THIRTY

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The air in Luxor was dry and clean, composed mainly of sunlight, it seemed to Harriet as she inhaled it. Her chest had gradually ceased to ache and her breathing grew deeper and easier with each day that passed. Sitting in the grass-topped shelter in the hotel garden with Louisa, inhaling the scent of the jasmine that grew up the wooden supports, the muddy, underlying tang of the great river, she felt as if she might take in so much air she could float away like a balloon.

Each morning, Arab men came to the hotel gates to offer their services as guides to the west bank. They pressed around European visitors, offering to procure donkeys on the other side, ladies’ saddles, cold water, antikis for a good price.

Harriet and Louisa watched from where they sat on the stone terrace at the front of the hotel.

“Why don’t we go, Mother?” Harriet said. “I’d like to.”

Monsieur Andreas, hovering by a bed of leggy roses in the garden, cleared his throat.

“I will find the best guide for Madame,” he said. “The very best.”

Louisa lifted her green veil, threw it back over her hat, and smiled at him.

“I fear it may overtax Harriet’s strength, Monsieur,” she said. “And for myself I consider visiting tombs a macabre occupation.”

Monsieur Andreas nodded, looking at Louisa, dipping his dark head up and down.

“As Madame wishes,” he said.

Harriet decided not to quarrel with her mother. She would find a way to get to the west bank. When she was fully recovered, she would insist on it. If Louisa refused, she would go alone, with Fouad.

Until she could reach the Necropolis, Harriet occupied herself at the Luxor temple, a short walk from the hotel. She settled to sketching a section of wall that bore a carved depiction of a king offering two round vessels to a god. The king looked boyish, his chest bare and his profile grave and smooth under an elaborate crown. Attached to the front of his crown was his uraeus, the raised head of a cobra, ready to spit in the eyes of enemies.

The deity to whom he offered vessels of wine wore the plumes of Amun, the hidden one, and held a scepter, or was, emblem of the power of the gods, in his left hand. In Amun’s right hand, hanging from his fingers, was an ankh, the symbol of life and breath. Amun held the ankh loosely, almost casually, as if it was a gift to be lightly given and as lightly withheld.

Above the two figures and running down between them were vertical lines of hieroglyphs, the characters large and beautifully formed. Harriet recognized the seated woman with a single feather on her head that signified the goddess Maat, or truth. The ankh was repeated again and again on the panel of stone. Had some invisible god handed her an ankh, she wondered as she worked. Had she been given the gift of breath, of life, in this place?

While she sketched, Fouad held the parasol over Harriet’s head, keeping curious children at bay by means of a narrowed gaze or click of his tongue. Far from Alexandria, out of the shadow of Mustapha, their dragoman appeared taller than he had, and a more effective protector. Dragoman came from a Turkish word meaning to explain and Fouad, encouraged by her interest in the life of the present as well as the past, had begun to explain all that he could to Harriet.

“Good, Miss Harry?” he said when she raised her head and found him looking at her work.

Kwayis?”

Kwayis, Fouad,” she replied.