by Wilbur Smith
Now the baby was sleeping again, Ryder picked up a sheaf of documents and ran through the columns of figures, calculating swiftly in his head. The three miners in the saloon were wrong: he had not sunk every penny of his fortune into this mining venture. Back in Cairo and under the guard of his trusted Arab lieutenant, Bacheet, Ryder had left a reserve in trade goods and gold, but the hunger to make something of this mine had meant he had invested more heavily than he had first intended. He had not heard from the men he had sent to buy the land and begin establishing the camp since before the rains. That was to be expected, of course—nothing moved during the period of those fierce daily storms—but what would the sun shine on when they were over? Ryder had heard rumors in Cairo that the Italians were supplying John’s southern rival, Menelik, King of Shoa, with modern rifles and quantities of ammunition. Ryder believed the Italians were playing a dangerous game. Menelik was a shrewd man with expanding territories and an Ethiopian patriotism. If the Italians thought they could use him to control Abyssinia, they were wrong. Would the Italian appetite for Abyssinia be sharpened by rumors of large silver deposits in the mountains of Tigray, so temptingly close to their base at Massowah? Possibly.
The penalties if Ryder failed in this venture were clear: he would lose fifteen years of profit and have to start building his fortune all over again, only now he had a wife and child to support. But if they succeeded in working the lode . . . In that moment the thought crossed his mind, like a bird of prey crossing a high blue sky between distant peaks: what might be the penalties of success?
•••
On deck, watching the shore drift by, Saffron was testing her sister’s Amharic.
“The translators at Emperor John’s court are nice enough, but they never bother to translate things precisely,” Saffron said with a shrug. “Ryder says he learned years ago that shaking hands on a deal made through them was a recipe for disaster.”
Her sister didn’t reply and Saffy looked at her sideways. She knew she talked about Ryder too much, but she couldn’t help it. She had fallen in love with him under the walls of besieged Khartoum with the unquestioning, wholehearted devotion of a child. That love had deepened and matured as she grew up, but it was still the absolute center of her existence. When she thought of his hands on her, on her waist, in her hair, she shivered and flushed. When she was pregnant, she was afraid that she would have no love left in her for the baby, but then Leon was born and she realized love was not something one ran out of, like fuel for a lamp. She had plenty for her son too, and though she knew she’d never be the sort of mother who devoted every breath and word to her child, she knew that her heart had room enough for him. In fact, having his child had made her love Ryder even more, and she had never believed such a thing was possible.
Amber had felt the same way about Penrod, Saffron knew that. She knew every fiber of her twin’s being so she never tried to fool herself that Amber’s devotion to Penrod had been less intense than what she felt for Ryder. When she tried to imagine what it would be to lose faith in her husband, her heart almost stopped in her chest and she was terrified by her own good luck.
Saffron lived her life by running at it, throwing herself into every endeavor and adventure with abandon. As soon as she was bored or unhappy, she quickly found the next challenge and embraced it. From learning to shoot to learning how to ride, from feeding starving crowds in Khartoum to learning to paint or designing her own elaborate evening dresses, she had excelled in everything she had done. She felt she excelled in being a wife too. Amber had never failed at anything either. She could shoot just as well as Saffron could and the first time she had tried to write a book, it had become an international bestseller. But then she had broken off her engagement with Penrod. Not that Amber had failed—it was Penrod who had ruined everything—but a small voice in Saffron’s head told her that it might feel like a failure to Amber.
They had fallen silent, staring at the rocky coastline, while the handsome, dashing soldier Amber loved was in both their thoughts. He got everywhere, Saffron thought, like sand in the desert wind.
“What exactly did Ryder tell you?” Amber asked, her blue eyes still gazing unseeingly at the coastline.
Saffron understood what she meant. The twins had not spoken the name of Penrod Ballantyne since that day in Shepheard’s Hotel. They didn’t need to, and Saffron knew that any mention of him while they were still in the same city as him would have been a knife in Amber’s heart. She had been so brave, the way she bore those months before Leon was born.
“No more than what I told you after Agatha spoke to you. That it happened only a few days before Osman Atalan led the attack on Khartoum and they took you and Rebecca. Ryder and Rebecca made love in his office at the compound and he asked her to marry him. She wouldn’t give him an answer because she hoped that Penrod would come back for her.” Even saying the words made Saffron feel a little sick. “Ryder told me the day after I told him we should get married. He said I had to know.”
“Did Ryder think Rebecca was a whore?”
Saffron turned and leaned against the ship’s rail. “Ryder said he tried to think bad things about her after he realized she’d been with Penrod, but it didn’t work. He said he thought she was very brave and very beautiful and if he could have rescued her, he would still have married her and thought himself a lucky man.”
Amber hung her head, leaning over the rail and staring into the churning waters of the Red Sea as the steamer cut through them. The steady beat of the engine made the teak planks of the deck throb under her feet. “What did you say?”
Saffron did not reply at once. “I did a lot of shouting. And hitting. Then he got hold of my wrists, so I tried to kick him instead. He’d locked my revolver and hunting knife in the money chest before he told me, and hidden the key.” She considered this for a moment. “Which was probably a good idea.”
Amber smiled reluctantly. “Then what happened?”
“After the kicking and shouting? He kept hold of my wrists so I couldn’t scratch his eyes out, until I was too tired to fight anymore, then he let me go. I suppose I cried myself to sleep in the end. I didn’t speak to him for three days. Wouldn’t even look at him, even when I put his evening whisky in front of him.” Her voice took on a rather satisfied note. “It made him feel terrible. I think he found out then how much he loved me.” She turned back out toward the water and put her arm through her sister’s. “When the three days were up, I went to him and said I realized that I had been too young for him to love in that way before, and Rebecca is brave and beautiful, so I understood why he might like her. I said it was good he had told me, and if he could promise that he loved me more now than he had ever loved Rebecca then I would still marry him.”
Amber moved closer to her. “And he did promise you that?”
“Oh yes. He was so relieved he fell on his knees and made me a proper proposal. That was nice because the first time around I proposed to him. Well, actually I said I was going to follow him around until I died so he might as well marry me, which is almost the same thing. I’m glad he ended up asking me too and looking like he meant it, otherwise I might always have thought he just married me because he didn’t know how to make me go away.” She sighed. “I’m still glad the compound where they made love was burned to the ground, though.”
Amber put her head on Saffron’s shoulder. “And you still love Rebecca?”
Saffron stared out across at the eastern shores of the Red Sea. Rebecca was somewhere in the Sudan in the harem of Osman Atalan, caring for his children, going everywhere with her eyes cast down.
“Yes. Though I think perhaps she is not the Rebecca we knew anymore, if she is still alive.”
“Do you think we will ever see her again?”
Saffron kissed her twin’s head quickly. She could feel Amber was crying, and hoped it was doing her some good. “No, darling, I don’t think we shall. Alive or dead, our sister belongs to the desert now.”
•••<
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The weather was being kind to them, warm but not savagely hot with a steady breeze to cool them, but no sudden squalls. The ship made steady progress through the calm waters. That night, Ryder stared up into the darkness, still considering how to move the machinery he needed out of Massowah. Saffron lay across his broad chest, one slim leg lying across his own. He could see the line of her collarbone in the moonlight as it shone across her from the brass-rimmed porthole. He could feel the weight of her breasts against his chest and his desire for her began to grow. She would not mind being woken by him, to emerge from her dreams to find his hand making its way up her smooth thigh. He could already hear her answering moan of lust when she felt him hard against her. No. He fought temptation. His wife needed to rest. Saffron had nightmares too often. The horrors she had seen in Khartoum, the starving men and women killed as they stormed Ryder’s compound, her father’s head held high by the dervish executioners, often returned to her in the darkness. Three or four nights in every seven, Ryder would wake to find her sweating and trembling beside him. She never cried out, and never spoke about her nightmares during the day. Ryder knew and understood, though. Tonight Saffron was smiling in her dreams, her fingers resting feather-light on his chest. No matter how he wanted her, he would not wake her. He carefully slipped out from under her and she made a soft keening sound then turned toward the cabin wall, still lost in her dreams.
Ryder dressed and took his leather wallet of documents and calculations onto the private area of deck outside their stateroom. The moon was full and the stars so bright and numerous in the heavens he could read by their light. He began going through the papers once more. The risk and challenge of the enterprise excited him and he realized he was smiling as he worked. After half an hour he struck a match to light his cheroot, then flicked it, still smoking, over the rail. Nearby on the deck someone coughed.
“Who’s there?” he said quietly.
A small white face leaned forward out of the shadows. “Only me, Ryder,” Amber said. “I didn’t want to disturb you and I like the smell of cheroots. The smell of matches always makes me cough, though. Silly, isn’t it?”
“Have you been there all this time, al-Zahra?” He spoke quietly and fondly in Arabic, which flowed from his tongue as easily as it did from hers.
“I was out here thinking; I didn’t want to disturb you.”
The door behind them opened and Saffron emerged onto the deck, her feet bare, her shift covered only by Ryder’s long leather traveling coat. It hung down below her knees and the sleeves hid her hands completely. She yawned and stretched.
“What are you both doing up? Lord, what a beautiful night. Ryder, do you need anything?”
Ryder took her hand and kissed her palm. “All is well, Filfil.” The twins’ nurse had named Saffron “pepper” in Arabic. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh, all right, but it seems a shame when the stars are so lovely.” The last word was almost lost in another yawn. She turned to shuffle off to bed, when suddenly below and behind them there came a dull, smothered boom, then another. The ship gave a shuddering groan and lurched hard. Ryder leaped to his feet and caught Saffron before she fell. She clutched his arm.
“Ryder! What in God’s name—?”
“I’ve no idea. I’m going to see. Get ready. Don’t go below and if they lower the boats move fast. Take Leon. Promise not to wait.”
She had gone pale in the moonlight, but his wife was not the sort of woman to panic. He could see her mind working already, figuring out what to save and what to leave. He put his hand to her warm cheek for a moment.
“I promise, Ryder. Go. Remember to come back.”
•••
Ryder had run a steamboat up and down the Nile before the fall of Khartoum. He had taken his turn stoking the furnace, watching the pressure in the boilers and learning how to squeeze vital extra power from the engine when he needed to outrun or outmaneuver an enemy on a swift-flowing and capricious river. He had learned the power and danger of steam in those years. The ship on which he found himself now was on a very different scale to the Intrepid Ibis. The Iona was nearly four hundred feet long, and could carry up to three hundred passengers as well as cargo. She was brigantine rigged, but powered her way through the waters with a compound steam engine that could put out five hundred horsepower. Ryder and his companions had been given the tour by the chief engineer while they were waiting to leave Suez. The engineer was a young Australian, whom Ryder liked. He had shown Ryder around the engine room like a bride showing off her new marital home. The stokers who fed the furnaces were teams of lascars, Indian sailors valued for their hard work and skill at wielding a shovel in the suffocating temperatures. The boilers were over sixty tons each, made of riveted steel plates thick enough to contain the pressurized steam, which drove the laboring engines. Ryder had seen that the crew understood their business and treated the power they controlled with respect, but he also knew from his own experience that accidents happened even to good crews, and when dealing with such explosive forces, accidents could swiftly become disasters.
Ryder tore down the narrow companionway to the lower levels. The second-class passengers, clouded with sleep and confusion, were standing at the doors of their cabins. They looked like lambs in their cotton shifts and shirts. The small faces of children peered around their parents’ knees, eyes wide. A young Indian, dressed in a gray European-style suit, called after him as he ran by.
“Sir, what’s happening? Sir?”
Ryder half turned, trying to decide if he should send them back to bed, reassure them and prevent panic, but he remembered his instructions to his own wife.
“Get them all up on deck. Dressed, no baggage. It might be nothing, but . . .”
The young man was already clapping his hands, urging the passengers into their clothes and up the companionway. “I understand, sir. Come on, everyone, quick and calm . . . No, ma’am, leave that! Just you and the little ones . . .”
Ryder ran back and slid down the next companionway into the bowels of the ship.
•••
Saffron pulled on her traveling skirt, belt, socks and her boots, then lifted Leon from his cot. He grizzled and stretched. If she had to get into a lifeboat, she’d need her hands free. She laid the baby back down again, took her hunting knife from its sheath at her waist and sliced one of the snowy cotton sheets into thick bands. Then she settled Leon across her chest and bound him securely and comfortably to her, tying the strips over her hip. Next she belted Ryder’s heavy coat around her and folded back the sleeves. Then she glanced around the cabin. Ryder’s box of cigars she thrust into her coat, then she flung open one of the trunks and plucked out their moneybag, packed with their supply of Maria Theresa silver dollars. They were the only currency that was worth carrying in Abyssinia, but God, they were heavy. If she ended up in the water they would drag her and Leon into the depths in moments. She hesitated and felt a touch on her shoulder. Amber was beside her, dressed and ready with a leather satchel slung securely across her back.
“Split them with me, Saffy. You have your knife?”
Saffron nodded. They divided the silver, took half each and tied the heavy leather pouches that held them under their skirts. They left the thongs that secured them exposed at the waist so they could be cut quickly if they needed to lose the weight. They could hear voices in the corridor outside, a wondering exchange of questions and answers, a masculine laugh.
“What else?” Amber said quickly. “Ryder has his document folder, I saw him tuck it into his waistcoat.”
“Good. Father’s revolver?”
“I have that.” Amber patted her leather bag.
“This, then.” Saffron picked up Ryder’s large silver hip flask and filled it from the decanter on the desk. She was glad to see her hand was steady.
Amber made her own choices. She grabbed Saffron’s sketchbook and pencil box from the unused upper bunk, wrapped them in oiled cloth and thrust the package into the satchel.<
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“The Star of Solomon,” Saffron said suddenly. She yanked open another leather-bound trunk and for a minute the air was full of lace and linen as she threw her shifts and petticoats over her shoulder. “Here!” She drew out an ornately carved wooden case and opened it. Inside was a decoration, a sort of silver emblem set in an elaborate network of chains and covered with ribbons. She plucked it out, opened her coat and began to try to fasten it to the inside.
“Let me help.” Saffron lifted her chin and Amber helped fasten the decoration securely, then she smoothed down the coat again over her sleeping nephew. A fine silk shawl lay on the bed, green and gold and still smelling faintly of the spiced air of the Cairo bazaars. Amber wrapped it around her sister’s neck and tucked in the ends. The tassels brushed Leon’s nose and he sneezed, then slept on.
From the deck they heard a great rattle and bang, then a new chorus of shouting.
“Amber, they’re lowering the boats. We have to go. Ryder said.”
Amber looked around her at the comfortable, quiet cabin. The gas lamps still burned steadily in their etched glass shades, warming the shadows away. “What if it’s nothing, Saffy? We could wait and see.”
“If it’s nothing they’ll pick us up again.”
Amber nodded sharply. One final glance around the cabin and they left it. In the corridor they saw the wife of a colonel, a large lady wrapped in a white, quilted dressing gown making her look like an expensive cream cake.
“Where are you hurrying to, my dear girls?” She yawned.
“On deck to the boats, Mrs. Cobbett, and you should come too,” Saffron said.
“Oh, nonsense, my dear. Just a little engine trouble.”
Amber put her hand on the woman’s arm. She smelled of lavender soap. “Mr. Courtney has gone to see what is happening, Mrs. Cobbett. But he said we should go to the boats. Do come with us.” She looked into Mrs. Cobbett’s face with urgent appeal. Saffron was dragging at her wrist, pulling her away.