Part 25 (1/2)

Mohammed nodded and, in the ensuing silence, took the floor. Joseph translated. ”He say one man comes to him yesterday and ask permisso to leave. His mother very sick. Last night he goes home.”

”I knew it!” Max said, pounding the sand with his ivory-topped cane. Startled, Flo stepped back. ”Foul play,” he continued. ”Trout did not vanish on her own.” He shook his head. ”Foul play.”

”Mohammed swear by all holy that man have nothing to do with Trout,” Joseph added.

”Il est menteur, le con!” Max cursed under his breath. Joseph let the words pa.s.s without the Arabic equivalent.

”Perhaps we should return to Koseir,” she blurted, more out of nervousness than common sense. Her first instinct was always to retreat to the place or moment before a catastrophe, as if she could turn back time itself.

”No,” said Max. ”That will do no good.”

Through Joseph, Mohammed proclaimed that they must continue the journey to Kenneh or risk exhausting their food.

He is not the least intimidated by us, she thought. What she had earlier taken for trepidation was something else. But what? Duplicity? Humility? The simple desire to stick to his routine?

”Inshallah, perhaps the woman will return to us,” Mohammed said. ”I remain at your service, effendi.” With that, he and his crew turned away to tend to the camels, which had been staked in place since the night before.

Max shouted after him, his cane in the air. ”Wait right there! If a Frank is harmed or dies, an Arab, or more than one, shall also die!”

Flo caught her breath. Striking a Bedouin could be fatal. What did insulting or threatening one lead to? To her relief, the camel drivers stopped and listened to Joseph hectically translating. ”He say he know the law, effendi, and he and his men are innocent.” Mohammed stopped, gestured toward them, and offered a benediction. ”May Allah watch over you.”

”Et vous,” Gustave rushed to say.

”Audthu bilahi min ash shaytan ar rajim,” Mohammed intoned, smiling and bowing before turning away.

”What was that last?” Gustave asked. He looked beside himself with worry.

”He say he seek Allah to protect from the accursed Satan.”

”As should we all,” Max replied halfheartedly. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. ”Tell Mohammed to send out a search party for the next two hours.”

The message was conveyed. Mohammed held up his hand and nodded, then sent two men to untether their camels.

Max shook his head. ”As Damien said on the morning of his execution, 'It will be rough day.'”

Gustave sat down Indian-style and put his head in his hands.

Flo wondered if the mention of Satan was one of the numberless Arabic proverbs proffered to throttle discussion, or a sly reference to the Europeans as white devils. How could you determine a man's intention if you didn't speak his language or share his beliefs? She'd happily embarked on a study of ancient Egyptian religion but had no curiosity about Islam, which seemed an amalgam of oddities and borrowings. She felt with conviction what she'd written home more than once-that Egypt would be an exquisite country were it not for the Egyptians who lived there.

After sending Joseph to spy on the remaining camel drivers, the three of them gathered in the men's tent, talking and pacing in circles. Flo was feeling more terrible by the minute, knowing Trout must be terrified wherever she was. Which she did not wish to imagine. Instead, she pictured her doll-sized, wrapped in her green plaid shawl in a cartouche with Ramses, her hand securing her black straw bonnet. There she stayed, etched on stone, immobile, safe in the vaults of history until Flo could figure out what to do.

Why, they asked each other, had Trout been kidnapped, but not Flo? Gustave gently suggested she was more vulnerable alone in a small tent, while Flo probably escaped because her tent was large, implying several occupants. Flo's spirits sank at this supposition, thinking it must be true. Max believed there would be a demand for ransom and that the camel drivers were implicated.

How had it been accomplished, especially as none of the camels was missing? They agreed that a person or persons of professional stealth must have crept up in the night. Max again proposed a conspiracy among the camel drivers that would have eased the culprit's way.

I am responsible for her, Flo kept thinking. I and only I. I should have antic.i.p.ated these possibilities. Or was that hubris? Taking responsibility for everything, like G.o.d.

The discussion was wearing on her nerves. The obvious horror in Trout's abduction was rape, a word she dared not say but found so harrowing that merely to think it produced waves of nausea. Instead, they talked around it, addressing it historically, which was only slightly less disturbing. Max mentioned the long, infamous history of white slavery in the Orient, which traced all the way back to Saphira, the Circa.s.sian concubine in King Solomon's court. Beautiful young white women had been kidnapped for centuries, not to mention, Gustave added, the loathsome custom of dest.i.tute parents selling their daughters into seraglios. Naturally, some of these women had been found and returned home. If what had happened to Trout was commonplace, might there not be a commonplace solution? But here they reached a logical impa.s.se: since Trout was neither young nor beautiful, why would anyone want her in the first place?

It was unendurable to think of the flinty, middle-aged spinster, so upright in her way, being violated. The cartouche cracked. Trout ran shrieking across the dunes, pursued by turbaned men on camels. Flo struggled not to faint, her face hot, hands cold, and head pounding. She missed Selina and Charles, even the heaving, righteous bosom of f.a.n.n.y, the speechless awkwardness of WEN. What if Trout were killed or sold into slavery? What if they never learned what happened to her? The tragedy-and her failure as an employer-would settle on her head like a lead weight. And on her heart. She could barely follow the conversation.

Gustave, sitting next to her, seemed to sense her upset, but she made it clear that she wished no affection from him. If Max saw signs of intimacy he might a.s.sume that she was Gustave's conquest, not his confidante. ”We must do something to help the poor woman!” she cried abruptly.

”Yes, yes,” Gustave and Max agreed.

At once they decided to send a man back to Koseir to request that Pere Elias dispatch a search party into the desert. The messenger took Trout's camel.

Two hours later, the luckless crewmen returned empty-handed and subdued.

After a quick luncheon, the caravan pulled up stakes and continued toward Kenneh. The crew struck Trout's tent and packed up her belongings with Flo's.

The pa.s.sing vistas merged into a muddy blur. Flo's mind locked onto Trout, her thoughts painfully mixed. Trout had been a good patient while ill and better than no company at all at Pere Elias's, where they had enjoyed the tub together even if in a dull silence. Though Flo was desperately worried for her, she could not lie. She refused to be a hypocrite, like the vicars at home, who turned the recently deceased into saints, seconded by paris.h.i.+oners known to despise them. It was only when she allowed herself to imagine danger to Trout's person that her feelings toward her were temporarily simplified-purified-into a singular loving concern. It was so much easier to deal with Trout-to feel genuine affection and sympathy for her-when she was absent.

That evening they camped later than usual in order to reach the well at Hagee Soolayman, where camels were always watered on the second night of a return journey from Koseir. Mohammed explained that they could not alter the itinerary. If they had tried to stop earlier, the camels would have balked, for they knew where the well was. In their blood, they knew, he said.

Flo was limp with exhaustion. It was nearly midnight. She would have traded anything for a bath in the pink tub, and thought longingly, too, of the Red Sea. Just to behold it again would be refres.h.i.+ng.

The crew bought goats' milk from the Ababdeh, whose huts cl.u.s.tered in the surrounding hills. It was too late to go shooting for fowl, so they dined on beans and apricot paste. The tribesmen watched from a distance like vultures about to descend on their crumbs, but only the children, naked and shy, came forward to beg, singing and dancing in the orange glow of the campfire. Flo gave them most of her portion.

At Gustave's insistence, Mohammed posted a sentry outside her tent. With the guard in place, she retired and prepared for sleep. She lit a new candle. The light was hypnotic, and staring at it, she was able to calm herself and collect her thoughts.

She reached into her camel box and retrieved her desk. Touching her writing supplies was rea.s.suring. Steel pen, inkwell, nibs, her diary, and Trout's brown book. She prepared to jot a line or two in Lavie.

Wouldn't it be a miracle if Trout had managed a word about her abductor? Or inadvertently noted something suspicious, or had a premonition of what was to come? Didn't the circ.u.mstance demand that she peek at the journal to search for clues? Just the last brief entry before the ink smear . . .

25 April 1850 Here is your drudge in the desert again, cold and lonely.

We left Koseer at dawn. I am writing with one hand, holding your key in the other. I like to remember that you kept it in your pocket near your heart.

The wind is howling. So I checked the pole that the natives say will hold up the tent in a storm. Miss N told me the Egyptian name for tent is ”house of hair.” Goat hair, thick as a doormat and never washed. I think vermin live in it that chew on me when I sleep. I itch and itch.

Flo paused to scratch her ankle. Thinking about a bite always made it tickle.

I am cold. My breath is the only heat. Except for shoes, I am dressed. I won't change clothes until Kenna as there is no water to bathe and no privacy in the desert. Which Miss N calls ”solitudinous,” as if a fancy word could fill all that emptiness.

Flo cringed each time she encountered her name. It was terrible to read another person's truth, especially when it included one's self.

My eyes stung and hurt all day. I wonder can the desert burn them out. No job fairs for blind maids. I'd be put in the workhouse, caning chairs or weaving on a handloom. Such dark notions I know you do not care for.

It had never occurred to Flo to provide Trout with a green eye-shade. It had seemed a luxury-like good gloves-not a necessity.

I sleep on a rug, but sand works its way through. That is the story of Egypt: one thing after another burrowing into the skin. It isn't a carpet proper, but a saddlebag with the seams ripped open and rest.i.tched flat. When we trek in the daytime, it is stored just above the camel's foulest part.

I told Miss N I did not want to be alone in a tent, but she did not answer. She sleeps in a big tent and is not afraid like Flo cringed with horror. She didn't recall Trout asking to share her tent. She felt a sudden heat, a spreading shame, quickly striped with anger. Question after question tumbled through her mind. Who had given Trout that key and why? Which must be the same one she'd found on the dahabiyah floor and later seen under Trout's pillow. Not only was Trout's disappearance a mystery, the woman herself was.