by Wilbur Smith
Most evenings David took his station on the terrace above the river with one of his Purdey shotguns at the ready, and waited for the flights of waterfowl to pass overhead as they flew in to their roosts. Behind him the twins waited with the other guns. Such a matching trio of firearms was known as a garnish of guns. David believed that any woman who lived in Africa, that continent of wild animals and wilder men, should be competent in the use of firearms. Under his tutelage Rebecca was already an expert pistol shot. At ten paces she was usually capable with six shots from the heavy Webley revolver of knocking at least five empty bully-beef cans off the stone wall at the bottom of the terrace to send them spinning out across the waters of the Nile.
The twins were still too small to withstand the recoil of a Webley or Purdey, so he had trained them to serve the spare shotguns until they had become as quick and dexterous as a professional loader on a Yorkshire grouse moor. The moment her father had fired both barrels, Amber snatched the empty gun from him and, at almost the same instant, Saffron thrust the second into his hands. While he picked his birds and fired again, the girls reloaded the empty weapon and were ready to serve him with it as soon as he reached for it. Between them they could keep up an impressive rate of fire.
David was a celebrated shot and seldom wasted a cartridge. While the girls squealed encouragement he might on occasion bring down five or six birds in quick succession from a flight of teal speeding high overhead. In the first weeks of the siege wild duck had regularly come within range of the terrace, teal, shovellers and more exotic species, such as Egyptian geese and garganey, all of which had provided important additions to the palace larder. But the surviving duck learnt quickly, and now the flocks habitually gave the terrace a wide berth. It was only the more stupid and less palatable birds that could still be brought to table by David’s marksmanship. A brace of heavily billed pelicans were his most recent victims.
The accompanying dish Rebecca planned to serve was the boiled leaves and stems of the sacred Egyptian water-lily. When he had recommended this plant to her Ryder Courtney had told her that its botanical name was Nymphaea alba. He had a vast fund of knowledge of all the natural world. She used the lovely blue blossoms as a salad – their peppery flavour helped to disguise the pervading fishy taste of pelican flesh. These plants grew in the narrow canal that cut off the city from the mainland. At this season the water in the canal was waist deep, but in the Low Nile period it dried out. General Gordon had set his troops to widening and deepening the canal into a moat to bolster the city’s fortifications and, much to Rebecca’s annoyance, they were destroying the source of this nutritious delicacy in the process.
The consular cellars were almost bare, except for a single case of Krug champagne that David was saving to celebrate the arrival of the relief force from the south. However, when Ryder Courtney sent Bacheet up to the consulate to accept the dinner invitation, he also sent three calabash gourds of Tej, the powerful native honey beer, which tasted like poor-quality cider. Rebecca intended serving it in crystal claret decanters to give it an importance it did not normally warrant.
Now she was putting the finishing touches to the dinner arrangements, and the table’s floral decoration of oleander from the neglected gardens. The guests would start arriving in an hour and her father had not yet returned from his daily meeting with General Gordon. She was a little worried that David might be late and spoil her evening. However, she was secretly relieved that General Gordon had refused the invitation: he was a great and saintly man, a hero of the Empire, but scornful of the social graces. His conversation was pious and arcane, and his sense of humour, to be charitable, was impaired if not totally lacking.
At that moment she heard her father’s familiar tread reverberating down the cloisters and his voice raised as he summoned one of the servants. She ran to greet him as he stepped out on to the terrace. He returned her embrace in a distracted, perfunctory manner. She stepped back and studied his face. ‘Father, what is it?’
‘We are to leave the city tomorrow night. General Gordon has ordered all British, French and Austrian citizens to be evacuated at once.’
‘Does that mean you will come with us, Daddy?’ These days she seldom used the childish term of endearment.
‘It does indeed.’
‘How are we to travel?’
‘Gordon has commandeered Ryder Courtney’s steamer and barges. He has ordered him downriver with all of us on board. I tried to argue with him, but to no avail. The man is intractable and cannot be moved from his chosen path.’ Then David grinned, seized her round the waist and spun her into a waltz. ‘To tell the truth, I am vastly relieved that the decision has been taken out of my hands, and that you and the twins will be conveyed to safety.’
An hour later David and Rebecca stood under the candelabrum in the reception lobby to greet their guests, who were almost entirely male. Months before, nearly all the white women had been evacuated north to the delta, aboard General Gordon’s tin-pot steamers. Now those vessels were stranded far south at Metemma, awaiting the arrival of a relief force. Rebecca and the twins were among the few European females who remained in the city.
The twins stood demurely behind their father. They had prevailed on their elder sister to allow them to be there when Ryder arrived and to watch the fireworks with him before Nazeera, their nurse, took them to the nursery. Nazeera had been Rebecca’s nurse too and was a beloved member of the Benbrook household. She stood close behind the twins now, ready to spring into action at the first stroke of nine. Much to the twins’ disappointment, Ryder Courtney was last to arrive, but when he did they giggled and whispered together.
‘He’s so handsome,’ said Saffron, and did her swooning act.
Nazeera pinched her and whispered in Arabic, ‘Even if you are never to be a lady, you must learn to behave like one, Saffy.’
‘I have never seen him in full fig before.’ Amber agreed with her twin: Ryder wore one of the new dinner jackets that the Prince of Wales had recently made fashionable. It had watered satin lapels and was nipped in at the waist. He had had it copied from an picture in the London Illustrated News by an Armenian tailor in Cairo, and carried it off with a casual elegance far from his rumpled workaday moleskins. He was freshly shaven and his hair shone in the candlelight.
‘And, look, he has brought us presents!’ Amber had seen the telltale bulge in his breast pocket. She had a woman’s eye for such details.
Ryder shook hands with David and bowed to Rebecca. He refrained from kissing her hand in the Frenchified gesture that many members of the diplomatic corps, who had arrived before him, had affected. Then he winked at the twins, who covered their mouths to suppress giggles as they dropped him a curtsy in return.
‘May I have the honour of escorting you two beautiful ladies to the terrace?’ He bowed.
‘Wee wee, Moonseer,’ said Saffron, grandly, which was almost too much for Amber’s self-control.
Ryder took one on each arm, stooping a little so that they could reach, and led them out through the french windows. One of the servants in a white robe and blue turban brought them glasses of lemonade, made from the few remaining fruits on the trees in the orchard, and Ryder presented the twins with their gifts, necklaces of ivory beads carved in the shape of tiny animals: lions, monkeys and giraffes. He fastened the clasps at the backs of their necks. They were enchanted.
Almost on cue the military band down on the maidan beside the old slave market began to play. The distance muted the sound to a pleasing volume, and the musicians succeeded in embellishing the familiar repertoire of polkas, waltzes and marching tunes of the British Army with beguiling Oriental cadences.
‘Sing for us, Ryder, oh, please do!’ Amber begged, and when he laughed and shook his head, she appealed to her father, ‘Please make him sing, Daddy.’
‘My daughter is right, Mr Courtney. A voice would add immeasurably to the pleasure of the occasion.’
Ryder sang unselfconsciously, and soon had them all
tapping their feet or clapping in time to the music. Those who fancied their own vocal prowess joined in with the chorus of ‘Over the Sea to Skye’.
Then the firework display began, General Gordon’s nightly treat. The sky cascaded with sheets of blue, green and red sparks from the ship’s signal rockets, and the watchers oohed and aahed in wonder. Over on the far bank of the Nile the Dervish gunner whom David had dubbed the Bedlam Bedouin fired a few shrapnel shells at the point from where he guessed the rockets were being set off. As usual, his aim was awry and nobody sought shelter. Instead, everyone booed his efforts with gusto.
Then the twins were led away, protesting vainly, to the nursery, and the company was summoned to the table by one of the robed Arab footmen tapping on a finger drum. Everyone was in fine appetite: if not yet starving, they were at least half-way there. The portions were minuscule, barely a mouthful each, but Herr Schiffer, the Austrian consul, declared the blackjack weed soup to be excellent, the palm-pith pâté nourishing and the roast pelican ‘quite extraordinary’. Rebecca convinced herself that this was meant as a compliment.
As the meal drew to a close, Ryder Courtney did something to confirm his status as the hero of the evening. He clapped his hands and Bacheet, his boatswain, came out on to the terrace grinning like a gargoyle and carrying a silver tray on which reposed a cut-glass bottle of VSOP Hine Cognac and a cedarwood box of Cuban cigars. With their glasses charged and the cigars drawing until the tips glowed, the men were transported into an expansive mood. The conversation was diverting, until Monsieur le Blanc joined in.
‘I wonder that Chinese Gordon refused such fine entertainment.’ He giggled in a girlish, irritating manner. ‘Surely it is not possible to save the mighty British Empire twenty-four hours of every day. Even Hercules had to rest from his labours.’ Le Blanc was head of the Belgian delegation sent by King Leopold to initiate diplomatic contact with the Mahdi. So far his efforts had not been crowned by success and he had ended up a captive in the city like the rest of them. The Englishmen at the table looked upon him pityingly. However, as he was a foreigner and knew no better, he was excused the solecism.
‘The General refused to attend a banquet while the populace was starving.’ Rebecca rose to Gordon’s defence. ‘I think that was very noble-minded of him.’ Then she hurried on modestly, ‘Not that I claim my humble offering as a great banquet.’
Following her example David initiated a eulogy to the General’s inflexible character and his marvellous achievements.
Ryder Courtney was still smarting from Gordon’s last demonstration of his adamantine character and did not join in the chorus of praise.
‘He wields an almost messianic power over his men,’ David told them earnestly. ‘They will follow him anywhere, and if they don’t he will drag them by their pigtails, as he did with his Ever Victorious Army in China, or kick their backsides black and blue as he does to the Egyptian riff-raff with which he is forced to defend the city at the moment.’
‘Your language, Daddy,’ Rebecca chided him primly.
‘I am sorry, my darling, but it is true. He is completely fearless. Alone, mounted on a camel and in full dress uniform, he rode into that murderous rogue Suleiman’s encamped army of rebels and harangued them. Instead of murdering him out of hand Suleiman abandoned the rebellion and went home.’
‘He did the same with the Zulus in South Africa. When he walked alone among their warlike impis, and turned his extraordinary eyes upon them, they worshipped him as a god. At that, he thrashed their induna for blasphemy.’
Another spoke up: ‘Kings and potentates of many nations have competed to secure his services – the Emperor of China, King Leopold of the Belgians, the Khedive of Egypt and the premier of the Cape Colony.’
‘He is a man of God before he is a warrior. He scorns the clamour of men, and before he makes any fateful decision he enquires in solitary prayer what his God requires of him.’
I wonder that God required him to steal my dhurra, Ryder thought bitterly. He did not voice the sentiment but changed the direction of the conversation dramatically: ‘Is it not remarkable that in many ways the man who faces him now across the Nile shares many characteristics with our gallant general?’ A silence followed this remark, which was almost as bad as Le Blanc’s gaucherie, not at all worthy of a man of the calibre of Ryder Courtney.
Even Rebecca was aghast at the idea of comparing the saint with the monster. Yet she noticed that when Ryder spoke other men listened. Even though he was the youngest man at the table, the others deferred to him for his fortune and reputation were formidable. He had travelled indefatigably where few men before him had ventured. He had reached the Mountains of the Moon and sailed on all of the great lakes of the African interior. He was a friend and confidant of John, the Emperor of Abyssinia. The Mutesa of Buganda and the Kamrasi of Bunyoro were his familiars and had granted him exclusive trading rights in their kingdoms.
His Arabic was so fluent that he could debate the Koran with the mullahs in the mosque. He spoke a dozen other more primitive tongues and could bargain with the naked Dinka and the Shilluk. He had hunted and captured every known species of the wild beasts and birds of Equatoria, and sold them to the menageries of the kings, emperors and zoological gardens of Europe.
‘That is an extraordinary notion, Ryder,’ David ventured cautiously. ‘It strikes me that the Mad Mahdi and General Charles Gordon stand at opposite poles. But perhaps you can point out some characteristics they have in common.’
‘First, David, they are both ascetics who practise self-denial and abstain from worldly comforts,’ Ryder replied easily. ‘And both are men of God.’
‘Different Gods,’ David challenged.
‘No, sir! One and the same God: the God of the Jews, Muslims, Christians and all other monotheists is the same God. It is simply that they worship Him in different ways.’
David smiled. ‘Perhaps we can debate that later. But for now tell us what else they have in common.’
‘They both believe that God speaks directly to them and that therefore they are infallible. Once their minds are set they are unwavering and deaf to argument. Then again, like many great men and beautiful women, they are both betrayed by their belief in the cult of personality. They believe that they are able to carry all before them by the blue of their eyes or by the gap between their front teeth and their eloquence,’ Ryder said.
‘We know who possesses the blue and compelling eye,’ David chuckled, ‘but to whom belongs the gap-toothed grin?’
‘To Muhammad Ahmed, the Mahdi, the Divinely Guided One,’ said Ryder. ‘The wedge shaped gap is called the falja and his Ansar consider it a mark of the divine.’
‘You speak as though you are familiar with him,’ said Le Blanc. ‘Have you met the man?’
‘I have,’ Ryder confirmed, and they all stared at him as though he had admitted to supping with Satan himself.
Rebecca was the first to rouse herself. ‘Do tell us, Mr Courtney, where and when? What is he truly like?’
‘I knew him first when he lived in a hole in the bank of Abbas Island, forty miles up the Blue Nile from where we now sit. Often when I passed the island I would go ashore to sit with him and speak of God and the affairs of men. I could not claim that we were friends, nor would I ever wish to do so. But there was something about him that I found fascinating. I sensed that he was different, and I was always impressed by his piety, his quiet strength and unruffled smile. He is a true patriot, as is General Gordon – another trait they have in common.’
‘Enough of General Gordon. We all know of his virtues,’ Rebecca interjected. ‘Tell us rather of this terrible Mahdi. How can you say he has in him a grain of the same nobility?’
‘We all know that the domination of the Sudan by the Khedive in Egypt has been iniquitous and brutal. Behind the magnificent façade of imperial dominion has flourished unspeakable corruption and cruelty. The native population has been subject to greedy and heartless pashas, and an army of occup
ation forty thousand strong, which was used to collect the extortionate taxes the pashas imposed. Only half went to the Khedive in Cairo and the rest into the personal coffers of the pashas. The land was ruled by bayonet and kurbash, the vicious hippo-hide whip. The effete pashas sitting here in Khartoum delighted in devising the most savage tortures and executions. Villages were razed and their inhabitants slaughtered. Arab and black man alike cowered under the shadow of the hated ‘Turk’, but no man dared protest.
‘The Egyptians, while aspiring to civilization, fostered and encouraged the trade in slaves, for that was how the taxes were paid. I have seen such horrors with my own eyes, and I was amazed by the forbearance of the population. I discussed all this with the hermit in his hole in the riverbank. We were both young men, although I was by some years the younger. We attempted between us to discover why this situation persisted, for the Arab is a proud man and has not lacked provocation. We decided that two essential elements of revolution were missing, and the first of these was the knowledge of better things. General Charles Gordon, as the governor of the Sudan, provided this. The other missing element was a uniting catalyst among the oppressed. In the fullness of time Muhammad Ahmed provided this. It was how the new Mahdist nation was born.’
They were silent, until Rebecca spoke again, and hers was a woman’s question. The political, religious and military facets of the Mahdi’s history interested her very little. ‘But what is he really like, Mr Courtney? What of his appearance and his demeanour? How does his voice sound? And tell us more of this strange gap between his teeth.’
‘He possesses the same vast charisma as Charles Gordon, another trait they have in common. He is of medium height and slim in stature. He has always dressed in robes of spotless white, even when he lived in the hole in the ground. On his right cheek is a birthmark in the shape of a bird or an angel. This is seen by his disciples and adherents as a touch of the divine. The gap between his teeth rivets your attention when he speaks. He is a compelling orator. His voice is soft and sibilant, until his ire is aroused. Then he speaks with the thunder of one of the biblical prophets, but even in anger he smiles.’ Ryder drew out his gold pocket-watch. ‘It lacks only an hour of midnight. I have kept you late. We should all get a good night’s rest, for as you have been told it is my duty, allotted to me by General Gordon, to make certain that none of you here tonight will ever be forced to listen to the voice of Muhammad Ahmed. Remember, please, that you are to be aboard my steamer at the Old City wharf before midnight tomorrow. It is my intention to sail while it is still too dark for the Dervish gunners to pick us out clearly. Please restrict your luggage to the minimum. With good fortune we may run clean away from them before they get off a single shot.’