Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  Hannah picked a date from the dish, contemplated it. ‘Men!’ she said, conversationally. ‘What a very simple world they do inhabit, date!’

  Harry, happy to lighten the moment, leaned forward, addressing the fruit as seriously as she. ‘Women, date!’ he said. ‘How they do like to impress we poor, simple men with the subtle depths of their reasoning.’

  Hannah popped the date in her mouth. ‘Touché,’ she said, affably, and laughed her clear, sudden laugh.

  ‘Captain Sherwood,’ Abdo said from the shadows behind them, ‘would you care for coffee? Or for brandy?’ He stepped into the light, his face impassive as always; and as always Harry found it infuriatingly difficult to meet the steady gaze. He stood up, stretching his stiff leg. ‘Neither, thank you, Abdo. If the ladies will forgive me I intend to get an early night.’ He bowed his goodnights and left the deck.

  Behind him he heard Hannah Say, ‘Abdo, these men you say still trade in slaves – who are they?’

  One thing could be said about Hannah Standish, Harry thought ruefully as he let himself into the small, stuffy cabin. Once she got her teeth into something she rarely let go until she had torn it to shreds.

  * * *

  They continued peacefully on their way. Most of the ancient sites that Hannah was so anxious to visit were further upstream, around and beyond Luxor, and much of this part of the voyage was spent simply enjoying the warm and lazy days upon the shaded deck, watching the passing, ever-fascinating life of the great river as the Horus forged steadily south. There was always something to see: small mud villages huddled beneath shadowed groves of palms, their miniature minarets and domes shimmering in the bright, hot air; water buffalo laboured in the fields beside the river, strings of camels plodded in sober line, tassels swinging, great loads moving in rhythm with their steps, and donkeys, heavy-laden or carrying riders whose bare feet almost touched the ground, picked their surprisingly dainty way along the stony desert tracks. Veiled and robed women came to the water to do the family’s washing and to gossip, and their barefoot children waved and shouted as the dahabeeyah sailed by. The occasional crocodile, the menace of the Nile, sunned itself, deceptively innocent, upon the mud. And always there were the birds, singly and in flocks: egrets, swallows, long-legged herons and great pied crows. Hannah spent hours with her easel set up in the prow of the Horus, sketching and painting, eager to capture every picture, every impression of the great river. The waters were alive with the tall triangular sails of the little feluccas used by the villagers for fishing or commerce; the Nile was a highway, not least for the great steamers that ploughed past them, cheerfully, waving tourists lining their rails, the wash setting the Horus bobbing like a cork.

  Hannah laughed as one of the steamers sounded a last salute before disappearing around a bend in the river. ‘We really shouldn’t allow ourselves to feel so dreadfully superior, you know!’ she said. ‘I’m quite certain they must be extremely comfortable in their own way. But oh, so unromantic compared to dear old Horus!’

  There were other dahabeeyahs on the river, most bigger than the Horus, and often one or more would moor together, and the occasion would become a social one, with visits back and forth and meals shared in saloons or on decks. The days drifted by in an altogether pleasant way. Sometimes they landed and rode into the desert to visit rock tombs or the sand-sifted ruins of temples. On other occasions Laila and Harry, accompanied sometimes by Abdo and always by three or four members of the crew, would hire horses and ride upstream for the pure pleasure of it, meeting the dahabeeyah when she moored in the evening. Hannah, who was no rider, always cheerfully declined any invitation to these expeditions; she was happy alone with her books and her paints, and knew the other two enjoyed each other’s company. Sometimes she wondered if Laila were not perhaps just a little too taken with Harry, and if Harry, beguiled by the easy-going regime of their days, was not being a little incautious in his attentions to the Egyptian girl, but such faint worries were always short-lived; except on their desert rides, Laila’s nurse was always with her, and when they rode they were always surrounded by people. There could be no question of any impropriety, and Harry himself was always the soul of discretion. Soon enough, no doubt, Laila would be compelled to marry a man of her father’s choosing; there could surely be no harm for her in this mild and innocent flirtation?

  For Harry, the trip he had undertaken with such misgiving was proving unexpectedly pleasant. His duties were far from onerous and his leg improved with every passing day. There was only one fly in the ointment. Though he still haunted the souks and squares of the villages and towns they passed through, no scrap of information had he managed to pick up since his talk with the camel driver in Benisuef.

  The trail, such as it had been, had apparently run cold.

  * * *

  Osyut, the capital of Middle Egypt, was a small but busy city of sun-dried mud houses and minareted mosques set a little way from the river and backed by mountains in which were many ancient tombs. The Horus sailed into her mooring on a cool, clear afternoon, in company with another dahabeeyah, the Ra, with whom they had made contact several times in the past few days. The passengers on the Ra were an elderly English couple called Rainsford and a Scots family of four –mother, father and two grown-up sons – the MacDonalds. Hannah had in particular been pleased to meet the Rainsfords, since it seemed they were on their way to visit an eccentric relative of theirs, a reclusive but respected Egyptologist who lived in the mountains beyond the city and to whom, to Hannah’s delight, they had offered to introduce her. The Horus, of necessity, would be staying in Osyut for at least two days, since, as was usual, Hannah’s agreement with Reis Hassan had included permission for the crew to spend a day baking a batch of the bread that was their staple diet in one of the public ovens of the city. There was little hardship in that, however – as well as the mountain of tombs, known as the City of the Dead, Osyut was reputed to have the best and most varied bazaars in the whole length of the river. There was street after street of booths and stalls devoted simply to the sale of the red-and-black pottery for which the area was famous, besides other souks in which virtually anything could be purchased, from a button to a fine-tooled saddle, a singing bird to a docile wife. Hannah, surfeited with riverbank scenes and picturesque feluccas, planned to do some sketching in the bazaars.

  They dined that night with the Rainsfords and the MacDonalds, and plans were made for the party from the Horus to accompany the Rainsfords to lunch with their Egyptologist the day after next. The following morning Hannah watched the preparations for the bread-making for a while before, accompanied by a burly and well-natured crewman known simply as Ali, she packed her sketchpad and pencils and set out for the main bazaar. She spent an industrious and happy morning sketching and drawing; a turbaned head here, an excited, hand-waving group about a stall there, an old man with a wispy grey beard that reached to his skinny abdomen, crouched over a hookah pipe. A blind beggar, lifting his face to the passers-by. A high, almost windowless wall from which projected a single narrow balcony, entirely protected from the world by a beautifully wrought metal screen; what secrets were hidden there? A fountain set in an ancient curve of wall, its very sound seeming to cool the hot and dusty air, worn brass drinking cups resting upon the glimmering, beautiful tiles that edged the water. A veiled woman riding upon a brightly caparisoned donkey, earrings and bangles and anklets chiming as she rode, bright eyes enticing above the flimsy protection of her veil. Utterly absorbed, Hannah tried to capture the spirit of the noisy, exotic, dirty streets. Smoke from a hundred cooking fires wreathed the narrow lanes, and the savoury smell of meat was on the air. Her attention was caught by a group of Bedouin, their cream-and-chocolate striped woollen robes immaculately elegant, seated easily, cross-legged on the ground, drinking coffee in a small courtyard off one of the streets. As her pencil flew she was half aware of two newcomers, tall, hooded and robed, one of whom moved with an excessive grace. For a moment she could not think why the figure
appeared familiar. Then she realized – the man, whose dark face was obscured by his soft, folded hood, must be a Nubian. The grace of his carriage was exactly that of Abdo. For a moment, pencil still busy, she pondered as she often had before the illogical puzzle of national characteristics. People were people, as Leo was very fond of saying – there were bad and good, tall and short, fat and thin in all races. It was absurd to try to classify men by the arbitrary rule of blood. He was of course, most certainly right. The illogic of assuming that the man who moved as Abdo moved was Nubian was well illustrated by the fact that the man who followed him, dressed in the same desert robes as the Bedouin she had been sketching, might, by his height and his bearing, be taken for that most English of officers, Harry Sherwood. Smiling at the thought, she finished her sketch, packed up her things and let Ali lead her back to the Horus and a cool and welcome drink.

  * * *

  Sheldon Rainsford lived on a hillside above the city in a simple, airy house set about a vine-wreathed courtyard garden in which a fountain played. He was a stockily built, sandy-haired man with an abrupt manner and the bushiest eyebrows Hannah had ever seen. His main emotion upon greeting his relatives, with Hannah, Laila and Harry in tow, appeared to be irritation, but it soon became apparent that this was the norm; habitually he snapped his words as a dog might snap at a passing stranger.

  The monosyllabic gruffness with which they were received, however, eased a little as the afternoon wore on. Hannah got the distinct impression that Sheldon Rainsford simply regarded the social graces as a waste of precious time, and was in fact making courteous and considerable effort – as he would with the customs of some primitive people – to pander to his visitors’ tribal expectations.

  Luncheon was simple in the extreme and was served by a silent, barefoot servant in a sparsely furnished, cool room upon a trestle table, hastily erected. The conversation, at first, was stilted and to the guests from the Horus almost incomprehensible, since it consisted almost entirely of messages and news from relatives of their host. Hannah had to suppress her amusement at the fact that he seemed no more acquainted with the senders of the messages, nor of the import of their content, than was she. As the afternoon wore on, however, and the date wine, cool and rich, flowed with the same steady cheer as did the water in the fountain beyond the open colonnade, the talk at last turned to Egypt, her Pharaohs and her gods.

  The man, Harry conceded, certainly knew his stuff. Unusually amongst European Egyptologists he was not in favour of removing the priceless artefacts, which were day by day being unearthed, from what so many perceived as the feckless hands of the Egyptians, whose past and history they so vividly illustrated. ‘Take an obelisk, a mummy, half the side of a temple, the simplest drinking vessel, to the British Museum, and what do you have? A nothing. Or rather – a thing. A dead thing. A thing out of context, out of its living environment. A thing we have no right to possess. A thing that bears no relationship to its surroundings –’

  Harry, pleasantly impressed by the quality and quantity of the wine, listened to Hannah’s earnest arguments and, later, to her graceful capitulation with equal pleasure. Rainsford, self-evidently happier now that the subject of the conversation was more to his taste, at a diffident question from his cousin, explained why, whilst temples and statues and magnificent tombs abounded there was nothing in Egypt of palaces or great houses.

  ‘My dear Sibyl, have you understood nothing of what you’ve seen here? The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife as certainly as we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow! Their earthly homes they built of sunbaked mud; why build a fragile paradise on this earth, when the certainty is of a life beyond the trials we suffer here? Would we could all have such faith!’ The atmosphere was not, however, so easy when the conversation moved to the pantheon of the Egyptian gods; tiny Mrs Rainsford, rebuked over her perfectly innocent question, and who had not partaken of the wine, became a little pink about the ears as Hannah and Sheldon Rainsford discussed, more or less earnestly, the symbolic significance of that part of Osiris’s anatomy that his wife and sister Isis had been unable to recover after his murder and dismemberment by his brother Set. The consequent comparison of the birth of Horus and the virgin birth of Christ clearly distressed the lady to the point that Harry, who had in their few meetings conceived something of a true affection for the dauntless little woman, offered a smile and a supporting arm and led her into the courtyard.

  Laila, who had waited more than patiently through a boring afternoon, watched them go with a veiled, steely eye.

  Harry was surprised, a little later, to be joined by their host, Sibyl Rainsford having long ago scurried back to the safety of her husband’s side. Harry stood, thoughtful, beside an aperture in the courtyard wall that gave onto the mountainside and the gold and ochre desert that stretched to Osyut. The sun was setting, the sky glorious with colour, the mountains and the desert reflecting rose, gold and shadowed blues; almost as he watched the light shimmered and changed as the sun dipped further towards the horizon. Below the house a small village huddled in palm trees, its mud construction making it all but disappear into its surroundings. Only the minaret of its tiny mosque threw a stark shadow in the desert sunset.

  ‘You know,’ Sheldon Rainsford said from behind him, ‘that the origin of the minaret is Christian?’

  Harry started, and turned. ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘There has always been conflict – conquest. When the Christian knights took infidel territory, the first thing they did was to build churches, and bell towers; when the infidel took back his own as always he used what he found. The bell towers made a perfect platform from which to call the faithful to prayer. They simply became taller and thinner. And in my opinion more beautiful.’ The stocky figure turned, moved closer to the water. Harry followed.

  ‘Captain Sherwood,’ Rainsford said, reflectively, ‘of Her Britannic Majesty’s army.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘The British should not be in Egypt, did you know that?’

  Harry contemplated a variety of answers, opted for tact. ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Not just Egypt. And not just Britain.’ Rainsford hunched huge shoulders, staring into the water. ‘A mistake, my boy. An historic and self-evident mistake, this scrambling to divide a continent.’

  Harry was truly intrigued. ‘A mistake, Sir? That isn’t the way it’s seen in London, I think?’

  Rainsford smiled a huge, stained, almost beatific smile. ‘Ah. London,’ he said. ‘That’s where the idiots live who think the criminally stupid Gordon should be avenged, is it not?’

  There was a breath of silence. ‘I think, Sir,’ Harry said, hearing the stiffness in his own tone, ‘that I should perhaps rejoin my party – it may be that Miss Standish is ready to return.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, man.’ The words were remarkably mild. Sheldon Rainsford returned his gaze to the splashing waters. ‘Did you know,’ he asked, conversationally, ‘that in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul there is a bedroom in the centre of the harem – a very beautiful bedroom I believe – within which a fountain plays constantly?’

  Harry was ready to go. He shifted his foot, glanced towards where voices and laughter rang. ‘No, Sir. I didn’t know that.’

  The sandy, leonine head lifted. ‘The sound of water is remarkably diffusive, did you know? It’s difficult – no, I think impossible – to overhear a conversation held beside running water.’

  Harry turned, and waited.

  ‘I hear that you’ve been making certain enquiries, Captain Sherwood,’ the other man said.

  Harry hesitated for the space of a breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Regarding – certain shipments to the south?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rainsford’s hesitation was longer than Harry’s had been. ‘I may – only may – be able to help you.’

  In the silence the fountain sang.

  ‘Arms are being run to the south.’ There was an open reluctance in his voice. ‘And as to that I
have to admit to very mixed feelings, Captain Sherwood. Why should the Dervishes not acquire arms? What disaster might befall the tribesmen if they come to face the might of the British army with bows, and spears and knives?’

  ‘Bows, spears and knives were enough to finish off General Gordon and his companions fairly comprehensively, Sir,’ Harry suggested grimly.

  ‘That was entirely the general’s own fault, Captain, the British public’s view notwithstanding. The man was a fool and invited his fate.’ The words were tart. ‘If indeed he did actually die as reported, which appears to be by no means certain. However, with regard to your recent enquiries –’

  Harry, who had believed those same enquiries had been conducted with a maximum of discretion, winced a little. ‘Yes, Sir?’

  ‘You’ve heard that a gang of slavers is working the river?’

  Harry hesitated. ‘I’ve heard – some such story, yes.’

  ‘It’s no story, Captain. I’ll tell you this; find the slavers and you’ve found your gun runners. They are one and the same. I have many friends amongst the native population. I hear many things. I have a name for you. A Frenchman –’

  Harry experienced the only glint of pleasure he had felt in the whole of this difficult interview. ‘Would that be a Monsieur LeFeuvre?’

  The other man smiled drily. ‘One of his names, certainly. Try also LaFitte, or Montand. If the man changes his shirts as often as he changes his name, his seamstress must be a rich lady indeed. I have an address. A warehouse in Luxor –’

  ‘Captain Sherwood?’ It was Laila, moving gracefully through the vine-draped colonnade. ‘We’re ready to leave.’

  Behind her Rainsford’s silent servant appeared, awaiting his orders.

  Even Rainsford was not immune to the girl’s gazelle-like beauty. He smiled. ‘A moment, my dear.’