by Wilbur Smith
‘And the English girl’s Arabic name is al-Zahra. I am told that she is young and very beautiful. Is that so, my lord?’
‘It is so, Bakhita.’ He was not surprised that she knew. Bakhita knew everything.
‘Then she is the one we spoke of. The girl of your own people who will be your wife. I am happy for you.’
‘We will still be friends, you and I.’
‘Friends and more than that,’ she said softly. ‘Whenever there is something that you should know I will write to you.’
‘I will come to see you.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘May I see your face once more before I go, Bakhita?’
‘It would not be wise.’
He went to her and knelt in front of her. ‘I want to see your lovely face again, to look into your eyes and to kiss your lips one last time.’
‘I beg of you, lord of my heart, spare me this thing.’
He reached out and touched her veil. ‘May I lift it?’
She was silent for a while. Then she sighed. ‘Perhaps, after all, it would be easier this way,’ she said.
He lifted the veil and stared at her. Slowly she watched the horror dawn in his eyes.
‘Bakhita, oh, my dear heart, what has happened to you?’ His voice trembled with pity.
‘It was the smallpox. Allah has punished me for loving you.’ The pockmarks were still fresh and livid. Her luminous eyes shone in the ruins of the face that had once been so lovely. ‘Remember me as I once was,’ she pleaded.
‘I will remember only your courage and your kindness, and that you are my friend,’ he whispered, and bent forward to kiss her lips.
‘It is you who are kind,’ she replied. Then she reached up and covered her face with the veil. ‘Now you must leave me.’
He stood up. ‘I shall return.’
‘Perhaps you will, Effendi.’
But they both knew he never would.
The aggagiers found the corpse of Kabel al-Din lying in the courtyard beside the abandoned yoke of the shebba. Osman Atalan called all his men to horse and for many days they scoured both banks of the river. Osman was in a murderous mood when at last he returned to Omdurman without having found any trace of the fugitive. This was a bad time for the women to come to him and tell him that al-Zahra was also missing.
‘How long has she been gone?’ he demanded.
‘Eight days, exalted Khalif.’
‘The same time as Abadan Riji,’ he exclaimed. ‘What of the woman al-Jamal?’
‘She is still in the zenana, mighty Atalan.’
‘Bring her to me, and her servant also.’
They dragged in the two women and flung them at his feet.
‘Where is your sister?’
‘Lord, I do not know,’ Rebecca replied.
Osman looked at al-Noor. ‘Beat her,’ he ordered. ‘Beat her until she answers truthfully.’
‘Mighty Khalif!’ Nazeera cried. ‘If you beat her she will lose your child. It may be a son. A son with golden hair like his mother and the lionheart of his sire.’ Osman looked startled. He hesitated, staring at Rebecca’s belly. Then he snarled at his aggagiers, ‘Leave us. Do not return until I call you.’
They hurried out of the room, relieved to be sent away, for when a khalif and emir of the Beja is angry all men around him are in jeopardy.
‘Disrobe,’ he ordered. Rebecca rose to her feet and let her robe drop to her feet. Osman stared at her white, protruding belly. Then he went to her and placed his hand upon it.
Move! Please, my darling, move! Rebecca begged silently, and the foetus kicked.
Osman jerked away his hand and jumped back.
‘In God’s Name, it is alive.’ He stared in awe at the bulge. ‘Cover yourself!’
While Nazeera helped her to dress, Osman tugged furiously in his beard as he considered his dilemma. Suddenly he let out another angry shout and his aggagiers trooped back into the room. ‘This woman.’ He pointed at Nazeera. ‘Beat her until al-Jamal tells us the whereabouts of her sister.’
Two of them held Nazeera’s arms and Mooman Digna grabbed the cloth at the back of her neck and ripped it open to the knees. Al-Noor hefted the kurbash in his right hand. The first blow raised a red stripe across her shoulder-blades.
‘Yi! Yi!’ screeched Nazeera, and tried to throw herself flat, but the aggagiers held her.
‘Yi!’ she howled.
‘Wait, Lord. I will tell you everything.’ Rebecca could bear it no longer.
‘Stop!’ Osman ordered. ‘Tell me.’
‘A stranger came and led al-Zahra away,’ Rebecca gabbled. ‘I think they went north towards Metemma and Egypt, but I cannot be certain of it. Nazeera had nothing to do with this.’
‘Why did you not go with them?’
‘You are my master, and the father of my son,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I will leave you only when you kill me or send me away.’
‘Beat the old whore again.’ Osman waved to assuage his fury without endangering the well-being of the son who might have blue eyes and golden hair.
Rebecca clutched her belly with both hands and cried, ‘I can feel the distress of my son within me. If you beat this woman, who is as my own mother, I shall not be able to hold the boy longer in my womb.’
‘Hold!’ Osman shouted. He was torn. He wanted to see blood. He drew his sword and Nazeera quailed under his gaze. Then he rushed at the stone column in the centre of the room and struck it with such force that sparks showered from the steel.
‘Take these two women to the mosque at the oasis of Gedda.’ It was a lonely place run by a few old mullahs fifty leagues out in the desert, a religious retreat for the devout, and for students of the Noble Koran. ‘If the child that al-Jamal brings forth is a female, kill all three of them. If it is a son, bring them back to me and make certain they remain alive, especially my son.’
Five months later, lying on a rug spread on the floor of her cell at Gedda, while Nazeera attended her and the mullahs waited at the door, Rebecca gave birth to her first child. As soon as she felt the slippery burden she had carried for so long rush out of her, she struggled up on her elbows. Nazeera held the infant in her arms, all shiny with blood and mucus, still bound to Rebecca by the thick cord.
‘What is it?’ Rebecca gasped. ‘Is it a boy? Sweet God, let it be a boy.’
Nazeera cackled like a broody hen and presented the child for her inspection. ‘This one is a little stallion.’ With her forefinger she tickled the baby’s tiny penis. ‘See how hard he stands already. You could crack an egg on the end of it. Beware anyone in skirts who stands in this one’s way.’
The mullahs of Gedda sent word to Omdurman, and within days twenty aggagiers headed by al-Noor came to escort them back to the Holy City. When they reached the gates of Osman Atalan’s palace, he was waiting to meet them. During the past five months his fury had had time to abate. However, he was trying not to appear too benign, and stood with one hand on the hilt of his sword, scowling hideously.
Al-Noor dismounted and took the child from Rebecca’s arms. He was wrapped in cotton swaddling clothes and his face was covered to protect him from the sunlight and the dust. ‘Mighty Atalan, behold your son!’
Osman glared at al-Noor. ‘This I must see for myself.’
He took the bundle and placed it in the crook of his left arm. With his right hand he unwrapped it. He stared at the tiny creature. His head was bald, except for a single copper-tinted quiff. His skin was the colour of goat’s milk with a splash of coffee added to it. His eyes were the colour of the waters of the Bahr al-Azrek, the Blue Nile. Osman opened the lower folds of his covering, and his scowl slipped, hovered on the verge of a smile.
The infant felt the cool river breeze fan his genitals, and let fly a yellow stream that splashed down his father’s brightly patched jibba.
Osman let forth a startled roar of laughter. ‘Behold! This is my son. As he pisses on me, so he shall piss on my enemies.’ He held the child high, and he said, ‘T
his is my son, Ahmed Habib abd Atalan. Approach and show him respect.’ One after another his aggagiers came forward and, with a full salaam, greeted Ahmed, who kicked and gurgled with amusement. Osman had not glanced in the direction of the two waiting women, but now he handed the infant to al-Noor, and said offhandedly, ‘Give the child to his mother, and tell her that she will return to her quarters in the harem, and there await my pleasure.’
Over the following eighteen months Rebecca saw Osman only three or four times, and then at a distance as he came and went on affairs of war and state. Whenever he returned he would send al-Noor to fetch Ahmed, and would keep the child away for hours on end, until it was time for him to be fed.
The child flourished. Rebecca fancied that she saw in him a resemblance to her own father, and to Amber, which made her loneliness more acute. She had only Nazeera and the baby: the other women of the harem were silly, scatter-brained creatures. She missed her sisters, and thought of them when she awoke to another empty day, and when she composed herself to sleep with Ahmed at her bosom.
Then, slowly, she became aware that she wanted Osman Atalan to send for her. Her body had recovered from the damage of childbirth, except for the stretchmarks across her belly and the soft sag of her breasts. Sometimes when she awoke in the night and could not sleep again she thought of the men she had known, but her mind returned variably to Osman. She needed somebody to talk to, somebody to be with, somebody to make love to her, and nobody had done that with the same skill as Osman Atalan.
Then the rumour in the harem was that there was to be a great new jihad, a war against the Christian infidels of Abyssinia. Osman Atalan would lead the army, and Allah would go with him. Ahmed was now toddling and talking. She hoped that Osman would take them with him. She remembered how it had been at Gallabat when she had conceived. She thought about that a great deal. She had vivid dreams about it, of how he had looked and how he had felt inside her. Her loneliness was an ache deep within her. She devoted herself entirely to the child, but the nights were long.
Then the news ran through the harem. Osman was taking three wives and eight concubines with him to the jihad; Rebecca was chosen as one of the eight. Ahmed and Nazeera would go with her, but none of Osman’s other children. She understood that he was interested solely in the child, and that she and Nazeera were merely Ahmed’s nursemaids. Her empty body ached.
They rode to the Abyssinian border forty thousand strong, a mighty warlike array. Osman left Rebecca and his other women at Gallabat. He rushed into Abyssinia and struck with all his cavalry at the passes.
The Abyssinians were also a warlike nation, and warriors to the blood. Although they had been alerted by Ryder Courtney’s warning, even they could not stand before the ferocity of Osman Atalan’s attack. He drove hard for the mountain passes at Minkti and Atbara, and seized them against desperate and courageous resistance. He slaughtered all the Abyssinian prisoners that he took, and led his army into the Minkti pass. They toiled up through bitter cold.
Ras Adal, the Abyssinian general, had not expected them to come so high and he made the mistake of allowing them to debouch unopposed on to the plain of Debra Sin before he attacked them.
The battle was fierce and bloody, but at last Ras Adal broke before the savagery of Osman’s assault. He and all his army were driven into the river at their backs and most of them drowned. The entire province of Amhara fell to Osman, and he was able to advance unopposed to capture Gondar, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.
Gondar was the city in which Osman intended to set up his own capital, but he had never experienced a winter in the Abyssinian highlands. His Beja were men of the sands and deserts: they shivered, sickened and died. Osman abandoned his conquests, sacked and burned Gondar and led his men back to Gallabat. He arrived on a litter, drawn by his own warhorse, al-Buq. The cold of the mountains had entered his lungs and he was a sick man. They laid him on his angareb and waited for him to die.
Osman wheezed for breath. He choked and hawked and spat up slugs of greenish-yellow phlegm, ‘Send for al-Jamal,’ he ordered.
Rebecca came to his bedside and nursed him. She dosed him with a brew of selected herbs and roots that Nazeera prepared, and sweated him with hot stones. When his crisis came she brought Ahmed to him. ‘You cannot die, mighty Atalan. Your son needs his father.’
It took several weeks, but at last Osman was on the road to recovery. During his convalescence he sent for Rebecca on most evenings and resumed the long conversations with her as though they had never ceased. Rebecca was lonely no more.
As he grew stronger, he made love to her again, possessing her masterfully and completely, filling the aching emptiness deep inside her. He declared Ahmed his heir and, in the unpredictable fashion in which he often did things, sent for the mullah and made Rebecca his wife.
It was only when she lay beside him on the first night as his wife that she could bring herself to face the truth squarely. He had made her his slave, in body and in heart. He had snuffed out the last spark of her once indomitable spirit. The suffering he inflicted upon her so casually had become a drug that she could not live without. In a bizarre and unnatural way he had forced her to love him. She knew she could never be without him now.
Emperor John and all his subjects were infuriated by the capture of the province of Amhara and the sack of Gondar. With an army of more than a hundred thousand behind him he came down upon Gallabat to take his revenge. He sent a warning to Osman Atalan that he was coming, so he might not be seen as a sneaking coward. Osman decapitated his messenger and sent the man’s head back to him.
Heavily outnumbered, Osman transformed the town into a huge defensive zareba. He placed the women and children in the centre, and stood to meet the Abyssinian fury. It burst upon him. Al-Noor’s division of four thousand men was almost wiped out, and al-Noor himself was gravely wounded. The exultant Abyssinians broke into the centre of the zareba where the women were, and the rape and slaughter began.
When Osman realized the day was lost, he leapt on to al-Buq, and spurred him forward, going for the head of the serpent. The Emperor had once been a legendary warrior, but he was a young man no longer. In his leopardskins, bronze cuirassier and the gold crown of the Negus on his head, he was tall and regal but his beard was more silver than black. He drew his sword when he saw Osman charging at him through the carnage. The Dervish commander cut down the bodyguards that tried to interpose themselves. He had learnt from Penrod Ballantyne, and he never took his eye from the Emperor’s blade. His riposte was like a bolt of silver lightning.
‘The Emperor is dead. The Negus has gone!’ The cry went up from the Abyssinian host. The moment of complete victory had been transformed into defeat and rout by a single stroke of Osman Atalan’s long blade.
Osman rode back to Omdurman with the heads of Emperor John and his generals carried on the lances of his bodyguard. They planted them at the entrance to Khalifat Abdullahi’s palace.
Seven months later Rebecca gave birth to her second child, a girl. Osman was not sufficiently interested in a female to bother himself with a name for her. Rebecca named her Kahruba, which in Arabic means Amber. After some months Osman forgave her for bearing a girl, and resumed their nightly conversations and lovemaking. When Kahruba turned into a pretty little thing with smoked-honey hair, he sometimes stroked her head. Once he even took her up on the front of his saddle and ran al-Buq at full gallop. Kahruba squealed with glee, which caused Osman to remark as he handed her back to Rebecca, ‘You erred grievously, wife. You should have made her a boy, for she has the heart of one.’
None of his other daughters received any sign of his affection. They were not allowed to speak to him, or to touch him. When Kahruba was six years old, at the feast of Kurban Bairam, she left the women and, with one finger in her mouth, she went to where Osman sat among his aggagiers. He watched her coldly as she approached. Undeterred she scrambled on to his lap.
Osman was flabbergasted. His aggagiers had difficulty in maintai
ning their sober expressions. Osman scowled at them as though daring any to laugh. Then he deliberately selected a sweetmeat from the bowl in front of him and placed it in the child’s mouth. She retaliated by throwing both arms round his neck. However, this was going too far. Osman replaced her on the ground and slapped her little bottom. ‘Be off with you, you shameless vixen!’ he said.
Mr Hiram Steven Maxim sat on a low stool in the brilliant sunshine of the Nile delta. In front of him on a steel tripod was an ungainly-looking weapon with a thick water-jacketed barrel. On his left side stood a five-gallon water can, connected to the weapon by a sturdy rubber hose. At his right hand dozens of wooden crates of ammunition were piled high. His three assistants hovered about him. Despite the heat they wore thick tweed jackets and flat cloth caps. Mr Maxim had stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and his bowler hat was pushed to the back of his head. Since he had come from America to settle in England, he had adopted British ways and dress.
Now he rolled the unlit cigar from one side of his jaw to the other. ‘Major Ballantyne,’ he sang out. His accent still proclaimed that he had been born in Sangerville, Maine. ‘Would you be good enough to note the time?’ At a short distance behind him was a small group of uniformed officers. In the front rank stood the sirdar, General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a stocky, powerful figure flanked by his staff.
‘General, sir?’ Penrod glanced at Kitchener for permission to reply.
‘Carry on, Ballantyne.’ Kitchener nodded.
‘Time mark!’ Penrod called out. Six hundred yards ahead of the machine-gun, at the foot of a high dun-coloured sand dune, was a line of fifty wooden models of the human form. They were dressed in Dervish jibbas and carried wooden spears. Mr Maxim leant forward and took hold of the firing handles. By squeezing the finger-grips he lifted the safety catch off the firing button.
‘Commencing firing, now!’ He thrust his thumbs down on the trigger button. The gun shuddered and roared. The separate shots were too rapid for the ear to distinguish. It was a prolonged thunder like a high waterfall in spate. The recoil of each shot kicked back the mechanism, and ejected the spent cartridge cases in a blur of glittering bronze. The forward stroke of the action reloaded the chamber, cocked and fired. It was too fast for the eye to follow the sequence.