediately began to wonder what she might give her as a present. She hadn’t thought to bring trinkets. Would Selina be willing to part with a couple of pencils or pieces or chalk? She whispered the question, and Selina nodded enthusiastically.

“And here is more of the family,” said Mrs. Lewis.

An old man clad in a sheer white robe approached with two girls in tow, an adolescent and a younger child. Flo felt she’d been delivered to a pagan heaven and here was its St. Peter, accompanied by two angels. With open faces and kindly expressions, they appeared to exist in a state of contentment that Flo had never known or could no longer remember—the paradise that was her childhood, before Miss Christie? The trio beamed at her. They were clean and polished-looking, from their neatly oiled and coiffed hair to the dazzling red of the elder’s tunic. Mrs. Lewis explained that one big family inhabited Bidji and that he was its patriarch. Flo wished she could speak to him directly. Was there any bigger obstacle in the world than language? She saw Selina curtsy and followed suit.

The old man was Zehnab’s great-great-grandfather. The older girl, Fatima, was Zehnab’s mother and a widow at sixteen. The last girl, Azrah, was Zehnab’s aunt. She was ten and had just been married.

After a deep salaam, the old man left the girls with the women.

“It’s a short swim from Bidji to Mahatta,” Mrs. Lewis said. “Azrah swims over to visit us several times a week. Sometimes she brings little Zehnab.”

Azrah, the new bride, was anxious to show off her house, a typical Nubian mud dome consisting of two rooms, one furnished with a clay divan and water jar, the second one reserved for chickens. Azrah was happy with her life, Mrs. Lewis declared, and especially proud of two pillows angled neatly on the divan. Though Flo could not stand up in the squat dwelling, she appreciated its cleanliness and practicality.

Mrs. Lewis had prepared a picnic to eat under the trees. She asked Fatima to fetch it, and soon the six of them were lounging on an Indian paisley bedcover, munching on pistachio nuts, durra bread, durra cakes, olives, and white cheese. Nothing English, unlike the evening before. While the food was being passed, Selina dug into her tote, pulled out three pencils, and placed them in Flo’s pocket.

Mrs. Lewis was an adept translator, and the Nubian children—the wife, widow, and bride—had many questions for her. Azrah was fascinated by Mrs. Lewis’s gold wedding band, which she removed and passed among the three girls to try on. Flo wondered how Mr. Lewis would react if he saw the ring so casually handled.

Selina began to sketch Zehnab while the older girls asked to hear the story of Mrs. Lewis’s wedding. Mrs. Lewis was happy to oblige. Since grooms paid a bride price in Egypt, they wanted to know how much Mr. Lewis had given for her.

“Thirty shillings,” she said, laughing. She translated the conversation for the women.

Fatima said that was very little and seemed disconcerted by Mrs. Lewis’s bargain price. She asked how often Mr. Lewis beat her.

“Never,” chuckled Mrs. Lewis.

Surprised by that answer, Fatima and Azrah conferred briefly before the next question. “What is wrong with him that he does not beat you?” Azrah asked. She looked agitated.

“It is because he loves me,” Mrs. Lewis replied. “In England, men do not beat their wives.” She fussed with her mousy hair, pushing it back from her forehead.

Again, the older girls conferred, withdrawing to a corner of the picnic cloth while Zehnab continued to pose for Selina, frequently peeking at herself taking shape on the sketch pad. Selina seemed delighted by the little girl.

“Is the thirty shillings part true?” Flo asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Lewis answered, more cheerful than ever. “The cadi who married us demanded a price be paid, so my dear husband gave thirty shillings for the poor plate.”

“It must have been a strange but happy day,” Flo said.

“Unusual, to be sure.” Mrs. Lewis seemed lost in a momentary reverie of the event. “But wonderful, too. That is the day Mr. Lewis bought me my Berber slave. Oh, but you saw her, last night at dinner.”

Flo could not believe it! That there should still be slaves in Egypt was criminal. But that Marian Lewis should delight in owning one was nothing short of loathsome and evil. She recalled the hostile glare of Rosy Dawn when she caught Flo staring at her, and felt deeply ashamed. “You must love Mr. Lewis very much,” Flo mumbled. “Such an extravagant wedding gift.” Selina, like Flo an abolitionist, took one of Zehnab’s hands and held it, avoiding Mrs. Lewis’s eyes.

“Have you thought about arranging to educate little Zehnab?” Flo asked. “She seems so bright and energetic. You could send her to the nuns in Cairo.”

“Whatever for?” Mrs. Lewis replied.

Wasn’t it obvious? Flo thought of Felicetta Sensi, the little urchin she’d placed a year ago in the convent school at Trinità dei Monti, proud to have removed her from the harsh, perverting streets of Rome. Since then, she’d been paying for the child’s education with her dress allowance. “For her betterment and the betterment of her whole family.” Flo stared unblinking into Marian Lewis’s face. Was it really going to be necessary to explain the idea of progress to her?

“That would be a waste of time. The child is perfectly happy here as she is.”

The older girls rejoined the group, still watching Mrs. Lewis piteously.

Flo decided it was useless to express her outrage.

“Could you translate something, Marian?” Selina asked, handing Zehnab the portrait she’d made.

“Of course.”

“Tell the girls that we like them very much.” Selina tore off several sheets of paper and signaled to Flo to produce the pencils. “These are gifts for them.”

As Mrs. Lewis translated, the girls eagerly accepted their presents, chattering and tugging on Flo and Selina. “They want to embrace you,” Mrs. Lewis said, “to thank you.”

“That would be lovely,” said Flo. The five hugged and bussed. Selina clung to the little girls with tears in her eyes as Mrs. Lewis watched impassively.

Fatima returned to the subject of Mrs. Lewis’s nuptials with what seemed to be an expression of concern. Would Mr. Lewis be sending her home since he did not think enough of her to beat her?

Mrs. Lewis laughed, then laughed again as she translated for Selina and Flo. Englishmen, she explained, did not send their wives home. They remained married to one woman forever.

The Nubians shrugged and abandoned the topic, still pitying Marian Lewis, Flo thought, who was the last person in the world to recognize pity when it was directed at her.

• • •

“I gather you disapproved of her,” Selina said on the boat ride home. She swatted at a wayward insect swept up in a current of air. The men had unfurled the sail, and the boat was moving at a clip, combing the water into patches of green corduroy. “As did I. That she should brag about owning a fellow human being!” Selina frowned and shook her head.

“Awful,” Flo said. “I think she’s a brat.”

“Do you?” Selina yawned.

“Yes. She has too high an opinion of herself, and quite apart from what others think of her.”

Selina didn’t seem to be as enraged about Marian Lewis as she was. In another moment, she nodded off, her cheeks a tawny pink in the fading light.

Sweet Selina, compassionate Selina. Remarkably, when it came to people like Marian Lewis, who were spoiled rotten and oblivious to their own flaws, she kept an open mind, while Flo detested Mrs. Lewis’s complacency. No doubt, privately Marian Lewis set herself above the likes of Selina and Flo, Selina because of her age and faded beauty, Flo because she was a spinster seven years older than she. Most frustrating, it was impossible to impress Mrs. Lewis, as she wasn’t interested in anything she didn’t already know.

Something beyond mere disapproval irked Flo. Why was she so enraged? The anger was akin to the way she sometimes felt toward Fanny. With Fanny, the intensity of feeling made sense: Fanny had the power not only to block her ambitions, but also to withhold her love. Marian Lewis’s greatest offense was that she was sickeningly content, immune to what people like Flo thought of her. Also, she had accomplished something Flo had not: she had found her place in life and was reveling in it.

It disgusted Flo finally to realize that what she felt was pure jealousy, and of someone she did not admire!

• • •

The next morning, the post arrived shortly after breakfast. Flo had two letters, one from Fanny. Nothing yet from Gustave, but it was only Wednesday, and she calculated that he was still in Aswan, perhaps performing obscene acts. She found herself hungering for his unique company. He didn’t shy away from topics many people considered impolite. She no longer gave a fig for polite conversation. She much preferred to be unconventional.

Fanny’s letter was full of cheerful reportage and advice. Flo decided to put off answering it until she had completed the Philae letter. She wanted to explore further the parallels between Osiris and Christ. Had Osiris not died for his people, too? In the seventh room, he was a fearsome presence, though she was convinced that, like Jesus, his terrible death had made him a compassionate and loving god.

She recognized the handwriting on the second letter. “It’s from Clarkey,” she cried out to Selina.

“I can’t wait to hear the latest from Paris,” Selina trilled.

Mary Clarke’s letters were generous and stylish and, most of all, funny. She had a knack for inventing words that sounded half French and half English, but made perfect sense. She “trigged up” her apartment when it was dirty, and now so did Flo and Selina. The entire Clarkey circle had adopted the term.

The stationery was a somber tan instead of Mary’s usual peach. Flo flipped it over and saw that she must have borrowed it; Julius Mohl’s name appeared on the back flap.

February 11, 1850

Chère Pup,

I received your letter, posted from Cairo, with the wondrous description of your boat ride up the canal on your way to the Nile. Now I picture you, Selina, and Charles scampering up the great pyramid, scratching your initials on the ceiling of a secret passage known only to pharaohs. I know you are having a splendid time and will write me your adventures in detail.

I’ve been sitting on a secret for three long months because I wanted to be able to change my mind up until the last minute. Personally, I don’t give a snap for surprises, so before I tell you my news, I hope you’ll accept my apology for waiting too long to share it with you. I believe you shall be happy for me. For I am happy, despite my indecision beforehand.

Julius Mohl and I were married three months ago. (Espoused “before men and angles,” as Smollett said—I think in Humphrey Clinker.) I was so unsure of this decision that when we published the banns, I paid a poster boy to plaster over them immediately. Other than Herr Mohl and me, no one knew of the engagement.

Married life suits me. Julius has moved into my apartment and installed his gigantique library. I write this surrounded by Ninevah and Ur in all their glorious dust and gold.

As you know, I planned never to marry, and this conviction strengthened after Claude died, for he was the love of my life—at least so I believed at the time. Julius and I comforted each other for the great friend we had lost. This shared grief brought him closer to my attention and me to his. And though Julius is seven years my junior, I believe we are well matched. As a woman nearing fifty, I dare not call myself a “new” bride; I think of myself as a bride who has at last been brought out of mothballs.

We had no official celebrations. Instead, two days later, Julius and I traveled to Berlin, where we spent three weeks with delightful and elite company. Herr Mohl, the celebrated Orientalist, had spent so many years in Paris that none of his colleagues recognized him on sight!

As you know, for years I favored ardent friendships over romances, for I was not willing to trade a roomful of loving friends for one partner who might become possessive and boring and keep me from the social life so essential to my happiness. In short, the salon continues in full force, Julius being my assistant and constant companion. The only difference is that he no longer goes home at the end of the evening. (Before I forget to tell you, upon our return we had the pleasure of an evening with your friend Richard Monckton Milnes, who is an avid admirer of French literature. He takes a scholarly interest in the Marquis de Sade, Julius told me after he left.)

Florence, dear, though this interlude in Egypt is only a hiatus in the family wars, I believe that once your ambitions take firmer shape, you shall fulfill them. Ultimately, I know you shall make your way in a world that is often hostile to women like us who break the standard mold.

The next time you visit, though everyone will address me as Madame Mohl, I shall still be your Clarkey (what’s in a name, a rose would smell as sweet, etc.), and eager as always to hear your latest thoughts and plans.

Your loving,

Mary

Flo’s temples were pounding; her face was on fire. Because they always shared their letters from Clarkey, she handed it without a word to Selina, but did not watch her read it. Being married, and happily so, Selina would doubtless be pleased.

Flo, however, felt devastated, betrayed. It could not be! She did not want it to be! But she couldn’t say so, even to Selina. It was unkind and rude, small-minded and selfish. It would sound mentally unbalanced. It wasn’t as if Mary had sworn to Flo to remain celibate. Yet Mary had violated her deepest precept. How could she? What had changed? If it were a union of convenience, Flo found it all the more abhorrent.

She could not imagine answering Mary’s letter. Ever. For Mary was no longer Mary, but a stranger. Anyway, what could she say? I feel wretched about your marriage. How could you? She didn’t wish to hurt Mary, though Mary had unknowingly cut her to the quick.

Selina finished reading. “Hurrah for Clarkey!” She waved the letter aloft. “Wonderful news! Aren’t you thrilled for her?”

Flo sped through everything she might say that would not give her away, but could only manage, “I am surprised. Aren’t you?” She could not force an iota of joy into her voice, further proof that deep down she was a wretched person, unable to be happy for a friend. She felt sick to her stomach, light-headed. “I’m a bit woozy,” she said, touching her hair.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I think I’ll have a lie down.” She stood and hurried belowdecks without waiting for Selina’s response. Even with her closest confidante Flo was too ashamed to admit how she felt.

She lay facing the row of windows, eyes closed. A sense of dread overpowered her and she trembled. Mary had been her ally; now she was alone. And still she did not regret refusing Richard. She would do it again.

Despite her rational resolve, a feeling of terror began to overwhelm her. Lacking Clarkey’s resources, how could she achieve anything without Fanny and WEN’s consent? What would she do for money and where would she go and what would become of her shadowy sister, Parthe, who yearned always to be by her side, unable to take a forward step on her own? Poor Parthe! Poor Flo, with her sister stuck to her like dock weed to a lamb.

• • •

The sun was high in the sky when Flo opened her eyes. Soon it would be time for lunch. Selina or Charles would mention Mary’s marriage, the thought of which terrified her most for what it predicted of her own future. She would have to feign a headache.

A welcome breeze passed into the cabin through the open windows. Where did breezes come from and where did they go? The Greeks thought the winds slept in caves and in bags carried by the gods. If only she could disappear as the wind did, without fanfare or ceremony or people asking why. She was utterly alone with an ambition that was fierce and truly monstrous, for it could not be satisfied without changing the entire world.