by Wilbur Smith
Suddenly the world seemed to explode about them. The crystal chandelier that had been hanging on the high ceiling above them was now hurtling down on them both. The barmen leaped for cover. Penrod released his grip, and both men wrapped their arms around their heads and rolled out of the way. The glittering mass exploded on the black and white tiles, and Ryder found himself covered in shards of glass. He twisted around and saw his wife, the shotgun she had just fired into the ceiling already broken and hanging over the crook of her arm. She was watching Penrod, her mouth set in a firm line and her honey eyes glittering as if they were reflecting every shattered remnant of the Shepheard’s chandelier. The complete silence was broken only by the crackle of glass as one of the barmen stood up from his hiding place to see what had happened, his drying cloth still held in his left hand.
Ryder got carefully to his feet and coughed, rubbing his bruised throat. He could taste his own blood in his mouth, sweet and metallic, and the air stank of spilled alcohol. He pulled off his scarf and pressed it to the wound on his scalp.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Major Ballantyne, gentlemen,” Saffron said crisply. Ryder’s cronies smiled at her weakly. “But I would like to have a word with my husband in private. Would you mind excusing us for a moment?”
Penrod got to his feet and brushed the glass from his coat, then smoothed his thick blond hair back into place. His hand shook a little as he did, but that look of animal frenzy in his eyes had faded.
“Of course, Mrs. Courtney. Good day to you.” He bowed to her, receiving a microscopic nod in return, then turned and left the hotel.
A door at the end of the bar, marked Manager, opened, and a slight, middle-aged European man emerged. He pointed at the chandelier and his mouth worked as if he were trying to say something, but nothing came out.
“Sorry about the mess, Mr. Simpson!” Saffron said brightly. “Do add it to our bill.” She looked at her husband as one of his friends handed him back his glass and tilted her head to one side. “Ryder, now I think of it, I had better have a quick word with Amber. Might you have time to speak with me after that?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“Thank you.” She walked away, the shotgun still slung through the crook of her arm. He watched her, admiring the sway of her hips in her long brown skirt. He couldn’t resist.
“I take it the wedding is off between Penrod and Amber, then?” he called.
She had reached the bottom of the stairs before she replied. “That seems a reasonable assumption.”
“I found us a house, Saffy.”
She turned and looked at him over her slim shoulder, her gaze flickering over the wreckage of the hotel bar.
“Perfect timing, I should say, my love.”
The upper caste of Anglo-Egyptian society saw nothing of Miss Benbrook or Mrs. Courtney after that. Everyone knew they were still in the city, and that the engagement between Miss Benbrook and Major Ballantyne was at an end, but Amber was no longer a presence at polo matches or the parade ground. Some of them missed her, others thought that Major Ballantyne was better off out of it, and although the way he flaunted his renewed affair with Lady Agatha was perhaps not in the best possible taste, well, Lady Agatha was beautiful, rich and a genuine aristocrat, so was approved of whatever she did.
Meanwhile, Mr. Simpson of Shepheard’s Hotel presented a bill for the chandelier, which made Ryder whistle between his teeth, but he paid it without argument.
Courtney House, in the wrong part of town, became a lively and cheerful home. The air was full of the voices of women chattering in English, Arabic and, from time to time, Tigrean and Amharic. Saffron and Amber had employed language teachers from the shifting population of Cairo to teach them. Saffron painted happily in her studio and seemed to bloom as her morning sickness passed and her belly swelled. Amber threw herself into the study of the new languages and care of her sister. Twice Saffron parceled up her work and sent it to the family solicitor, Sebastian Hardy, in London. He sent back compliments and later clippings from various newspapers praising a small show he had put on of her works in Cork Street, London. All the canvases were sold within a week. He also told Amber that he had allowed a stage adaptation of Slaves of the Mahdi to be performed by the company at the Haymarket Theatre. It was the sensation of the season, and the Benbrook Trust bank balance continued to swell.
The twins hardly ever saw Ryder. He was either at the docks while his orders from various European foundries came in or was writing letters in his office. By the summer of 1887, Ryder had recruited the men he needed and amassed a huge cargo of mining equipment in Suez, ready to ship to Massowah, the nearest port to Tigray. The British had let the Italians take control of Massowah to prevent the French influence spreading too far along the coast of the Red Sea, a decision that had irritated the Abyssinian Emperor. In January, one of the emperor’s most trusted deputies, Ras Alula, had slaughtered five hundred Italian troops at Dogali when he felt they had strayed too far into Abyssinian lands, but now an uneasy peace existed in the region and Ryder was sure that with a little diplomacy he would be able to transport his gear through Italian territory and into the mountains where he intended to mine. Now he waited only for the birth of his child, and the end of the rains in early September to depart.
On August 9, Saffron delivered a healthy baby boy, and they named him Leon. Amber was the baby’s godmother, of course, and Sebastian Hardy accepted the honor of becoming the little boy’s godfather. He sent a handsome silver christening mug from London. Saffron recovered quickly from the birth and by the end of the month they were at last ready to leave Cairo.
•••
The three men playing cards in the saloon of the steamer Iona, as it made its steady progress down the Red Sea from Suez to Massowah, looked like brothers. They were all dressed in worn but well-repaired traveling clothes, leathers and dull tweeds that showed signs of days under hot suns and nights in the open. Each man also had the solid muscled shape of men who labored hard for a living. None of them was clean-shaven, and their occasional curses from their luck—or lack of it—with the cards suggested they were not used to polite company. Most of the other first-class passengers on the steamer, who were a mix of army wives, diplomats and the occasional businessman, avoided them and this corner of the saloon was acknowledged theirs for the duration of the voyage.
If you took the time to examine them, though, they were not as alike as they appeared at first glance. One was some years older than the rest. His short beard and black hair were strongly woven with white, and the lines on his tanned face were deep and plentiful. Still, his was the broadest back, and the other two treated him with a friendly deference. Of the two other men, one was slimmer, with pale hazel eyes and a thick head of red hair visible under his wide-brimmed slouch hat. He would, from time to time, interrupt their game to pull a beaten leather-bound journal from his pocket and make notes with the stub of a pencil. The other, a blond man whose skin had been burned almost scarlet over years of outside work, growled whenever the game was broken off. He would have been handsome, but the heavy scarring on the right side of his face made him look almost monstrous and he wore a patch over one eye.
“What are you making notes for now anyway, Rusty?” he said. “If it’s a shopping list you’re making, forget it. Anything you haven’t got now you’ll have to do without. Nothing but donkeys and women in Massowah. Courtney’s bought up all the donkeys already, and the women you can’t afford.”
The slimmer man, Matt “Rusty” Tompkins, finished his note and slipped his journal back into his coat pocket. He spoke with the swinging lilt of the American Irish.
“It’s ideas, is all, Patch. Things to talk over with Mr. Courtney. If we’re going to be processing the silver in those savage lands with no trained help and half the water I’d want, it all needs thinking on. And I do my best thinking when I write things down.” He picked up his cards again and scratched his nose. “I’ll raise you two.”
“Call,” the
man with the grizzled beard said, “and you, Rusty, make your notes if you want but don’t feel so free to name the nature of our enterprise in public.”
Rusty glanced around the empty saloon, then shrugged. “This isn’t Utah, Dan. No one here is going to grab a pickax and follow us. It took Courtney months to get the permits sorted and he speaks them savage languages. Any fool who tries to follow us will get a spear in the belly before he’s within a hundred miles of the strike.”
“Fold,” Patch said, then leaned back in his chair and struck a light for his half-smoked cigar. “You may be right, that you may, Rusty. Still, Dan’s right also. I see no good in jabbering. While it’s quiet up here, I don’t mind saying, gentlemen, it feels like a queer set-up out in the hills on our own. Courtney learns quick, fair play to him, but he knows little enough about mining as yet, and he’s the only one to have seen the strike.”
“He’s put his money in it.” Rusty shrugged and stared at his cards. “Raise you two more, Dan. I’d swear he’s sunk every cent of it into this enterprise and I like a man who bets big.”
Dan didn’t answer at once; he was distracted by a movement outside. All three men turned to watch as Saffron Courtney and Amber Benbrook passed by beyond the large saloon windows. They were talking with their heads close together. Saffron’s tawny mane of hair and Amber’s blonder tresses seemed to mingle together as they were caught by the sea breeze. All three men sighed.
“I told him to leave the women in Cairo, and the baby,” Patch said. “What the hell are they going to be but a problem a thousand miles from civilization?” He blew out a cloud of smoke with the satisfaction of a connoisseur. “Not that they aren’t a pleasure to look upon.”
“Raise you five.”
“Call,” Rusty said. “I told him the same. He laughed in my face and said his wife would follow him no matter what he said. And I for one wouldn’t argue with that little girl, not after seeing how she rearranged the decoration in Shepheard’s.” Dan laid down his cards.
“Full house, aces over tens.”
Rusty threw down his cards. “Damn, do you never bluff, Dan?”
“Not when you scratch your nose, I don’t, Mr. Tompkins.” Dan gathered in the ragged pile of Egyptian currency they were playing with. “Guess this will be as much use as play money where we’re going. Still, warms my heart to win it. Anyone know what happened to that soldier who wanted a piece of Courtney?”
Patch yawned. “I heard his superiors smoothed things over in Cairo, but he went straight back to that Lady Agatha’s bed and started treating her like a whore.” He looked out of the window again where Amber and Saffron had passed. “Poor kid. Did you read her book? Seems like she’s suffered enough.”
Rusty scratched his nose, then looked at his hands as if they had betrayed him, and nodded his head. “Slaves of the Mahdi? I read it on the boat out from San Francisco, along with everyone else. Seeing the Mahdi’s men kill her father like that at Khartoum . . . Swear those fellows are worse than Indians . . .” He whistled between his teeth. “And their sister still in the harem? I’d have thought the Brits would have gone out and taught them a lesson or two. Taking white women . . .”
Dan finished counting his money and folded it neatly away in his pocket. “Brits are busy enough elsewhere and the Mahdi’s fellows are kings of nothing but sand. Hey, you know if they are Christians or heathens where we’re going?”
“What difference would it make to you? When you come into town, Dan Matthews, it isn’t the church you head for,” Rusty said and began to shuffle the ragged pack. “They’re heathen Christians in Abyssinia, I’m told. But the men have strong backs and the women . . . Oh, I’ve heard stories about the women.” He began to deal.
Patch picked up his greasy cards with suspicion. “They better have more than donkeys for sale in Massowah. If we’re going to be stuck up in the mountains digging year in and year out, we’re going to need another pack of cards.”
•••
Ryder Courtney was in his cabin while his mining experts gossiped over their game. He was in his shirtsleeves, with a cheroot clamped between his teeth and surrounded on all sides by books and papers, diagrams and journals. They would dock in Massowah tomorrow and he needed to be ready. He had the best part of three tons of mining and processing equipment in the hold of the steamer and he had to shift all of it inland up into the highlands, a hundred miles west of the ancient capital of Axum. For anyone else such an enterprise would have been financial suicide, but Ryder had advantages as well as his brains and his broad back. For one thing, he had traveled through Abyssinia many times, one of the few white men to have done so, and spoke Amharic and the local Tigrean language with the same fluency he spoke Arabic or English. Emperor John, King of Kings and ruler of Abyssinia, had been the guest of honor at his wedding to Saffron a little more than a year ago. Ryder also knew and respected the local ruler and general of John’s northern army, Ras Alula, and had cultivated the friendship of the priests who held great influence over the local people.
Ryder laced his fingers together behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Next to him the baby in his rocking basket yawned widely and blinked up at the patterns of light cast over the ceiling of the cabin. Ryder gently set the basket in motion with the edge of his boot and the baby snorted and closed his eyes again. It was time to build something, make a mark on the empty maps. Ryder had traded in ivory, dhurra corn and gum arabic across East Africa since he was little more than a boy. He had amassed a fortune, but kept his reputation as an honest man. Now was the time to put some of the accumulated wealth to work. It might take years before the mine produced the profits he hoped for, but Ryder was willing to invest time as well as money to create something lasting.
He remembered coming into Saffron’s room just after Leon’s birth and seeing his child for the first time, feeling the grip of his tiny fingers and wondering at the miracle of his fluttering breaths. He grinned to himself. He had thought himself a man before the siege of Khartoum, but marriage and fatherhood had matured him. He had worried that the love he felt for Saffron would weaken him, but he knew now it had made him stronger. It bound him to the world, to life, to the future.
Ryder had also been careful enough to hire the three best men available in the western world for the work ahead. Dan Matthews had made and lost a fortune in California in 1849, when he was hardly more than a boy himself, and then made another fortune working the massive wealth of the Comstock silver lode in the wilds of Utah after that. Dan’s wife and child had died in a cholera outbreak in the city of Virginia, the sprawling boom town that grew up near the strike, and he’d disappeared for a while. When he returned, he claimed to have nothing but the clothes he stood up in and his pick. The man could read rock, though—see its strengths and its failings, feel where tunnels would collapse and where they would hold. They said he saved twenty lives in 1880 because he sniffed the air and knew the water was coming, and coming hard. Ryder listened to the stories, made his inquiries and decided he was the best man for the job, so had written as soon as he had his permits in his hand, sent sketch maps of where he hoped to mine and offered Dan his passage and a fat fee to come and help him. Dan must have boarded a boat the same day and was waiting in Cairo in a flea-ridden dosshouse when Ryder arrived. It turned out he could have stayed in Shepheard’s if he’d wanted to. He said he preferred the company at the dosshouse and fleas had stopped trying to get through his hide in 1876.
Matt “Rusty” Tompkins was their smelting and processing expert. He too was a Comstock veteran, hauled into the wilderness as a boy by his father—one of the thousands whom bad luck and strong drink made a failure even when he was living on a once-in-a-lifetime strike. The boy’s mother left with the first man who would take her, and his father was killed in a hunting accident before Rusty was twelve years old. Rusty found work in the mills watching the ore being ground to the consistency of sand, then forced to give up its treasures in the amalgamating rooms and furnaces. He
had a sharp mind and was fascinated by the processes that made and unmade stone. Before he was twenty, men twice his age were paying top dollar for his advice. He seemed to have little interest in the money, though. It was the challenge of the rock that Rusty loved. His fellow miners thought him a bit simple for all his cleverness, but the women of the camp liked him. On Dan’s recommendation, Ryder had written to the owner of the Homestead Hotel in Virginia, looking for a man with Rusty’s skills. She wrote back with his name and said he was one of those men always looking up at the hills as if he wanted to know what was on the other side of them, and as he seemed to crave neither women nor drink, a new place in the wilds might appeal to him. Ryder wrote to him and two months later went and collected him off the boat in Alexandria. His notebook was already full of questions and ideas.
Finally there was Tom “Patch” Western, another veteran of the Comstock Lode. He’d not stayed in Utah long, though, instead leaving America for work in the Transvaal. Ryder wrote to his own nephew Sean, who had made a fortune on the Witwatersrand goldfields, and asked for the name of a trustworthy man who could lead a team of natives without becoming a tyrant or an embarrassment, and who knew about explosives and engineering underground. Sean had told him to take Patch and no one else. The raw scar on his face was a souvenir of when he was last drunk and let his assistant supervise a blast. The assistant had died, squeezed to a pulp under the rockfall, and Patch had lost his eye and his looks in the explosion. Sean wrote to his uncle that Patch hadn’t taken a drink since, was fierce but loyal to the men who worked in his crew, and happy to damn his superiors to hell and back if they pushed too hard.