by Wilbur Smith
Gordon turned back from the window and pulled his gold hunter from his pocket by its chain. ‘Eight o’clock. I want this rogue al-Faroque and his minions tried, sentenced and ready for execution by five this afternoon. I want it done in public on the maidan to make the deepest impression on the populace. I cannot abide black-marketeering in this city where most of the populace is starving. You are in charge, Ballantyne, and I want it done properly.’
It had all gone off very well, Penrod decided, as he wandered down the terrace of the consular palace before he retired for the night. He came to a stately tamarind tree whose branches overshadowed half the terrace and leant against the trunk. He was smoking the Cuban cigar that Ryder Courtney had pressed upon him when they parted. Courtney had declined the invitation to attend the executions. ‘I don’t blame him. I myself would rather have been employed elsewhere,’ he murmured.
He felt slightly queasy as he thought about it now, and he took a long, deep draw on the cigar. At five o’clock that afternoon almost the entire garrison of Khartoum had paraded on the maidan to witness punishment. Only the minimum strength was left to man the defences of the city. Although they had not been ordered to do so, it seemed that the entire civilian populace, too, lined the perimeter of the parade ground three and four deep. The eight Krupps guns were lined up wheel to wheel and aimed at maximum elevation toward the besieging Dervish hordes in Omdurman. The ammunition shortage was too severe to waste even these eight rounds: after they had completed the primary destruction they would fly on across the river to burst among the legions of besiegers and, with luck, kill a few more of the enemy.
The first to be marched out were the black-marketeers and merchants of the city who had been caught red-handed with stocks of al-Faroque’s grain. Ali Muhammad Acrani was at the head of the file. When Penrod had searched his premises behind the hospital he had found six hundred sacks hidden in the slave cells under the barracoons.
The prisoners were lined up close behind the guns. Gordon Pasha had sentenced them to watch the executions. In addition all their possessions, including the contraband dhurra, were confiscated. Finally they were to be expelled from the city to take their chances on the clemency of the Mahdi and his Ansar across the river. Penrod considered their fate. Given the same choice, I think I would have preferred the kiss of the gunner’s daughter, he decided.
His mind went back to that afternoon’s programme of entertainment on the maidan. When all the spectators were assembled, Penrod had given the order and Major al-Faroque and the seven other condemned men were marched out from the cells of Mukran Fort. They wore full dress uniform. Each man stood to attention in front of the artillery piece to which he was allocated. The regimental sergeant major read out the charges and sentences in a stentorian voice that carried to every one of the spectators. They craned forward to catch the words ‘. . . that they shall be shot from guns.’ A hum of anticipation went up from the packed ranks. This was something none of them had ever witnessed. They held up their babies and young children for a better view.
They watched the sergeant major roll up the charge sheet and hand it to a runner, who carried it to where Gordon Pasha and Captain Ballantyne stood. The man saluted and handed the roll to the general. ‘Very well.’ Gordon returned the salute. ‘Carry out the sentences.’
The sergeant marched smartly down the rank of condemned men, halting before each in turn and ceremoniously ripping the insignias of rank and merit from their shoulders and the breasts of their tunics. He threw the golden crowns, chevrons and medals into the dust.
When the eight men stood in their torn clothing, forlorn and dishonoured, he gave another order. One at a time the condemned were led to the waiting guns and spreadeagled over them. The gaping muzzles were aimed into the centre of their chests and their arms strapped along each side of the shining black barrels. From this grotesque embrace they would receive the kiss of the gunner’s daughter. Al-Faroque threw himself down in the dust of the parade ground. He howled, wept and drummed his heels. Finally he had to be carried to his gun by the soldiers.
‘Prepared to carry out the sentence,’ the sergeant major bellowed.
‘Carry on, Sergeant Major!’ Penrod snapped back, his face and voice expressionless.
The sergeant major drew his sword and raised the bare blade. The drummer-boy at his side raised his sticks to his lips, then dropped them to the drumhead in a long roll. The sergeant major dropped his sword blade, and the drummer stopped abruptly. There was a momentary silence and even Penrod drew a sharp breath. The first gun bellowed.
The victim disappeared for an instant in a cloud of dense grey powder smoke. Then the separate parts of his torso were spinning high in the air. There was a stunned silence after the explosion, then a spontaneous burst of cheering from the spectators as the head fell back to earth and rolled across the sun-baked clay.
The sergeant major raised his sword again. The drum rolled, and was again abruptly cut short. Another thunderous discharge. This time the spectators were anticipating the result and the wild applause was mixed with hoots of laughter. Al-Faroque was last in the line and as his turn came closer he screamed for mercy. The crowd yelled in imitation, and al-Faroque’s bowels voided noisily. Liquid faeces stained the back of his breeches. The hilarity of the watchers swelled to a bellow as the drum rolled for the eighth and last time. Al-Faroque’s head leapt higher in the air than that of any man who had preceded him.
Penrod examined the stub of his cigar and decided regretfully that he could not take another draw without scorching his fingertips. He dropped it on to the flags of the terrace and ground it out under his heel. Although it was late and he had already made his nightly rounds of the city’s defences, he still had a pile of paperwork to complete before he could think of bed. Gordon would want all his lists and reports first thing in the morning. The little martinet made no allowances for the contingencies of the siege and the heavy load he had already placed on Penrod’s shoulders: ‘We have to keep up to scratch, Ballantyne, and set an example.’
At least he spares himself even less than he does me, Penrod thought.
He straightened up from the tree, preparing to make his way up to the quarters that David Benbrook had allocated to him, when a small movement on one of the second-floor balconies caught his eye. The door to the balcony had opened and he was able to see into the room beyond it. The interior was lit by an oil lamp that stood on a ladies’ dressing-table, and he could just make out the upright posts and canopy of the bed. The wallpaper was patterned with red roses and sprigs of greenery.
A slim feminine figure appeared in the doorway, back-lit by the lamp, which spun a golden nimbus about her head, like a medieval painting of the Madonna. Even though he could not see her face, he recognized Rebecca immediately. She wore a robe of some lustrous material with a pale blue sheen, probably crêpe-de-Chine. It fitted her closely, emphasizing the curve of her waist and hip, and leaving her arms bare below the elbows. She came to the front of the balcony where the moonlight added subtle silver tones to the golden lamplight behind her.
She gazed down on to the garden and terrace below her but did not see him, half concealed by the wide branches of the tamarind. She gathered her skirts and, with a graceful movement, swung her lower body up until she was sitting on the balcony wall. Her feet were bare, and her legs exposed to the knees. Her calves were shapely, her feet small and girlish. Penrod was enthralled by their elegance. Now the lamplight struck her in profile and left the other half of her face in mysterious moon shadow. She held an ivory-backed brush in one hand, and her long blonde hair was loose. She stroked the brush through it, beginning at the pale parting that ran down the centre of her scalp and ending at her waist, where the tresses danced and rippled. Her expression was serene and lovely.
Penrod wanted to move close enough to study every plane and angle of her face and perhaps even to catch a trace of her perfume. Despite the gloves, the long sleeves and the wide-brimmed straw hat that she wore hab
itually during the day, the skin of Rebecca’s bare arms and legs was not fashionably milky but a light gold. Her neck was long and graceful, her head tilted at a beguiling angle. She began to hum softly. He did not recognize the tune, but it was a siren song he could not resist. He moved closer to the balcony with the caution of a hunter, waiting for her to close her eyes briefly at the completion of each brush stroke before he took another small step towards her. Now he could hear the intake of her breath at the end of each bar of the tune and almost feel the warmth and texture of her lips under his own. He imagined the tremulous way in which they would part to allow him to taste the apple-sweet juices of her mouth.
At last she set aside the brush, twisted her hair into a thick rope and coiled it on top of her head. She drew a long hairpin with a jewelled head from the lapel of her gown and reached up to secure her hair. As she did so she turned her head away and Penrod took advantage of this to step forward again.
She froze like a gazelle sensing the stalk of the leopard. He stood still and held his breath. Then she turned to face him and her eyes flew wide. She stared down at him for a moment, then swung her legs back into the balcony and sprang to her feet. Her lips framed a silent accusation: ‘You were spying!’
Then she whirled away through the open door and closed it behind her, with just a faint click of the latch, as though she did not want anyone else to hear. As though the fact that he had been spying on her was a secret between them. Penrod’s heart was drumming and his breath came faster. He regretted that he had frightened her away. He wished he had been able to watch her a little longer, as though he might have learnt some secret by studying her unsuspecting face.
He left the terrace and, as he mounted the main spiral staircase to his own quarters, his predatory instinct, which, for a brief interlude, had been replaced by an almost reverential awe, reasserted itself. He smiled. At least we now know where to find Mademoiselle’s boudoir, should the need arise, he thought.
Unlike her twin, Amber was unperturbed by what they had witnessed when they burst in upon their elder sister and Ryder. She was the only one of the Benbrook sisters who returned to his compound the following day. She arrived at the usual hour with Nazeera in tow and immediately took charge of the team of three dozen Sudanese women who were manufacturing the precious green-cake. She relished not having to share the authority with Saffron.
Bacheet found his master in the workshop at the harbour and whispered his report.
Ryder looked up from the Ibis’s main steam line, which he and Jock McCrump were welding. ‘Her sisters?’ Ryder demanded. ‘Miss Saffron and Miss Rebecca?’
Bacheet shook his head. ‘Only Miss Amber.’ This was not a conversation that Ryder wanted to share with Jock McCrump and the Ibis’s stokers and oilers. He jerked his head towards the door and Bacheet followed him out.
They were half-way back to the compound before Ryder broke the silence. ‘What happened, Bacheet?’ Bacheet looked innocently uncomprehending, but Ryder was certain that he had shared Nazeera’s mattress last night and knew every detail of what had transpired during the past twenty-four hours in the ladies’ quarters of Her Britannic Majesty’s consular palace.
‘Tell me what you know,’ he insisted.
‘I am a simple man,’ said Bacheet. ‘I know horses and camels, the cataracts and currents of the Nile. But what do I know of a woman’s heart?’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps you should enquire of these mysteries from one much wiser than I.’
‘Send Nazeera to me.’ Ryder stifled a smile. ‘I shall wait for her at the monkey cages.’
Nazeera approved of Ryder Courtney. Of course, he had the par-boiled look of most ferenghi, and his eyes were a disconcerting and unnatural shade of green, but a man’s looks and age counted for little if he was a good provider. This one’s wives would never starve: he was a man strong in body and resolve, and he would protect his own. Yet there was a gentleness in him. He would never beat his women, unless their behaviour truly invited it. Yes, she approved of him. It was to be regretted that, so far, al-Jamal had not displayed equal good sense.
She came to the animal compound, and whispered to old Ali that he should stay within call but out of earshot. She might be a widow and almost forty years of age, but she was a devout, respectable woman. She had convinced herself that she was the only one who knew of her discreet friendships with Yakub and Bacheet.
She greeted Ryder, asked the blessings of the Prophet for him, touched her heart and lips, then squatted at a polite distance from him. She drew her shawl over the lower part of her face and waited for him to speak.
Ryder asked after her health, and she assured him that she was well. Then he asked after the health of her charges.
‘Al-Jamal is well.’
‘I am happy to hear that. I was worried about her. She has not come to help the women today.’
Nazeera inclined her head slightly but made no comment.
‘Nazeera, is she angry with me?’ he asked.
She drew a sharp breath of disapproval. The question lacked even a semblance of subtlety. She should not dignify it with a reply. However, this time she would make allowances for him: after all, he was an infidel.
‘Al-Jamal feels that you took advantage of her trust. She was in need of comfort and counsel so she came to you as a friend, but you behaved like a lecher.’
Bacheet saw Ryder’s face crumple with dismay.
‘Lecher?’ he asked. ‘She is wrong. I bear her great respect and affection. I am not a lecher.’
Nazeera was balanced on a knife edge of loyalty. She could not tell him that the real offence was that they had been discovered not only by the twins but also by the pretty captain. But she liked him enough to give him a light word of comfort. ‘I love her like my own daughter, but she is a young girl and understands nothing, not even her own heart. She will change with the moon and the wind and the current, like a dhow without a captain. When she says she wishes never to see someone again, she means at least until midnight, but probably not until noon tomorrow.’
Ryder pondered this as he offered a morsel of green-cake through the bars of the cage to Lucy, the vervet monkey. She was due to give birth at any moment. She seized his wrist and licked the last crumbs from his fingers.
‘What should I do, Nazeera?’ He asked.
She shook her head. Men were such children. ‘Anything you do now will only make matters worse. Do nothing. I will tell her how much you are suffering. Most young girls like to hear that. When it is time to do so we will speak again.’
Ryder was much cheered, by this offer of assistance. ‘But what of Saffron? Why has she not come to help Amber?’
‘Filfil feels as strongly about your behaviour as her eldest sister.’ Filfil was the Arabic word for pepper, and also Saffron’s nickname. ‘She also has expressed an intention never to speak to you again. She says that she wishes to die.’
Ryder looked alarmed again. ‘A single kiss, and a fairly chaste one at that. Now she wants to die?’
‘Long ago she chose you as her future husband. She has even discussed the details with me. I should warn you now that she will never allow you to have more than one wife.’
Ryder burst out in incredulous laughter. ‘What a sweet and funny child she is, but a child nevertheless.’
‘In a few short years she will be of marriageable age,’ Nazeera did not smile, ‘and she has made her plans.’
Ryder laughed again, but this time with a note of trepidation. ‘Nazeera, I do not wish to encourage her to believe in the impossible, but nor do I wish to hurt her. Will you give her my message? Will you tell her that there is important work for her to do? I need her here.’
‘I will tell her, Effendi,’ Nazeera rose to her feet and bowed, ‘but she will need more encouragement than that to forgive your infidelity. But now I must go to help al-Zahra.’ Amber’s Arabic name meant ‘the Flower’. ‘We can never make enough of the green-cake to feed so many hungry mouths.’
After sh
e had gone Ryder lingered a few minutes longer at the monkey cage, pondering his predicaments. Lucy perched at the bars, belly bulging between her knees, and offered her head to his caress. She loved to be scratched behind the ears, and to have her fur searched for vermin. At last Ryder sighed and made to leave the cage. Lucy seized his hand as he tried to pull it out through the bars, and sank her sharp white fangs into his thumb.
‘You creature, you!’ He cuffed her lightly. She shrieked, as though in mortal anguish, and shot to the top of the cage where she gibbered at him furiously.
‘A plague on you, and all female wiles!’ he scolded, and sucked his thumb as he left the enclosure to go down to the harbour. Today Jock McCrump hoped to complete the repairs to the hull and engine, and he was planning to take the Ibis out on her trials.
Penrod stood on the parapet of the forward redoubt on the riverbank opposite Tutti Island. He stamped on the sandbags to test their solidity. As the stores of dhurra were used up he had the empty sacks filled and worked into weak points in the fortifications. ‘That will do!’ he told the Egyptian sergeant in charge of the work detail. ‘Now we need a few more timber baulks in the embrasures of the gun pits.’ Under General Gordon’s orders, he was stripping the abandoned buildings, and using their timbers to strengthen the fortifications.
He strode along the top of the sandbagged wall, pausing every fifty or hundred paces to survey the riverbank below. He had placed marker pegs in the strip of muddy earth between the foot of the wall and the edge of the water. A month ago the Nile had lapped the wall three feet from the top. Two weeks ago a few inches of mud had appeared at the foot of the wall. Now the strip of bank was six feet wide. Each day the river was falling. Within the next few months it would enter the stage of Low Nile. This was what the Dervish were waiting for. The wide banks would dry out to give a safe mooring for the dhows ferrying their legions across the river, and a firm footing from which to launch a final assault on the city.