Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  ‘Miss Standish is not without guile,’ Abdo said, approvingly. ‘Her signal caught my eye. I watched. And saw her when they allowed her to exercise in the courtyard.’

  Harry had continued to sweep the compound with the glasses. Two men struggled across the sandy expanse towards one of the long, low buildings behind the mud wall. They carried two large steaming pots of what looked like animal mash. With no comment, Harry passed the glasses back to Abdo.

  Abdo scanned the compound. ‘Ayman el Akad feeds his other reluctant guests,’ he said, softly.

  ‘Is Hannah guarded?’ Harry asked after a moment.

  ‘Yes. On the courtyard side, where the door is. The window, as you see, is too high and too narrow to afford any thought of escape.’

  ‘So.’ Harry wriggled away from the edge and sat up. A gust of wind ballooned his shirt and stirred his hair. ‘Here’s a mess,’ he said. ‘The guns are there and the slaves are there.’ He glanced at Abdo, who had also squirmed back from the edge and was sitting with his back propped against a rock. The Nubian nodded calmly. ‘But,’ Harry continued, ‘with Hannah down there as well our hands are tied.’ He ran a hand through his damp hair. ‘We have to get her out. We have to get her out before we do anything else.’

  As if by magic one of the slender, dangerous throwing knives had appeared in Abdo’s hand. He smiled behind it, mildly. ‘We’ll do it,’ he said softly, and the knife spun, flashing, in the air to be caught in his dark, steady fingers. ‘In sh’Allah.’

  * * *

  The plan Abdo laid before him was simple and, as far as Harry could see, the best they could do in the circumstances. They had to work on the assumption that Hannah was in more or less immediate danger and they must act as swiftly as was possible. Abdo it was who said, with chill lack of emotion, ‘He will send her with the slaves. There can be no other reason for the sparing of her life. If she is a prisoner it is because she saw or heard something that made her a danger to el Akad. If he believed her a danger he would not scruple to kill her. But his instincts are those of a merchant; an Arab merchant, a dealer in flesh. There are markets for a white skin, and for the strangeness of her hair, profitable markets. Why kill, when to sell would put silver in the coffers? But that, only, is while he is not threatened. First we must make her safe. Then we bring the soldiers. If the valley should be attacked, and Miss Standish should still be a prisoner, she would not survive the first few moments.’

  The waiting was the worst.

  It had been agreed that their best chance was to wait until well into the night, to wait for that time when sleep was deepest, and vigilance was least. To wait for the moment when, with luck, the rescue could be made with the minimum risk of the alarm being raised before morning.

  They lay belly-down in silence on their ridge, watching the dying glories of the sunset, cursing the rising of the wind, the stinging sand, the fitfulness of the dying light.

  Anxiety gnawed at Harry. What if tonight were the night the slavers came? What if they were forced to watch, helpless, as she was taken?

  ‘Sleep,’ Abdo said, and laid his head upon his arm.

  Harry watched on.

  * * *

  It was perhaps half an hour past midnight, and the temperature had dropped like a stone before they moved. Abdo had already scouted the narrow path that wound between the gaping mouths of the rock tombs to the valley floor. In the fitful light of a moon that disappeared every now and again behind wind-driven rags of clouds, it was negotiable, with care.

  ‘We should have started earlier,’ Harry muttered as, painfully slowly, they inched their way down. Below them house and compound slumbered, lit only by the odd glow of a lantern. Nothing moved but the restless wind. A dog barked, and was quiet.

  ‘Patience,’ Abdo’s voice was tranquil. ‘The slavers won’t come now before daylight. And by then Miss Standish will be safe and I will be on my way. Have faith. And watch where you are putting your feet.’

  It was a long half-hour before they stood in the shadows at the foot of the cliff. Harry reached for one of his knives, and sensed Abdo’s movement beside him as he did the same. ‘Ready?’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  By good fortune the way down the cliff – more a sheep or goat track than a true path – lay between the Bedouin camp and the mud wall of the compound. In the camp a couple of dogs were yelping again, disturbed by the gusting wind. Beyond the compound the white walls of the Winter House gleamed through tossing branches. The noise and disturbance of the wind their ally, they slipped like shadows towards the house. Now that the action had begun all anxiety, all excitement had left Harry; cool and alert, he experienced an almost pleasurable frisson of anticipation. It was a feeling he recognized, a feeling he associated with the suspended moments before the sound of trumpet and of gunfire, of the savage shouts of men launched into battle.

  The gate of the compound was guarded; two robed figures leaned, half asleep, in the shadows, sheltering from the wind, but they noticed nothing as Harry and Abdo, using the sheltering shadows, slipped past them.

  They had made the simplest of plans, no words were necessary. At the corner of the house they split up, Abdo disappearing like a ghost into the darkness. Harry made his way around the outer wall to where the ribbon still fluttered bravely in the wind. The bars were within easy reach above him. He grasped them and hauled himself up.

  A very small lamp burned in the room, which was furnished sparsely with chair and table and small divan. Upon the divan Hannah lay, fully clothed, her hair a dishevelled tangle about her face. A sudden surge of feeling that went far beyond simple relief jolted through him, taking him utterly by surprise. ‘Hannah!’ The word was a breath that mingled with the sound of the wind.

  Hannah did not stir.

  ‘Hannah! Wake up! Hannah!’

  She started awake and sat up in one movement, hands raised to defend herself, mouth open to scream.

  ‘Hannah, no! It’s me – Harry – Hannah, don’t make a noise – not a sound!’ His voice was low and urgent. They had guessed this would be the danger – that Hannah, overwrought and frightened, unexpectedly roused, might herself give them away.

  Her drawn face was white as paper, her eyes huge. She looked thinner than he remembered her. But her smile had not changed. ‘Harry!’ She sat stock still, looking up at him. Then ‘Harry!’ she whispered again, and jumped to her stockinged feet, moving swiftly across the room towards the window.

  ‘Ssh!’

  She nodded her understanding.

  Harry’s arms were failing him. He jerked his head towards the door of the room, mouthed Abdo’s name twice.

  Eyes still fixed upon him, she nodded again, quickly, turned to watch the door. Harry cautiously let himself back down to the ground, flexed his arms for a moment. When he hauled himself up again Hannah was sitting on the divan hastily pulling her boots on. The door rattled as the key was inserted in the lock. She cast a swift, anxious glance up at Harry, then faced the door, backed as far away as she could get, hands flat against the wall beside her.

  The door swung inwards. Abdo’s tall, robed figure all but filled the dark opening for a moment. Then he turned and bent to his burden. Blood darkened the white robe of the dead man he dragged through the door and pitched onto the divan. Harry saw Hannah clamp her lower teeth into her lip as she watched Abdo, with nerveless efficiency, arrange the corpse and cover it with a rug. Any small trick that might gain them precious time was worth trying.

  Abdo looked up at the window and nodded. ‘All’s clear.’

  Harry let himself down once more to the dusty ground, leaned against the wall and waited.

  They slipped around the corner seconds later. For the briefest of moments Hannah clung to him, tense and trembling. He rested his cheek on her wild, wiry hair, his arms tight enough about her to stop her breath. Then she stepped back. ‘What now?’ Her whisper was calm. Her hand still held Harry’s. The wind buffeted, the moon slid from behind a moving cloud and lit fo
r a moment her white, composed face.

  ‘We run like hell,’ Harry said, encouragement in his voice. ‘But quietly.’ He turned.

  She tugged at his hand. ‘The road’s that way.’

  ‘I know where the road is,’ he said. ‘And so does everyone else. That’s why we’re going this way.’

  * * *

  It took them even longer to get back up the cliff to their chosen hiding place than it had to get down. With no questions and no complaints, badly hampered by her trailing skirts and tight, thin-soled boots, Hannah toiled with them. Abdo moved ahead like a shadow, turning to extend a firm helping hand when the path became narrow or extra steep. Harry brought up the rear, ears straining through the wind to listen for the shouts, the commotion, that would signal that the alarm had been raised; but the minutes passed, they climbed ever higher, and he heard nothing. They passed the eerie open mouths of the tombs, the wind whistling and echoing in their empty depths. After an hour they rested a while, Hannah dropping exhausted onto a rock, gasping for breath. A moment later she stood up and moved a little into the darkness.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Harry hissed.

  ‘Mind your own business. And don’t look,’ she added repressively, rustling.

  ‘I wouldn’t see much if I did.’ He could not keep amusement from his voice.

  ‘Some might say that in my case that would be as true in broad daylight as in the dark!’ There was more than a trace of the old subversive laughter in the words. ‘Oh, goodness, that’s better!’ She rejoined them, a ghost in the darkness, holding something. ‘Are these any use as a weapon, do you think? They’ve well-nigh killed me, but I don’t see how they could be used against a Bedouin.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘My corsets.’

  That took Harry entirely by surprise.

  ‘Don’t choke!’ she said, in only half-mocking alarm. ‘Someone might hear you!’

  They set off again, a little slower this time, as Abdo paused at the tomb entrances, looking for the one they had picked, and in which they had left the saddle bag.

  ‘Here. This is the one.’

  The entrance was narrow, having been blocked at some time by a rock fall. The shaft, illuminated by the swift flash from the precious torch Abdo had taken from the saddle bag, stretched back into the rock, chiselled square and sloping, the wall paintings faint and mysterious in the brief flicker of light.

  The other two scrambled thankfully in after him, slipping and sliding on the debris. He turned on the torch again, shading it, and directing it down to the smooth rock of the floor. ‘This way.’

  They moved deeper. The passage widened into a room in which loomed a granite sarcophagus, intricately carved. ‘How very charming,’ Hannah said, dauntlessly cheerful. ‘I like the furniture. Do we sit on it or under it?’ Her voice, bravely pitched and with only the slightest quiver betraying it, echoed and was lost.

  ‘Anywhere but in it,’ Harry said. ‘Our host has already bagged that spot.’

  Abdo flicked a look at them both. Shook his head, as if at children. Neither noticed.

  ‘Mind your manners, Captain Sherwood,’ Hannah said severely. ‘He probably likes it in there. At the very least I should think that after a couple of thousand years he’s got rather used to it. It isn’t fair to hurt his feelings.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Filthy, the neat and respectable suit in which he had set out that morning rumpled and torn as a tramp’s, Harry executed a small salute in the direction of the tomb. ‘My apologies.’

  Hannah waited, as if listening. ‘Well, that’s all right,’ she said. ‘He accepts.’

  ‘The English,’ Abdo said, divesting himself of the dark woollen robe, handing the saddle bag to Harry, ‘are surely the strangest tribe on the face of this earth.’ He handed the robe to Hannah. ‘You may find you need this. It’s cold now. It will be colder around dawn.’

  Hannah took it. ‘Thank you.’

  Abdo looked at Harry. ‘You’ll be safe enough here unless they have –’

  ‘We’ll be safe,’ Harry interrupted, quickly.

  Abdo shrugged.

  ‘Just get back as fast as you can,’ Harry said softly.

  Abdo looked at him for a long moment. Inclined his head. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘Allah be with you.’

  ‘And with you.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Hannah said, as Abdo disappeared into darkness, ‘that we have confused poor Abdo.’

  Harry lifted the saddle bag, hefted it in his hand, shone the shaded torch into it. ‘Serves him right,’ he said, mildly, ‘I’m beginning to feel that a bit of human weakness in the man wouldn’t come amiss. Look at that. He’s even thought to pack bread and cheese. The man’s a bloody miracle worker.’ He lifted his head, looking at her. A sudden silence fell. When he spoke again it was with abrupt and husky feeling. ‘I am so very pleased to see you, Hannah.’

  ‘And I you.’ With no warning, all bravado had deserted her. Her eyes were huge and suddenly haunted in the dim light. ‘Oh, Harry, I was so very frightened!’ She was in his arms, her face hidden in his shoulder, her own shoulders shaking. He held her, fiercely, feeling the thin, strong body shaken by the sobs she had so long kept at bay, hearing in the incoherent words that mingled with the tears the terror she had until now refused to show.

  ‘Hush now, hush my darling.’ He rocked her, calming her as he might a distressed child. He laid his cheek upon her tangled hair. ‘Hush now,’ he said again, softly.

  It took a some time for her to calm; longer still for him to let her go. Somehow, long after the sobs of terror and relief had died, long after the frightened flow of words had stopped, she stood within the circle of his arms, her face resting tiredly on his shoulder. His fingers had found her wet cheek, stroking, gentling, his face was still against her hair. She closed her eyes, willing the darkness and the danger away, feeling his nearness and his warmth, feeling above all the fierce and reassuring tenderness of his touch. She lifted her lips to his. The wind whistled eerily about the mouth of the tomb, the music of angels or of devils; if she could have done it she would have stopped time, there and then, and kept them embalmed in this moment, with no dangers to be braved, no decisions to be taken, no pride to stand between them.

  ‘I love you, Harry Sherwood,’ she said at last, softly, when his mouth lifted from hers. She raised a hand in the darkness to cover his lips. ‘Don’t say anything. There’s no need. I don’t expect you to love me. I can’t even be certain that I want you to. I just don’t want this night to pass without telling you, that’s all. I’ve had little to do in the past two days but to think. I discovered –’ she hesitated ‘– some regrets.’

  Harry stood silent.

  Hannah took her fingers away, kissed him again, long and lovingly. Then she stepped calmly from him. ‘If – when – we get out of this I shall go home and I shall marry dear Leo, if he’ll still have me. There are more ways to love than one. I’ll make him a good wife, and a faithful one. But as long as I live I shall remember you. As long as I live some part of me will wish – that things might have been different.’ She half turned from him. ‘Now, tell me why we’re here. Why did only you and Abdo come for me? I assumed that when you got my message you’d contact the garrison commander?’

  His fingers caught her wrist. ‘Hannah!’

  ‘No.’ Very firmly she shook herself free. ‘Please understand, Harry. I know your feelings towards women – towards your own freedom. If I believed it a battle I could win, do you think I would not attempt it? I’m no Fenella Hampshire, Harry. I don’t just want your bright eyes and your handsome body; I want your life. Your mind. Your friendship. Your trust. I want your love, your understanding. And I want your child.’ She heard his quick breath. ‘And since I know you aren’t willing – aren’t able – to give me those things, then I want nothing. I promise you that. I won’t bother you. I’m no threat to your precious freedom, have no fear of that.’ She stopped suddenly, sensing a change in him, h
er voice a little less composed than it had been. ‘Harry?’

  There was an extremely long silence. ‘Well,’ Harry said at last, very coolly, ‘since in your usual sensible and lucid manner you seem to have worked all that out to your own satisfaction, perhaps we could get down to matters of more immediate importance? What message?’

  She caught her breath as if he had slapped her. ‘I – sent a message –’ her voice gained strength in sudden anger ‘– I bribed a child, a boy, to carry a message to you –’

  ‘When?’

  Hannah thought for a moment. ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘We were still on the river. There was no message when we arrived.’

  ‘How very exasperating.’ Her voice was perfectly calm now, and as cold as his. She lifted a hand to her earlobe. ‘They were quite my favourite earbobs, and it seemed I sacrificed them for nothing.’

  He dug into the saddle bag, held out a chunk of bread and a piece of cheese. ‘Here, you’d better eat this. What happened? Why did el Akad keep you prisoner?’

  She took the food carefully, not touching his fingers. The story was quickly told; during its telling Harry kept his temper and his patience with a barely concealed effort.

  Hannah had telegraphed the Winter House to tell Laila’s father of their change of plan. His reaction she had found surprising; when they arrived by train in Aswan, an armed escort awaited Laila. Hannah was told firmly that her presence at the Winter House would not be welcome.

  ‘And you still went?’ Harry demanded.

  ‘But of course I did! Laila is little more than a child – she was in my charge. I had promised to deliver her into her father’s hands.’ She laughed, suddenly and sharply, the sound devoid of all humour. ‘I certainly did that, didn’t I?’

  ‘So you ignored el Akad’s instructions and went with Laila to the Winter House?’