The Sacred River (27 page)

Strips of wicker had uncurled from the bentwood frame: the chair back was scratchy against Harriet’s palm. Shards of light fell through a roof made of dried grasses, striping her shoulders, the tops of her bare feet. She was dressed in a loose blue robe, the Egyptian djellaba
that Suraya had made for her; newly released from its nighttime plaits, her hair fell in crimped waves to her waist and her feet were bare on the dried mud floor. Every muscle in her body was begging to be allowed to move.

At the other end of the gazebo, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, Eyre Soane mixed pigments on his palette. The paint, or the oil he used to thin it, was irritating her lungs. For the first time in weeks, Harriet could hear her own breathing.

He glanced up.

“You are beautiful, Miss Heron.”

Harriet felt embarrassed. She looked at him, her eyes shifting down from the point where he had instructed her to fasten her gaze.

“I’m not beautiful, and I have always known it. You need not flatter me.”

“But you are,” he said. “The shape of your head. The delicacy of your gestures. I knew from the very first time I set eyes on you that I had to paint you.”

“That morning on the weather deck? You barely noticed me, Mr. Soane.”

Harriet thought she saw annoyance in his face. She pictured him as he had been on that day, remembered how handsome and unreachable he had appeared. Harriet felt she knew him barely any better now. It was the fourth day of the sitting and Eyre Soane had once again taken a long time to arrange her in the pose, moving her head right and left, her chin up and down until it was just so, adjusting her arm. Harriet’s face had colored at the touch of his hand through the thin fabric of her sleeve.

His treatment of her was making her uneasy. He approached too close, looked too long, rested his hand on her waist in a manner that Harriet sensed was improper. Even worse were the compliments he paid her. She wanted to believe them but something inside, some insistent voice, told her that they were insincere.

“I meant at the villa,” he said, “in Alexandria. I didn’t have a chance to see you on the steamer, amid all those frightful tourists.”

She felt the blush begin again. It would not be deterred. Had he forgotten the way their eyes had met across the ship’s dining saloon, after he had joined them at dinner?

The shelter was open on two sides to the breeze, and from where she stood, out of the corner of her eye, she got a glimpse of the aviary. Inside it, the trapped birds swooped and perched, clung to the netting, dipped their heads to the shallow bowl of water.

Outside, the free birds came as if to visit them, landing on the ground, heads cocked to one side, letting out streams of sound.

As she looked, Harriet thought she saw a flash of green, glimpsed the train of Louisa’s skirts passing behind a clump of palm trees outside. She waited for Louisa to enter the gazebo and comment on the canvas or announce that she had changed her mind about allowing, or at any rate not disallowing, the portrait. But the minutes ticked on and Louisa did not come. Harriet decided she must have been mistaken.

Louisa had taken it into her head that they must return to London. Harriet had no wish to leave Luxor. She’d agreed to begin the sitting immediately, from a sense of obligation to Mr. Soane and to gain time in which to try to change Louisa’s mind.

Standing in the pose, her gaze unfocused, as Eyre Soane had instructed, her mind turned to the west bank. She saw the white valley, the dark entrance to the tomb, and imagined herself walking into it, sitting in front of the panel and puzzling over the signs to the music of Dr. Woolfe’s trowel. She’d wanted every day to see him, if only to explain her absence, but Mr. Soane had made it impossible. He arrived at the hotel each morning even before it was properly light and was waiting for her in the lobby by the time she and Louisa came down for breakfast. He worked on the portrait for hours, releasing Harriet at mid-afternoon, too late to cross the river.

Harriet pictured the cartouche, the circle enclosing the hieroglyphs, by the queen in her white dress. She could see each of the symbols individually—the image of the goddess, seated, with her wig long on her back. Aast. Isis.
The sign of a windpipe and lungs, which meant
beautiful
, the face, which was in her own name, that made the sound
hr—
but she couldn’t read anything coherent from them.

Lifting one foot in the air, she moved her toes, trying to rid herself of pins and needles.

“I must go back to the dig tomorrow. I’ve been away for days.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I am not teasing you, Mr. Soane. It matters to me, the work I do there. And Dr. Woolfe expects me. I cannot pose for you tomorrow.”

“You will not escape me that easily, Miss Heron,” he said, standing back from the canvas, his right arm outstretched, making marks on the rectangle that was clamped on the easel.

Harriet said no more until Eyre Soane walked over to where she stood and took hold of her hand, turned it upward and kissed the palm, pressing his mouth to her hand. She could feel the moistness of his lips. She pulled away her hand. Harriet had a guilty feeling that far from being in love with Mr. Soane, she was beginning to dislike him. Perhaps that was normal. She knew nothing of love, she reminded herself.

•  •  •

The sitting over for the day, Eyre Soane insisted on accompanying Harriet to the dining room of the hotel, where she was meeting Louisa for luncheon. As they walked into the room, Louisa rose to her feet from her place at the table. She looked like a ghost, her eyes huge and haunted, one hand patting her chignon.

“Mrs. Heron,” Eyre Soane said. “Please don’t disturb yourself.”

“What do you want?” Louisa said.

He raised his eyebrows, pulling out a chair for Harriet. “I want to invite you and your charming daughter to dinner. I’m organizing a soirée here on Friday evening, for the Europeans. It is to be a celebration of art.”

“When will your portrait be finished, Mr. Soane?” said Louisa.

“Soon, Mrs. Heron. Soon.”

He smiled at her and Louisa stared back at him without the smallest pretense of politeness. Harriet felt puzzled. In all her life, she had never known her mother to behave badly.

FORTY-THREE

Harriet applied her pencil to the paper on the drawing board. Things had changed since her last visit. Dr. Woolfe was close to being able to enter the tomb. The whole of the lintel of the doorway had emerged under his patient tapping, and the rubble beneath it was steadily being reduced, carried away for sieving by the Egyptian workers. He had greeted her without commenting on her absence, simply saying that he had thought she would return. Then he made a little bow and apologized for his English. He had not thought she would return. He had
hoped
that she would.

The pool of lamplight where she worked was still and steady; not a breath of the thick air moved.

“Have you made any more finds, Dr. Woolfe?” she called to him.

“
Ach
, just shards mainly, Romans. I came across the feet of a shabti, in faience. And a promising-looking amulet that I haven’t had a chance yet to examine. Another scarab.”

“I like scarabs,” Harriet said.

“I also like scarabs,” came Dr. Woolfe’s voice. He cleared his throat. “We have missed you here, Miss Heron.”

“I wanted to come before but I’ve been sitting for a portrait. Eyre Soane, the artist, is here with his friends.”

“I have heard about the arrival of the dashing Mr. Soane. In fact, I met the man on the ship.”

“He would like to visit the dig,” Harriet said, “if you had no objection.”

“If I had no objection,” Dr. Woolfe said, “then he could.”

His voice, traveling through the darkness, sounded farther away than it was.

Harriet held up the paper to compare her drawing with the original. She was copying the second column of hieroglyphs, below the oval ring of symbols that spelled out the name of the queen, that she hadn’t yet been able to read. At the top of the column was the depiction of a house, which—combined with two walking legs and an empty eye shape—meant
to go forth
. Harriet wondered again whether the queen still lay on the other side of the doorway, whether the magic had worked and the Lady of the Two Lands went forth by day to savor the muddy scent of the rising Nile, feel the sun on her shoulders. The queens wore surprisingly revealing gowns.

Harriet had risen before dawn and walked through the hotel garden in the darkness, the warmth cloaking her despite the early hour. Mornings in Luxor were unlike any Harriet had ever experienced in England. The minutes before dawn seemed to hold some great tension, as if the curtain was about to be raised on an epic drama and the earth hushed itself in readiness, with only the cockerels unable to contain themselves, shrieking their excitement at the coming day.

She’d told Fouad of her intention and he was waiting for her by the gate the servants used. Hurrying behind the mud-brick wall at the back of the hotel, they walked quickly south along the shore to the spot from which the boats departed for the west bank. Soft splashes broke the silence as the boatman pushed the little craft out into the water, waded through the shallows, and scrambled on board in his bare feet, pulling round the sail to catch the breeze.

Fifty yards or more out into the river, Fouad clicked his tongue and nodded his head toward the shore. Harriet followed the direction of his eyes. Eyre Soane was walking in the direction of the Luxor Hotel, his paintbox under his arm. His step reminded Harriet of the way he’d approached their table on the steamer. Then it had been Louisa who was the object of his purpose. Now it was herself. She still didn’t know what that purpose was.

Harriet had thought once that she wanted more than anything to be painted by Mr. Soane. It was hard to admit to herself that she wasn’t enjoying it. She watched as he dropped his cigar in the dust, ground it out with his heel, then walked through the gate. She’d left a note in the gazebo apologizing for her absence and assuring him that she would be there the following day.

Harriet looked again at what she had copied onto the paper. A sickle shape, an oar, the sign for the sound
kh
, and the name of the god Osiris, giver of breath, followed by a flag, the sign of a male god, and something like a sword that made the sound
ahk
, and meant
great
. Then the feather of Maat, that for Harriet stood for Aunt Yael but for the ancient Egyptians meant order and balance and rightness of all kinds.

Suddenly, the signs fell into place. Harriet let out a shout of pleasure and the tapping from farther down the passage ceased as Dr. Woolfe came hurrying to where she worked.

“Miss Heron? Are you—”

“Look!” She pointed at the hieroglyphs. “This means
Her voice has been justified before Osiris, the great god
. Or at least I think it does.”

“That is most helpful,” Dr. Woolfe said, examining her drawings. “In fact, it is marvelous.”

He smiled at her, then went back to his station by the blocked entrance and for some time they worked in silence.

“How is your mother?” he called through the darkness.

“Well, thank you.”

Louisa hadn’t been herself for days but she wasn’t ill in the way one could describe to another person. She had taken to haunting the garden, veiled against the sun, shaded by her parasol, her hands hidden in white gloves. At lunchtime, when Harriet met her in the hotel dining room after the sittings, she was anxious, her appetite poor. She was still urging that they leave for Alexandria, and then London.

“I wondered . . .” came Dr. Woolfe’s voice in the darkness. “That is, I thought . . . Will you join me for dinner on Friday evening, Miss Heron? With your mother, of course.”

“I would like to, Dr. Woolfe, but I can’t.” In the silence that followed, Harriet added an explanation. “Mr. Soane is holding a dinner party.”

“
Ach
, I see. Yes, I do see.” The tapping resumed.

“I am certain he would be pleased to see you there, Dr. Woolfe, at the dinner.”

“How are you certain, Fräulein?” he called over the hammering.

“Well, I would be glad if you attended,” she called back. “I know that.”

FORTY-FOUR