Locanda del Leone

Description

A three-storey merchant’s house in Alexandria’s Frank quarter, a few streets back from the Western Harbour, converted to an inn. Faded ochre plaster, green shutters bleached grey by sun and salt, and a worn stone lion (Venetian, looted from somewhere, nose gone) over the door. Inside, a cool central courtyard holds a dribbling fountain, a lemon tree, caged songbirds, and a tattered awning. The ground-floor common room smells of tobacco, coffee, and spilled wine — a long table and a few private nooks. Eight whitewashed guest rooms above, shuttered against the heat, each with a rope bed, washstand, crucifix, and a window onto the courtyard or the street. A roof terrace catches the evening breeze off the sea.

After weeks in La Speranza’s after-cabin, the Locanda feels like a palace: clean, private, with doors that actually shut.

Notable Features

• The courtyard — fountain, lemon tree, songbirds; the social heart of the inn.
• The common room — where patrons gather and gossip travels by morning.
• The roof terrace — sea breeze, evening quiet (an option for Katherine’s rooftop solitude, foreshadowing the Cairo beat).
• Private rooms with shutting doors — the first real privacy since Vienna; a place to hide trunks, study tomes, or rest a wound.

People

Owner — Bartolomeo “Meo” Crespi. Genoese, late 50s. Stout, sour, magnificently mustachioed; a former ship’s purser who washed up here and stayed. Speaks five languages badly and money fluently. Gruff but fair, warms to coin and good manners, and assumes every guest is robbing him (usually correct).

Staff:

• Aziza — Egyptian housekeeper, 40s. Runs the place in fact while Meo runs it in name. Sees everything, says little. Befriend her to learn who is staying and who came asking.
• Niccolò — Maltese pot-boy/porter, 14, all elbows; hauls luggage and gossip alike. Cheaply bribed.
• The cook — a vast, silent Nubian woman whose lamb and rice is the best food in Egypt. Nobody knows her name.

Patrons (common room, any night):

• Mr. Lucas Pyke — English antiquities dealer; sweating, loud, certain, fishing for “curiosities” off arriving ships. (Natural rival or co-schemer for Endicott if he lived.)
• Capitaine Thibault — French ex-officer turned merchant, courteous and watchful; lingered after Napoleon’s army left. Will speak French with Adrien.
• Two Greek coasting captains — endless backgammon, endless argument about the wind.
• Madame Rosa — Triestine widow, frank about her past trades; deals in information and introductions.

Connections

• Recommended by Yusuf the dragoman (for a cut). See Session 03 Alexandria for the wider Alexandria leg and onward routes to Cairo.
• A place to treat Emma’s Major Wound (summon a Frank doctor), study tomes, or rebuild after the becalming.

Session 4 — Morning After and Departure (Chapter 4, Session 4)

The morning-after breakfast. The morning after the party’s raucous first night in Alexandria (lion’s milk the night before), the group gathered in the courtyard to competing mosque calls, church bells, and the distant bray of camels. Freddy and Thomas were badly hungover; Meo, the landlady, produced a bottle of Mrs. Gray Purse’s hangover remedy (a grey, cloudy, brine-and-vinegar draught, two piastres) to set them right, while Aziza quietly moved their chairs out of the sun. Over flatbread, white cheese, dates, hard-boiled eggs, and the cook’s cold lamb and rice, the party divided the day’s plans: the ladies to the souk and the baths, the men to money, papers, and provisions.

Before the group dispersed, Thomas pulled Emma aside into the inn’s courtyard, where the fountain dribbled in the background, and awkwardly presented her with a beaded veil as a token of his affection — stumbling over his words but earnest in his intent. Madame Rosa, the widow guest from Trieste, joined the long table well-rested and agreed to guide the ladies through the city for the day.

The departure. The following morning, eight donkeys and their barefoot, shouting donkey-boys arrived outside the inn to carry the party’s trunks, supplies, and the squawking chicken coop down to the old harbour. As Georgiana’s donkey was being led out, the maid Aziza silently approached and touched her hand for luck — the baraka rumour from the Hammam al Yasmin had already reached the inn ahead of the party. Startled, Georgiana pulled back; Aziza burst into tears and fled inside. Stricken with guilt, Georgiana dismounted and chased her down, holding out her hand in reassurance — Aziza pressed it to her forehead, smiled, and Georgiana climbed back onto her donkey to rejoin the procession. Meo counted the bill twice before letting them go, and Rosa waved farewell from the balcony as the caravan set off for the old harbour and the coastal djerm to Rashid.

Appearances

Relationships

• Steers-guests-to Yusuf al Maghribi — Yusuf the dragoman takes a commission for bringing guests; will recommend it if the price is right