Hattie Clarke Extract from Tentra
L
ast to arrive at the dig house, Élise thought. What a perfect way to start. “We were terribly unlucky,” Charles said, handing over her suitcases to a young Egyptian who came running up the platform. Their missed train chugged into the distance. “You can’t plan for these things, Miss Lassarre,” he said over his shoulder as he marched towards the guards’ office. He wasn’t able to plan, Élise was sure of that much. Since she’d met the museum’s chosen escort, Egyptian cities seemed more chaotic than their reputation. While he argued with the man on duty, Élise copied down the next train times from a chalkboard into her notebook. Without it, she doubted if they’d ever make it to Boulaq. Thankfully they did, but not quite in time to catch the first-class steamer. Why the museum had sent Charles as her escort, Élise did not know. Surely she was better equipped to puzzle out her journey to Tentra than their back-of-house archivist. A stern letter to them was forming in her head. Élise sat on an upturned crate in the midday sun while Charles tried to negotiate with a dragoman, in an awful medley of French and Arabic. The dragoman’s children came out of the shade to watch her. One dared the other to pull her skirt. “God would not like it,” Élise said quietly in Arabic. The little boy gasped as if she were God himself and fled back to his sister. There would have been reclining armchairs, Élise thought, as she felt a splinter from the crate catch the side of her hand. She saw herself on the deck of the steamer, a server putting a glass of
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