Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  ‘Indeed it is. The Reis would like to stop there for a day or so to add to our provisions.’

  ‘Most certainly. I should like the chance to see a little of the city myself. Miss Nightingale found it a poor place – a place of sordid mud and clay is how she described it.’

  ‘A harsh judgement, I think,’ said the quiet voice beside her. ‘And from a stranger who knew little of the land.’

  Hannah glanced at him sharply. Although the same thought had occurred to her, it startled her to hear it so bluntly put by a man who was, after all, little more than a servant. And yet, of course, he was right. In the three days since they had left Cairo she had been constantly impressed by the man; under his hand the routine of the boat ran like clockwork, all the small details that Hannah had devised for their comfort had been attended to meticulously. He was intelligent, diplomatic and hard-working; he was also, she told herself severely, entirely entitled to his opinion, even on Miss Nightingale’s caustic judgements, and was surprised at herself that such self-censure should be necessary. She stored the thought away for future examination. ‘You’re probably right. Is the captain back yet?’ Harry had taken the little felucca and gone ashore on an errand of his own some time earlier.

  ‘No. He’s expected at any moment, I believe.’

  A veiled woman had come to the bank and beneath a canopy of palms was filling an earthenware pot with water. Beside her a donkey stood, patient and docile. Beyond her, a huddle of mud huts all but disappeared into the line between desert and flood-fed fields. She lifted her head, raised a shy hand as the dahabeeyah passed. Hannah smiled and waved back. ‘I must say that Captain Sherwood does seem to have acquired a quite remarkable habit of disappearing. Where does he go on these little expeditions, do you know?’ The question was idle, and half-humorous, but the small silence that followed it drew her attention.

  Abdo’s face was expressionless. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. Miss Standish, if you’ll excuse me? I have duties still to attend to. If the wind is going to drop then the cook will be called in for other duties than in the kitchen. I’d like to make sure that the arrangements for dinner are made.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ She watched him walk away, barefoot and graceful. As he disappeared down the narrow flight of steps that led to the lower deck, she surveyed her small kingdom. The awninged deck with its rugs, its divans, its books and its flowers looked a very haven of peace and tranquillity. Laila and her nurse were still below decks; the post-luncheon rest for guardian and charge was sacrosanct. A blessedly solitary, leisurely hour stretched before her, her favoured companion Amelia Edwards’s extraordinarily evocative and informative book A Thousand Miles up the Nile, written just twenty years earlier, and as thumbed and earmarked as Hannah’s signed edition of the Florence Nightingale letters. At the thought of those, she remembered Abdo’s gentle remonstrance and found herself vaguely discomfited. To observe a place was one thing; to pass judgement was something else again. She should not have needed Abdo to tell her that. She glanced towards the east bank. The small felucca, skimming the water like a bird, its tall, triangular sail bending to the slightest breath of breeze, raced on a tack that would bring it alongside the Horus. She saw Harry at the tiller. He lifted a hand. She waved back. The breeze blustered, and died. Above her the great rust-coloured sail, which had been taut with the steady, driving energy of the wind, flapped, faltered, and fell slack. Hannah felt the dahabeeyah lose way, was suddenly aware of the surge of the current against them. A streaming flight of birds, white, glistening like a silver shoal in the sunshine, wheeled and dipped across the soft, relentlessly flowing waters. The Horus slowed, and slewed towards the bank.

  Harry came back aboard as they pulled into the bank, just as Abdo with his usual miraculous timing appeared with a tray of tea. Harry and Hannah drank it on deck as they watched the preparations for tracking the boat the rest of the way to Benisuef.

  ‘It’s no good.’ Hannah shook her head. ‘I know they don’t seem to mind, but I do hate to see the men harnessed like animals. It doesn’t seem right.’

  Harry shrugged a little. He had lost interest in the activity and had picked up a magazine. ‘As you say, they don’t seem to mind. I daresay they wouldn’t do it if they did.’

  ‘But of course they would! They have to earn a living.’

  Harry smiled, blunting the edge of her indignation. ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘Don’t laugh, Captain Sherwood.’ She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, linking her hands, resting her chin in earnest thought upon them. ‘Don’t you see the importance of understanding such things? To me, to see men chained like donkeys or mules is degrading – but I’m seeing it, aren’t I, with European eyes? Here it is the norm, here it is accepted. So do I have the right to judge? Abdo said something of the sort this afternoon.’

  Harry tossed the magazine aside, still smiling. A genuine, and, to Harry at least, surprising friendship was well on the way to growing between these two. Against all his expectations in the days since they had left Cairo, he had found himself slipping easily into the pleasant routine of life aboard the Horus; a routine that had been largely, with unfussy good humour, thought out and instigated by Hannah. He found it remarkably refreshing to be with a woman who neither fawned upon nor attempted to challenge him. Hannah did not coquet, nor did she treat him with the provocative disdain he had long grown to recognize as just another ploy in the perilous give and take of sexual attraction. He could relax with her; and if on occasion, as now, she showed an alarming tendency to lecture, he found himself at least equally as often drawn into a spirited discussion or argument that was as entertaining as any flirtation, and far less dangerous.

  ‘And yet, surely, there are some things that are basically right, basically wrong? Murder, for instance, can surely never be justified. Or gratuitous cruelty. And slavery. That slavery is normal practice in a community, as it was in Ancient Egypt, cannot be an excuse to justify it, can it? Captain Sherwood? Is something wrong?’

  Harry had moved abruptly, standing up, turning from her, leaning upon the rail apparently freshly absorbed in the activity upon the bank. ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘Did you know –’ she joined him at the rail ‘– that according to Abdo there is still an established illegal trade in slaves here in Egypt? If it’s true it’s absolutely scandalous. Slavery has been outlawed in the Empire for sixty years! Yet Abdo says that many of his own people are taken by the Arab traders. I have to say I find it hard to believe, for surely that must mean some kind of official condonement of the wretched business? But Abdo said –’

  ‘Abdo seems to have been talking rather a lot today.’ The attempt at lightness did not work. His voice was sharp, hard-edged.

  She looked at him curiously. ‘Captain, there is something wrong. What is it?’

  Harry shook his head, forced mild apology into his smile. ‘I’m sorry. Too much sun, perhaps. I walked a little way into the desert this morning. It really was most impressive. Perhaps while we’re at Benisuef you’d like me to arrange a trip for you? There are camels or ponies for hire.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. That would be nice.’ The words were absently spoken; the attempt to change the subject was so transparent that, characteristically, she simply ignored it. ‘Captain – would you mind if I asked you something? Something you might regard as a little personal?’

  ‘No. Of course not,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Is there some reason why you don’t like Abdo?’

  The question shocked him. ‘Of course not. Why should there be? He’s an admirable and reliable servant. Why should you think such a thing?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. There just seem times when –’ she considered for a moment ‘– when you aren’t at ease with him.’

  ‘As I said, the man is a servant, Miss Standish and –’ he hesitated ‘ – and a native. Are you suggesting I should treat him as a personal friend?’ This time he made no attempt to disguise the
sharpness in his voice.

  ‘No. No, of course not. And now I have made you angry. Forgive me, Captain, I had no right to ask such a question. Ah – see – we’re under way at last. And Laila, my dear, how absolutely enchanting you look! – you rested well? I’m afraid the captain and I have quite finished the tea! I’ll ring for some more.’

  The Egyptian girl, who had come onto the deck as they were speaking, smiled vividly from one to the other. ‘That would be nice. Thank you.’ Her English was almost perfect, with only the trace of an accent. She was dressed today in European style, in fine, pale cotton sprigged with flowers that matched the wonderful sapphire of her eyes. A wide straw hat, also flower-decked and tied beneath her chin with an embroidered ribbon, framed her small, pretty face. Her nurse and shadow padded to the edge of the deck and squatted, black-shrouded, watching. Harry turned to the newcomer with something like relief. ‘Miss Akad. I trust you’re well?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, Captain.’ The words were demure, the shy set of the head was demure; the spark in those remarkable eyes was not.

  On much easier and more familiar ground, Harry moved a chair a little, out of the sun, making a small bow in the direction of the smiling girl. ‘There. I think you’ll find that cooler.’

  She glanced at him again from beneath lustrous dark lashes. ‘Thank you, Captain.’

  ‘Laila, have you seen this? I thought it might interest you. You can have it if you’d like, I’ve entirely finished with it.’ Hannah had picked up a small book.

  Harry moved away from them, aware that the little Egyptian girl’s eyes followed him, but for once not ready to play the pretty game of flirtation they both usually so enjoyed. Hannah was right – her impertinent question had angered him; but its perception had disturbed him too. In that unwary moment he had been surprised into a flash of clear-sighted honesty. He well knew that, as Hannah had so bluntly pointed out, his relationship with Abdo was not as easy as it might have been. There was an awkwardness, always, a reserve, that Harry knew emanated entirely from him. What he had seen in that instant was that, had Hannah Standish but known it, it was partly her own easily friendly relationship with the Nubian that for Harry touched some obscure sore spot; a sore spot he did not care to probe. To have Hannah, or anyone else, even suspect its existence would be utterly intolerable.

  He stood for a moment longer looking down onto the activity upon the lower deck. As if conjured by his thoughts, Abdo stood, a giant amongst the smaller Egyptians, talking to Reis Hassan. As if sensing Harry’s presence he looked up, and their eyes met. Unsmiling, Harry made a small movement of his hand in greeting. After the slightest hesitation Abdo nodded.

  Too quickly, Harry turned away.

  * * *

  They spent a night and a day and then another night in Benisuef. At Hannah’s request, Abdo and Harry escorted the ladies through the shaded, teeming, carpet-hung bazaars, with their silver- and goldsmiths, their stalls of brass and copper platters, bowls and cups, their silks, their spices and their quarrelsome dogs. A dust haze hung within the crowded, mud-built alleys, pierced by the shafts of sunlight that struck shining blades through the patched matting strung high across the narrow streets. Every shade of complexion moved through those busy, shadowed alleys, from the velvet black of Nubia through elegant degrees of brown to a scattering of pale or red-faced Europeans beneath palm-leaf hats. There were turbans and tarbushes, ragged fellaheen and graceful Bedouin, stately in their desert robes. The party from the Horus shouldered their way through the crowds, stepped aside for docile, heavily laden donkeys and for disdainful camels strung with brass bells and multicoloured swinging tassels, heavy wooden saddles swaying to their rhythmic gait like the battle decks of a fleet of fighting galleons. They strolled through the slipper bazaar, delighted at the bright, beaded footwear, made to every size and every pattern – toes turned up, toes made round, toes made flat, any style that took the fancy. Hannah loved the rugs and prayer mats that abounded; the boy from the Horus who accompanied them could soon barely be seen for the pile he was carrying to enhance their temporary home. With Abdo’s help and encouragement they bartered with the merchants who sat smoking their coiled pipes in the midst of their glittering Aladdin’s cave of wares. They bought brightly painted plates and bowls, a set of copper saucepans that fitted one into the other and a bukray – a Turkish coffee pot in brass and silver – in which Hannah fancied flowers might look very well. They bought sweetmeats and cakes, dates and fruit, fragrant tobacco for Harry and as a present for the Reis. Laila spent little, but might easily have acquired more than any of them had she wished; just the mention of her name was enough in most cases to bring an obsequious smile and the offer of the best merchandise, often brought from the small dark shops behind the stalls. She bought a pretty gold tissue scarf for Hannah, a bright leather pouch for Harry, and a string of intricately fashioned beads in her favourite sapphire blue for herself. They watched in fascination as a charmer enticed a gleaming and perilous-looking snake from its basket, and refused the temptation of a fortune-teller. Harry found time for a swift but unsatisfactory conversation with a vendor of singing birds whose name had been mentioned in Sakhara, and then found himself invited to smoke a pipe with a camel driver from Minieh, who seemed eager to talk about a Frenchman, whose name had cropped up more than once before. Abdo obligingly guided the ladies towards a small kiosk of glittering stones and gleaming metal whilst Harry, with grace, accepted the invitation and noted the information. It was a tired but satisfied party that finally boarded the Horus that evening and ate their meal upon the awninged deck by the light of the candles Abdo had acquired in the bazaar, washing it down with a very passable date wine produced by Christian monks in the fastness east of the city.

  The next morning, in the improbably glorious light of a desert dawn and to the eerie call of the muezzin from a nearby minaret, the Horus raised her sail once more and surged into the tide of the great river, heading south.

  * * *

  The next few days, sailing towards Osyut, were uneventful but for a routine visit to some ancient tombs and an expedition into the desert organized by their dragoman from a village in which a suspicious number of people knew his name and his face. The man who owned most of the camels was his cousin; the man who owned the rest was enough like him to be his brother. Laila, to whom neither desert nor camels were a novelty to be enjoyed, but rather a curse to be avoided, declined to join the party. Hannah, once the awkward and perilous business of boarding the animal was accomplished and she had come to terms with the distance that stretched between her and the ground, was amazed at the comfort, the positive pleasure, of the ride. She had no difficulty in adapting herself to the even, rolling gait, was fascinated as she watched the great splayed feet plant themselves in the shifting, hot sand, safe, steady and reliable as a dog’s paws upon turf. By the end of the day she had privately determined that the camel was a singular beast and was entirely entitled to his scornful and grouchy independence.

  The air shimmered with heat, the sky was a brazen bowl above them. They rode to the ruins of a monastery whose origins were long lost and whose only significance was as a point of reference in those vast golden spaces. They picnicked in a ruined courtyard encircled by the forlorn remains of a masonry wall. The men who had accompanied them took wary station as the visitors ate.

  ‘They fear the Bedouin,’ Abdo said simply, in answer to Hannah’s question.

  ‘Is there much trouble still with the desert tribes?’ Harry asked.

  Abdo shrugged. ‘Enough. It troubles a man if death, or slavery, can be the result of an unwary moment.’

  Death or slavery. The words repeated themselves in Hannah’s mind as she sat her swaying mount as they made their way back across the apparently trackless hills and valleys towards the river. Death or slavery – which would be the least evil, she wondered, suddenly sober; and found herself shivering at the thought of either.

  She voiced the question later that evening as they a
te dates and English cheese after the main meal, with the Horus tied close to the western bank and the river rippling peacefully about them. The last colours of a glorious sunset still touched the sky, dying quickly as the swift desert night claimed them.

  ‘Death,’ Harry said without an instant’s hesitation or thought.

  Laila glanced at him from beneath the shadow of her lashes. ‘Really, Captain? You surprise me. There are some forms of slavery, surely, that are less arduous than others?’

  Harry smiled, acknowledging her meaning yet still a shade grimly, shaking his head, saying nothing.

  ‘You’re very positive,’ Hannah said.

  He looked at her in some surprise. ‘Aren’t you? Would you, could you, allow yourself to be enslaved?’

  ‘But is it that simple? Would one have such a choice? If one were born to the condition of slavery?’ She trailed off for a moment, thinking. ‘Or even if one were captured and enslaved – to die would be to end all hope of freedom.’

  ‘To live,’ Harry said, ‘would be to end all hope of honour.’

  She frowned, considering that. ‘That’s a very harsh judgement, is it not? And possibly based upon our own fortuitous certainty that such a choice would never be forced upon us?’

  ‘No, Miss Standish.’ The words were very cool. ‘I can assure you that isn’t so. There is always a choice. It is simply my opinion that any man who allowed himself to be enslaved – by anyone –’ he lightened the moment by turning to Laila and bowing a little, lips curved in a smile, though the gleam in his eyes was hard ‘– is nothing but a worthless coward. There is no question but that it would be better to die.’