by Wilbur Smith
‘It has been only twenty-six days, but it seems like all my life,’ she said, and her voice quivered like the strings of a lute plucked by skilled fingers.
‘You have counted the days?’ he asked.
‘And the hours also.’ She nodded. Roses coloured the waxen perfection of her cheeks, and the long lashes meshed over her eyes as she glanced away shyly. Then her eyes crept back to his face.
‘You knew I was coming?’ he accused her. ‘How could you when I did not know it myself?’
‘My heart knew, as the night knows the coming of dawn.’ She touched his face as though she were blind and trying to remember something with her fingertips. ‘Are you hungry, my lord?’
‘I am famished for you,’ he replied.
‘Are you thirsty, my lord?’
‘I thirst for you as a traveller thirsts for the waterhole when he has been hunting seven days in the desert under the relentless sun.’
‘Come,’ she whispered, and took his hand. She led him into the inner room. Their angareb stood in the centre of the floor and he saw that the linen upon it had been washed, bleached and smoothed with a hot iron, until it shone like the saltpan of Shokra. She knelt before him and removed his uniform. When he stood naked she rose and stepped back to admire him. ‘You bring me vast treasure, lord.’ She reached out and touched him. ‘An ivory sceptre, tipped with the ruby of your manhood.’
‘If this is treasure, then show me what you bring in exchange.’
Naked, her body was moon pale, and her breasts bulged weightily, the nipples as large as ripe grapes, wine dark and swollen. She wore only a slim gold chain round her waist, and her belly was rounded and smooth as polished granite from the quarries above the first cataract. Her hands and feet were decorated with fine acanthus-wreath patterns of henna.
She shook out the dark tresses of her hair, and came to lie beside him on their mattress. He gloated over her with his eyes and fingertips, and she moved softly as his hands dictated, raising her hips and twisting her shoulders so that her bosom changed shape and no secret part of her body was hidden from him.
‘Your quimmy is so beautiful, so precious, that Allah should have set it in the forehead of a ravening lion. Then only the valiant and the worthy might dare to possess it.’ There was wonder in his voice. ‘It is like a ripe fig, warmed in the sun, splitting open and running with sweet juices.’
‘Feast to your heart’s content upon the fig of my love, dear lord,’ she whispered huskily.
Afterwards they slept entwined and their own sweat cooled them. At last old Liala brought them a bowl of dates and pomegranates, and a jug of lemon sherbet. They sat cross-legged on the angareb facing each other and Bakhita made her report to him. There was much for her to relate, great and dire news from the south, from Nubia and beyond. The Arab tribes were all in a state of flux and change, new alliances forged and century-old ties broken. At the centre of all this turmoil sat the Mahdi and his khalifa, two venomous spiders at the centre of their web.
Bakhita was older than Penrod by three years. She had been the first wife of a prosperous grain merchant, but she was unable to bear him a child. Her husband had taken a younger woman to wife, a dull-witted creature with broad, childbearing hips. Within ten months she had given birth to a son. From this position of marital power she had importuned her husband. He had tried to resist her, for Bakhita was clever and loyal and with her business acumen he had doubled his fortune in five short years. However, in the end the mother of his son had prevailed. Sorrowfully he had spoken the dread words: ‘Talaq! Talaq! Talaq! I divorce thee!’ Thus Bakhita had been cast into that terrible limbo of the Islamic world inhabited only by widows and divorced women.
The only paths that seemed open to her were to find an old husband with many wives who needed a slave without having to pay the headprice, or to sell herself as a plaything to passing men. But she had honed the wiles of a merchant while serving her husband. With the few coins she had saved she bought shards of ceramics and chipped, damaged images of the ancient gods from the Bedouin and from the orphans who scratched in the ruins, the dry riverbeds and nullahs of the desert, then sold them to the white tourists who came up the river on the steamers from the delta.
She paid a fair price, took a modest profit and kept her word, so soon the diggers and grave-robbers brought her porcelain and ceramics, religious statuettes, amulets and scarabs that, after four thousand years, were miraculously perfect. She learnt to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancient priests on these relics, and the writings of the Greeks and Romans who came long after them; Alexander and the Ptolemy dynasty, Julius Caesar and Octavian who was also Augustus. In time her reputation spread wide. Men came to her little garden to trade and to talk. Some had travelled down the great river from as far afield as Equatoria and Suakin. With them they brought news and tidings that were almost as precious as the trade goods and the relics. Often the men talked more than they should have for she was very beautiful and they wanted her. But they could not have her: she trusted no man after what the man she had once trusted had done to her.
Bakhita learnt what was happening in every village along the course of the great river, and in the deserts that surrounded it. She knew when the sheikh of the Jaalin Arabs raided the Bishareen, and how many camels he stole. She knew how many slaves Zubeir Pasha sent down to Khartoum in his dhows, and the taxes and bribes he paid to the Egyptian governor in the city. She followed intimately the intrigues of the court of Emperor John in high Abyssinia, and the trade manifests in the ports of Suakin and Aden.
Then one day a small ragged urchin came to her with a coin wrapped in a filthy rag that was like no coin she had seen before or since. It filled the palm of her hand with the weight of fine gold. On the obverse was the portrait of a crowned woman, and on the reverse a charioteer wearing a laurel wreath. The surfaces were so pristine that they seemed to have been struck the previous day. She was able to read the legend below each portrait readily. The couple on the coin were Cleopatra Thea Philopator and Marcus Antonius. She kept the coin and showed it to no one, until one day a man came into her shop. He was a Frank and for a while she was speechless, for in profile he was the image of the Antony on her coin. When she recovered her tongue, they talked for a while with Bakhita veiled and old Liala sitting in close attendance as chaperone. The stranger spoke beautiful poetic Arabic, and soon he did not seem to be a stranger. Without knowing it she began to trust him a little.
‘I have heard that you are wise and virtuous, and that you may have items to sell that are beautiful and rare,’ he asked at last.
She sent Liala away on some pretext, and when she poured another thimble of thick black coffee for her guest she contrived to let her veil slip so that he could glimpse her face. He started, and stared at her until she readjusted it. They went on speaking but something hung in the air, like the promise of thunder before the first winds of the khamsin.
Bakhita was gradually overtaken by an overpowering urge to show him the coin. When she placed it in his hand he studied the portraits gravely, then said, ‘This is our coin. Yours and mine.’ She bowed her head in silence and he said, ‘Forgive me, I have offended you.’
She looked up at him and removed the veil so he could look into her eyes. ‘You do not offend me, Effendi,’ she whispered.
‘Then why do your eyes fill with tears?’
‘I weep because what you said is true. And I weep with joy.’
‘You wish me to leave now?’
‘No, I wish you to stay as long as your heart desires.’
‘That may be a long time.’
‘If it is God’s will,’ she agreed.
In the years that followed that first meeting she had given him everything that was in her power to give, but in exchange had asked from him nothing that he would not give freely. She knew that one day he would leave her, for he was young and came from a world where she could never follow him. He had made her no promise. At their first meeting he had said, ‘That may
be a long time,’ but he had never said, ‘always’. So she did not try to exact a pact from him. The certainty of the ending added a poignancy to her love that was sweet as honey and bitter as the wild melon of the desert.
This day she sat with him and told him all she had learnt since they had last spoken twenty-six days before. He listened and asked questions, then wrote it all out on five pages from his despatch notebook. He did not need to consult a cipher for he had learnt by heart the code that Sir Evelyn Baring had given him.
Old Liala covered her head with her widow’s cloak and slipped out into the alley carrying the despatch tucked into her intimate undergarments. The sergeant of the guard at the British military base knew her as a regular visitor. He was under strict orders from the base intelligence officer, so he personally escorted her to the headquarters building. Within the hour the message was buzzing down the telegraph line to Cairo. The following morning it had been deciphered by the signals clerk at the consulate and the en clair text was on the consul general’s silver tray when he came in from breakfast.
Once she had sent Liala to the base with the report, Bakhita came back to Penrod. She knelt beside his stool and began to trim his sideburns and moustache. She worked quickly and, with the expertise of long practice, had soon reduced his fashionable whiskers to the ragged shape of a poor Arab fellah. Then she turned to his dense wavy curls and the tears slid down her cheeks as she hacked them away.
‘They will soon grow again, my dove.’ Penrod tried to console her as he ran his hand over the stubble.
‘It is like murdering my own child,’ she whispered. ‘You were so beautiful.’
‘And I will be beautiful again,’ he assured her.
She gathered up his uniform from where it lay in the corner of the room. ‘I will not let even Liala touch it. I will wash it with my own hands,’ she promised him. ‘It will await your return, but never as eagerly as I.’
Then she brought the cloth bag in which she had kept his stained and ragged clothing from his last journey to the south. She wound the filthy turban round his cropped head. He strapped the leather purse round his waist and tucked the service revolver into the light canvas holster, then slipped the curved blade of the dagger into its sheath beside the Webley. They would not show under his dirty galabiyya. Then he strapped on a pair of rough camel-hide sandals and was ready to leave.
‘Stay with God, honoured lady.’ He bowed obsequiously and she was amazed at how easily he had made the transformation from swaggering Hussar to humble peasant, from effendi to fellah.
‘Return to me soon,’ she murmured, ‘for if you perish, I shall perish with you.’
‘I shall not perish,’ he promised.
The harbour master took only a glance at the military travel pass before he assigned Penrod to the gang of stevedores on the next ammunition ship to leave for the south. Penrod wondered again if the elaborate precautions he was taking to avoid recognition were truly necessary. Then he reminded himself that the owner of almost every black or brown face in the swarming docks was a sympathizer of the Dervish. He knew also that he was a marked man. His heroics at El Obeid had been widely discussed, for they were the one blemish on a perfect victory for the Mahdi and his khalifa. Bakhita had warned him that when his name was uttered in the souks along the riverfront it was with a frown and a curse.
The steamer’s cargo was made up entirely of military stores for the army, which was assembling at Wadi Halfa in preparation for the drive upriver. The loading continued all that night and most of the next day. It had been a long time since Penrod had indulged in such hard and debilitating labour. A pause to straighten an aching back or even the slightest hesitation invited the flick and snap of the kurbash whip from one of the overseers. It required all his self-restraint to grovel to the blows and not retaliate with a clenched fist. The ship settled lower into the water as the heavy ammunition cases were heaped on her decks. At sunrise as she left the wharf, pulled into the channel of the river and thrust her ugly round bows into the current she had less than two feet of free board.
Penrod found a space between the tall piles of crates and stretched out in it. He clasped his skinned knuckles and raw fingers under his armpits. He ached in every joint and muscle. It was almost twenty hours’ steaming against the stream to the port of Wadi Halfa. He slept for most of the voyage, and was fully recovered by the time they arrived early the next morning. Fourteen larger steamers were anchored in the main stream of the river. On the south bank was a vast encampment, lines of white canvas tents and mountainous piles of military stores. Boatloads of helmeted troops were being ferried out to the steamers by nuggars and small dhows.
Sir Evelyn Baring had explained the rescue-expedition plan in detail. This was the River Division of the double-pronged advance southwards. The flotilla was preparing to set out on the detour around the great western bend of the river. They would be forced to negotiate three dangerous cataracts along the way. The men going on board would have to tow the steamers on long lines from the bank through those boiling rock-strewn narrows.
Ahead of them, the Desert Column would travel swiftly across the bend of the Nile to Metemma, where Chinese Gordon’s four little steamers were waiting to carry a small detachment of hand-picked men to Khartoum, to reinforce the city until the arrival of the main relief column.
The ammunition ship moored against the riverbank and the porters were immediately roused to begin offloading. Penrod was one of the first ashore and again his travel pass, when displayed to the subaltern in charge of the detail, worked its small miracle. He was allowed through. He picked his way through the encampment and was challenged often before he reached the guardpost at the entrance to the zareba that contained the Desert Column.
Its four regiments, commanded by General Sir Herbert Stewart, were drilling and exercising on the parade ground in preparation for the long trek across the loop. But it might be weeks or even months before they received the final marching orders from London.
The sergeant of the guard must have been forewarned of Penrod’s arrival for he did not quibble when the dirty Arab labourer addressed him in the idiom of the officers’ mess, and demanded to be taken to the adjutant’s tent.
‘Ah, Ballantyne! I received the telegraph from Colonel Adams in Cairo, but I didn’t expect you for three or four days yet. You have made good time.’ Major Kenwick shook hands, but refrained from mentioning Penrod’s unusual garb. Like most of the senior officers he was rather fond of this young scamp, but a little envious of his escapades. He seemed to have a knack of popping up whenever the bullets were flying and promotion was in the air.
‘Thank you, Major. Do you know, by any chance, if my men are here?’
‘Yes, damn it! And that sergeant of yours has helped himself to five of my best camels. If I had not been firm he would have made off with a whole troop.’
‘I’ll be on my way, then, if you’ll excuse me, sir.’
‘So soon? I rather hoped that we might have the pleasure of your company in the mess for dinner this evening.’
Penrod saw that he was eaten up with curiosity about this mysterious visitation. ‘I’m in rather a hurry, sir.’
‘Perhaps we might see you in Khartoum, then?’ The adjutant kept fishing resolutely.
‘Oh, I doubt it, sir. Shall we agree to meet at the Long Bar of the Gheziera Club when this little business has been settled?’
Sergeant al-Saada was waiting for him at the camel lines. Many eyes were watching so his greeting was cold and dismissive, a measure of the wide social chasm between a sergeant in a regiment of the Queen, and a common fellah. They rode into the dunes, Penrod trailing behind him on the grey she-camel. His spirits surged as she moved under him: he knew at once that al-Saada had chosen a wind-eater for him. As soon as they were out of sight of the camp al-Saada reined in. As Penrod came up alongside him his forbidding expression split in a flashing grin, and he snapped his clenched fist across his chest in the riding salute. ‘I saw you on th
e deck of the steamer when she came round Ras Indera. You have travelled fast, Abadan Riji.’ The name meant the One Who Never Turns Back. ‘I told Yakub you would be here in less than five days.’
‘Fast I came,’ Penrod agreed, ‘but even faster must we go.’
Yakub was waiting for them a mile further on. He had the other camels couched behind an outcrop of black rock. Their shapes were rendered grotesque by the waterskins they carried, like huge black cancerous growths on their backs. Each camel was capable of carrying five hundred pounds, but in the Mother of Stones desert each man needed two gallons of water every day to stay alive. As they dismounted Yakub hurried to greet Penrod. He went down on one knee and touched his lips and his heart. ‘Faithful Yakub has waited for you since Kurban Bairam.’
‘I see you, Beloved of Allah.’ Penrod smiled back at him. ‘But did you forget my pack?’
Yakub looked pained. He ran back, untied it from one of the camels and brought it to him. Penrod unrolled it on the baked earth. He saw that his galabiyya had been freshly laundered. Swiftly he changed his rags for the fine wool robe that would protect him from the sun. He covered his face with the black cotton headdress in the fashion of the Bedouin, and tied the black sash round his waist. He tucked the curved dagger and the Webley revolver into the sash over his right hip, and his cavalry sabre on the opposite hip to balance them. Then he drew the sabre from its plain leather scabbard and tested the edge. It stung like a cut-throat razor and he nodded approval at Yakub. Then he made a few practice strokes with the steel, cutting to both sides, lunging high and low, recovering instantly. The sabre felt good in his hand and seemed to take on a life of its own. In this age of breech-loading rifles and heavy ordnance Penrod still revelled in the arme blanche.
Almost every Arab carried the long broadsword, and Penrod had observed their use of the blade in contrast to his own. The heavy weapon did not suit the Arab physique. Unlike the mailed crusaders from whom the heavy blade had been copied they were not big, powerful men: they were terriers rather than mastiffs. They were devils to cut and lunge, and the broadsword could inflict a terrible wound. But they were slow to recover their blade. They did not understand the parry, and they used their round leather shield almost exclusively to defend themselves. Against a skilled swordsman they were vulnerable to a feint high in the natural line. Their instinctive response was to lift the shield and to lose sight of the opponent’s point, and they would not see the thrust that followed the feint like a thunderbolt. At El Obeid when the square had broken and the Dervish had swarmed in, Penrod had killed five in as many minutes with that ploy. He ran the blade back into its scabbard and asked Yakub, ‘Is the Mother of Stones open?’