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after us, as though we were its prey.
    Luckily for me, when the boatmen bring
Zint el-Bachreyn
close in to the embankment, there is much else to see, much to take my mind away from the heat.
    But the journey is hard on my Lady, truth be told; her health has been deteriorating steadily since the day we left Esher. The sea journey was too long, Alexandria too damp, Cairo too dirty, too busy. Shepheard’s Hotel was too expensive—as always, concern about money is at the forefront of my Lady’s mind—uncomfortable, and worse, claustrophobic. “That horrid hotel,” my Lady said later. “I couldn’t wait to get away. Now,” she says, she states uncategorically, “I will regain my strength as the boat travels south up the Nile.”
    “Yes, you will,” I reply.
    But a few days out of the port at Boulak, she can scarcely breathe, each breath as labored as the last, her blood spitting continual and debilitating, and none of my usual tricks—bed rest, hot drinks, fresh air, swaddling, steam humidity—are working.
    It is evening. Mr. Abu Halaweh has arrived to take away my Lady’s meal tray, though she has eaten nothing. I am sitting at one end of her chaise rubbing her feet. “They are so cold, Sally,” she says, “like ice. As though my blood no longer reaches them.”
    “Let me treat you,” I say.
    My Lady groans and shakes her head.
    “Miss Naldrett tells me she can make you better,
Sitti,”
says our dragoman. He calls her
“Sitti
Duff Gordon”—
Sitti
means Lady—or just
“Sitti,”
which my Lady enjoys. “I suggest you let Miss Naldrett treat you.”
    We both turn and look at Mr. Abu Halaweh. “Is that an order?” asks my Lady.
    I’m too startled to say anything.
    “I suspect it is,” she continues, “the first of many, no doubt, Omar?”
    He smiles his broad smile, winning us both over to his point of view.
    And so, I treat her. Now that we are on board our temporary home and my Lady can rest in comfort and, even as she lies prone, be entertained by the world as the
dahabieh
glides along, she allows me to treat her.
    But the treatment itself is dreadful: cupping. Neither of us relishes it. I was tutored in the cruel method by Doctor Izod in Esher last year, before we traveled to the Cape. He had adapted the procedure himself, adding a deep incision prior to the application of the heated glass. “There may not be a good, reliable doctor where you are headed, my girl,” he said. “We are trusting you with Lady Duff Gordon’s life,” and I quaked—without showing it, of course—because I had never thought of my position in this way before, caretaker of my Lady’s very life.
    I clean the scalpel purchased in London for this sole purpose, specially designed, pointed and very sharp. Mr. Abu Halaweh is in attendance; he stands away from where my mistress lies, half-turned towards the door to preserve her privacy, but ready to help if he is needed. I have prepared the cup; I have heated it in a kettle of boiling water. It is hot to touch, but not hot enough to burn her skin, I hope. I am going to go in over the right breast, above the lung that, on earlier listening, sounded the more inundated, the more congested. I move quickly, unlacing my Lady’s blouse, pulling her undergarments to one side, baring her breast; this is only the second time I have undertaken this procedure unaided, and I want my movements to feel assured, definite—precise. I look up and meet my Lady’s gaze and she nods at me calmly; we have agreed she will not speak so as not to provoke more coughing. She took a steep draft of brandy before I began. I lower the scalpel and press down hard, making the incision, one inch long, perhaps an inch in depth. Blood wells up around the blade. My Lady cries out loudly before her head rolls to one side. Mr. Abu Halaweh steps forward but I reassure him: “It’s all right, she has fainted. It is a blessing.”
    Moving swiftly, I unwrap the glass cup and, gripping it with the cloth as it