by M. M. Kaye
The glow faded from Dan’s eyes and was replaced by a curious stillness, and he said carefully: “I seem to have made a mistake. What are you here for, Cressy?”
“I’ve just told you. To ask you not to do it. To beg you not to. You could refuse if you wanted to. Colonel Edwards isn’t anything to do with you really. I mean, he’s not in the Navy, or—or anything like that, and you could always leave harbour and say you were needed some place else, couldn’t you? You’re supposed to be hunting slavers, so you could say that you had heard one was on its way to Oh, to Madagascar or the Gulf, anywhere—and that it was your duty to intercept it. And it is your duty; it is! This isn’t. Zanzibar doesn’t belong to you or your country. It’s nothing to do with you and you’ve no right to interfere!”
She saw that Dan was looking oddly drawn and somehow a great deal older than she had imagined him to be, and found herself thinking that this was how he would look in ten years’ time—or twenty.
He said: “Will you excuse me if I sit down?” and did so without waiting for her permission, jerking the bathrobe further across him with his right hand. “I think you’ll have to make yourself a little clearer. What is it that you want me to do—or not to do?”
There was a remoteness in the tone of his voice that disconcerted Cressy, and she looked at him doubtfully. She had never heard anyone speak in quite that voice before, and she realized with a little shock of surprise that he was no longer a friend, or even an acquaintance. He had suddenly become a stranger about whom she knew nothing, and the eyes that were raised to her face were empty of all expression. Yet if he were not the person she had thought him to be, not a man whom she had once confidently imagined to be in love with her, how could she ask favours of him? And if she did ask, was there any reason why he should be disposed to grant them?
Cressy discovered that the air in the cramped little cabin was intolerably close, and pushing the hood back from her head with a nervous gesture she tugged at the ribbons that fastened it under her chin, as though they impeded her breathing. The sun slid below the horizon taking the gold from the day, and all at once the cabin was full of blue twilight and the sound of the tide chuckling softly against the anchor chain.
Dan said:‘Well?”
“Papa said…Pa told me—” began Cressy uncertainly: and paused again, biting her lip and pleating the ribbons with careful fingers.
“Yes?” The query was not in the least helpful and was not intended to be.
Cressy flushed and said: “Colonel Edwards told him that—that the Sultan’s men had refused to attack the Prince’s troops.”
“The rebels, you mean,” corrected Dan dryly.
Cressy flashed him an angry glance and said defiantly: “No, I don’t! I mean Prince Bargash’s supporters. And he said that when they wouldn’t do anything, you and a party of your people fired on them and drove them out of Marseilles, and killed a great many of them. Did you do that?”
“We did. Is that what you wanted to ask me?”
“No. I—he…Colonel Edwards told Papa that the Prince had come back to his own house and that you were going to arrest him tomorrow. He said you were going to anchor right opposite his house and open fire on it. Like you did on Marseilles.”
She paused again, as though she hoped that he would deny it. But Dan made no comment: partly because the British Consul’s instructions had not yet reached him and this was the first he had heard of it, but largely because there was nothing to be said.
Cressy held out her hands in a sudden childish gesture of pleading that touched his heart, and at the same time pitchforked him into anger because she had no right to come here and ask impossible things of him: things that he could not grant and that she would hate him for not granting. He would so gladly have given her almost anything else she might ask of him—including his life if she had cared to demand it! But not this…
Cressy said: “Dan, please—please! You can’t do it. You can’t kill a whole lot of people who have no quarrel with you and are no concern of yours, just because you think one man should be their ruler and they prefer another. Let them settle it among themselves. It’s their country, not yours. You don’t have to interfere.”
Dan said curtly: “I have to obey orders.”
“But you’ve no right to interfere!”
“I’m not interfering. I’m obeying orders.”
“But if the orders are wrong?—if they are unfair?”
Unfair! thought Dan with another spasm of anger and despair. How could she talk about being unfair when she could come to him now, looking pale and desperate—and utterly, heart-breakingly young and sweet and lovely? When she knew, she must know, how much he loved her and how hard it was to resist her…Unfair! What did women know of fairness or unfairness if they were prepared to use a man’s love as a lever to get what they desired?
He said harshly: “Who is to be the judge of that? You? You don’t know what you are talking about, Cressy. You are being sentimental about something you do not understand, and thinking with your heart and not your head. I’m not going to argue the rights and wrongs of the case with you: I tried to do that once before, you remember, and it only ended by my offending you.”
“Because you were being prejudiced,” said Cressy hotly. “You didn’t want me to be friends with the Prince’s sisters because you and your Colonel Edwards don’t happen to like him, and you were afraid that I might hear something to his advantage—see his side of things for a change.”
“No,” said Dan evenly and without emotion. “I was afraid that you might get involved in a dangerous and unsavoury affair; and I can only hope you have not done so.”
“Well I have!—if you mean that I sympathize with the Prince and think that he is a far better man than that horrible brother of his, who everyone knows is weak and mean and selfish and is doing nothing for his people, and won’t spend any money except on himself, and—”
She paused for breath and Dan said tiredly: “I suppose you got that from his sisters, too? It’s no good, Cressy. You had better go home. I can’t help you. And even if I could, it would still be no good, because if I took the Daffodil out tonight someone else would carry out the orders in my place.”
“No, they wouldn’t. That’s why I came here. That’s why I had to see you. Pa says that Colonel Edwards told him that the other ship and the Sultan’s own warships draw too much water, and that’s why he had asked Colonel Edwards to use yours instead, because the Daffodil can go right in close to shore and his can’t. So you see if you weren’t here it would be all right. Dan, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t you for…for…’ The blood came up in a hot rush to her pretty, pleading face, and she finished in a barely audible whisper: “For me?”
She saw Dan flinch as though she had struck him, but he did not speak. He only looked at her, and the silence stretched out like a violin string that is slowly drawn taut, until she could hear the ticking of the flat gold pocket watch that lay on the desk between them, and once again the whisper of the tide.
He was not going to answer her, but his silence was the refusal that he would not put into words, and now it was no longer only her cheeks that were hot, for her whole body seemed one burning blush of shame. She had made a personal thing of her plea, and he had refused her. He was not in love with her after all. He probably never had been and she had only imagined it. And imagined, too, that because of it she could, if she tried, twist him round her finger and make him do anything she asked, because it was she, Cressida Hollis, who asked it.
Cressy pressed her hands together, trembling with humiliation and hurt, and forcing back the angry tears that glittered in her eyes and must on no account be allowed to fall, said in taut, brittle voice: “I suppose I should have known better than to ask a favour of you. The British enjoy bullying, don’t they? And interfering. And running other people’s countries and sending gunboats to deal with anyone who disagrees with them. You didn’t stop and think before you opened fire a few days ago on several hund
red defenceless people who had done you no harm, did you? You just obeyed orders and killed them. And you’ll do just the same tomorrow, even though there are women in the house. Méjé is there, and her servants. And a little boy of twelve. But that won’t stop you, will it? You’ll kill them without a qualm, and the Prince too and all the people who have stayed by him and been loyal to him, just because you are ordered to. You’re no better than a public hangman and I hope I never have to see you again!”
She dragged the hood over her curls, and Dan said in a colourless voice: Til get someone to see you home.”
“I don’t need anyone to see me home, thank you.”
Dan gave a short laugh that held no amusement, and said: “You’ll need a boat; unless you intend to swim.”
He got to his feet with a palpable effort, and as he did so the bathrobe slipped a little and she saw for the first time that his left arm was in a sling. For a moment her heart seemed to check and stop, and she said breathlessly: “You’re hurt! How did you were you…were you wounded in the fighting?”
“I was,” said Dan. “By those poor ‘defenceless creatures’ you are so concerned about. And since it seems that their enemies are yours, it will console you to know that I was not the only one, for they somehow managed to kill or wound over sixty of their attackers.’ He walked past her to jerk open the cabin door and send for Mr Wilson, whom he instructed to see Miss Hollis safely back to her father’s house.
The boat that took her away passed the British Consul’s skiff coming out, and the seaman who brought Colonel Edwards’ letter to Lieutenant Larrimore’s cabin found it in darkness in the deepening twilight, and his commanding officer sitting with his head on the desk and his face hidden in the crook of his right arm.
As the clear, pale light of morning brightened over the green Island and the placid sea, the muezzin’s voice arose from the minaret of the mosque calling the Faithful to prayer, and throughout the city good Moslems left their beds and stood facing Mecca to murmur obediently: ‘Here am I at thy call, O God—’
Cholé had risen with them. But when her prayers were said she had not returned to her bed to sleep again, for she knew that today sleep would elude her as it had eluded her for the greater part of the two last nights. She had witnessed from her window the humiliating reception and ignominious retreat of Majid’s ambassador, and had placed the same construction upon that ill-fated essay in diplomacy as her brother Bargash had done. And when on the following night Méjé, leaning from her lattice in the dark, had whispered the details of Sûd’s visit, she had been as sure as Bargash himself that he had been right to reject such a pusillanimous offer, since it was clearly not the action of a man who held the winning hand, but of one who was afraid and who hoped to gain by fair words what he could not gain through strength.
Fortified by this conviction, Chole’s spirits had soared once more and she had lain awake in the darkness, feverishly thinking and planning for Bargash, and refusing to entertain the prospect of failure. It was still unthinkable to her that the brother whom she had quarrelled with and now hated should triumph over the brother she loved, and even now, after the crushing defeat at Marseilles she would not admit that such a thing was possible. There was still hope—Sûd’s abortive mission had proved that! There would be some way out. There must be some way out! Some twist of fate that would turn defeat into victory.
Cholé had tossed and turned and agonized, and fallen at last into an exhausted sleep from which dawn and her women had awakened her barely two hours later. But her prayers being said, she had gone to the windows that gave onto the harbour, to lean on the sill and breathe the fresh air of morning and hope that the day would bring a solution to the tangled problems that had haunted her all night.
The sea was a milky opal in the dawn, and the harbour full of ships that rocked gently to the barely breathing swell, appearing no more substantial than silhouettes cut from dark paper and pasted on looking-glass. Dhows, mtepes, batelas, feluccas, wind-jammers and brigs; each one drowsing above its own mirrored reflection. Behind them, threading its way through the three tiny islands that guarded the entrance to the harbour, a solitary schooner under jib and staysail drifted in on the tide, and Cholé watched it idly for a moment or two, and then recognizing it, frowned. The Virago’s owner was a friend of Majid’s and therefore by inference an enemy, and she could have wished that he had not chosen this moment to return, for they had enough enemies to contend with already and the arrival of another was an unpropitious omen. She gave a small superstitious shiver at the thought, and looking quickly away, saw the Daffodil…
It was surprising that she had not noticed it at once, for it lay close in shore and immediately opposite her brother’s house: its guns trained on the barred door and shuttered windows, and a boat-load of armed seamen already rowing away from it She watched uncomprehendingly while the men disembarked, and saw a naval officer detach himself from among them and walk alone to the gate—the Sultan’s Baluchi guard parting to let him through—and heard him call out to the Seyyid Bargash to surrender. And it was only then that she realized what had happened. Majid had appealed to the British to arrest his brother, and all was indeed lost.
Salmé, entering, found her sister pacing frantically to and fro, wringing her hands and crying; her lovely face so ravaged with grief as to be barely recognizable and her voice harsh with tears: “It is over,” sobbed Cholé.
“It is over! We have lost! It is over! What are we going to do? What will become of us all?”
She began to rock herself backwards and forwards, and Salmé looked from the window and saw the end of everything they had planned. The end of hope and the end of all their dreams…“Méjé was right,” whispered Salmé. “She is the only one who has been right. She said Majid’s terms were generous and that Bargash would have been wise to accept them. We have all been mad and foolish, and now—”
Her voice was drowned in a crash of shots, and the morning that a moment before has seemed so quiet was suddenly a bedlam of noise, for the bluejackets were firing at the shuttered windows, and the crack and whine and smack of bullets were barely louder than the shouts of men and the terrified screams of women.
Cholé broke into hysterical weeping, and as the din of the firing increased she put her hands over her ears and ran from the room. But the whole house was awake and alive with sounds that could not be shut out, and everywhere she looked there were shrieking women who cowered in comers or tried to hide themselves behind curtains and hangings. In their screams and the remorseless crack of the rifles she heard at last the knell of all her fevered dreams and glittering ambition, and knew that there was no longer any hope for Bargash except in submission. The English had not yet used the guns that were trained on the house, but they would do so if he persisted in his refusal to surrender. They would use them as they had done at Marseilles, to batter down the solid stone walls and smash the men who hid behind them into into ugly, bloodstained fragments. It must not happen here! She must do something to stop it She must persuade Bargash that his only chance was to surrender…
She fled to a side window, and leaning from it, screamed across the narrow gap until at last she was answered and her brother’s contorted face glared back at her, mouthing wild words:
No! he would not give himself up. Death was preferable and he would sacrifice his whole household rather than surrender! Méjé, Aziz, servants, slaves and supporters—they should die with him! It was the least they could do after the way he had been betrayed…Yes, betrayed! None of this was his fault. Not one jot of it! He had been tricked by that scheming white man who had sold him worthless weapons. By the imbecility of the el Harth who had lacked the wit to know how to use such new-fangled firearms and supposed that he would be able to explain all when he came, or bring different ammunition; and had then blamed him for their own stupidity—the sons of apes and noseless mothers! But let everyone beware, for he was not yet defeated! He still had many sympathizers in the city and more in the v
illages, and they would certainly have heard the firing and already be hastening to his side to slay the foreign sailors and overthrow Majid. Cholé would see!
Listening to her brother’s extravagant ravings through the din of firing and the sound of bullets ploughing into furniture and splintering vases and mirrors, Cholé was seized with the terrifying conviction that Bargash had lost his grip on reality and was no longer sane, and she began to cry again and to beg and implore in a voice that was alternately choked with tears and shrill with panic.
Perhaps it was her frantic pleading that at last persuaded him. Or possibly it was the ominous smell of smoke and a belated realization that the beleaguered house could all too easily catch fire and bum down about them. Whatever the reason, she saw his face change. The frenzy drained slowly out of it, leaving it as slack and emotionless as a dead man’s, and she knew that she had won:
“Tell them to stop firing,” said Bargash dully. “I will surrender…but not to Majid. I will never surrender to Majid. It must be to the British Consul, or to no one.”
Cholé did not wait for further words. She turned from the window and ran out of the room and along the passages, tripping over boxes and scattered bundles of clothing, thrusting aside kneeling women and only pausing at the bottom of the last flight of stairs to snatch a cloak and a veil from a praying slave. A moment later she had crossed the courtyard and brushed past the cowering gate-keeper, and was running through the streets towards the British Consulate.
She knew that what she was doing was contrary to every tenet of Arab etiquette and violated every rule of feminine modesty. But to Cholé as well as to Bargash, the humiliation of begging assistance and mediation from a foreigner was preferable to humbling themselves before Majid. Behind her she could hear voices shouting above the crash and crackle of musketry: “Aman! Aman! (peace) and she knew that they came from Bargash’s house. His people must be calling to the sailors to stop firing, and she paused for a moment in the deserted street to listen, gasping and breathless, and heard the sounds thin and stop. And all at once the morning was strangely silent.