by M. M. Kaye
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end.
Methinks it is no journey.
He had read it over and over again, fascinated to find that something said in verse could make such piercing sense. But though his journeys had been easy enough to make in the spirit, they had been hard to make in the flesh. Five times he had run away only to be ignominiously captured and brought back. And when at last he was sent away to school, the three years he spent at an establishment noted for its success in crushing the spirits of recalcitrant and unmanageable boys had seemed a paradise cont-pared to his uncle’s house.
It had been a strict and brutal school. Run more on the lines of a reformatory than a seat of learning, by mean and unimaginative men under a headmaster who, though preaching in the school chapel as one in the full confidence of the Almighty, underpaid his assistants, saved money on food and amenities, and believed with Uncle Henry that inflexible strictness, harsh corporal punishment and near-starvation was the only way to deal with difficult boys. But four years under his uncle’s roof had inured Rory to all these things, and he had swallowed such learning as was offered him with an avidity that would have disgusted his schoolmates had it not been for the fact that he had also learnt to use his fists with a skill that had taught them to leave him severely alone, and a ferocity that no subsequent punishments had succeeded in curbing.
He had been fifteen when he decided that he had had enough of school and Uncle Henry, and on the night following that decision he had climbed out of his dormitory window, slid down a conveniently placed drainpipe, scaled two walls and walked out into the world a free man. And that time he had not been caught or brought back…”
27
The northeast Trade Wind that stirred up the evil-smelling dust of Zanzibar and woke the palms to rustling music, was a very different wind from the cold northeaster that had once blown icy raindrops into the face of a boy who plodded along in the darkness, making for the nearest seaport. But recalling that long-ago night and the dungeon years behind it, Rory felt again a tremor of the fierce determination that had possessed him then. A determination to escape and live his own life in his own way, and never again to allow another man or woman to tell him what he must do, or punish him for not doing it.
He had lived ever since by his family’s motto; taking what he wanted when he wanted it. And he had never let sentiment or remorse or any scruples stand in the way of his desires, or permitted anyone to order or own him. Love, friendship, affection, were all dangerous things if one let them get too great a hold on one, so he had seen to it that they should not do so. For his charming, selfish mother had taught him early a lesson that he had never forgotten—that pain inflicted by someone loved and trusted is deeper and more unendurable than the worse savageries that can be committed by those one hates or cares nothing for. He had no intention of allowing his own emotions to become either a weapon that could be turned against him or a tie that could hold him against his will, and there were even times when he resented Batty, Ralub, Zorah and the child Amrah, because in their several ways they implied a claim on him, and he would not admit any such claim: least of all through his affections. Faithful Batty, loyal Hajji Ralub, adoring Zorah, and Amrah—Amrah who was his own daughter…
The child had been a mistake: his mistake, and a bad one. He had never paused to care or consider whether his casual amours were productive of anything more than the gratification of a passing desire, and he had certainly never thought of it when the starving, terrified creature he had bought in an idle moment off an Arab slave trader had grown into a lovely and desirable woman. He had taken her because it pleased him to do so.
Rory had had other mistresses; and possibly other bastards, though if so he was unaware of it. But Zorah had differed from the others in that she belonged to him. She was as much a part of his household as Batty and Ralub, his servants and his crew and Murashi, the white cockatoo. He had bought her, and she had no other home, and though he had tried, once, to trace her people, it had proved an impossible task and he had abandoned it. And then she had grown up and without his quite realizing it taken over the management of The Dolphins’ House from the fat, idle negress who had been in nominal charge, and within a year of her becoming his mistress, Amrah had been born.
He could still remember the shock it had given him when she had told him with shining pride that she was carrying his child: his sudden involuntary spasm of revulsion. “It will be a son,” said Zorah. “It cannot be otherwise, for I have prayed for a son and made offerings, and surely my prayers will be granted.’ But he did not want a son and he did not want to see Zorah bear one. Not his child; someone who would have a claim on him and grow up to carry his blood into a future that he could only view with hostility and distrust. Someone who would be a responsibility and a tie—looking to him for advice, affection and security.
If he could have sent Zorah away then he would have done so, and as he could not, he had absented himself from the Island as often as possible and had not been there when the child was born. Amrah had been three months old when he had first seen her, and though the baby’s sex had been a bitter disappointment to Zorah, Rory had been strangely relieved. Any child was bad enough, but a girl was the lesser of two evils, since she would belong more to her mother and so be less of a tie. But the little creature had been startlingly like him, and as she grew older she had become more so, and it had been an effort to prevent her from getting her small fingers on his heart.
‘With a host of furious fancies, whereof I am commander, with a burning spear and a horse of air to the wilderness I wander…’ The words that had first made poetry live for him repeated themselves in his brain and were still with him. He was still Tom-a-Bedlam, singing them in the streets of Zanzibar. ‘Whereof I am commander’…That was the secret! To exercise complete control over one’s heart: to possess oneself, rejecting the tyrannous or clinging claims of others, and to wander in the wild and lawless places of a world in which there would soon be no wildernesses, but only walls and laws and factory chimneys. He could see it coming and feel its encroaching breath as clearly as he had felt that faint, barely perceptible change in the hot, heavy stillness and known that the currents of the air had changed and soon the wind would rise. There would be no escaping it, and nowhere left where a man could breathe—and go to the devil in his own way!
He said abruptly: “Batty, what would you do if you had a hell of a lot of money?”
Batty did not reply to the question immediately, but after pondering over it for a space, he said thoughtfully: “Now that I comes to think of it, I don’t know as I’d want an ‘ole ‘eap of money. Enough’s enough, I reckons. What ‘ud I do with it—my age?”
“You mean you wouldn’t fancy yourself as a bloated plutocrat with a carriage-and-pair and a house full of butlers and footmen? There’s nothing you’d like that you haven’t got?”
“Well now, I won’t go so far as to deny that there’s times that I’d like to see old London town again, and ‘ear Bow Bells ring and walk down Cheapside. But what would a cove like me do with butlers and footmen? An ‘aughty lot they are, and I’d rather ‘ave that old scoundrel Jumah any day. I clips ‘im when I thinks ‘e needs it, and ‘e answers back as saucy as a sparrow, and no ‘ard feelings on either side. I reckon I been livin’ this way too long to fancy settlin’ down in mansions with footmen, and as long as I ‘as enough to keep me from the work ‘ouse in me old age, I won’t say as I wants much more than I ‘ave right now.”
“Uncle, you’re a man of sense. About the only one I’ve ever met!”
“What you mean is, I ain’t a blinkin’ fool,” sniffed Batty: and added ruminatively: “If I was younger, now, I might get to thinkin’ that money would buy me an ‘areem full of beauteous wimmin, and enough rum to keep me as drunk as a royal Dook. But I’ve ‘ad me share of females, and though I ain’t saying as I don’t enjoy a nice tumble with a likely wench now and then, it ain’t what it used to be, and that’s the truth. Grub
and terbaccy is as good, and maybe better. Still, there’s somethin’ about money—‘filthy lucre’ it may be, but it gets you; and I dare say if someone was to offer me a ruddy great fortune on a platter I wouldn’t ‘ave the ‘eart to turn it down.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Rory, and laughed.
“Why? Anyone been offerin’ you a fortune lately?” enquired Batty, interested.
“More or less. And on a platter.”
“Must be a catch in it,” decided Batty, shaking his head pessimistically. “No one don’t go ‘andin’ out fortunes for nothing. You know what’s the trouble with you, don’t you Cap’n Rory? You been on the booze again, that’s what. You’ll wake up with a shockin’ ‘ead in the mornin’: and no fortune neither—though what you’d do with one I don’t know.”
“I do!”
“And what’s that?”
“What I’ve always meant to do one day—go back to England and put the law on dear Uncle Henry.”
“There! I knew you was drunk. Why, ‘e’d turn the Peelers on you quicker than a flash. Ten years you’d get. Maybe twenty!”
“He hasn’t any proof. Besides, he wouldn’t dare charge me.”
“That’s what you ‘ope. But what about me? I ain’t ‘is loving nephew.”
“Don’t be an old fool, Uncle. He doesn’t know anything about you.”
“Maybe not. But the Peelers do, and they ‘ave ‘orrible long memories, God rot ‘em! I know—I’ve ‘ad experience: which is more than anyone could say of you, if you’re fool enough to go puttin’ your ‘ead back into the basket. You ain’t reelly thinkin’ of going after ‘im, are you?”
Batty’s voice was suddenly anxious, and Rory gave a short and ugly laugh. “I’ve thought of nothing much else for years! And I’ll do it one day—unless he cheats me by dying before I get the chance. But it’s going to take a lot of money to fight Uncle Henry in the courts, and make him account for his stewardship and cough up the family estates on which he and my dear cousins Lionel and Walter have established squatter’s rights. Justice comes high in the Home of the Free!”
“You can’t do it!” said Batty distressfully. “‘E’ll ‘ave the law on you for snitchin’ all them spoons and stuff and swipin’ your aunt’s jools—sure as check!”
“Let him try! But you don’t have to worry Batty. I’m not going to do anything about it at die moment It’s just one of those day-dreams, and it can wait. It’s waited long enough, God knows!” He began to whistle very softly through his teeth, and presently he broke off in the middle of a bar to say: “You know. Batty, it’s time we moved off somewhere else. This island is getting a bloody sight too civilized. Foreigners and sour faces wherever you look; British gunboats cluttering up the harbour and a damned officious British Consul poking his nose into peoples’ private affairs. Yanks, Frogs and so on jostling for elbow-room on the maidan, and soon we’ll have a swarm of missionaries preaching Salvation. It’s played out, Batty. It’s beginning to stink of law and order, and for myself I prefer the smell of sewage.”
“Hum,” said Batty doubtfully, rubbing his nose with a gnarled forefinger. “I’m not sure that you ain’t right. Where was you thinkin’ of going?”
“Persia—Arabia—Borneo—China. The Mountains of the Moon! What does it matter? Central Asia, perhaps.”
“Couldn’t take the Virago there,” commented Batty judicially. “I wouldn’t like that; I’ve got used to the old bitch. Mind the step now—we’re ‘ome. And if I was you, I’d put me ‘ead under the pump before I went to bed. Might sober you up a bit Fortunes, indeed!”
True to Batty’s prophecy, Captain Emory Frost awoke the following morning with an evil headache and a jaundiced view of life. But his own prediction was also fulfilled, for he found the shutters of his room barred against driving rain, and the northeast Trade Winds roaring across the island.
The rain poured off the roofs and balconies of Zanzibar in a thunder of falling water; washing away the dust of the burning days and leaping in cataracts to the streets below, where the gutters flooded and the dirt and debris of months swirled away on a rushing torrent; racing down the narrow lanes to pour into the sea, and carrying with it a tide of filth and garbage and all the unspeakable flotsam and jetsam of the city.
Within an hour the streets were swept clear, and a day or two later beaches that for weeks past had been no better than vast, malodorous middens were clean sand and rock and shingle once more, and the harbour was no longer awash with foulness, but smelt only of the sea.
25
To discover which of Pemba’s notorious Mchawi’s had been consulted by Sultan Saïd in the matter of the great drought had been easy enough, for although at the time many had been consulted, only one, the youngest, was still alive. It had also been a simple matter to verify that this same man had visited the late Sultan during the last years of his reign, and possessed a brother who had recently met a violent end in Mombasa. But it had proved quite a different matter to get him brought over from Pemba to Zanzibar.
Majid’s messenger had returned bearing the witch-doctor’s barely polite excuses, and when a direct command had also been ignored, there had been nothing for it but to kidnap him. Though that too had presented considerable difficulties, since few men were prepared to risk the terrible fate that might befall those who mishandled a wizard known to have authority over devils, ghosts and demons. It had been done eventually by two malefactors under sentence of death, who had been promised a free pardon, a handful of gold and a passage to Muscat in return for their services. Fearing demons less than death, they had brought the bound and gibbering witchdoctor under cover of night to a disused storehouse in the grounds of the old palace of Beit-el-Ras.
The vaulted stone chamber with its ruined gutters and damp-streaked walls had been built underground for greater coolness, and had once, long ago, been used for the storage of fruit and oil and such foodstuffs as kept better in a low temperature. It stank of mildew and rotting vegetation, the dank smell of stone and the acrid scent of charcoal and hot metal: and later of other and more noisome odours; burning flesh, blood and sweat and human excreta. For the wizard proved obdurate.
Majid, to give him his due, had never seriously imagined that it would come to this. After all, as the son who succeeded Seyyid Saïd as Sultan of Zanzibar, he was entitled to his father’s treasure, and there was no reason why the Mchawi should object to disclosing its hiding place to the legal heir. He therefore ordered the man’s bonds to be removed, apologized and promised suitable compensation for the somewhat arbitrary manner in which the wizard, due to his own intransigence, had been brought over from Pemba, and having fully explained the circumstances that had made this necessary, requested the Mchawi’s cooperation.
It was not forthcoming. The witchdoctor was not only furious over the way he had been abducted, but insolent, uncooperative and quite impervious to reason. The late Sultan, he declared, had intended the treasure for his own use and requested that a spell be put upon it to ensure that its hiding place was not discovered by anyone else. He had left no instructions as to who, if anyone, should inherit it after his death, and that, as far as the Mchawi was concerned, was that. Majid had attempted to reason with him, and when that had proved useless tried bribery, threats and cajolery by turns. But all to no effect. The Mchawi remained adamant, and there is little doubt that had he initially denied all knowledge of where the treasure was hidden, Majid would have decided that he was following a false trail and given up. But men had cringed and grovelled and gone in terror of die wizard for too long, and far too many of them had died terrible deaths at his hands or by his orders, for him to believe that anyone, even the Sultan, would dare to do more than threaten him. Secure in that belief he not only haughtily admitted his knowledge but boasted of it; and thereby sealed his fate. For having committed himself so far, fear and avarice had driven Majid to translate threats into action.
It was a long-drawn-out and ugly business, for the wizard, though ancie
nt and white-headed, was also unbelievably stubborn. He shrieked and writhed and screamed to his familiars to aid him, and between bouts of pain called down horrifying curses upon the heads of his tormentors and chanted the song that begins ‘Hodi Muamu. Nakuja Kuamsha na ni ujima,’ that is used to summon devils. But his devils did not aid him. Majid trembled and muttered charms, and countered with the ‘Watenda je hapa’ that drives them away: though recalling some of the more unpleasant activities of the witchdoctors of Pemba, and the many victims who had in their day suffered worse terror and tortures at the hands of the shrieking creature who writhed in the red glow of the brazier, he was not disposed to waste any pity on him.
Considering the wizard’s age, the hideous, nerve-racking affair took an unconscionably long tune. But the half-breed dwarf and the huge negro, both of whom combined a talent for torture with a physical defect that proved invaluable in their profession—they were stone deaf—eventually succeeded in bringing him to see reason, and what was left of him talked…
“So it was true!” muttered Majid under his breath, and brushed the sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand. His face was wet and pallid in the dim light and he was shivering as though with ague. The solitary lamp that hung from a staple on the damp wall was less bright than the coals that burned in a brazier on the stained flags beneath it, but although the room was below ground level and the massive door at the top of the steps that led down to it had been closed and bolted, a faint draught had found its way in, and the flame of the oil lamp swayed to it, sending the shadows of three men crawling over the walls, and giving an uneasy suggestion of movement to the huddled body of the fourth. Majid wondered if the man were dead, and thought that it would be as well if he were. And also that Rory was not going to like this! The flame began to gutter and burn low and he turned and went up the stairs, and drawing back the heavy iron bolt, jerked open the door to let a rush of cool, rain-scented air into the fetid atmosphere of the cellar.