The Sacred River (31 page)

“I should be glad to meet your sister,” she said. “I do hope an opportunity will present itself.”

FORTY-NINE

Harriet sat on the back of the donkey, her feet dangling to one side of its belly; the rein was slack and the animal made its own way through the flooded fields that lay behind the river, continuing around the edge of a thicket of strange human-looking cactus plants, as tall as she was. Fouad walked at the donkey’s head, holding Dash under one arm. The donkey boy had a thorn in his foot and had stayed behind.

The night before, Harriet had been unable to sleep. She’d been picturing Dr. Woolfe’s house, clothed in darkness on the other side of the river, had looked for it out of her window, wondering if it betrayed its presence by a light, but had seen only darkness on the west bank. Remembering the hurry in which Dr. Woolfe had left the dinner, the boorish behavior of Mr. Simpson and Mr. Soane, she urged the donkey on with her heels. She wanted to see Dr. Woolfe, talk to him. She hoped she wasn’t too late. He’d mentioned at the dinner that he intended to visit another dig, to the south, out in the desert.

Harriet could make sense of neither her mother nor her supposed suitor. Louisa seemed to have temporarily lost her mind, firing the pistol at Eyre Soane. She was insisting that they leave Luxor the next day, on whatever boat presented itself. If necessary, her mother said, they would travel on one of the cargo boats that passed through laden with elephant tusks and feet, bundles of ostrich feathers, chattering monkeys tethered to the rails. She offered no explanation for what had happened in the garden.

Eyre Soane had shown himself in the worst possible light. Harriet felt repulsed by the thought of him. Lying under the cotton sheet, in a cocoon of mosquito curtains, listening to wild dogs baying in the distance, she’d made a decision. She wasn’t ready to leave. She felt at home in Luxor. She had a sense as strong and unstoppable as the surging river that she could find life in this place of death. It was strange to Harriet how the west bank, the knowledge of the rock tombs concealed in the mountains, made life not morbid, as Dr. Grammaticas had feared, but more vivid.

She would apologize for the embarrassment of the dinner party, then beg Dr. Woolfe to take her on as an assistant, allow her to work on the dig until it was concluded. Harriet had a small amount of money; her father had given her some before they left, for emergencies, and when she’d opened the tin that Yael had pressed on her at the railway station, she found not peppermints but sovereigns, wrapped in a note that, in her aunt’s familiar handwriting, wished her
bon voyage
. Away from the hotel, she could live on almost nothing; the little she had would last for months and she could lodge with Mrs. Treadwell. She would think about what had happened with Eyre Soane, none of which she could understand, afterward.

They came through the fields, skirting the two giant statues, and began the climb into the hills. Beyond the floodplain, the ground grew dry and arid; the air was hot and still, the silence broken only by the unshod feet of the donkey striking the ground and the slosh of the water skin behind her on its back. Despite the intense heat, Harriet shivered. She never quite grew accustomed to this landscape, never altogether threw off the feeling it had aroused in her the first time she visited, of fear.

The donkey quickened its pace, pricked its ears, as they entered the steep-sided ravine. It was Friday; the site was deserted and the valley looked as desolate as she’d ever seen it. Fouad halted the donkey, dragging on the rein.

“This bad place. Let us leave, Miss Harry.”

“No, Fouad. I must see Dr. Woolfe.”

Harriet shook the rein, urged the donkey on, and the animal picked its way toward the entrance to the tomb. She slid off its back, not waiting for Fouad’s assistance, her feet meeting the ground with a crunch. At the tomb entrance, the usual lamps and matches were arranged neatly on a wooden box. The guard wasn’t at his post.

“Stay here, Fouad. Stay with Dash and wait till I come out again. Don’t move from here.”

Lighting the first lamp that came to hand, Harriet blew out the match and adjusted the wick. She walked in slowly, her eyes growing accustomed to the gloom, keeping one hand in contact with the wall and feeling the curious softness of the rock under the tips of her fingers as she made her way along the passage.

“Dr. Woolfe?”

No answer. At the panel of plaster, she paused, raising the lamp to the queen, arrested in her game, still undecided about where to place her piece.

At the blocked entrance to the tomb, she held the light aloft. Underneath the white stone lintel, a gap had opened up in the rubble. There was an opening of a foot or more in height, the same across. Harriet’s heart leaped. Dr. Woolfe had opened the tomb. He was inside, exploring.

She leaned her head through as far as she could. “Dr. Woolfe? Are you there?”

A faint sound of pebbles shifting and sliding came from somewhere inside. He must be there, working. She brought her head out again, her skin crawling with a mix of excitement and dread at the idea of entering the tomb. Straightening up, she inhaled to the pit of her stomach, counting the breaths in and out until she felt steady. The opening was more like a tunnel than a doorway, the remaining rubble underneath still thick. She longed to see what was on the other side of the wall, to see the resting place of the Lady of the Two Lands. And she had to see Dr. Woolfe. It was vital.

Harriet took another deep breath. She wrapped the orange scarf tightly around her head, tied the ends at the back of her neck. Holding the lamp in one hand, pushing the pocket around to the back of her waist, she maneuvered herself through the opening headfirst, as if she were swimming across the heap of remaining rubble, and half fell through to the other side. Setting the lamp down by her feet, she wiped her face on her sleeve and shook the dust from her skirts. Righted the pocket. Her hands were grazed.

“Dr. Woolfe?”

No answer. In front of her was a flight of fifteen or twenty steps, hewn into the rock, leading downward. She picked up the lamp and walked down the steps, her heart thudding with excitement. At the bottom was another doorway. As she stepped through it, every hair on Harriet’s body rose. She was in a rectangular chamber, the walls covered in columns of hieroglyphs, painted on a white background. The symbols were bright, the colors vivid and jewel-like. The writing, she saw immediately, related to the funeral ritual. Harriet cried out in awe. She had stepped inside the books of her girlhood. At last, she had arrived.

Turning up the wick, she held up the lamp. The room was large. Farther doorways led off it and in the center were four tall pillars going from the floor to the ceiling, their sides made smooth by plaster, decorated with more hieroglyphs and pictures, all perfectly preserved.

Holding the lamp close to the wall on her right, moving step by slow step, she gasped again and again. The hieroglyphs were beautiful, each one a work of art. The curving serpent was represented; Maat’s feather of justice balanced on one side of a pair of scales; the length of twisted flax; the sickle; the seated woman; the sun disk, colored crimson; and again and again, the ankh
that symbolized breath. Her eyes came to rest on the heron hieroglyph. Its long legs were striped with black, its breast tufted with feathers, its pose curious and hesitant.

“Dr. Woolfe?”

She longed to read the story told by the signs. The longing was physical, strong and fierce as hunger. She must find Dr. Woolfe without delay, persuade him to allow her to stay and work with him. Straining her ears for evidence of where he was, she called his name again. No answer came.

Dr. Woolfe was not there. Harriet stood for a moment, absorbing the knowledge. She felt a compulsion to go on, to reach the place where the Lady of the Two Lands lay at rest. The flame in the lamp seemed to flicker, despite the stillness of the air. The tomb was hot, hotter than the passage outside.

Gripping her book in its pocket, feeling the soft leather under her fingers, holding up the lamp with her other hand, she walked down another set of steps and around a pillar painted with priests, recognizable by their garb of leopard skins. In the space between four pillars was a pink granite sarcophagus. The stone lid had been heaved off it and was balanced like a playing card between the coffin and the ground. Harriet inched her way toward it, sweat pouring down her back under her dress. Bending over the side, she held the lamp aloft and peered in. Except for a heap of sticks that looked like kindling, some dirty bandages, the sarcophagus was empty.

The queen was gone from her ornate palace of death. Harriet felt sad. She stood still for a minute, then raised her eyes and held up the lamp toward the ceiling. It was a rich violet blue, the color of midnight, lined with gold five-pointed stars, thick with them. The queen had lain under the starriest of all starry skies, the movement of the hands that had painted them seeming to live on in their shapes. As Harriet gazed up at the ceiling, the lamp flickered again. With a flare that lit up the celestial realm, the flame went out.

FIFTY

A party of Italians had arrived earlier in the day and was taking coffee in the gazebo. The exuberance of their language, its extravagant rise and fall, made it sound as if they were debating matters of life and death. Listening from a table in the dining room, by the open doors, Louisa wondered if they could see daubs of oil paint on the ground in the gazebo where the easel had stood, or found a remaining spot of blood outside on the grass, where the gardener had so painstakingly sluiced and scrubbed, and were piecing together the incident. But perhaps they were discussing the dinner menu, the heat, where they would go next.

Louisa lifted a piece of chicken on a fork and ate it slowly. She was taking a late lunch alone; Harriet had gone to the west bank to say farewell to Dr. Woolfe, with Fouad and the dog. Looking at the white meat on the bone on her plate, Louisa put down her fork. The waiter brought a pot of the English breakfast tea that Monsieur Andreas had procured from somewhere, and which Louisa drank at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She topped up the pot from a jug of hot water and sat on in the dining room.

She had to get Harriet back to Yael. Her own death might come at any moment. It was right, that if one of them were to die, it should be herself. Louisa had had a generous helping of life, more than many, and Harriet’s was at its beginning. Still, it was hard to face death. In all its comedy and pathos, life was dear. Its imperfection, its ridiculousnesses and failures, were its more precious parts. She’d never realized it until now. Before she died, she would absolve herself for the mistakes she had made. She’d borne their weight too long and would not take that same burden into death. If she could only say goodbye to Blundell, look on his face once more, she could die in peace. It was a terrible cruelty to die without farewells.

“Good afternoon, madame.”

Monsieur Andreas stood by the table, his hands linked behind his back, wearing the white bow tie in which she had first seen him, the wing collar and rusty-looking black tailcoat. Ruler of his small empire by the Nile, which was, more than anything, an empire of the imagination. One of his front teeth was chipped, she noticed for the first time. Teeth were the only part of the body not capable of healing themselves, she’d read somewhere. If they suffered an injury, it was permanent. Louisa wished she could offer him her own unchipped teeth. Soon she would have no need of them.

She eased the tightness in her throat with another sip of tea and replaced the cup on the saucer.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur Andreas.”

“You will depart tomorrow?”

She nodded. His manner toward her, solicitous, almost tender, had not altered since the shooting in the garden.

“Yes, as soon as we can find a cabin.”

“They say, madame, that once you have drunk the water of the Nile, you are sure to come back.”

Louisa wanted to speak to him frankly. She would have liked to explain to Monsieur Andreas that death awaited her, would unfortunately preclude her from coming back to the Luxor Hotel—but that its proximity made these days, even this moment, among the very sweetest of her life. The hotel had appeared shabby on their arrival. Now she recognized it as an oasis of civilization, an outpost if not of England then of Europe, the polished brass planters and fringed carpets, the fish knives and soft-boiled eggs nothing less than miraculous.