FORTY-ONE

The British consul’s agent inhabited one of the few two-story houses in Luxor; it was narrow, built of mud bricks, with curled iron grilles over the ground-floor windows. A pot of marigolds stood to one side of a faded red door, which opened to a dark hallway scented with a musky incense. The smell transported Louisa, as she stepped inside, to Mr. Hamilton’s house in Greenwich.

She glanced around her, half expecting to see Mr. Hamilton’s plump, leaking wife, to breathe in the scent of cats and cabbage, be invited to make her own way to the back parlor. She found herself instead looking at a neat, dark-haired woman with an olive complexion, gold hoops dangling from the lobes of her ears. Louisa removed her glasses.

“Good morning. Is Ahmed Bey present?”

The woman shook her head and showed Louisa into a cool, square study. She brought in a pile of letters on a salver. Looking through the envelopes, Louisa found three addressed to her. One was in Blundell’s strong, methodical hand, the second in Yael’s forward-­leaping script that made her think of a horse taking a fence. The third was in handwriting she didn’t recognize.

The housekeeper left the room and Louisa sat down on the visitor’s chair by the side of the agent’s desk. The silence in the room was broken by the light, scurrying tick of a carriage clock on the top of a bookcase. Its urgency seemed redundant in this place of stillness, this place where time had dwarfed itself.

Blundell’s letter was addressed to her in Alexandria, care of the Anglo Ottoman Bank, and had been forwarded by Yael. Louisa opened it with the jeweled paper knife that lay on the desk, shearing through the crease on the top of the envelope. She got out the letter and for a minute held it without unfolding it. It was communication enough, that what had been in Blundell’s hand was now in hers. How long had she been away from her husband? She hardly knew anymore and no counting of days or miles could quantify how far she’d traveled from their life together.

Opening out the sheet of paper, she read the contents. He’d received the letter she had written on the journey upriver, was glad to hear they had enjoyed the trip, and hoped the climate in Luxor was proving beneficial to Harriet. Their sons were in good health, although he himself had suffered a minor bout of Russian influenza, which was no cause for concern. The weather was wet for May and hardly seemed like spring, although the cherry blossom in the garden was splendid. He was sorry she was missing it, since she appreciated beauty better than he. On a more serious note, the news from Egypt concerned him. He suspected that it might be a good idea for them all to return home soon and would sign off now in the hope of being reunited with his beloved wife.

The housekeeper returned and set down a tray on which was a small glass of spirits, a saucer of Turkish delight. Louisa raised her eyes from the letter, blinking away a tear. She waited until the woman had left the room before opening the next letter. Yael trusted that dear Harriet’s health was improving and Louisa was keeping well. She was busy with her charity work. The weather in Alexandria was surprisingly comfortable, not unlike Boscombe in July, and the evenings cool. Louisa scanned the lines, barely absorbing their contents, folding the sheet back into the envelope.

She contemplated the script on the front of the third letter. The initial L was embellished at both ends with curling loops. The envelope was coarse, with a dirty-looking thumbprint on one corner. Her surname had been misspelled. Mrs. L. Herron. Whenever she received a note in an unfamiliar hand, Louisa knew its provenance. Malachi Sethe Hamilton had so little time and so many calls on it that he always sent missives written by one scribe or another. She tore open the envelope, impatient suddenly to know what message it contained.

Glancing at the letter, taking in its brevity, Louisa first thought that Mr. Hamilton had no news to communicate to her. It wasn’t more than a line. Then she read it.

Antigua Street, SE

Mrs. Herron,

Yr mam came through again. Death is coming for sure.

M. S. Hamilton (Mr.)

Picking up the glass from the tray, Louisa downed the brandy in one burning swallow.

As she walked back by the river, Louisa’s feet hurt. She stopped to rest, sat down on a great gray boulder, lifting one foot and then the other out of the thin summer shoes that she had purchased for the trip and that had proved quite hopeless for the terrain, watching the coruscant water, its smooth eternal flow. The Nile appeared wider than it had when they arrived in Luxor. Everything changed. Even the oldest river in history, on which Moses had floated in a cradle sealed with pitch, was altering with every moment that passed.

As she sat, the meaning of her mother’s message at last became clear to her. Harriet was in better health than she had been for years. She was blooming in the dry heat, breathing freely, had never looked or been stronger. If it wasn’t Harriet who was in danger, it must be herself. It was her own death that was near. Amelia Newlove—­Louisa never thought of her as Mam, that was Mr. Hamilton’s term—had tried to warn her. Was trying still. Warn her or welcome her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before.

She stopped under one of the trees that grew by the edge of the river. Leaning on it, she felt steadied. A tree was a tree, in whatever soil it grew. The dry rustle of leaves over her head sounded for a moment like the sea, and she felt a sudden longing for the sensation of rain on her face and the sight of a cloudy sky. Walking on, she found herself thinking again of Dover, the place she still called home if taken unawares. The place that Augustus had robbed her of because the flint house where they’d lived, the turf-covered cliff, the night music of the sea as it murmured and roared to itself in the darkness, had come to seem the same as innocence.

“I am homesick,” she said aloud.

On the far side of the river, the pink hills stared back, impassive. A noise cut through the air, sounding like a wounded animal. Louisa walked a few more steps and, beyond the line of bushes at the edge of the field, saw a woman. She was on her knees by a short, low mound of earth, scooping handfuls of dust from the ground and raining them down over her head, rubbing them into her grief-ravaged face and her exposed breast, her wails rending the air. She lowered her face to the ground, rubbing her forehead on the earth as if she would crawl into it. At the end of the grave was a bowl of water with a small brown bird perched on the rim. Louisa bowed her head. She felt a pain in her own breast, for all the agony that lived in the world like wind or sun, moving about, falling at random on its human subjects. If she was to die, she must first get Harriet safely back to Blundell. At the thought that she might never see her husband again, she began to weep.