The Sultan's Daughter

by Dennis Wheatley

  For the first few days Roger remained too lethargic to think of much besides his miraculous preservation, Zanthé’s love and her devotion to him, the kindness of the Sarodopulouses and the joy of having his recovery aided by security, quiet and lazing in the shade of the terrace watching little green lizards darting from place to place along the sunlit balustrade. But, as his mental faculties returned to him, he began again to enjoy speculating with his host on the course of the war.

  As usual, Sarodopulous’s agents had kept him well informed; so he was able to tell Roger of the major events that had taken place in Europe up till about eight weeks earlier.

  Austria had dragged her feet in the matter of actually committing her Armies to the new war of the Second Coalition. Although already negotiating an offensive alliance with Russia, Turkey and Britain in the winter, she had allowed both Piedmont and Naples to be overrun by the French without lifting a finger, and in the early spring had still shown great reluctance to take positive action. At length it had been forced upon her through the entry of a Russian Army into Austria, under the late Catherine the Great’s famous Commander, General Suvóroff. The French had demanded that, within eight days, the Russians should withdraw from Austrian territory; the Emperor had ignored the demand and it had then been tacitly accepted by the two countries that a state of war existed between them.

  The Directory, made over-confident by the long series of victories won by Bonaparte in Italy, had, regardless of numbers, instructed its principal Commanders—the Republican veteran Jourdan on the borders of Austria, and Masséna in Switzerland—to assume the offensive at once.

  Apparently the strategy of the French had been based on the idea that, if they could secure the bastion of the Alps, they would at any time be able to emerge from it and dictate the situation in the neighbouring plains; so they had given little attention to the upper reaches of the Danube or the Rhine. On March 1st Jourdan crossed the later and on the 6th Masséna moved into the Grissons to expel the bands of anti-French Swiss there, who were eagerly awaiting Austrian support.

  Jourdan, meanwhile, advanced into the Black Forest between the source of the Danube and Lake Constance; so the war seemed to have opened well for the French. But, during the uneasy peace, the Austrian Emperor had been extremely active in reorganising his Army, calling up and training reserves and making every sort of preparation against another outbreak of war. In consequence, he had been able to put into the field two hundred and twenty-five thousand well-equipped troops, which far outnumbered those with which the French could oppose him.

  The first fruits of this numerical superiority were seen on March 21st, in the first collision of the Armies. Jourdan’s thirty-six thousand French clashed head-ón with some seventy-eight thousand Austrians under the Emperor’s most capable General, the Archduke Charles. The French fought courageously, but were forced to give way and retire on the village of Stockach.

  The village was of considerable strategic importance, because the roads from Switzerland and Swabia met there. Rallying his forces there on the 25th, Jourdan decided to advance and give battle. The Archduke also advanced troops in that direction, intending only to make a reconnaissance in force. Confused fighting resulted, which later developed into a most desperate conflict involving both armies fully. Although Jourdan had Lefebvre and St. Cyr among his Divisional Commanders, the French were heavily defeated and a large part of their Army fled in terrible confusion across the plain of Liptingen.

  Jourdan retired with the remnants of his force into the Black Forest, while Masséna’s offensive had been checked and he was being hard pressed in Switzerland by another Austrian Army. At the same time the Allies launched a third powerful Army, consisting of thirty-six thousand Austrians and Suvóroff’s eighteen thousand Russians, into northern Italy. They were opposed there by General Scherer, who had one hundred and two thousand men under him. But the French were widely scattered and Schérer, one of the old-type Republican Generals, was incapable of co-ordinating his forces effectively. The French were driven back over river after river until they were behind the Adda, and there Schérer was relieved of his Command by Moreau.

  Yet even that hero of many victories could not hold the enemy. Suvóroff’s Russians, fighting like tigers, forced the bridge at Cassano and on April 27th captured General Sérurier with three thousand men. The French had already had to leave the great fortress of Mantua to be besieged and now the Allies entered Milan.

  In southern Italy also the French had suffered a severe blow. Called on for help, General Macdonald left strong garrisons in the three great castles at Naples then marched north with thirty-six thousand men. The withdrawal of his Army at once resulted in a peasant rising, led by a militant Cardinal named Ruffo, and in April there ensued the massacre of the Neapolitans who had collaborated with the French. To complete this tale of woe for the Republic, although their garrison on Malta continued to hold out, Corfu was captured from them by a combined Russo-Turkish Fleet towards the end of April.

  Another matter about which Sarodopulous told Roger was the ending of the Conference of Rastatt, and how the manner of it had excited indignation in every Court in Europe. Ever since the late autumn of ’97 the French plenipotentiaries had remained at Rastatt, negotiating with Austria and a horde of German and Italian petty Sovereigns, on the final clauses to be inserted in the Treaty of Campo Formio. By that treaty, the Austrians conceded to the French the Germanic territories up to the left bank of the Rhine and recognised the Cisalpine Republic, which embraced the greater part of northern Italy. The object of the Conference had been to compensate such Princes as had been dispossessed of their territories by giving them others.

  The plenipotentiaries chosen by the Directory had been the most vulgar, brutal type of die-hard revolutionaries. Making capital out of Bonaparte’s recently concluded victorious Italian campaign, they had behaved with the utmost arrogance and had acted throughout like bullies rather than diplomats. On several occasions the Austrian plenipotentiaries had withdrawn in disgust, but the French had kept the Conference going with the Princes and Grand Dukes on the excuse that their future status could not be left unsettled. After sitting for a year the Conference became a complete farce, for by then a French Army was besieging the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine and, when it surrendered, the Emperor decided that no possible good could come of continuing the negotiations.

  But the French plenipotentiaries refused to depart. Even when Austria and France became openly at war, and after the Archduke Charles’s victory at Stockach, they still remained there, chaffering with the Princes and seeking to undermine the Empire by tempting them with offers of territories which were to be taken from the Church lands ruled by the German Prince-Bishops.

  At last, on April 8th, the Emperor formally decreed the Conference at an end and annulled all its acts. The Germans withdrew but the French protested violently and stayed on until a military force was sent to turn them out. On the evening of April 28th they left with their families, in three coaches. Just outside the town they were set upon by a regiment of Szekler Hussars and dragged from their coaches. Two of the plenipotentiaries were murdered in the presence of their horrified wives and the third escaped only because he was left for dead after a terrible beating. That the men themselves had been brutal ex-terrorists was beside the point, and on all sides Austria was condemned for this shocking breach of the immunity always accorded to diplomatic representatives.

  By the end of June Roger was still very much an invalid physically, but sufficiently alert mentally to give some thought to his future and that of Zanthé’s. Since their brief conversation on the morning after they had escaped from Acre, neither of them had mentioned marriage; but he had introduced her to the Sarodopulouses as his fiancée and he felt sure that she expected him to make her his wife as soon as he was fully recovered.

  His recollections of her as a mistress were such that, although his health debarred him, for the time being, from resuming his role of her love
r, he had begun to long for the time when they could again share a divan. Even so, being no callow youth and having been the lover of a number of beautiful women, he could not help wondering for how long the passionate attraction between them would last. Through the years Georgina had never failed to rouse him, but hers was a case apart. Moreover he knew there to be a great deal in her contention that their continued physical desire for one another was largely due to the fact that they had never lived together for more than a few months at a time, and even then at long intervals.

  In Zanthé’s case, although he reproached himself for thinking of it, there was a special reason why her attraction for him should decline more swiftly than would that of other beautiful women he had known. When he had met her ten months ago she had been seventeen but by European standards looked to be in her early twenties. She was now eighteen, but in England would not have been put down as less than twenty-five. The cause was her half-Eastem blood and her wholly Eastern upbringing. Eastern women aged much more swiftly than Europeans and Zanthé also had the normal Eastern woman’s love of rich foods and sweetmeats. With a true fatalist’s disregard for her figure, she ate Rahat Lacoum, sugared nuts and preserved fruits by the pound. It would have been as agonising for her to deprive herself of them as it would have been for a Frenchman to deny himself wine; so the odds were that by the time she was thirty she would, like most upper-class women of that age in the East, be able only to waddle.

  There was also the factor that, unless Georgina would change her mind and have him, Roger had not wanted to marry again; at least, not for another few years and then only should he find someone to whom he was greatly attracted and who would also make a suitable step-mother for his little daughter Susan. And how could Zanthé, with the best will in the world, be expected to bring up a young English girl fittingly and launch her in Society?

  On the other hand, physical attractions apart, Zanthé was of a most lovable disposition, had been well educated by her French mother and was quick to learn. With such qualities, Roger had no doubt that she would take Susan to her heart, prove as good-tempered a wife as any man could wish for and perhaps, after a while, acquire the manners and attitude of mind of an English lady of quality.

  In any case, the more he thought about it the more convinced he became that honour demanded that he take a gamble on the future. Zanthé had twice saved his life and now, having severed herself from her own people, all she had in the world were some valuable jewels and himself. Sarodopulous had examined her jewels and had declared that, if sold, they would provide her with a handsome dowry; so, had Roger decided against marrying her, she could have found another husband. But he believed that it would break her heart to have to do so, and after all she had been to him he could not bring himself to do that.

  As a result of these deliberations, he broached the subject to her, one afternoon during the first week in July, on the score that, as in another month or six weeks he hoped to be fully restored to health, they ought to begin making plans. Just as he expected, she at once raised the question of religion. He had no intention of becoming a Mohammedan and had thought it probable that, as they would in due course be going to make their home in Europe, she would consent to becoming a Christian.

  He was not disappointed in that but, to his surprise and dismay, he met with most determined opposition when, evading the awkward implications of saying he was Church of England, he declared himself to be a Protestant. Zanthé’s mother had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, so she respected that faith and was perfectly willing to subscribe to it in order to marry him. But she had been taught that Protestants of all denominations were as evil as Jews and was greatly shocked to learn that Roger was what Christians of her mother’s faith termed a ‘heretic’.

  During the next few days they had several sessions in which they argued the matter passionately. Zanthé suggested that both of them should become Catholics, but Roger would not hear of it. He was far from being a religious man but, like most Englishmen of his day, had been brought up to regard the Pope as anti-Christ and all his works as of the Devil. Such beliefs, when inculcated young, die hard, and he was as fully convinced that he would lose his hope of salvation should he become a Catholic as she was that she would lose hers should she become a Protestant.

  The resistance she displayed might have caused another man to have seized on it as an excuse to refuse to pursue matters further, but in Roger it only aroused a determination to make her his wife. He suggested that they should be content with a civil marriage, which was now the normal form of ceremony in Republican France. But Zanthé would not hear of it. She protested that, unless their marriage were blessed either by a Muslim imam or a Catholic priest, it would be no marriage in the sight of Heaven. Then, in tears, she declared that, if Roger were not prepared to sacrifice his scruples to make her his wife, she loved him so dearly that she would accept the terrible humiliation of accompanying him back to France as his concubine.

  This impasse continued for some days until on July 11th Roger was given other things to think about. On that day Sir Sidney Smith’s Squadron appeared off Alexandria, convoying an armada of transports carrying a considerable Turkish Army. For the past week Roger had been going for short rides, accompanied by a groom. In view of this emergency he felt that, to maintain his status as an aide-de-camp to the General-in-Chief, he must, although still far from strong, offer his services.

  Ignoring the protests of Zanthé and the Sarodopulouses, he rode into Alexandria and reported to Marmont, who was now in command there. The young General was a gunner. He was one of Bonaparte’s oldest friends and had served with him at the siege of Toulon, where Roger had also met him. Their greeting was cordial but, after one look at Roger, Marmont declared him unfit for active service. However, he said that he would welcome his help in his bureau; so Roger was given a desk and set about dealing with urgent administrative matters.

  Couriers had been sent post-haste to Bonaparte at Ghizeh. They reached him on the 15th and he at once set out for Rahmaniyeh. From there, he ordered a concentration of troops headed by Kléber’s Division, then at Rosetta. By the 21st he had at his disposal an Army nearly as large as that of the Turks, which was reported to number ten thousand men. Meanwhile the Turks had landed on the peninsula of Aboukir, massacred the garrison of the small fort there and dug themselves in behind a double line of entrenchments.

  On July 25th Bonaparte attacked. Lannes, amazingly recovered from his wounds, and d’Estaing outflanked the village which formed the strongpoint centre of the first line of Turkish defences, then Murat followed with his cavalry and drove a great number of the Turks into the sea.

  During the terrible heat of midday Bonaparte gave his troops two hours’ rest. He then sent them in against the Turks’ second line, which had a strong redoubt in its centre. Again the French charged with tremendous élan but this time the attack failed, largely owing to the supporting fire of the Turkish gunboats that had been brought close inshore. The Turks, confident of victory, surged out of their entrenchments, but delayed to butcher the wounded French and mutilate the dead. Seeing them to be scattered while engaged in this barbarous business, Bonaparte ordered another attack. Catching the Turks at a disadvantage, the French reached and seized the second line of trenches. Murat, with his cavalry and camelry, again drove the fleeing Turks into the surf and hundreds of them were either sabred or pursued into deep water until they drowned. Heavy cannon was then brought up to bombard the small fortress into which the surviving Turks had crammed themselves. It became a massacre. After two days, two thousand of the Turks surrendered—all that was left of an Army of ten thousand.

  Roger saw nothing of this, but received gruesome accounts of it while working at Alexandria in Marmont’s office. The emergency over, he returned to Sarodopulous’s villa, a little tired from his exertions but otherwise in good heart, to continue his convalescence.

  It was on the day after his return that he had a most unnerving experience. While sitting on
the privy, he felt something furry tickling his left buttock. Leaping up, he found it to be a large scorpion. At his sudden action the poisonous beast fell off on to the floor. Next moment he had crushed it with his boot; but he stood there for a few moments, white and shaking. Had it stung him he might have died in agony. Shortly afterwards, on returning to the villa, he told Zanthé of his lucky escape and added:

  ‘This is the most accursed country. I managed to escape from it once. When next a chance comes for me to do so I’ll take it, and never, never will I return. Not even wild horses shall drag me back to it again.’

  Three days later it so happened that he was given a chance to leave Egypt. The fortnight he had spent working in Mar-mont’s office had proved no undue strain upon him. On the contrary, he was inclined to think that, before it, he had allowed Zanthé and the Sarodopulouses to pamper him too much; for on his return to the villa he felt considerably fitter. In the early mornings, before the sun got too hot, he was going out riding on his own and ever further afield.

  On the morning of July 30th, having ridden some five miles along the coast to the west, he trotted to the top of a big sand-dune and saw below, in the little bay, a group of men. A British sloop-of-war was lying about half a mile off-shore and the men had obviously landed from her. At a glance he saw what they were about.