by M. M. Kaye
Love and kindness…Once there had been so much of both, but where had it all gone? Of all the sisters and brothers and cousins she had laughed and played with, only a handful now remained her friends—those few who had elected to side with Bargash. Would she ever be happy again, wondered Salmé? Would any of them, as long as Majid sat on the throne that Bargash coveted, and Cholé nursed her grievance against one brother and espoused the cause of the other?
Bargash would never give up; never rest until he had obtained what he desired—he had always been like that, and Salmé knew that he could not change: any more than Majid could change, or beautiful, embittered, unforgiving Cholé. Yet she had to admit that until a short while ago she herself had found the emotional, semi-farcical atmosphere of plot and counter-plot exciting and stimulating, for it had helped her to forget the sadness of her father’s tragic home-coming and the death of her beloved mother. Bargash and Cholé together had snatched her up out of her grey, twilight brooding into a brightly-coloured world of conspiracy and high romance that seemed more than half playacting, and she had found the whispering and scheming and the tense, uplifting sense of being involved in great affairs wildly exhilarating and as heady as the fumes of bang. She had thought it all a great adventure until…until the intrusion of the foreign women.
Salmé lifted her chin from her palm and spoke to her sister; her soft voice unexpectedly loud in the quiet room:
“Why do they come here, Cholé? Why do you encourage them to come, when you don’t even like them?”
Cholé turned her lovely head, and it seemed that she too had been thinking of the foreign women, for she laid down the embroidery with which her hands had been busied and replied instantly: “Because we need help and they can give it.”
“How? How can that possibly help us?”
“In more ways than you would think. For one thing, they talk; and their talk often tells us a great deal about how their menfolk think, which is very useful to us. They also hear things that we don’t, and carry news to our friends by ways that would be much too dangerous for us to use. And as they support our brother Bargash, they…’ She hesitated, and then shook her head and picked up her embroidery again.
Salmé said urgently: “They what? What else can they do for us?”
“Nothing else,” said Cholé shortly, and turned to address one of her waiting women, when a mischievous childish voice spoke from the far end of the room where little Abd-il-Aziz lay on his stomach among a pile of cushions, eating sugared almonds and playing with a marmoset: “Of course there is something else: I’ll tell you, if Cholé won’t.”
“Aziz!” Cholé had forgotten that this small brother was present, and her voice was half imperative and half imploring, while her eyes flashed a warning that even a child could read. The boy glanced at the five other women in the room, and shrugged and turned back to his pet: “Oh, all right. But I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about, because everyone in my brother’s house knows. They’ve been going on and on about it. Even Efembi says that the only thing he doesn’t know yet is the price; though Karim thinks—”
“Aziz!”
“Don’t fuss, Cholé! I wasn’t going to say anything. Who was the new white woman who came with your foreign friends this morning? We saw her from my window when their carriage came to your door. She’s so tall that Karim thought you were entertaining a man in disguise, but I told him you wouldn’t dare: not in the middle of the morning with all the slaves looking on. But she walked just like one. Like this…”
The boy sprang up and strode across the room with his chin up and his shoulders back, until his foot caught in the fringe of a carpet and he tripped and fell, and rolled over, laughing. “Just like that! except that she didn’t fall. I wish she had. I’d have laughed and laughed!”
“Then she would have thought you shockingly bad-mannered,” scolded Salmé, “and cruel, too. People shouldn’t laugh when others get hurt.”
“Why not, if it’s funny? That fat slave of Mégé’s fell down the stairs with a big jar of boiling water last week, and you should have heard the noise she made! The water splashed all over her, and she rolled about and squalled like a scalded cat, and everyone laughed like anything. You’d have laughed too, if you’d been there.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” protested Salmé, shuddering. “I don’t like to see people hurt. It is only you others who—” She stopped and bit her lip, aghast at the words she had been about to say:’—who are Arabs of Oman, and descended from the Imams and Seyyids of Muscat and Oman who loved violence and cruelty and cunning.’ Yet she too was of the same blood. Though in her the gentleness of her sweet-tempered Circassian mother would seem to have outweighed the fiery strain of her father’s line, since she could never find pleasure in another’s pain.
Looking from her small brother to her beautiful, implacable half-sister, Salmé was conscious of a cold shiver of apprehension. Was it Majid’s murder that was being planned? No, it could not be that! Cholé had promised…Bargash had sworn…
Yet there had been that frightening incident when a boat in which their brother Majid sat to take the evening air had passed within range of the seaward-facing windows of Bargash’s house, and had been fired upon—by Bargash himself! A fusillade of shots had spattered into the quiet water of the harbour, and the Heir-Apparent, taxed with an attempt to assassinate the Sultan, had sworn that he had no knowledge of who was in the boat, because it was dusk, and that he had fired as a joke with the sole intention of startling the unknown occupants. Since no one had been hurt his story had been accepted—by all save Majid, who had resolutely refused to receive him until forced to do so under strong pressure from the French Consul, backed by the Commandant of the French forces on the East Coast of Africa, who had been visiting the island in a warship of thirty guns.
Until this moment it had not occurred to Salmé to doubt Bargash’s word, or to regard the incident as anything more than the foolish prank he had asserted it to be, because she had been convinced that her dashing brother would never have missed such an easy mark with half-a-dozen successive shots had he really intended any harm. It was this, rather than his denials, that had reassured her. But now, thinking back, she found herself uncertain; and because she was uncertain she became afraid. Her fear forced her abruptly to her feet and took her across the room to kneel on the wide stone ledge of the window embrasure and peer downward through the carved lattice-work of the wooden shutter.
Beit-el-Tani, like Bargash’s house, faced the sea, and looking out at the blue harbour water that broke on the beach a stone-throw away, Salmé saw a small boat passing. It was almost as though she had conjured it up from her anxious thoughts, for it was just such a boat as Majid had used. A Hindu trader lolled in the stem while his slaves bent to the oars, and she could see their faces quite clearly.
The sight brought her a large measure of reassurance, because it seemed to her that anyone should have been able to hit them with a well-aimed pebble, let alone a shot from a pistol, so that Bargash must have spoken the truth after all—or half the truth, at all events, for she had little doubt that he had known perfectly well who was in the boat and had meant to give Majid a fright! But there was no real harm in that; not if it had only been a joke. But had it been? The sun had not been shining then, as it was now, and without the daylight…
Once again doubt crept coldly in, whispering that it had been late in the evening and almost dark, and that it would have been easy enough to misjudge the distance of a moving target in the dusk. Could Bargash—had Bargash—?
Salmé drew back sharply from the window and shivered so violently that her teeth chattered, and Cholé, who had been watching her, enquired if she were feeling ill: “You haven’t been looking at all well this morning. You aren’t sickening for a fever, are you?”
Salmé forced a smile and protested that she was perfectly well, but Cholé seemed unconvinced, and dismissing her women she sent the reluctant Abd-il-Aziz back to his brother’
s house, and as soon as they had gone, turned again to her half-sister and said: “What are you afraid of, Salmé? Tell me.”
“I’m not. I mean…’ Salmé twisted her small hands together so that the heavy bracelets struck against each other like bells, and said unhappily: “It’s—it’s only that I sometimes wonder where all this plotting and deceit is leading us.”
Cholé laughed and said lightly: “Why, to victory, of course; where else?—for Bargash and all of us. It won’t be long now, and when we have won and he is safely seated in our father’s place we shall have time to be happy again, and you and I will be rewarded with praise and power. Bargash will give us anything we wish for—jewels, dresses, horses, slaves, palaces—we shall only have to ask. You’ll see!”
“And Majid?” asked Salmé in a half-whisper: “What will become of Majid?”
Cholé rose with a swift, angry clash of silver anklets, and said harshly:
“What does it matter? Why should we care what becomes of him? The only thing that matters is to depose him. And soon!”
“Cholé, you would not—you would not?” She could not finish the sentence. She could not put it into words and say baldly: “You would not have him murdered?” But Cholé was looking at her with eyes that were scornful and understanding—and oddly calculating. Cholé could not afford to lose adherents to the cause that she had made her own, and neither could she run the risk of allowing her young half-sister’s sympathies to be aroused on behalf of Majid: Salmé knew too much and was far too tender-hearted. It would be a calamity if she were to change her allegiance and run tattling to Majid. Realizing this, Cholé made a sudden rush, and catching the younger girl into a laughing embrace, hugged her, and then holding her away at arm’s length said gaily: “Do you really think I am such a monster that I would actually plot to murder one of my own brothers? Do you?”
Salmé blushed and laughed and shook her head, reassured and caught once more in the web of her love and admiration for this beautiful, fascinating older sister who had always been so kind to her.
“No, of course I don’t,” she protested. “How could I? It was only…Oh, it was the heat, I suppose; and all the worry…and then having to try and make out what those foreign women were saying. They are very friendly and kind, and they try so hard; but I don’t find it easy to understand them.”
“That needn’t worry you!” said Cholé tartly, releasing her, “for they seldom say anything worth listening to.”
“Why do you dislike them so, Cholé?”
“I should have thought it was obvious. But if you really don’t know, I’ll tell you: because they are foreigners and unbelievers. Because they lack education, refinement and modesty, and because they are ignorant, loud-voiced and shameless. Because they have no manners, and they move and dress without grace and flaunt themselves unveiled in the streets like harlots. And because they smell unpleasant There! Does that satisfy you?”
“I think you’re too hard on them. They can’t help these things, because they don’t know any better. Shouldn’t we try to enlighten them? We could teach them so much and I’m sure they would be grateful for it.”
“No doubt,” said Cholé with a return to hauteur. “But I have no desire for their gratitude and nor do I wish to teach them anything. If they want to receive instruction in the True Faith, I’ve no doubt that the maulvies, if properly approached, would be willing to enlighten their ignorance. But it’s no business of mine to teach these vulgar barbarians how to conduct themselves. I receive them only because Bargash feels that they may be of use to us, and as soon as their usefulness is ended I shall do so no longer. That day cannot come too soon for me!”
She gathered up her embroidery and went away, leaving Salmé to pick up and replace the Chronicles of the Imams and Seyyids of Muscat and Oman in the great carved and gilded chest from which she had taken it an hour ago, after the foreign visitors had left.
14
“Well, what do you think of them?” demanded Cressy eagerly. “Isn’t Princess Cholé the loveliest thing you’ve ever seen? so gracious and elegant, and so—so regal.
“She’s very pretty,” conceded Hero, who had been mentally comparing the Princess with the girl she had seen at The Dolphins’ House; Zorah, whose delicate features and enormous dark eyes seemed to her far more appealing than the Seyyida Chole’s flawless beauty and cold, expressionless gaze. The former might be a harlot and the other a daughter of a Royal House, but if asked to choose between them, most people, decided Hero, would give the palm to Zorah. She said reflectively: “It seems odd that the Princess Chole’s eyes should be almost grey rather than black or brown.”
“Mais non, it is not odd at all,” declared the little Frenchwoman who sat opposite her in the leather-scented shade of the closed carriage: “I am told that many of the old Sultan’s children have eyes of an even lighter colour. It is from their mothers, vous comprenez?”
Thérèse Tissot was small and dark, prettily plump and amazingly chic. Her clothes and her coiffeur were the envy of every other white woman in Zanzibar and it was difficult to make any accurate guess at her age, since she obviously tampered with nature. A combination of rouge, rice-powder and discreetly applied mascara lent her an appearance of youth that was possibly misleading, but though her black eyes were noticeably shrewd and observant, the charm of her smile, her coaxing voice, animated gestures and attractively accented English, could not be denied.
“The sarari—the Sultan’s women,” explained Madame Tissot to Hero, “have a name for the children of Circassian mothers. They call them ‘cats,’ because of their fair skin and eyes; and the other children are jealous of them.”
“But I understood that Salmé‘s mother was a Circassian too? She’s not nearly as fair as her sister, but I suppose she takes after her father. I felt quite sorry for the poor little thing; she has such a sad mouth and seems so shy, and sometimes she looked positively frightened.”
“Frightened?” Mrs Credwell, the fourth occupant of the carriage, looked startled and said nervously: “Of what? Oh, I do trust that die Sultan has not found out about anything.”
“Olivia—please!” Cressy frowned a warning and gestured silently in the direction of the dark-faced driver who sat on the box, and Olivia Credwell said guiltily: “Oh, dear, I quite forgot. It is so difficult to remember that one must guard one’s tongue at all times, and that almost anyone may be an informer or a spy.”
Mrs Credwell was a fair-haired and emotional lady who had been married at seventeen to an elderly bridegroom who had tactlessly succumbed to an attack of typhoid fever during the honeymoon, leaving his widow in poor circumstances. No other offers had come her way, and after fourteen years of unrelieved monotony she had gratefully accepted her sister-in-law’s invitation to spend a season or two in the tropics.
Olivia had thought it so very kind of dear Jane, and was unaware that Hubert’s wife, visualizing the possibility of an elderly and indigent widow battening upon them in later life, had only asked her in the hope that she might attract an offer from one of the European merchants or a visiting ship’s captain in Zanzibar—for though already in her thirties and with few pretensions to beauty, she was not ill-looking and would show up well enough in a place where white women were few and far between. That had been three years ago. But no second husband had appeared, and Olivia was still here: occupying herself with the enthusiastic study of Arabic and Kiswahili and a passionate interest in the affairs of the Royal Family of Zanzibar.
Her sister-in-law, who considered her to be a foolish, gushing and sentimental woman, had little time for her, and since her busy brother had even less, she had been left to go her own way and find her own amusements. And though Hubert Platt had aroused himself to mild remonstrance when he discovered that she was making friends among a faction known to be hostile to the Sultan, he had not been sufficiently interested to carry the matter further. Not that his sister would have paid much attention to him if he had.
Olivia had al
ways yearned for romance and adventure, and had found no trace of either in her dull and dutiful youth, or her brief marriage and the drab years of widowhood that had followed it. But now at last she had found an outlet for her frustrated emotions in the tangled and enthralling affairs of half-a-dozen Arab princes and princesses plotting for a throne, and for the first time in her repressed life she not only felt alive, but vitally involved in a whirl of important events. It was an exhilarating sensation and it had gone to her head like a strong drink—and produced much the same effect.
“Oh, what a relief it will be,” breathed Olivia, “when the people of this lovely island throw off their chains and are free to speak their minds without fear or favour!”
“Olivia!” This time it was Madame Tissot who spoke, and Mrs Credwell blushed and abandoned the topic, and turning hurriedly to Hero began to point out objects of interest by the way.
There were few roads in Zanzibar capable of taking a carriage, and few people, in consequence, kept such things. But Olivia’s sister-in-law, Jane Platt (who disliked Madame Tissot and was not to be outdone by her), had prevailed upon her husband to import an even larger and handsomer carriage than the one owned by Thérèse, and it was this unwieldy vehicle that now conveyed the four women along a dusty, uneven road shaded by flamboyants and India Cork trees, and turned in at the gates of a large pink-washed bungalow on the outskirts of the town. A sun-blistered notice-board proclaimed it the residence of Mr H. J. Platt of the British East African Coastal Trading Company, but the master of the house was away from home, being absent on a business trip to the neighbouring island of Pemba.
“Jane and the twins have gone with him, and they do not expect to be back for at least a week,” explained Olivia in a conspiratorial whisper. “And as they have taken the only two house-servants who speak any English, we can meet here as often as we like and feel quite safe, for the others speak none at all.”