The Twelve Rooms of the Nile

17

PÈRE ISSA

Flo hated the thought of conspiring against the Bracebridges, especially as they were willing to conspire with her for the upcoming Kaiserswerth visit. Nevertheless, she pondered her strategy all day. Though loving, permissive, and endearingly absentminded, Charles and Selina bore in loco parentis the responsibility for her safety. This was no mere formality: they would require assurances about the trip that she, Gustave, and Max would have to provide. The discussion must be unfettered, logical as a clock. Her only chance for success was to dull with the semblance of rationality an enterprise that in truth glittered like a jeweled dagger with the perils of the unknown.

Selina in particular knew the strength of Flo’s determination, though she had never tested it. After dinner, she surprised Flo by expressing her reservations. Trout had gone to retrieve her needlework, and Charles to fetch his brandy, leaving the two women alone on deck as they waited for the Frenchmen.

“I cannot help worrying that there will be many opportunities for mishaps,” Selina said, unfastening the catch on the mosaic bar pin she’d bought in Rome the year before. “It’s crooked,” she explained, stabbing the pin afresh into one side of her collar.

Flo was about to reply when Selina hurried on. “Oh, I trust M. Flaubert implicitly. It is the wilderness that concerns me.”

“But you read the guidebook, didn’t you?” Flo had pressed it into Selina’s hands that morning.

“Yes, Sweet, I did—”

“Then you know that our own military use the route our caravan will take. As do diplomats and missionaries.”

“Certainly, Flo. I read it all.” Selina worked the pin back and forth at her throat, attempting to level it.

“I’m only saying that if missionaries use it, surely the route is safe.” Flo folded her hands and wove her fingers together until they whitened. She feared no eventualities except being denied permission to go or, to a lesser degree, offending her dear friends.

“There!” Selina announced. “Is it straight now?”

Flo appraised the long, narrow brooch. Pliny’s doves, encircled in black, held between them a blue garland of flowers. “It is.”

Selina poured herself a glass of orange-flavored sugar water. “Something to drink, dear?”

Flo shook her head.

“As I understand it,” Selina went on, “it is not the preferred passage. Too rugged, I believe.” She sat down at the table. “And I saw no mention of families taking it out to India.” Avoiding Flo’s eye, she stared at the liquid in her glass.

Surely this was a bad sign. For the first time Selina was clearly discomfited by Flo’s intensity. They had never argued, never adamantly taken sides about anything. Selina had never been flint or fuel for Flo’s fire but always the snuffer, the damper, the cool ration of water.

“Yes, but the caravan route is shorter and quicker,” Flo said. Was that actually true? What was short was the description of it in Murray— just a page, not counting the list of landmarks. In fact, Murray, wishing to sell guidebooks, rarely sounded a note of alarm. A traveler would be hard-pressed to find mention of death or danger, save for ubiquitous warnings about the importance of respecting the honor and independence of Bedouins. As for the terrain, it was always “majestic.” Treacherous ravines and steep defiles became “echoing choirs for travelers who would give voice to their desert delight.”

Selina fussed with the damask tablecloth, tugging it over the corners of the wobbly table. “Flo, dear, I have no wish to argue. You know I have only your welfare at heart.”

An infuriating tear made its way down Flo’s cheek. “I’m counting on this trip, Selina, really I am.” Dabbing at her nose with a monogrammed linen handkerchief withdrawn from her sleeve, she lowered herself into one of the chairs. “It may be arduous, but I am equal to it. I’m sure I am.”

Charles had emerged from his cabin by now and stood at the stern, chatting with Paolo. Flo could hear the two reminiscing again about Greece. Twice Paolo had been Charles’s cicerone in Greece, so that, though Paolo was, in fact, from Malta, to Charles, he was Greece. Surely, Charles missed his club in London—the smoky, tweedy, liquor-tinged press of other Hellenophiles who worshipped at the altar of the Golden Age. Indeed, some (though not Charles) had joined the battle for Greek independence as young men.

Selina took Flo’s hand. “I just want you to be safe.”

“Is Charles so worried, too?”

Selina lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “I’m not certain. I haven’t raised the issue with him. I didn’t want to draw his attention to it.”

Flo sometimes forgot how clever Selina was, her jackdaw intellect cloaked in a fabric of pleasantries, smiles, and melodic speech. She and Charles loved each other more than any couple Flo knew, but that didn’t stop Selina from leading Charles around to her point of view like a bull with a nose ring. Brava, Selina!

“In any case, I doubt he’s given it much thought since you first mentioned it.” Selina tried to straighten the well-used tablecloth with the heel of her hand, Sisyphus clearing dust from the path of his rock.

“Perhaps he’s more concerned about the company I’m keeping. My honor and all that.” She regretted it instantly. Why could she not keep a civil tongue?

Selina shook her head, looking pained. “That’s hardly fair, Flo, and you know it.” She let go of Flo’s hand, leaned back in her chair. “Charles adores you. And he trusts your judgment as much as I do.”

“I’m sorry, Selina. I’m just so eager for this trip.” It was true: she didn’t doubt Charles’s loving regard. But it was infuriating to have her fate rest even in his benevolent hands. “You know how much I cherish you both.” Selina looked away from her. Was she reluctant to convey bad news? “Has he said anything at all about the trip?”

A breeze stirred, lifting the hair off Selina’s forehead.

“I believe he’ll want to know what your plans are. You know Charles—he thinks in terms of schedules and tactics.” Selina paused, her face full of pleasure. “My quartermaster. Wonderful trait in a husband, to be so practical.”

Indeed. Where would they be without Charles’s zest for organizing? It was Charles who insisted on lugging supplies from home. Without his foresight and insistence, they would have had no jams, no milled soaps and hairdressings, no laudanum, lye, oatmeal, or cocoa. Without gregarious, calendar-crazed Charles, there would have been no afternoon teas with consular agents, no lunches with delegates, no picnics with slave-mongering wives of watercolorists on remote islands. Left to Flo, they would not have met a single Englishman during the two-thousand-mile journey on the Nile. And would such isolation really have been wise or advisable? Not all the meetings had been boring; not every English tourist was an insensitive dolt.

How easy it was to complain about a thing when one had no shortage of it. Fanny was right: sometimes Flo was a selfish brat no better than Marian Lewis. Worse—a brat on the outside; on the inside, a monster. And forever at war with herself.

“Don’t fret, Sweet,” said Selina. “Let us see how things unfold. Just let people speak their minds. Have faith, dear Flo.”

If only Selina knew! Flo had faith enough for a dozen women, one for each year since God had so decisively if mysteriously put her under His thumb. How could she tell Selina that she not only wanted what she wanted, but also what God wanted for her.

Selina cupped Flo’s chin. “You shall be happy, I know it. We both wish it more than anything.”

There was movement on the beach, four men ambling toward the houseboat. In the uncanny pink light of dusk, their footprints were steeped in violet shadows and the Nile stilled to a vast deposit of jade. No such hue ever bathed the lawns or beaches of England.

Joseph led the way, followed by a stranger wearing a dazzling white gubbeh and tarboosh. Gustave and Max, for their parts, were dressed, ridiculously, à la Nizam— like Egyptian infantrymen—in baggy pants with tall boots, wide belts, and scarlet jackets.

The mere sight of their costumes lightened Flo’s mood. It struck her then that she was not simply drawn to Gustave; she was also drawn to herself as she might be in his company, to the freedom he elicited in her, his wildness perhaps unleashing its equivalent in her. She, too, might dress outrageously, pull pranks, tell jokes. He more than tolerated her moodiness; he embraced it. Little wonder that she burned to go to Koseir! Not so much for the place or the adventure as for a different self, a Florence driven not by selfishness or monstrosity, but by the simple prospect of joy.

Charles hailed the quartet and, with Paolo, handed them aboard. Introductions followed, cemented with handshakes, curtsies, the brushing of lips on hands. Max, Charles, and the stranger laid on courtesies and compliments in a thick impasto, tossing out verbal flourishes like bandalores in a game of “around the world.” Flo envisioned herself and Gustave parodying them later. They would bow to each other and knock heads, melt to the floor laughing, pleased with their private whimsy.

The stranger, Père Issa, was a Christian from Bethlehem who served as the French consular agent in Kenneh. A tall, immaculate man of indeterminate race with olive skin and green eyes, he wore a gold hoop in his ear, like a storybook pirate. Flo was struck by his long, slender fingers and glossy, almond-shaped nails. Overall, he cut the elegant figure of a man who had just emerged clean and pleasantly scented from a Turkish bath. Yet, for all this splendor, he was the farthest thing from an English gentleman she could imagine. The word exotic jumped to mind. Alluringly foreign.

But what was that at the end of the pinky finger of his right (but not his left) hand? A tapered fingernail grown beyond all utility flitted about him like a winged insect as he gesticulated. A weapon? Decoration? Mark of rank? She scrupulously avoided staring, but there it was, again and again, nearly two inches long. Following her covert gaze to the weird appendage, Gustave nodded, ever so slightly. Yes, I see it, too.

Selina welcomed everyone to the table, and Efreet-Youssef, always at the ready, pulled out chairs for each guest in turn, then blended into a nearby shadow. Charles poured two fingers of brandy from his crystal decanter for the men, while Selina and Flo took sugared water. Appearing on deck, Trout waved away the offer of a beverage before installing herself decisively in a chair several paces behind Selina, where she proceeded to count out crochet stitches.

“Ah, my dear Madame Trout, allow me to introduce to you Père Issa, our distinguished guest,” Gustave said, his voice a rich tapestry of regard, the words plumped in gold. Paolo translated perfectly.

Forty-two doubles and turn work, Flo heard her mutter. Would Trout stop crocheting? Finally, she rose with a little sigh and set her bundle on the chair. “How do you do, Mr. Issa.”

“Enchanté.” Following the French custom, the consul reached for her hand, which was not offered. Trout retreated a step. “I beg your pardon, sir. I do not parlay-voo.”

Rebuffed but still smiling, Père Issa bowed to Trout, then returned to his hosts.

Trout coiled yarn around her index finger and resumed her place behind Selina.

“We are gathered to discuss the excursion I spoke of last week,” Flo told her maid. She had mentioned Koseir in passing, only to stress that Trout would be going, for when given the option, Trout preferred to remain on the boat. There had been so many side trips to tombs, temples, bazaars, and ruins that Trout had stopped asking for details, and Flo had ceased providing them.

“Yes, mum,” Trout said, eyes on her yarn, wrists ticking forward and back. Loop up, wrap around, loop back, pull through. Another plank in the barricade nailed in place.

“It will be a stimulating journey, Madame Trout,” said Gustave, laying on solicitude with a trowel. “I hope you will enjoy yourself in our company.”

Paolo deftly translated. She thought to correct him and Gustave—Trout, after all, was a mademoiselle—but decided against it. A title of any sort gave Trout added gravitas, raised her social standing. Surely this pleased her.

“Thank you, sir. That’s most kind of you.” Trout said this loudly and slowly, as though to ensure his understanding. She had no inkling, thought Flo. Would it be better to keep her in the dark until the last moment, thereby adding the burden of guilt if she thought of refusing? Gustave seemed to have a strategy.

After talk about the weather, the river, and a brief recounting of the descent of the cataracts (by general accord a lark as compared with the ascent), Max unfolded a map onto the tabletop. He pointed to Kenneh and then to a brown dot on the Red Sea’s western shore. Koseir. Trout, still counting stitches, paid no mind. Charles and Selina were rapt.

“Well, just a knuckle away, really,” Charles said approvingly, swirling his brandy before plunging his nose into the glass.

“The crew will be specialists, of course, who’ve made the crossing tens of times,” said Max. “Hundreds, I daresay.”

“And Père Issa’s brother is, by chance, the French consular agent in Koseir,” Gustave added. His face gleamed in the tender pink light. Later, he might fatten (for he seemed inclined to fleshiness) and lose his hair. But now, perhaps out of gratitude for his presence, Flo imagined pressing her lips against his. (Was that all there was to a kiss? In which case, why did people keep at it for more than a second?) His lips would be soft and yielding, she expected, like flower petals, dry and warm as the center of fresh-baked bread.

“How fortunate,” said Selina.

“Dandy,” Charles agreed.

“My brother, Elias, he has a villa by the sea,” Père Issa explained, motioning with both hands. His palms, Flo noticed, were several shades lighter than the rest of him, like the chalked hands in the posters for the Ethiopian Serenaders, a minstrel show that played London every year. “He will be honored to entertain you as his guests.”

“Well, isn’t that grand?” Selina clapped her hands. “Isn’t it, Charles?”

“Indeed.” Charles turned to Flo in English. “After crossing the desert, a good bed will, I’m sure, be most welcome.”

At this mention of beds and lackings thereof, Trout looked up and began listening.

“You have made the trip yourself, Père Issa?” Selina inquired.

“Many times.”

Charles set his snifter on the table and removed a leather pouch from his frock coat. “What I want to know, monsieur, is how remote, how out of the way the road is.” He fiddled with his tobacco and pipe. “For instance, have you encountered other caravans on your trips? Are there highwaymen? Bandits?”

“Many pilgrims cross at this time of year.” Père Issa licked the rim of his glass delicately, like a cat. “And no, no bandits. It is quite safe. Protected by the Bedouins.”

Safe compared to an omnibus? Flo wondered, or to a trek through the Australian outback? She knew the desert was forsaken, lacking in life-sustaining food or water, and thus a test of will and endurance. Brigands had never entered her mind.

“Excellent.” Charles leaned back in his chair and drew on his pipe. Looking equally content, Selina gave his arm a knowing squeeze.

Was that it, then? Had it been decided? Flo trembled at the thought. Had Charles agreed, just that easily?

“What’s this about, mum?” Trout asked in a hushed tone that Flo had come to detest, a tone that tugged at Flo’s sleeve without exactly asserting itself.

“We were just speaking about the villa of Père Elias, M. Issa’s brother,” Flo said carefully, forcing a smile. Levity was called for—mirth—a touch of fancy. “M. Issa says it hangs on a cliff high above the sea, with cooling winds. And it’s white as sugar.” Now she was in the swing of it. “With feather beds in every room. He says we’ll be treated like royalty.”

Trout’s stilled crochet hook protruded between her fingers like the beak of a baby bird. “And the desert?”

Behind Trout’s head, the sky had turned a molten orange; while along the shore, the palms had darkened into fringed, black paper cutouts. The air was empty, eerily silent. There were so many birds along the Nile that when they roosted at night, the quiet was sudden and almost disturbing, like that afternoon she thought she’d gone deaf, before hearing the Voice. “We’ll traverse it, of course,” Flo answered.

“What desert would that be, mum?” For an instant, Trout’s eyes flashed red, like a dog’s, reflecting the sun as it smoldered at the horizon.

“The same desert you’ve already romped through, dear Trout. The eastern Sahara, which some call the Nubian—”

“But where are we going? What’s at the other side of the desert?” Resentment was etched all over Trout’s face—in her furrowed brow, her skeptical gaze and pinched mouth.

“La Mer Rouge!” Gustave cried, leaping from his chair and lowering himself on one knee before Trout.

“The Red Sea?” Trout ignored the man kneeling before her and strode over to the map, trailing her yarn. She had no idea where she was, had she? Flo dreaded the moment of her recognition. For though Trout had felt free to complain profusely about all manner of irritation, up until now she had followed Flo blindly. Flo wondered if Trout knew she had the power to refuse, to wreck everything. Would she dare?

“Here is the destination,” Selina said, tapping Koseir, “and here is where we are at present. And all of this”—she swept her hand from the narrow funnel at Suez to the Gulf of Aden—“is the Red Sea. The Red Sea of Moses and the Hebrews!”

“Heaven protect us!” said Trout. “It’s the other side of the world.”

“Il est à l’autre extrémité du monde,” Paolo repeated for the Frenchmen.

“Non, mais non,” Gustave wailed. “It is en Égypte.”

“Is it then?” Trout ran her tongue over her lips, which were dry and cracked.

“Mais oui, madame.” Gustave approached once more, lifted Trout’s hand, and gently moved it from Kenneh to the coast. “C’est notre voyage. Il sera merveilleux.”

Trout looked dubious. “Where will we sleep, mum?”

“In tents,” Flo said. “We shall be quite comfortable. We shall have our own cook. And travel by camel in a caravan.”

Incredulous, Trout turned to Selina. “You don’t mind riding one of those beasts, mum?”

“No, I don’t. Though I shan’t be going. Mr. Bracebridge and I are staying in Kenneh.”

Please don’t say why, Flo’s eyes begged. Don’t say the trip is difficult or your health isn’t up to it. Oh, please.

“We need to take care of some business.”

“That’s right,” Charles said.

Flo wanted to kiss him. A co-conspirator! How had she not understood how much he loved her? She wished she could take flight, not like a bird, but unpredictably, zigzagging around the boat like a punctured balloon. Fffft! Fwat! Charles had agreed without the question ever being put.

Just then, Père Issa hailed Rais Ibrahim coming aboard with four live chickens. The consul excused himself and joined the captain on the bow. They were apparently old friends.

Trout drooped over the table like a general over the scheme of a lost battle. She studied the map legend, measuring distances with her finger joints. “It’s a hundred mile, seems.” Her voice verged on indignance. “More than a hundred. How long will it take?”

“Quatre jours,” said Max. “Four days.”

Trout looked ready to cry. Good! Better for her to dissolve than ignite. Let her be miserable, just so long as she did not refuse. Would she risk rebellion in front of all these people? A public disgrace. Would not humiliation override her fear? Trout shut her eyes. Silently praying? Counting to ten?

Selina signaled Youssef for more sugar water. Charles smoked his pipe and muttered to Paolo. It was an intermission of sorts, Flo thought. The play wasn’t over.

Eyes still closed, Trout began to sway where she stood, in wider and wider arcs. Max jumped up and escorted her back to her chair, his hand extended like that of a maître d’. She obeyed him. Oh, if only Trout could fall just a little in love with Max, if only she could allow herself that folly, though maiden ladies of a certain age—Trout’s age—did not exactly fall in love. Indeed, it was difficult to imagine Trout with any man except an employer. Bring me my slippers, Trout. Yes, sir. My eggs. Yes, sir. No endearments or entanglements, just the emotionless propriety of service. For who could love Trout? She was not cuddlesome or amusing, nor the least bit feminine. Barrel-chested and tall, with outsized hands, she had about her something of the warrior. Amazon Trout. She was not afraid of men, Fanny had said, even clutches of them drinking and gambling. Fanny had once seen Trout walking past such ruffians into a pub. But even ugly women were not safe alone in the streets, Fanny had stressed. Trout had simply been lucky. Men were brutes.

“Madame Trout,” Max said, “I hope that you will agree to be my model in the desert.”

Flo grinned as Paulo issued the invitation in English.

“Your model?” she repeated uncertainly.

“You will establish scale in my photographs, my dear lady. You will be among the first human beings to be photographed in the eastern Sahara—perhaps the very first. An innovator, a pioneer.”

“Will I?” A droplet of sweat slid down Trout’s temple, catching the last gleam of light. No, she would not cry.

“Have you ever sat for a photograph?” Max asked.

A pointless question, Flo thought—the Nightingales themselves had yet to be photographed. The camera was a newfangled machine, with unreliable results. But Max was pointedly making a fuss over Trout; surely his flattery could nudge her past the point of refusal.

“Yes, sir, I have,” Trout said, and proceeded to brush the front of her dress with her two hands, as though tidying up to pose for a likeness. A pretentious gesture. Flo fought the impulse to laugh.

“Remarkable,” said Charles. “Congratulations, Trout. You are at the forefront of science and art.”

“Is that so, Mr. Bracebridge?”

Barely able to discern the outlines of Trout’s face, Flo could no longer restrain herself. “How is it that you have been photographed, Trout?”

“Oh, I have a friend, mum, Gilbert, who’s made my picture four times now. Once as myself, and three historical scenes.”

Gustave raised his glass. “To the future of art,” he cried. “And to Madame Trout, the photographers’ Muse!” Paolo translated.

“I don’t mind if I do, sir,” Trout said, at length. “Pose for you, I mean. But I will be wanting some photographs for myself, then.” Trout wound her loose yarn back onto the ball. Flo hadn’t known Trout to bargain so brazenly. But Max agreed, and offered to show Trout the next day the pictures the others had seen at Abu Simbel, when she was belowdecks.

Just then, Efreet-Youssef appeared from the shadows and placed an oil lamp on the table.

“You will bathe in the Red Sea!” Gustave pantomimed swimming with his arms.

“Not I, sir,” Trout said “No. I won’t be bathing in any foreign waters.”

Now that an accommodation seemed, miraculously, to have been reached, Florence was barely listening. Let Trout sweat, posing on the beach of the Red Sea, furiously fanning herself as Max hunched under the black hood of the camera. Let her stand atop a dune, or ride sidesaddle on a camel. Let her go on posturing sophistication, with trips to the dentist and a photographer friend who placed her in tableaux vivants. Flo was no longer bothered by any of it. She was going to Koseir!

Gustave produced three slim packages. “I have taken the liberty of buying the ladies gifts,” he said, and handed over the paper bundles, each one fastened with twine to which a cinnamon stick had been tied.

Flo and Selina immediately lifted theirs to inhale the sweet, pungent odor of that hard curl of spice. Trout, wasting no time, forced the string over the package, ripped the paper apart, and promptly shrieked, hurling the gift to the floor.

“What is it?” Flo asked, rising to her feet.

“A dead animal, mum.” Trout covered her face with her hands. “A strange sort of . . . cat mummy!” She shuddered at the idea.

Charles, ever chivalrous, tore Selina’s parcel from her hands.

“Non, non, non!” Gustave cried. “Quel est le problème? Vous n’aimez pas mon cadeau?”

Gustave had gone bright red, the shade he turned with any strong emotion, Flo had noticed. Some people reddened, others blanched. She herself was inclined to a paler pink, still evidence of a throbbing vitality. Most women prized a pale complexion as more ethereal and less carnal.

Charles removed the article from its wrapping and set it upon the table. He stared wonderingly at it, picked it up it by one end like something foul, and held it aloft with two fingers.

“Hair!” cried Flo.

“Les cheveux d’une femme Egyptienne,” Gustave explained. “Elles sont très belles, n’est-ce pas?”

“You see, it’s only a woman’s hair,” Flo told Trout soothingly. She unwrapped her own thick black braid, though the surprise had been ruined.

Still grimacing, Trout prodded hers with one foot, as if to ensure it wasn’t alive. “I was thinking maybe a dead rat. I heard as the natives eat vermin here. Maybe a rat for dinner, I thought.”

Drawn by the commotion, Père Issa rejoined the group.

“May I offer you or the captain another drink?” Charles asked, a glint in his eye. “Some brandy for your rat entrée, eh?” He tossed the mane into the air and emitted a tuba-size guffaw.

Selina grabbed his elbow, but he ignored her.

“Rodent flambé, anyone?”

“Charles, please!” Selina cried in vain. “You are embarrassing Trout.”

Gustave, meantime, was doing what Flo imagined a gentilhomme would always do for a woman under duress: he had taken Trout’s arm and was whispering apologies, first in French and then in his broken English, offering himself up as buffoon, if necessary, to regain her good graces. “Pardon me, sweet lady,” Flo overheard. “I am much desolated to scare you with hairs.” At this, Trout chuckled, which he matched with a giggle and Charles amplified to a horselaugh until they were all howling. And how wonderful it was to laugh! Charles and Gustave had a gift for it; Flo, alas, did not. But, then, hadn’t Fanny taught her to stifle the impulse and cover her mouth? No belly laughs permitted, only tittering behind a fan or gloved hand.

Flo linked arms with her maid. “Hair is very expensive, you know. You could have a fine wig made, Trout. We all could, in Paris. What a lovely gift, Gustave. Merci beaucoup.”

“Indeed,” Selina nodded. “A great luxury. Thank you.”

“Gustave always finds the best presents,” said Max. “I was with him when he bought the hair. The women wept and carried on while they were shorn. You see, the husbands forced them, for the money.”

“Oh, goodness,” Selina said, her voice sober again. “I wish I didn’t know that.”

The sky was by now completely dark. Noting the late hour, Père Issa prepared to depart. “Tomorrow, mes amis, I shall help you hire the caravan and crew. And I shall send word to my brother advising him of your arrival next week.” With that, he bowed, his robes languidly moving against his body, like a gentle tide. “Bonsoir à tous.”

Flo watched Père Issa’s white gubbeh float down the gangplank. Back on shore, he hurried into the crowd on the cay, his turban like a French knot pulled taut on its thread until it shrank into a swirled nub. In a moment he was indistinguishable from anyone else on shore.

Trout excused herself and went below. Then, in a ploy that Flo suspected was designed to leave her alone with Gustave, Selina fetched Charles’s telescope and proposed that Max look at the moon.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I happened upon Père Issa?” Gustave moved his chair closer. They sat at the table, the map between them.

“Bien sûr.”

“He found us, actually. He was eager to meet two authentic Frenchmen. What great good luck, isn’t it?”

“Does he really have a brother in Koseir?”

“Of course, my dear. I am not a liar. I merely emphasize.”

“And does his brother have a house?”

“He does, indeed. And quite a grand one, according to you.”

“You understood my English?”

“I grasped the gist of it, or, I suppose, the intention.”

“I see.”

Her eyes were drawn to the lamp. Paradoxically, its small, wavering flame made the darkness around it more pronounced.

She had reached a strange pass, having run out of what to say—she, the brilliant conversationalist whose head positively raced with too many ideas. She stared at the lamp, willing a genie to pipe forth from it in scarves of smoke. She stretched her fingers, folded them together, then pulled them apart to scratch her arm, her nails embarrassingly loud over the woven fabric.

At last she remembered the consul’s hand. “I saw you noticed Père Issa’s nail?” She wiggled her little finger in the lamplight.

“Unusual, n’est-ce pas, Rossignol?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen it before in the East. Haven’t you?”

Mostly, Charles had done the talking with the few Oriental men they’d met, and, determined not to offend them, she’d always stared at her feet, or into a neutral space to the side of them, while cultivating a vacant expression. The surreptitious glances she took at the cataract “bigs,” half naked in the river as they hoisted the Parthenope up and down the rapids, hardly counted, so far away were they, and clothed in froth. “No,” she said. “I haven’t.”

“It is a local custom, like the turban. Or like worry beads.”

“It must also be a mark of wealth,” Flo said. “For with such a nail, one could not possibly do a jot of manual work.” She was pleased with her logic.

“No, nothing like that, though it does have a use.” He set his empty snifter on the table and, inserting two fingers in the collar of his shirt, cranked his head from side to side. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be mysterious. I shall explain it to you when we are alone.”

Flo looked around. Max, Charles, and Selina were out of earshot. Paolo and Joseph were smoking the captain’s narghile at the bow. “But we are alone now.”

He lifted her hand into his lap. Setting up a rhythm, he stroked the side of her thumb and then of each finger, moving from digit to digit. “Then we must be more alone,” he said at last.

He was barely touching her, but she felt the contact before it happened, each hair pricking up from its follicle in anticipation.

“Truly alone.”

She found herself unable to speak—unable, in fact, to do anything save feel each finger as it was touched, all of her senses collected there, imprisoned in that single spot. Falling in love? No, not love, precisely, but falling, yes. And just where she would land was unclear and, in this moment, irrelevant.

Max returned to the table, downed the last of his brandy, and rolled up the map. Catching Gustave’s eye, and not caring, apparently, if she overheard, he grunted something about leaving, then returned to the Bracebridges.

“I shall come to see you the day after tomorrow,” Gustave said. “If there is anything you need for the trip, we shall buy it together in Kenneh.” He released her hand. “Then, at dawn the following day, we depart!”

“Thank you.”

“De rien.”

“And for Trout, too.”

“Ah, well. She did not require so much persuasion.”

“She did not, did she?” Why had he stopped? The desolation of her abandoned hand was unbearable. She reached for his hand and placed it between hers, which he allowed without acknowledging. “But I think there is more mystery to Trout than that,” she said. She was able to speak, though sentience remained centered in her hand. How strange to feel split in two, the Flo who was speaking and the Flo who was only a hand.

Not daring to mimic him, to touch his fingers, she simply held his hand until it grew heavy in hers, inanimate as a stone. Nor did she know how to free it, return it to him. It was all so awkward. He was waiting, she knew, for her to revive it, but shyness and inexperience stopped her. His hand could have been a dead fish.

Max, who seemed always to be in charge, slapped his friend on the back, impatient to go. Gustave retrieved his hand. In another moment, the three men were tromping down the gangplank, the light from Joseph’s lamp flickering over their well-liquored faces as they clambered ashore.

Turning back to the Parthenope, Gustave began to wave, his arm tick-tocking overhead like an upside-down pendulum as he sang au revoir alternated with bonsoir until his voice grew faint. This was for her, she was certain; he must have sensed how intently she was watching him.

In this simple act, she recognized that another connection had been forged between them. The evening had been entirely proper. Yet, the secret weight of their conspiracy had pressed them closer. They had resorted to tactics just short of lying. Surely, had they robbed a bank or committed some equally egregious crime together, it would have felt little different—no less forbidden, and no less astonishing.