Chapter4
Accommodations and Expectations
The following day
As Nabil piloted his felucca between the hazards of the slow moving Nile, Harry, Earl of Everly, struggled to read a letter he had been carrying with him since their departure from London.
“It appears I am no longer able to read French,” he grumbled, his gaze going to his wife.
Ensconced on her lap, their year-old son blabbered with excitement while Stella watched the scenery.“Would you like me to try?”she asked, reaching out to capture the brittle paper when he offered it to her.She had to hold it out beyond the reach of Bradley, who immediately took interest and wanted it for himself.
“Come here, you little troublemaker,” Helen said, moving from the other side of the felucca to take her brother into her arms, careful to duck her head under the bottom edge of the single sail that propelled the sailing vessel up the Nile.
Happy to join his older sister, Bradley continued to babble incoherently before ending his sentence with “dada”.
Harry chuckled softly.“I do wonder if we’ll ever know what he’s trying to say,” he murmured.
“Well, I can tell you what Monsieur Jacques LaSalle is trying to say in his letter,” Stella said, holding up the missive that included seven creases and looked as if it had taken a trip around the world, been dunked in a cup of tea, and been stomped on by a pair of riding boots before its delivery to their townhouse in Mayfair.
“Oh, good.Do enlighten me,” Harry replied in a pleading voice.
“It’s not your French, darling, but rather his poor penmanship,” Stella remarked.She held up the letter and recited, “Upon your arrival in Cairo on or around the fifteenth of February, your guide, Monsieur Nabil Al-Maghrabi, whom you shall meet in Alexandria on or around the third of February (given the current schedule of the ship you wish to take from London), knows to send word to me via courier upon your arrival so that I may meet you at the dock in Cairo and arrange transport to my...”Here she paused and shook her head.“I don’t recognize this word ‘riad’.”
“Oh, I know what that is,” Helen piped up before her brows furrowed.“It’s the Moroccan word forhouse.”Her face displayed confusion.“But I don’t know why he would call it that for a house in Cairo.”
“LaSalle’s house is no doubt of better construction than what we’ll usually be seeing on this journey,” her father commented.“He probably had the wood shipped in from Anatolia or Venice and the tile from Rome.He is a man of considerable wealth.”
“How did you even learn of him?”Stella asked.
“He was recommended by someone at White’s.They said he frequently hosts the bureaucrats that travel back and forth between India and England.”He waved to the missive.“Does he mention anything else in his letter?”
She nodded and resumed reading aloud.“Your request for accommodations comes at a rather popular time for tourists it would seem, for I have already made arrangements for another family from England to stay at theriad.”
Here, Stella paused when Helen gasped with excitement.Her face reddening when she realized both parents were staring at her, she said, “Oh, please, do go on.”
Stella hesitated reading aloud, though, and instead read in silence before she made a strange sound in her throat.“It seems we are tosharethe accommodations in Cairo but that theriadis quite large with more than enough bedchambers and servants to see to our comfort.”
“Hmpf,” Harry replied, his manner suggesting he wasn’t pleased with the arrangements.“Does he say anything else?”
“He wishes us safe travels and looks forward to meeting us in Cairo,” Stella replied.“Where he will introduce us to thedragoman...”She glanced up, her expression conveying confusion.“What does that word mean?”
“The guide he mentioned earlier in the letter.A dragoman is an interpreter as well as a guide.He’ll know English and Arabic and the routes we should take,” Harry explained.
“Oh,” she breathed.She continued where she left off in the letter.“The dragoman will take us to the pyramids at Giza and arrange for another to take to us to Memphis, should we wish to go to the necropolis located there.”Here she screwed up her face in a grimace.“Necropolis?”
“Memphis was the site of many tombs and pyramids,” Harry explained.“All of which were burial sites for the early pharaohs—the kings of Egypt.”
“And the queens,” Helen chimed in.
Her father chuckled.“Yes, the queens, too.”
“What of the weather?Shouldn’t it be raining this time of the year?”Stella asked, her gaze going to the cloudless sky.
From where he was manning the rudder at the back of the felucca, Nabil said, “This is our rainy season, my lady.”He waved.“Tonight I will be sure your tent is well away from the river as I expect it is raining upstream.”He pointed south.“In Nubia.We may have rain this evening.”
Stella glanced south and then turned to face the north.“This makes no sense,” she said, her attention going to the river.
“That’s because the Nile flows in the wrong direction,” Helen replied.“It starts somewhere south of Egypt and flows north until it reaches the delta and the Mediterranean Sea.”
