Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  “We shall wait for you, al-Salil.”

  The next day, at the time of prayers when the guns fell silent the heralds circled the walls again.

  “The true Caliph Zayn al-Din has declared a sack of the city. Any man or woman who is found within the walls when the Caliph enters will be put to death by torture.”

  This time only a few voices jeered back. That night almost half of the remaining defenders left. The Turks lined the road as they passed and made no effort to prevent them.

  “You are distracted, my darling.” Caroline Courtney watched her daughter’s face quizzically. “What is it that troubles you so?”

  Apart from a vague greeting, Verity had not spoken to her mother since she had come up on the deck of the Arcturus from her father’s great cabin. The meeting with the Caliph’s military commander, Kadem ibn Abubaker, had lasted most of the morning. Now Verity stood at the ship’s side and watched the fast felucca conveying the general back to the shore. She had translated Abubaker’s report to her father, and relayed to him the Caliph’s orders to tighten the blockade of the bay to prevent any enemy ships escaping when at last the city was captured from the usurper.

  She sighed and turned to her mother. “The siege is entering its final stages, Mother,” she answered dutifully. The two had never been close. Caroline was a nervous, hysterical woman. She was dominated by her husband and had little time or energy remaining for her role as mother. Like a child, she seemed unable to concentrate on a single matter for any extended period, and her mind flitted from one subject to the next like a butterfly in a spring garden.

  “I will be so relieved when this awful business is over and your father has dealt properly with this al-Salil rascal. Then we can have done with the whole dreadful business and go back home.” For Caroline, home was the consulate in Delhi. Behind the stone walls, in the manicured gardens and cool courtyards with bubbling fountains, she was safe and shielded from the cruel, alien world of the Orient. She scratched at her throat, and moaned softly. There was a scarlet rash on the white skin. The humid tropical airs and confinement in the hot little cabin had aggravated her prickly heat again.

  “Shall I help you with some of the cooling lotion?” Verity asked. She wondered how her mother could so easily make her feel guilty. She went to where Caroline lay on the wide hammock that Captain Cornish had had rigged for her in a corner of the quarter-deck. A canvas sun-screen shaded her, but allowed the cooling airs of the trade wind to flow over her plump, moist body.

  Verity knelt beside her and dabbed the white liquid on to the inflamed and itching rash. Caroline waved a hand languidly. Her diamond rings were deeply embedded in pasty white skin. The slim brown Indian maid in her beautiful silk sari knelt on the opposite side of the hammock from Verity and offered her a dish of sweetmeats. Caroline picked out a pink cube of Turkish Delight. When the maid began to rise to her feet Caroline stopped her with a peremptory snap of her fingers and selected two more of the flower-flavoured jellies and popped them into her mouth. She chewed with unbridled pleasure, and the fine white icing sugar dusted her lips.

  “What do you suppose will happen to al-Salil and his son Mansur if they are captured by Kadem ibn Abubaker?” Verity asked mildly.

  “I have no doubt that it will be something utterly detestable,” Caroline said, without interest. “The Caliph does beastly things to his enemies, trampling by elephants, shooting from cannon.” She shuddered and reached for the glass of honey sherbet that the maid offered her. “I really do not want to discuss it.” She sipped, and brightened. “If this business is over by the end of the month, then we might be back in Delhi for your birthday. I am planning a ball for you. Every eligible bachelor in the Company will attend. It is high time we found a husband for you, my dear. By the time I was your age, I had been married four years and had two children.”

  Suddenly Verity was angry with this vapid, fatuous woman as she had never been before. She had always treated her mother with weary deference, making allowance for her gluttony and other weaknesses. Not until her meeting with Mansur had she understood the depths of her mother’s subservience to her father, the guilt that had placed her in his power. But now she was outraged by her smug, mindless complacency. Her anger boiled over before she could check it.

  “Yes, Mother,” she said bitterly. “And the first of those two children was Tom Courtney’s bastard.” No sooner were the words past her lips than she wished them back.

  Caroline stared at her with huge, swimming eyes. “Oh, you wicked, wicked child! You have never loved me!” she whimpered and a mixture of sherbet and half-chewed Turkish Delight dribbled down the front of her lace blouse.

  All Verity’s sense of deference vanished. “You do remember Tom Courtney, Mother?” Verity asked. “And what tricks the two of you played while you were on passage to India in Grandfather’s ship the Seraph?”

  “You never—Who told you? What have you heard? It isn’t true!” Caroline blubbered hysterically.

  “What about Dorian Courtney? Do you remember how you and my father left him to rot in slavery when he was a child? How you and Father lied to Uncle Tom? How you told him that Dorian had died of the fever? You told me the same lie. You even showed me the grave on Lamu island where you said he was buried.”

  “Stop this!” Caroline clapped her hands over her ears. “I will not listen to such filth.”

  “’Tis filth, is it, Mother?” Verity asked coldly. “Then who do you think is this al-Salil, whom you wish trampled by elephants or shot from a cannon? Do you not know that he is Dorian Courtney?”

  Caroline stared at her, her face white as buttermilk, the inflamed rash more evident in contrast. “Lies!” she whispered. “All terrible wicked lies.”

  “And, Mother, al-Salil’s son is my cousin, Mansur Courtney. You want a husband for me? Look no further. If ever Mansur does me the honour of asking me to marry him, I shall not hesitate. I shall fly to his side.”

  Caroline let out a strangled shriek, and fell out of the hammock on to the deck. The maid and two of the ship’s officers ran forward to help her to her feet. As soon as she was up, she struggled out of their grip, the fat quivering beneath her lace and pearl-studded dress, and heaved herself to the companionway that led down to the great cabin.

  Sir Guy heard her shrieks of anguish and rushed out of the doorway in his shirtsleeves. He seized his wife’s arm and drew her into the cabin.

  Verity waited alone by the ship’s rail for the retribution that she knew must surely follow. She stared beyond the rest of the blockading fleet of war dhows, into the entrance of Muscat bay to the distant spires and minarets of the city.

  In her mind she went over once again the dreadful news that Kadem ibn Abubaker had brought to her father, and which she had translated to him. Muscat would be in the hands of Zayn al-Din before the month was out. Mansur was in the most dire danger, and there was nothing she could do to help him. Her dread and frustration had led her to the gross indiscretion with her mother she had just perpetrated. “Please, God!” she whispered. “Do not let anything befall Mansur.”

  Within the hour her father’s steward came to summon her.

  In the cabin her mother sat in the seat below the stern window. She held a moist, crumpled handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her nose loudly.

  Her father stood in the centre of the cabin. He was still in his shirtsleeves. His expression was severe and hard. “What poisonous lies have you been telling your mother?” he demanded.

  “No lies, Father,” she answered him defiantly. She knew what the consequences of provoking him must be, but she felt a reckless abandon.

  “Repeat them to me,” Sir Guy ordered. In quiet, measured tones she described to him all that Mansur had told her. At the end he was silent. He went to the stern window and stared out at the low swells of the azure sea. He did not look at his wife. The silence drew out. Verity knew that this silence was one of his ploys to intimidate her and force her to lower her defences and her resist
ance to him.

  “You kept this from me,” he said at last. “Why did you not tell me at once what you had learned? That was the duty you owe to me, child.”

  “You do not deny any of it, Father?” she asked.

  “I do not have to deny or affirm anything to you. I am not on trial. You are.”

  Silence fell again. It was hot and airless in the cabin, and the ship rolled sickeningly on the slow, greasy undulations of the current. She felt breathless and nauseated, but was determined not to show it.

  Sir Guy spoke again: “You have given your mother a severe shock with these wild stories.” Caroline sobbed dramatically and blew her nose again. “A fast packet boat arrived from Bombay this morning. I am sending her back to the consulate.”

  “I will not go with her,” Verity said evenly.

  “No,” Sir Guy agreed. “I will keep you here. It might be a summary example for you to witness the execution of the rebels in whom you have expressed such an unhealthy interest.” He was silent again for a while as he considered how much Verity knew of his affairs. Her knowledge was so extensive that it might prove lethal if she chose to use it against him. He dared not let her escape his immediate control.

  “Father, these rebels are your own brother,” Verity broke the silence, “and his son.”

  Sir Guy showed no reaction. Instead he went on quietly, “It seems, from what your mother tells me, you have been playing the harlot with the younger Arab. Have you forgotten that you are an Englishwoman?”

  “You demean yourself by making that accusation.”

  “You demean me and your family by your unconscionable behaviour. For that alone you must be punished.”

  He went to his desk and picked up the whalebone riding crop that lay upon it. He turned back to her. “Disrobe!” he ordered. She stood motionless, her face expressionless.

  “Do as your father orders,” said Caroline, “you blatant hussy.” She had stopped weeping and her tone was vindictive and gloating.

  “Disrobe at once,” Guy said again, “or I shall summon two of the seamen to do it for you.”

  Verity lifted her hands to her throat and untied the ribbon that held her blouse closed. When at last she stood naked before them she raised her chin defiantly, shook out her hair and let it hang forward over her shoulders to screen her proud young breasts, and cover her pudenda.

  “Lie face down over the daybed,” her father ordered.

  She went to it with a firm tread. She stretched out on the buttoned green leather. The lines of her body were sweet and smooth as those of a Michelangelo marble. I will not cry out, she told herself, but her muscles convulsed instinctively as the whip hissed and clapped across her buttocks. I will not grant him that pleasure, she promised herself, and closed her eyes as the next stroke fell across the back of her thighs. It stung like the bite of a scorpion. She bit her lip until blood seeped salty and metallic into her mouth.

  At last Sir Guy stood back, his breath fast and ragged with the effort. “You may dress yourself, you shameless harlot,” he gasped.

  She sat up slowly, and tried to ignore the fire that raged down her back and her legs. The front of her father’s breeches was on a level with her eyes and she smiled with cold contempt as she noticed the tumescent evidence of his arousal.

  He turned away hurriedly and threw the whip on to the desk top. “You have been deceitful and disloyal to me. I can no longer trust you. I shall keep you confined to your cabin until such time as I have decided what additional punishment is appropriate,” he warned her.

  Dorian and Mansur stood with the sheikhs on the balcony of the minaret, and watched the plumes and tops of the bronze soup-bowl helmets of the Turkish assault troops showing above the parapets as they moved up the approach trenches. As they massed below the walls Zayn al-Din’s heavy batteries redoubled their rate of fire. They had changed their ammunition. Instead of stone balls, they swept the parapets and breaches with cartloads of fist-sized pebbles and cast-iron potlegs. The guns fell silent and the Turkish trumpeters sounded the charge; the drums pounded out an urgent beat.

  A mass of shrieking Turks erupted from the head of the trenches. As they raced forward across the last few yards before the breaches, the guns of the defenders on the parapets blazed down upon them, and the archers loosed flights of arrows.

  The leading attackers were across the open ground before the gunners could reload. They left dead and wounded littered upon the shot-torn earth, but wave after wave ran forward to take the place of the fallen.

  They clambered over the rubble and the shattered stone blocks, and swarmed through the breaches. As soon as they were through they found themselves in a maze of narrow alleys and dead-end lanes. Dorian had ordered barricades built across every one. The Turks had to take each by storm, running into a hail of close-range musket fire as they charged. As soon as they scaled an obstruction, the defenders ran back to the next line of defence and the Turks were forced to attack again. It was gruelling and bloody work, but gradually Mansur and bin-Shibam’s depleted forces were driven back into the main souk, and the Turks were able to outflank them, and reach the main city gate. They slaughtered the men who tried to defend the winches and forced the gates wide. Kadem and Koots, at the head of two thousand Turks, were waiting outside and the moment the gates swung open they rushed in.

  From the top of the minaret Dorian saw them pouring like floodwaters down the narrow streets. He was relieved that over the past months he had been able to spirit most of the women and children out of the city and into the desert, for they would have been lambs to these wolves. As soon as the gates were open, he ordered the hoisting of the previously prepared flag signal to the Sprite and the Revenge. Then he turned to his councillors and captains. “It is over,” he told them. “I thank you for your courage and loyalty. Take your men and escape if you can. We will fight again another day.” One at a time they came forward to embrace him.

  Bin-Shibam was covered with dust and black with smoke; his robe was stained with the dried blood of half a dozen flesh wounds. It mingled with the blood of the Turks he had slain. “We shall wait for your return,” he said.

  “You know where you can find me. Send a messenger to me when all is in readiness. I shall return to you at once,” Dorian told him, “if God is willing. Praise God.”

  “God is great,” they replied.

  The horses were waiting in the lanes before the small north gate. When it was thrown open Mustapha Zindara, bin-Shibam and the rest of the council rode out at the head of their men. They fought their way through the attackers who raced forward to cut them off, then galloped away through the palm groves and irrigated fields. Dorian watched them go from the minaret. He heard footsteps on the marble stairs and turned with his sword in his hand. For a moment he hardly recognized his own son under the coating of grime and soot.

  “Come, Father,” Mansur said, “we must hurry.”

  Together they ran down the stairs to where Istaph and ten men were waiting for them in the mosque.

  “This way.” An imam stepped from the shadows and gesticulated. They hurried after him, and he led them through a labyrinth of passages until they reached a small iron gate. He unlocked it and Mansur kicked it open.

  “Stay with God’s blessing,” Dorian told the imam.

  “Go with God’s blessing,” he replied, “and may He bring you swiftly back to Oman.”

  They ran through the door and found themselves in a gloomy alleyway so narrow that the latticed balconies of the top floors of the deserted buildings almost met overhead.

  “This way, Majesty!” Istaph had been born in the city, and these alleys had been his childhood playground. They raced after him and burst out into the sunlight again. The open waters of the harbour lay before them, and the Sprite’s longboat was waiting out in the bay to take them off. Mansur shouted and waved to Kumrah who stood at the helm. The oarsmen pulled together and the longboat shot in towards them.

  At that moment there was an angry di
n behind them. A mob of Turkish and Omani attackers poured out from the mouth of one of the alleys on to the wharf. They charged towards them, their front rank bristling with long pikes and bright-edged weapons. Dorian glanced over his shoulder and saw that the longboat was still a pistol shot away across the green waters. “Stand together!” he cried, and they formed a tight circle at the head of the landing steps, shoulder to shoulder, facing outwards.

  “Al-Salil!” shouted the Arab who led the attack. He was tall and lean, and he moved like a leopard. His long, lank hair whipped out behind him and his beard curled on to his chest.

  “Al-Salil!” he shouted again. “I have come for you.” Dorian recognized that fierce, fanatical glare.

  “Kadem.” Mansur recognized him at the same moment, and his voice rang with the force of his hatred.

  “I have come for you also, you bastard puppy of a dog and an incestuous bitch in heat!” Kadem shouted again.

  “You must take me first.” Dorian stepped forward a pace, and Kadem hurled himself upon him. Their blades clashed as Dorian blocked the cut for his head, and then sent a riposte at Kadem’s throat. Steel rang and scraped on steel. It was the first time they had matched blades, but Dorian knew at once that Kadem was a dangerous opponent. His right arm was quick and powerful, and in his left hand he held a curved dagger, poised to strike through any opening.

  “You murdered my wife!” Dorian snarled, as he thrust again.

  “I give thanks that I was able to do that duty. I should have killed you also,” Kadem answered, “for my father’s sake.”

  Mansur fought at Dorian’s right hand and Istaph on the left, guarding his flanks but careful not to block or impede his sword arm. Step by step they gave ground, retreating to the head of the landing, and the attackers pressed them hard.

  Dorian heard the bows of the longboat bump against the stone wall below them, and Kumrah shouted, “Come, al-Salil!”