Victorian England.........
"No father," said Adrienne. "I will go to Egypt."
"But it is not seemly for a woman to travel on her own. Especially to a country filled with uncivilized people."
"Egyptians are not savages, they have had their own civilization for longer than Britain."
"But we are in the middle of an industrial revolution here in Britain. Egyptians are still almost primitive by comparison."
:"Just because Queen Victoria reigns here doesn't make the rest of the world backward. Anyway, the ship leaves tomorrow and I will be on it, with or without your blessing."
Adrienne turned and left her father's study in London, closing the door behind her. She hoped that she had been forceful enough to make her view clear without annoying her father. For the reality was that while she didn't need her father's blessing she did need some money. For years she had been fascinated with Egyptian history, the pyramids, the pharaohs, the temples. Now she was 21 she was officially an adult and she would make the trip of her life to see these things for real, before she returned to Britain and her predestined future. Once back she would have to play the role expected of her: take a good husband, produce babies, run a household..
Adrienne climbed the stairs to her room. There in the middle was the steamer trunk containing her clothes. A cart would take it down to the docks in the morning and at mid-day a carriage would take her to the ship. She felt a quiver of excitement in her belly. She had never left Britain before, never even been on a sailing ship. But she had made the journey before in her mind, creating an imagined reality from the hundreds of books that she had read on Egypt, on travel. It would be so much easier were she a boy, she thought. Nobody would be telling her what she could and could not do. But a girl in Victorian society was someone to be protected, someone to be treated like a fruit, handled gently to prevent it being bruised. She thought back to the times she was told off as a child for climbing trees, or as a teenager for insisting on going to the library on her own, or more recently for inviting that strangely garbed man into the house to teach her Arabic..
Adrienne's maid entered her bedroom to undress her and get her ready for bed. The maid carried a jug of hot water that she poured into the bowl on Adrienne's dresser. She unhooked the long row of buttons on the dress than ran up Adrienne's spine. Then she unlaced the unyielding corset that thrust Adrienne's full breasts up. Soon Adrienne was naked. She looked down at her body. She was thin and fit, very muscular since she was so much more active physically than most Victorian women. Her rounded breasts were tipped with small brown aureole surrounding small pink nipples. She looked lower across her flat stomach to where a triangle of black hair crowned the swelling where her body curved out of sight. She had looked between her legs with a mirror once, surprised to discover the pink petals that surrounded her entrance. As a voracious reader she knew that a man would one day enter her there, and a baby would emerge. She wasn't really sure how this would take place, it seemed tight to her when she tentatively pushed a fingertip into herself. She had discovered that there was one special spot between her legs that was super sensitive. When she touched it, it aroused feelings in her body that she had never experienced before. It scared her, she was sure that she was not meant to feel like that. Nevertheless, occasionally in the privacy of her bed she would bunch her nightgown up around her waist, lick her finger and touch that special spot. As her finger slowly circled she would have strange dreams of disgusting things that she would never contemplate in real life. Perhaps she was undressing in front of a crowd of men, or a naked savage was carrying her off to his hut. These fantasies were a bit vague since she'd never actually seen a man naked. Sometimes the feelings in her body would start to get really intense. She was worried that she might do damage so she always stopped, never went to the far enough to find out what would happen next. Perhaps she felt that there was a dragon sleeping within her that would be best not awakened.
She pulled her nightgown over her head and her maid did up the button at the back of her neck. She got into bed. This time the following night she would be on board a ship heading out into the English Channel on the long voyage across the Bay of Biscay, through the Straits of Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo and the wonders of ancient Egypt.
**
Adrienne rapidly discovered that the clothes a Victorian woman would wear in London were completely impractical on board a ship. Firstly, she had no maid and most clothes required button hooks or ties that were impossible to do single-handed. In any case, a full skirt was simply impossible on board. At first the strong winds in the Atlantic would catch it and almost blow her over. And once they reached the Med it would be too hot. When they stopped to re-victual in Brest she purchased a pair of sailor's bell-bottoms and a traditional Breton fisherman's cotton shirt and a thick woolen sweater. It felt odd to be dressed in trousers, which she had never before worn in her life, almost illegal if not immoral, but it was definitely more practical. So it was dressed as a man that Adrienne finally arrived in Egypt, the Breton sweater long discarded under the relentless sun of a Mediterranean summer.
Once in Cairo, Adrienne used her primitive Arabic to arrange a carriage to the bazaar. She realized that her steamer trunk of clothes was quite useless and she would need to equip herself with a new wardrobe more suited to the climate and to life without a household of servants. Soon she changed from a male sailor to an Arab woman, naked under the loose fitting clothing that let her cope more easily with the desert heat. She packed her newly acquired clothes into a rough Hessian bag and organized a boat to take her up the Nile to Luxor where the ancient Egyptians had built a huge temple.
**
It was on the third day out of Cairo that they were attacked. Adrienne was asleep in the shade when suddenly the boat rocked hard. Another boat had rammed them. Before she could do anything to react, two men fell on top of her and pinned her to the deck. Everything was over so fast that she barely had time to be frightened. The men rolled her onto her front, pulled her arms behind her back and tied her wrists together tightly.
She was jerked onto her feet. There were about half a dozen pirates, armed with daggers. With the benefit of surprise they had easily subdued the unsuspecting crew. Now they would unload any valuables from the boat to where they had two camels waiting on the riverbank. Adrienne was unloaded too. For she was also a valuable that could be sold. The camels were loaded up with boxes from the boat and they set off, a few of the pirates, two heavily laden camels and then Adrienne, walking with her hands still tied behind her back. One of the pirates placed a broad hat made from straw on her head which protected her from at least some of the afternoon sun.
At first they were passing through green countryside, for this was where the Nile would flood each year and irrigate the crops. But as they continued the landscape became drier and browner and gradually became desert. The sun gradually got lower in the sky as the miles fell away, the temperature starting to fall. For a woman used to the thin sunlight of gray London, the route march across the desert was a punishment. But she was worried at what might be to come. She had asked her captors some questions in her basic Arabic but they had just laughed at her and told her she would have to wait and see. She thought of running but realized that with her arms pinioned behind her she would easily be chased down, and besides, she would never survive the night alone in the unforgiving desert.
In the distance, as the sun was starting to set, she could see some sort of nomadic encampment in the distance. It was just starting to get dark when finally they arrived there. The pirates unloaded the camels and carried the boxes into the biggest tent. They pushed Adrienne forward into the tent too. At the far end was a throne of sorts and a chieftain, or a prince of some sort was seated there. The pirates placed the heavy boxes in front of the prince and opened them. An assistant to the prince stood at his side and seemed to negotiate with the pirates, presumably agreeing on a price for the stolen goods.
