Short Stories: Phlegmatic

Every city with a river bears it soul upon the water. Every deed, noble and ignoble, inevitably find their way to the water. The Nile had proved no different, at least not in the Earl’s experience.

“Sir! Sir!” A man raced up to him his eyes on fire. “They have found a body.” He said in the poetic storied tones of Arabic. The Earl had marveled at it as a language when first introduced, specifically the Egyptian Dialect with its swirling mixture of Badawadi, Turkish, Historical Egyptian, and Classical Arabic. It had been arduous to master it with the precision required of a gentleman upon his debarkation in Cairo two years prior. Yet it had only seemed right should he expect his seconds to master English that he should in turn master the language of both commoners and kings alike.

The Earl skipped down the sandy embankments of the Nile to the dense grove of weeds and grasses where the men had gathered. A few muttered prayers, others whispered in hushed tones of speculation as he pressed past. Beyond the opposing riverbank the crest of the Great Pyramids shimmered with a bronze hue in the morning sun. Of course there were no kings left in Egypt, or pharaohs as it were, the Earl reminded himself. Somewhat tragically the Veiled Protectorate of the British Empire with its client kings had seen to that he conceded with a certain degree of solace.

Parting the reeds with his cane the Earl revealed the swollen figure at his feet. Face down it undulated with the subtle press of the river against the marshy glasses as though it would crawl forward onto the bank and look up once more. “Clear back. Clear back!” The Earl called at the familiar sight of the maid’s uniform from the palace of the Khedive Tewfiq.

“Turn her, please.” The Earl asked with a growing dread in his stomach. The bloated form was rolled so that her eyes could see the sun once more.

“Allah bestow your mercy!” One of the men called upon witnessing the swollen face of the poor woman. Even the Earl stumbled back in horror. Her face was mutilated with deep gashed to the cheeks, her abdomen disemboweled. It was not the brutality of the crime which terrified the Earl to his core and sent him retching into the grasses. It was that he had seen it before. Two years’ prior in the papers of London, in those ugly months of 1888 when evil of White Chapel had consumed the world.

“What is it?” His attendant and friend Kaphiri asked from the riverbank where he scribbled notes in a journal.

“A monster has come to Egypt.” The Earl wiped his gloved hand against his lips, seeking to draw the bile from his body. The British had only recently asserted their control over the Tawfiq, last great dynasty of Egypt. Their influence though could already be strongly felt, even if it had not been made clear to the world yet. It would not be impossible for a man to pass from streets of London to the alleys of Cairo with the right resources.

“A monster? This is a terrible crime Sir we must take action.” Kaphiri said.

The Earl straightened, reasserting the cool temperament of the gentleman on his persona. Study would be required to confirm his ugly suspicions, though that had been his charge. “We must head to the Embassy and Home Office there is grave work to be done. Have them bury the body.” He said retreating up the hill.

The soul of Cairo had been tainted and had he any other charge or been any other man the 8th Earl of Albemarle, Arnold Keppel, would have retreated. Yet he was a gentleman in the charge of the Prince of Wales’ Own Civil Service Rifles. So began his own chase, his cursed trek. As always the case, the Nile flowed.

Phlegmatic: 1) resembling, consisting of, or producing the humor phlegm 2) possessing a calm or composed temperament

Author’s Note: Day 9 of 365. I need to start working on these earlier in the day, with everything else I barely got the last two done before midnight. To give some insight, I actually complete these using the Merriam Webster Word of the Day as my prompt. This arrives at 7:20 am every morning so I effectively have 24 hours to turn it around. Of course on busy days that presents a challenge. In regards to today’s post I wanted to try to hit something which involved both of the definitions of phlegmatic as I thought they felt so radically different. This lead me to thinking about a disturbing situation in which a person would need to compose themselves and somehow that turned into an Earl hunting Jack the Ripper (or a copycat killer) in 1890’s Cairo. I actually like this world a little bit so I may revisit it in varying bursts if there is interest.