A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

It was interesting, that evening, to consider the men and women whom the winds of empire had blown to Port Said. There was a naturalist, apparently of some renown, who was raising funds for a trip to the center of the continent. There were half-a-dozen lean, hungry young men, all on the lookout for their fortunes in this fertile land, who variously described themselves as shipping consultants, exporters, or, most commonly and simply, “in business.” Many of them were based in Suez, and in town for Lenox’s meetings, sensing a chance of advancing their interests on his back, and therefore they were all extremely deferential and welcoming to him. There was a retired colonel from the Coldstream Guards, complete with family, whose continued good health required warm and dry weather. He had just been eight months in Marrakech, and had come to Port Said on a whim.

Perhaps most surprisingly there was a man Lenox had known at Oxford, an earl’s son, Cosmo Ashenden, who had killed a member of the House of Lords in a duel and never thereafter returned to English soil. He bore an angry scar over his eye. The woman who had been at issue Lenox still saw in London. She had married an elderly bishop, in the end, and been widowed young and rich.

“We thought there would be plenty of occasion for you to meet the Egyptians,” said Lady Megan. “All of us are British here this evening, whatever small expatriate community we can claim.”

When he finally reached his bed Lenox was staggeringly fatigued, worn down in body and bone, and he slept almost instantly, a vague thought of Jane passing through a far reach of his mind before he was gone.

As he had with each sunrise since his involuntary swim, Lenox felt better the next morning than he had the day before. His room was a wide, high-ceilinged, light-filled chamber, with an Englishman’s essentials—bookshelf, desk, bed—overlaid by an Egyptian’s detailing, from the prints on the wall to the perforated geometric patterns in his brass lamps. He ate a positively luxurious breakfast by his window, which was flung open for the breeze and the warmth of the day. As he spread some of Jane’s marmalade, still made by her childhood nanny, over buttered toast, he wrote to his wife, a letter to supersede all the others, and which he planned to send first that she might not fret about his condition. He took two or three cups of very strong African coffee, then, and dressed for the day.

“McEwan!” he called.

The steward’s face popped around the door. “Yes, sir?”

“You can have the Egyptian boys clear away my breakfast things, but I need you to post this letter.”

McEwan nodded. “Of course, sir. You know the Lucy will likely beat it home?”

“Never mind that.”

“No, sir.”

“And I’ll take my gray suit, wherever in hell you’ve secreted it.”

“Here in your wardrobe, sir,” said McEwan, pulling it out.

Lenox laughed. “I don’t know how you expected me to find it there.”

“Sir?”

“Only a joke. You’ll send that letter? Perhaps their secretary here can tell you how to do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Half an hour later Lenox was bouncing over the road to the mouth of the canal, while Chowdery and his wife offered advice on the proper forms of greeting in Egypt.

As it happened he didn’t need them; the man who greeted them at their carriage was dressed in a suit that looked as if it might have come from Savile Row, and after greeting Chowdery gave Lenox a firm handshake.

“I am Kafele, emissary of the Magnificent Ismail, khedive of Egypt and Sudan,” he said.

“Charles Lenox, member of Parliament.”

“It is our profound honor to welcome you, sir.”

“And mine to visit your country. I look forward to seeing the canal.”

“May I lead you this way?”

They were at the door of the most solid-looking building Lenox had seen in this makeshift city. “Most impressive,” he murmured.

“Thank you, sir,” said the wali’s emissary. “As a man of the world you will appreciate the difficulty of constructing a city from scratch. She had no fresh source of water, Port Said, for the first ten years of her existence, and no stone either. Everything had to be dragged across the desert or floated across the sea. Yet here you stand, in our noblest building.”

“What is its official function?”

“It is our customs house, sir.”

“Ah, of course.”

They walked across a handsome lobby and then down a dark corridor. “Is the canal this way?” said Lenox.

“If you would permit me the pleasure of surprise, sir.”

Chowdery, Arbuthnot, and Chowdery’s wife were well behind them now, giving the two men space. As they went down still another corridor, the Egyptian said, “Your visit occurs at an excellent moment, sir. We have every hope that the diplomatic and financial relationship between our nations will flourish.”

“As do we. The prime minister has instructed me to convey to your wali our pleasure that your relationship with France has not precluded exchange between our nations.”

“Indeed, now that the canal is built you are a better friend to us than France, Mr. Lenox, sir. Here, if you will permit me the pleasure—through this door.”

Kafele flung a pair of doors open, and the great glittering canal was only steps away, laden with ships bearing goods, just as busy as the port.

Closer at hand was a reception, which Lenox thought for a brief moment he must be interrupting, until he realized it was for him; and yet its splendor was such that he doubted it until the wali’s emissary bowed and said, “We welcome you to Egpyt, sir.”

A hundred soldiers in military uniform stood at attention in lines of ten, and behind them ten men on horses. A great white pavilion stood to one side, and through an open door Lenox could see tables and men inside. On the water behind the soldiers was a waiting ship.

Standing before them all was a massively fat Egpytian man in traditional dress. This proved to be one of the wali’s nephews, who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else, but who went through the forms nicely. He led Lenox to the pavilion, where a dozen men were waiting, some of them government functionaries, others in trade.

With this retinue Lenox reviewed the soldiers, nodding appreciatively at their movements, complimenting their uniforms, their bearing, and their agility.

“They are the sultan’s army?” he asked.

“His personal guard,” Kafele answered. “The very finest soldiers our nation has ever produced.”

From this review of the soldiers the sultan’s nephew led Lenox to the waiting ship. It was low in the water, burdened with great crates on its decks. A captain waited, smiling, by a gangway.

“These are the crops that will make both of our nations rich,” said Kafele, and led Lenox to a pallet at the ship’s edge. “Here you see a bale of cotton and a bag of rice. Please, take them as our gifts, as tokens of our commercial friendship, back to your country.”

“Thank you,” Lenox said. “I accept them on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”

The wali’s nephew came forward, behind him two men bearing pillows with boxes on them.

“We have these gifts, too, for you,” he said. “For your own august personage, an ancient cup of Egyptian marble, held in my family for many generations, and representing the comity of our nations, which share bread and water.”

One of the men bearing pillows stepped forward and showed Lenox the cup, whose marble was so thin it was nearly translucent, sand-colored and veined with red. It was beautiful. “I thank you,” he said.

“And for your prime minister, we offer this gold dagger, chased with dragons, inlaid with opals, as a representation that our strength belongs to you.”

The second pillow-bearer stepped forward, and again Lenox offered profuse thanks, along with a promise to give the dagger to the prime minister.

“The wali himself will present you with a gift for your queen, Mr. Lenox,” said the wali’s nephew. “Until then, may I invite you to a feast in our pavilion?”

“With great pleasure,” said Lenox.

It had been an interesting morning. The superficialities—the soldiers, the wali’s nephew—Lenox could take or leave. But the cotton and the rice were real. The hundreds of ships on the water were real. The economic potential of the canal, already partially realized, was so immense that with any luck Africa might soon be as great, as powerful and rich, as Europe. For the first time Lenox considered the idea that this pretext for this trip might, in the end, be just as important as his true reason for coming to Egypt.