by Wilbur Smith
She was overcome with a desperate sense of urgency. “Quickly -please, Ryder. I am dying. Do not let me die. Save me.” She knew she was babbling nonsense, but she did not care. She clasped both her arms round his neck and tried to climb up his body. He reached behind her, took a double handful of the hem of her skirt and lifted it up round her waist. She wore nothing beneath it, and her buttocks were pale and round as a pair of ostrich eggs in the gloom of the shuttered room. He cupped them in his hands and lifted her.
She locked her thighs round his hips, and felt him burrowing into the silken nest of curls at the fork of her legs. “Quickly! I cannot live another moment without you inside me.” She pressed down hard, screwing up her eyes with the effort, and felt all her resistance to him give way. She dug her fingernails into his back and pushed down again. Then nothing else in the world mattered: all her worries and fears dissolved as he glided in, impaling her deeply. She felt her womb open to welcome him. She thrust against him with a kind of barely controlled desperation. She felt his legs begin to tremble, and stared into his face as it contorted in ecstatic agony. She felt his legs juddering beneath them, and she thrust harder and faster. He opened his mouth and when he cried out, her voice echoed his. They locked each other in a fierce paroxysm that seemed as if it would bind them together through eternity, but at last their voices sank into silence, and the rigid muscles of his legs relaxed. He sank to the floor on his knees, but she clung to him desperately, clenching herself round him so that he could not slip out and leave her empty.
He seemed to return at last from a faraway place, and stared at her with an expression of awe and wonder. “Now you are my woman?” It was half-way between a question and a declaration.
She smiled at him tenderly. He was still deep inside her. She felt marvellously powerful, deliciously lascivious and wanton. She tightened her loins, and gripped hard. She had not realized she was capable of such a trick. He gasped and his eyes flew wide. “Yes,” she agreed, ‘and you are my man. I will hold you like this for ever, and never let you go-‘
“I am your willing captive,” he said. She kissed his lips.
When she broke off to draw breath he went on, “Will you do me the great honour of becoming my wife? We do not want to shock the world, do we?”
Suddenly it was all happening very swiftly. Although this had been her intention, she could not think of a response both demure and yet binding upon him. While she considered it there was a loud knock on the blockhouse door. She pushed him away and hurriedly stuffed her breasts back into her bodice, looking anxiously towards the door. “It is locked,” he reminded her in a whisper. With hundreds of pounds in coin lying on his desk, he had taken no chances. Now he raised his voice: “Who is it?”
“It is I, Bacheet. I have brought a news bulletin from Gordon Pasha.”
“That is not important enough to worry me when I am busy,” Ryder retorted. Gordon issued his bulletins almost daily. They were designed to comfort the populace of the city and to bolster their will to resist. Thus his compositions were subject to wide literary licence, and were often separated from the truth by a considerable distance.
“This one is important, Effendi.” Bacheet’s tone was excited. “Good news. Very good news.”
“Push it under the door,” Ryder ordered.
He stood up and lifted Rebecca to her feet. They both adjusted their clothing: he buttoned the front of his breeches and she straightened her skirts. Then Ryder went to the door and picked up the crudely printed bulletin. He scanned it, then brought it to her.
DERVISH ARMY ROUTED.
THE ROAD TO KHARTOUM IS OPEN.
BRITISH RELIEF COLUMN WILL ARRIVE WITHIN DAYS.
She read it twice, the first time swiftly, the second deliberately. At last she looked up at him. “Do you think it is the truth this time?”
“It will be a cruel hoax if it is not. But Chinese Gordon is not renowned for his restraint or his consideration for the delicate feelings of others.”
Rebecca pretended to reread the bulletin, but her mind was racing. If the relief column was truly on its way, was the need for a permanent relationship with Ryder Courtney really so pressing? As his wife she would be doomed to spend the rest of her days in this wild, savage land. Would she ever again see the green fields of England and have the society of civilized people? Was there any desperate urgency to marry a man who was pleasant and would care for her, but whom she did not love?
“True or not,” Ryder went on, ‘we shall find out very soon. One way or the other you will still be my fiancee. There is a full head of steam in the this’s boiler and her hold is loaded with every stick of cargo it can carry He broke off and studied her face quizzically. “What is it, my darling? Is something worrying you?”
“I have not yet replied to your question,” she said softly.
“Oh, if that is all, then I shall repeat it and hope for your formal response,” he said. “Will you, Rebecca Helen Benbrook, take me, Ryder Courtney, to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“In all truth, I do not know,” she said, and he stared at her, appalled. “Please give me a little time to think about it. It is a momentous decision and not one I can rush into.”
In this pivotal moment on which so much depended, a thought suddenly occurred to her: If the relief column arrives the day after tomorrow, will Penrod Ballantyne be with them? Then she thought, It is of no account, one way or the other, for he no longer means anything to me. I made a mistake in trusting him, but now he can go back to his Arab girls and his philandering ways for all I care. But she found herself unconvinced by this, and the image of Penrod persisted in her mind long after she had left Ryder’s compound and was on her way back to the consular palace.
It took Sir Charles Wilson several days to bring in all his wounded, the baggage and the camel string. In the meantime he fortified the camp on the riverbank below Metemma, siting the Nordenfelt machine-guns to cover all the approaches, and he raised the walls of the zareba to a height of six feet.
On the third day after the battle the chief regimental surgeon reported to him that General Stewart’s wound had developed gangrene. Wilson hurried down to the hospital tent. The rotten sweet smell of necrotic flesh was nauseating in the heat. He found Stewart lying in a bath of his own sweat under a mosquito net over which the huge hairy blue flies crawled, searching for some point of entry to reach the irresistible odour of the wound. It was covered with a field dressing, heavily stained with a custard-yellow discharge.
“I have managed to remove the bullet,” the surgeon assured Wilson, then lowered his voice to a whisper that the stricken man could not hear: “The gangrene has a firm hold, sir. There is little or no hope, I am afraid.”
Stewart was delirious and mistook Wilson for General Gordon as he stooped over the camp bed. “Thank God we were in time, Gordon. There were times when I feared we would be too late. I offer you my congratulations for your courage and fortitude, which saved Khartoum. Yours is an achievement of which Her Majesty and every citizen of the British Empire will be justly proud.”
“I am Charles Wilson, not Charles Gordon, sir,” Wilson corrected him.
Stewart stared at him in astonishment, then reached through the mosquito net and seized his hand. “Oh, well done, Charles! I knew I could trust you to do your duty. Where is Gordon? Ask him to come to me at once. I want to congratulate him myself.”
Wilson freed his hand and stood back from the bed. He turned to the surgeon. “Are you sedating him sufficiently? It will do him no good to become so agitated.”
“I am administering ten grains of laudanum every two hours. But there is little pain in the site of a wound once the gangrene takes hold.”
“I will place him on the first steamer that departs downriver for Aswan. That will probably be in two or three days’ time.”
“Two or three days?” Stewart had only picked up the last few sentences. “Why are you sending Gordon down to Aswan, and why two or three days? Answer me that.
”
“The steamers will set off for Khartoum imminently, General. We have run into unforeseen but unavoidable obstacles.”
“Gordon? But where is Gordon?”
“We must hope he is still holding out in Khartoum, sir, but we have had no news of him.”
Stewart looked around the tent with a wild, bewildered expression. “Is this not Khartoum? Where are we? How long have we been here?”
“This is Metemma, sir,” the surgeon intervened gently. “You have been here four days.”
“Four days!” Stewart’s voice rose to a shout. “Four days! You have thrown away the sacrifice made by my poor lads. Why did you not push on with all speed to Khartoum, instead of sitting here?
“He is delirious,” Wilson snapped at the surgeon. “Give him another dose of laudanum.”
“I am not delirious!” Stewart shouted “If you don’t set out for Khartoum immediately, I will see you court-martial led and shot for dereliction of your duty and cowardice in the face of the enemy, sir.” He choked and fell back, spent and muttering, on his pillows. He closed his eyes and was quiet.
“Poor fellow.” Wilson shook his head with deep regret. “Completely out of his head and hallucinating. No appreciation of the situation. Look after him and make him comfortable.”
He acknowledged the doctor’s salute, and ducked out through the fly of the tent. He blinked in the bright sunlight, then scowled as he realized that a small group of officers was standing rigidly to attention nearby. They had certainly heard every word that had been spoken. Their expressions left no doubt of that.
“Have you gentlemen nothing better to do than laze about here?” Wilson demanded. They avoided his eyes as they saluted and walked away.
Only one stood his ground. Penrod Ballantyne was the junior officer in the group. His behaviour was impudent. He was walking the tightrope across the lethal chasm of insubordination. Wilson glowered at him. “What are you about, Captain?” he demanded.
“I wondered if I might speak to you, sir.”
“What is it, then?”
“The camels are fully recovered. Plenty of water and good feed. With your permission I could be in Khartoum within twenty-four hours.”
“To what purpose, Captain? Are you proposing a one-man liberation of the city?” Wilson allowed his scowl to change to an amused smirk -an expression that was no great improvement, Penrod thought.
“My purpose would be to take your despatches to General Gordon, and inform him of your intentions, sir. The city is sore pressed and at the limit of its endurance. There are English women and children within the wails. It can be only days before they fall into the clutches of the Mahdi. I was hoping I might be allowed to assure General Gordon that you have his plight and that of the populace in mind.”
“You disapprove of my conduct of the campaign, do you? By the way, what is your name, sir?” Of course Wilson knew his name: this was a calculated insult.
“Penrod Ballantyne, 10th Hussars, sir. And no, sir, I would not presume to remark on your conduct of the campaign. I was merely offering, for your consideration, my local knowledge of the situation.”
“I shall be sure to call upon you if I feel in need of your vast wisdom. I will mention your subordinate conduct in the despatches I shall write at the conclusion of the campaign. You are to remain in this camp. I shall not detach you on any independent mission. I shall not include you in the force that I shall lead to the relief of Khartoum. At the first opportunity you will be sent back to Cairo. You will take no further part in this campaign. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”
“Abundantly clear, sir.” Penrod saluted.
Wilson did not return his salute as he stamped away.
Over the days that followed, Wilson spent most of his time in his headquarters tent, busying himself with his despatches. He ordered an inventory of the remaining stores and ammunition. He inspected the fortifications of the zareba. He drilled the men. He visited the wounded daily, but General Stewart was no longer conscious. The steamers waited at their moorings with full heads of steam in their boilers. A mood of indecision and uncertainty descended on the regiment. Nobody knew what the next step would be, or when it would be taken. Sir Charles Wilson issued no orders of consequence.
On the evening of the third day Penrod went down to the camel lines and found Yakub. While he made a pretence of inspecting the animals, he whispered, “Have the camels ready and the waterskins filled. The password for the sentries when you leave the zareba will be Waterloo. I will meet you at midnight by the little mosque on the far side of Metemma village.” Yakub looked at him askance. “We have been ordered to take messages to Gordon Pasha.”
Yakub was at the rendezvous, and they set out southwards at a rate that would take them beyond pursuit by dawn.
Two days to Khartoum, Penrod thought grimly, and my career in ruins. Wilson will throw me to the lions. I hope Rebecca Benbrook appreciates my efforts on her behalf.
Osman Atalan, riding hard with a small group of his aggagiers, left the main body of his cavalry many leagues behind. He climbed up through the gut of the Shabluka Gorge. On the heights, he reined in al-Buq and leapt on to the saddle. Balancing easily on the restless horse, he trained his telescope on the City of the Elephant’s Trunk, Khartoum, which lay on the horizon. “What do you see, master?” Al-Noor asked anxiously. “The flags of the infidel and the Turk are flying on the tower of Fort Mukran. The enemy of God, Gordon Pasha, still prevails in Khartoum,” said Osman, and the words were bitter as the juice of the aloe on his tongue. He dropped back onto the saddle and his sandal led feet found the stirrups. He gave the stallion a cut across the rump with the kurbash, and al-Buq jumped forward. They rode on southwards.
When they reached the Kerreri Hills they met the first exodus of women and old men from Omdurman. The refugees did not recognize Osman with his black head cloth and unfamiliar mount, and an old man called to him as he cantered by, “Turn back, stranger! The city ii lost. The infidel has triumphed in a mighty battle at Abu Klea. Salida, Osman Atalan and all their armies have been slain.”
“Reverend old father, tell us what has become of the Divine and Victorious Muhammad, the Mahdi, the successor of Allah’s Prophet.”
“He is the light of our eyes, but he has given the order for all his followers to leave Omdurman before the Turks and the infidels arrive. The Mahdi, may Allah continue to love and cherish him, will move into the desert with all his array. They say he purposes to march back to El Obeid.”
Osman threw back the head cloth that covered his face. “See me, old man! Do you know who I am?”
The man stared at him, then let out a wail and fell to his knees. “Forgive me, mighty Emir, that I pronounced you dead.”
“My army follows close behind me. We ride for Omdurman. The jihad continues! We will fight the infidel wherever we meet him. Tell this to all you meet upon the road.” Osman thumped his heels into al-Buq’s flanks and galloped on.
He found the streets of Omdurman in turmoil. Heavily armed Ansar galloped down the narrow streets; wailing women were loading all their possessions on to donkey carts and camels; crowds hurried to the mosques to hear the imams preach the comforting word of Allah at this terrible time of defeat and despair. Osman scattered all before his horse, and rode on towards the mud-walled palace of the Mahdi
He found the Mahdi and Khalifa Abdullahi on the rooftop, under the reed sunscreen, attended by a dozen young women of the harem. He prostrated himself before the angareb on which the Mahdi sat cross-legged. He had agonized over his decision to ride for Omdurman and face the successor to the Prophet of Allah, rather than taking his aggagiers and disappearing into the eastern deserts of the Sudan. He knew that if he had taken that course the Mahdi would certainly have sent an army after him, but in his own territory he would prevail against even the largest and most skilfully led host. But to wage war on the Mahdi, the direct emissary of Allah on earth, would have meant the end of him as a Muslim. The risk of death he ra
n now was preferable to being declared by the Mahdi an unbeliever, and having the gates of Paradise closed to him through all eternity.
“There is only one God, and no other God but Allah,” he said softly, ‘and Muhammad, the Mahdi, is the successor to his Prophet here on earth.”
“Look in my face, Osman Atalan,” said the Mahdi. Osman looked up at him. He was smiling, the sweet smile that showed the small, wedge-shaped gap between his front teeth. Osman knew, with the cold hand of death laid upon his heart, that this did not mean he was forgiven. The Mahdi was certainly infuriated by his failure to stop the relief column. It was necessary only for him to raise his hand and Osman would suffer death or mutilation. Often the Mahdi would offer the condemned man his choice. On the long ride up from Metemma Osman had decided that if the choice were offered him he would choose beheading, rather than the amputation of his hands and feet.
“Will you pray with me, Osman Atalan?” the Mahdi asked.
Osman’s spirit quailed. This invitation was ominous, and often preceded the sentence of death. “With all my heart and the last breath of my body,” Osman responded.
“We will recite together the al-fatihah, the first sura of the Noble Koran.”
Osman adopted the appropriate first prostration position, and they recited in unison: “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,” then went on through the remaining four verses, ending, “You alone we worship, and you alone we ask for help, for each and everything.” When they had finished, the Mahdi sat back and said, “Osman Atalan, I placed great faith in you, and set a task for you.”
“You are the beat of my heart, and the breath in my lungs.” Osman thanked him.
“But you have failed me. You have allowed the infidel to triumph against you. You have delivered me up to mine enemy, and it is all finished.”
“Nay, my master. All is not finished. I have failed in this one thing, but not in all.”
“Explain your meaning.”
“Allah has told you that it will not be finished until a man brings you the head of Gordon Pasha. Allah told you that I, Osman Atalan, am that man.”