by Wilbur Smith
With all her strength she thrust him away and rolled out from under him. She jumped up and, long pale legs flashing, ran like a fawn startled from its forest bed, back across the terrace and up the stairs. Frantically she raced to the twins’ room, beside her father’s suite. The door was never locked. She ran in to them, gathered them up and held them tight. She was sobbing with relief to find them safe, and for her own escape. “Are you all right, my darlings? Oh, dear Jesus, thank you for keeping us all safe.” She hugged them closer, but the twins were sleepy and grumpy.
“Why did you wake us up?” demanded Saffron.
“What’s wrong with you, Becky? Why are you crying?” Amber yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Why are you being so silly?”
Before she could reply her father came in through the door, carrying a lantern. “Are you girls all right?”
“What happened? What is all the fuss about?” Saffron clamoured.
“Didn’t even wake you up, what?” David laughed. “The Bedlam Bedouin will be mortified. He’s been shooting at the palace for months. The first time he manages to hit it, you go on sleeping as though nothing had happened. Shows a lack of respect, I’d say.”
“Oh, was it a shell?” Amber said. “I thought it was a dream.”
“Where, Daddy? Where did it hit?”
“The east wing, but it’s deserted. Nobody hurt. No fires. Everything safe.”
The twins were asleep before Rebecca left them, but after she got back to her own bed she could not drop off. She tried a prayer. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, thank you for looking after Papa and the twins. Thank you saving me from…” She did not think it necessary to elaborate: He knew everything. ‘.. . for saving me from a fate worse than death.” She had read that expression somewhere, and now seemed an appropriate time to use it. “Please keep me from temptation.” But the prayer did not seem to help. She did not truly feel as though she had been saved; on the contrary, she felt as though she had been cruelly deprived of something of great value, something as dear as life itself.
She thought about how he had touched her and began to ache again, where his fingers had been. Timidly she ran her own hand down to make sure he had not hurt her. She started with panic as she felt that she was bleeding, all hot and running wet. She pulled away her hand and held it up to the moonlight streaming in through the window. Her fingers were indeed damp but not with blood. She replaced her hand, and felt the pain swelling up inside her. She was panting, and wicked images flashed before her tightly shut eyelids. Penrod Ballantyne standing over her, naked, with the knife in his hand. She imagined his fingers where hers were now.
The huge ball inside her exploded, and the pain was gone. She felt a wonderful sense of elation and freedom. She felt herself falling backwards through the mattress, sinking down into a warm dark nest of sleep. When Nazeera woke her, sunlight was streaming in through the open balcony door.
“What happened to you, Becky? You are glowing like a ripe peach on the bough with the morning sun upon it.”
Arabic is such a romantic language, Rebecca thought. It suits my mood perfectly. “Darling Nazeera, I feel as though this is the very first morning of my life,” she replied, in the same language, and wondered why Nazeera suddenly looked so worried.
Penrod understood David’s reluctance to part for even a few hours with his precious double-barrelled twelve-bore London best guns by James Purdey & Sons. They were extraordinary weapons and had probably cost him as much as fifty pounds each, he guessed. “One hundred and fifty,” David corrected him. “Tsar Alexander of all the Russias and Kaiser William of Germany both have guns almost identical to mine.”
“I assure you that they are needed in the furtherance of an excellent cause, sir. I give you my solemn word of honour that I will look after them as though they were my firstborn,” Penrod wheedled.
“I hope you treat them better than that. It is always possible to beget brats. Purdeys like mine are another matter entirely.”
“Perhaps I should explain why I need to borrow them,” Penrod suggested.
David listened attentively. He became more intrigued as Penrod continued. In the end he sighed with resignation. “Very well, but there is a condition. The twins go with them.” As he saw Penrod’s nonplussed expression he went on, “They are my loaders and I have taught them to pay proper respect to my guns.”
Both girls were delighted to be chosen for the commission, Amber even more so than Saffron. This was an opportunity for her to have her hero to herself for a while. They were ready and waiting on the palace terrace an hour ahead of the appointed time.
When Penrod arrived they insisted on coaching him in the skills of passing and handing the guns. He soon saw how seriously they took their duties: to humour them he pretended ignorance and asked a few asinine questions. “Where do you put the bullets in?”
“They are not bullets, silly. They are cartridges,” Amber explained importantly. She was chief instructress. She and Saffron had debated this issue the previous night, when the lights were out and they were supposed to be asleep. Finally Amber had settled the matter: “Saffy, you can have Ryder as your special friend, but Captain Ballantyne is mine. Remember that!”
When it came to handling the guns, Penrod was deliberately clumsy and slow so that he did not deprive Amber of the pleasure of correcting him.
“When I pass it to you, you must try to remember to hold out your left hand with the palm up, Captain Ballantyne, so I can place the fore-end into your hand.”
“Like this, Miss Amber?” He managed to keep a straight face, as he reflected that he had been about the same age that Amber was now when he had first been allowed to attend his family’s grand shoot at Clercastle on the Borders, and to take his place in the line like a man.
“Don’t hold your hand so high, Captain Ballantyne, otherwise I can’t reach.” She hated to draw attention to the discrepancy in their heights. At last she was satisfied. She even commended him on his progress: “I must say, you do learn quickly, Captain Ballantyne.”
“I think that you and I make an excellent team, Miss Amber,” he replied seriously, and Amber felt quite giddy with gratification.
“Yes, but have you actually ever shot before?” Saffron was feeling left out, a sensation to which she was unaccustomed.
“Once or twice,” Penrod reassured her.
“My papa is one of the best shots in England,” Saffron informed him grandly.
“I am sure Captain Ballantyne will do very well.” Amber pulled a disapproving face at her twin. Could not Saffy keep quiet for once?
“Well, we shall see about that,” said Saffron haughtily.
All three waited impatiently on the terrace, the twins vying with each other to be the first to spot the pigeon. They saw it in the same instant, and squealed with excitement. The bird’s wing tips were bone white. They flashed in the sunlight. It was high as it came in across the river, much too high as it passed overhead. The Purdeys were choked full and full, giving them an effective pattern of pellets at a range out to sixty yards, but this pigeon was at least three hundred feet high.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Saffron demanded, as it flew on.
“It was well out of range,” Penrod told her. “If I prick the bird and send it wounded to its loft, the Dervish might tumble to what we are up to. They will stop using the birds. We must have a clean kill.”
“Daddy would have killed it easily.”
“Look, it’s coming round again.” Amber tried to prevent her sister baiting the captain.
The pigeon turned wide beyond the scattered buildings of Omdurman, then came back across the river, angling in towards the waterfront, losing height gradually.
“That should do well enough,” Penrod murmured, and brought up the gun. The movement was unhurried, almost casual. His left arm was extended almost straight in line with the barrels, his right cheek pressed to the comb of the butt-stock. He picked up the bird from behind its tail, and swung smoothly through its li
ne of flight. At the final instant, as his forefinger tightened on the trigger, he gave the gun an extra forward flick. It fired and the muzzle kicked up at the recoil. Smoothly he remounted the gun, his hands, shoulder and head dropping into the same position as before. The gun thudded again and jumped with a spurt of black powder smoke from the right-hand muzzle.
“Miss!” cried Saffron.
The bird was so high that there was a perceptible delay after the sound of the shots before the pellets reached it. Then the pigeon lurched and tottered in the air. Its legs dropped and dangled down.
“Hit!” howled Amber.
Then the pattern of the second shot caught the wounded bird and they heard the pellets rattle on its plumage. One pellet struck it under the chin and it threw back its head as the lead cut through to its brain.
“Dead!” Amber shrieked. “Stone dead in the air! Even Papa couldn’t have done better.” The pigeon’s wings folded and it plummeted to earth, but it still had the momentum of its flight and curled out towards the water.
“It’s going to fall into the river,” Penrod shouted with alarm, and tossed the shotgun back to Amber. It took her by surprise but she caught it before it hit the earth. Penrod bounded away down the lawn towards the riverbank, and she ran after him, hampered by the heavy gun.
For a while it looked as though the dead bird might fall on firm ground, but then the breeze caught it. Penrod came up short on the muddy strip of ground above the water’s edge and watched in dismay as the pigeon splashed in thirty yards offshore. The carcass floated in the centre of a spreading circle of ripples and loose blue breast feathers.
“Crocodile!” Amber screamed behind him. A hundred yards beyond the fallen pigeon Penrod saw the monstrous head push through the surface. The skin was gnarled and lumpy as the bark of an ancient olive tree. “Big one!” Amber shouted.
“It’s after the pigeon,” Saffron cried.
Penrod did not hesitate. He pulled off his boots and flung them aside, then ran to the water’s edge ripping off his shirt so that the buttons flew away like sown wheat. His breeches went next and he was left with only his underpants, in a dashing crimson silk. He ran into the green water until it reached his waist, then linked his hands over his head and dived forward. The moment his head broke water again, he struck out in a powerful overarm stroke. The crocodile was drawn on by the commotion, and its great tail thrashed from side to side, driving it to meet Penrod.
“Come back!” wailed Amber. “Leave the silly old bird!”
Penrod swam furiously, kicking hard with both legs, cleaving through the water. The crocodile moved much faster. This was its element, but it had three times further than Penrod to travel. He reached the carcass and thrust the pigeon’s head into his mouth, then turned and started back towards the shore. “Faster!” Amber shouted wildly. “It’s gaining on you! Faster, please! Please!”
The great saurian had fixed all its attention on the man. Instead of diving, it swam on the surface and the long tail drove from side to side, sending out a boiling wake behind it. It was so close that its eyes glittered like opaque yellow marbles. Long fangs protruded over its scaly lips, the rows interlocking with each other. It bore in on Penrod’s naked legs.
“It’s going to catch you!” Amber was wild with fear. She had not reloaded the shotgun, but now she pushed the slide across and broke open the breech. She fumbled a pair of cartridges out of the leather bag on her hip, thrust one into the breech, and dropped the other into the mud. There was no time to retrieve it or find another so she snapped the breech closed. As she ran into the water it rose to her knees, her hips, then her lower ribs.
Penrod was directly in front of her, crashing through the water like a maniac, kicking up a froth behind him. With cold horror Amber watched the monster close the gap between them. Suddenly it reared high out of the water, and its jaws gaped open. The lining of its mouth and throat was a lovely buttercup yellow. It was so close that she could clearly see the flap of skin at the back of its throat sealing off the opening of its gullet to keep the water from flooding into its lungs. The fangs were sharp and ragged. She could smell the obscene reek of its open maw. It lunged towards Penrod’s legs.
Amber threw up the gun and thumbed back the ornate hammer. At any other time she would have needed both hands to work against the heavy spring of the side lock but she was possessed. The butt was too long to fit into her shoulder so she held it under her right armpit. She aimed, and kept her eyes open, as her father had taught her, as she pulled the back trigger. If she had pulled the front one the hammer would have fallen on an empty chamber. David had taught her well.
The gun bucked and bellowed and a blast of shot swept inches over Penrod’s head. The muzzle blast deafened him. Amber and the gun were sent flying backwards by the recoil and she disappeared under the swirling river waters.
The full charge of shot flew down the crocodile’s gullet. The great jaws shut with a clash like the slamming of steel gates, and its body arched into a drawn bow of agony. The glistening black snout almost touched its tail. Half out of the water it performed a backwards somersault, then dived below the surface and was gone in a mighty swirl of green waters.
Penrod found the bottom and staggered to where Amber had gone under. His ears were ringing painfully with the concussion of the shot, and as he shook his head to try to clear them the sodden pigeon carcass he was still holding in his teeth flopped against his cheeks. Golden tendrils of Amber’s hair floated on the surface like some lovely water plant. Penrod seized a handful and dragged her head to the surface. She spluttered and choked, but she still had a firm grasp on her father’s Purdey. Penrod changed his grip, swung her under his arm and he waded with her, an undignified tangle of sodden skirts, hair and kicking limbs, to the bank.
“Put me down!” she gasped. “Please put me down.”
He set her on her feet. “Cough it all up,” he ordered, “Don’t swallow any.” He pounded her between the shoulder-blades. The city sewers spilled into the river upstream. He did not want to lose this little one to the blast of the cholera horn.
David and most of the palace staff had been watching from the terrace and were running down to the riverbank. Before they arrived Penrod knelt in front of her. “Are you all right now?”
“Yes, I am,” she gasped, ‘but Papa’s gun is wet.”
“What a brave and wonderful girl you are.” Penrod hugged her hard. “I’d choose you in a scrap every time.” As her father came running up, Penrod rose to his feet but he kept one arm round Amber’s shoulders. “Forgive the impropriety, sir, but I owe this young lady my life.”
“Quite right and proper, Captain. I’m going to give her a kiss myself.”
Before that could happen Nazeera and Rebecca arrived.
“That filthy river!” Rebecca avoided Penrod’s eyes, and pulled Amber away from him. “Nazeera, we’re going to get her into a Lysol bath.” The two swept Amber away.
In the bathroom, as Rebecca and Nazeera stripped off Amber’s bedraggled, mud-plastered clothing and Saffron poured another bucket of heated water into the porcelain hip-bath, Amber was in raptures, “Did you hear what he said, Becky? He said he’d choose me in a scrap every time.”
Rebecca studiously avoided a reply, but went to the bath and poured a liberal measure of Lysol into the steaming water.
Saffron was not so reticent. “So now I suppose you think that makes him your beau,” she mocked.
“He jolly well will be one day. You wait and see.” Amber placed her hands on her bare hips and glared at her twin.
“Don’t be so silly, Midget,” Rebecca rebuked her. “Captain Ballantyne is old enough to be your father. Now, come and get into this bath at once.”
Nazeera felt a pang as she watched Amber clamber into the bath. Changes seemed to have taken place in the child’s body. Soon there would be womanly hollows and swells where before all had been flat and featureless.
I am losing all my babies, she lamented inwardly.
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Once he had buckled on his breeches, Penrod could examine the pigeon. It was a large bird with body plumage of bronze and wing tips of white, probably a female for they made the best homers. The message it carried had been folded and rolled tightly into a spill no larger than the first joint of his little finger and secured to the bird’s leg with a fine silk thread. With his pocket-knife he cut the thread, and kept the carcass to take to the kitchens. He wrapped the roll of paper in his handkerchief to mop up as much moisture as possible, then pulled on his boots and, leaving David to mourn his waterlogged shotgun, set out for General Gordon’s headquarters in the west wing of the palace.
I understand that you have had some success with your shooting. There was a great deal of excitement on the riverbank,” Gordon greeted him.
“I managed to bring down a pigeon, sir, and it was a carrier.”
“You retrieved the message?” demanded Gordon eagerly.
“I have it, but it took a soaking in the river. I have not dared to unfold it, because the rice paper might disintegrate.”
“Let’s take a look at it. Put it here.” Obediently Penrod placed his bundled handkerchief on the general’s desk, and carefully unfolded it. They studied the tiny roll of paper.
“Seems it’s still in one piece,” Gordon murmured. “It’s your prize. You unfold it.”
Careful Penrod nipped the silk thread with the point of his penknife blade. The rice paper was so fine that it tore along the folds as he tried to open it, but the inner part of the message had been kept almost dry by the tightness of the roll. The ink had run, and in spots the words were indecipherable.
“We need a book,” Penrod said, ‘to press it while it dries completely.”
Gordon handed him his leather bound copy of the Bible.
“Are you certain, sir?”
“The good book for good works,” Gordon told him.
Penrod opened the Bible and gingerly spread the damp sheet between the pages. He closed it and pressed the heel of his hand on the outer cover. Gordon was visibly impatient. He paced up and down the room puffing at one of his Turkish cigarettes until he could contain himself no longer. “Damned thing must be dry enough by now.”