Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Dorian asked.

  ‘I will give you a firman of authority, a commission as a general in my armies and as many fighting men as you need – a thousand, two thousand? I want you to sail south to Lamu then cross the channel and march inland to put an end to these depredations.’

  ‘When do you wish me to leave?’

  ‘You must sail with the new moon that ends the fast of Ramadan.’

  The flotilla of Sheikh al-Salil, the Drawn Sword, anchored off the beach of the island of Lamu in the full of the moon. It comprised seven large seagoing dhows, carrying twelve hundred troops of the caliphate.

  Dorian went ashore in the dawn to call upon the governor, to present his firman and to make arrangements for the reception and resupply of his army. He needed quarters for his men ashore to recuperate from the long voyage down the coast, and supplies of fresh food, horses and baggage animals.

  The camels of the desert would not survive long on the humid, pestilent coast, and neither would Arabian horses from the north. Dorian needed animals that had been reared on the coast and had developed an immunity to the African diseases.

  It took three days to get all his men and his baggage train ashore, and Dorian spent much of this time at the landing or in the newly built camp above the beach. On the evening of the third day he was walking back through the streets of the town, accompanied by Batula and three of his captains. They were almost at the gates of the fort when he heard his childhood name called. ‘Al-Amhara!’

  He spun round, for he recognized the voice, though he had not heard it in many years, and stared at the heavily veiled woman who crouched in the doorway of the old mosque across the narrow lane. ‘Tahi? Is that you, old mother?’

  ‘Praise be to God, my child, I thought you might not remember me.’

  Dorian wanted to rush to her and embrace her, but it would be a grave breach of decorum and etiquette to do so in a public place. ‘Stay there, and I will send someone to bring you to my quarters,’ he told her, and walked on. He sent Batula back to bring her through the gates of the fort to the wing that the governor had placed at his disposal.

  As soon as Tahi stepped through the door, she threw back her veil and rushed to him. She was weeping, almost incoherently. ‘My little boy, my baby, how tall you have grown! The beard and the fierce eyes like a falcon – but I would have known you anywhere. What a great man you have become, and a sheikh also!’

  Dorian laughed, held her and stroked her hair. ‘What is this silver I see here, old mother? But you are still beautiful.’

  ‘I am an old woman, but your embrace makes me young again.’

  ‘Sit down.’ He led her to the pile of rugs on the terrace, then sent a slave for sherbet and a platter of honeyed dates.

  ‘There is so much I want to hear from you.’ She reached across to stroke his beard and his cheek. ‘My beautiful baby, who has become a beautiful man! Tell me everything you have done since you left Lamu.’

  ‘That would take a day and a night,’ he protested, smiling fondly at the old woman.

  ‘I have the rest of my life to listen,’ she said, so he answered all her questions, in the meantime holding back his own, although it took all his restraint.

  At last he came to the end of the recital. ‘And thus the Caliph has sent me back to Lamu and the Fever Coast, and I praise God that he has for now I am able to look on your beloved face again.’ Her face was deeply lined with care and hardship, and her hair steely grey, but he loved her as much as he ever had. ‘Tell me how you have fared since I went away.’

  She told him how she had stayed on in the zenana, given menial duties by the head eunuch, Kush. ‘At least I have had shelter and food in my mouth, for that I praise God’s Name.’

  ‘You shall come to live with me now,’ he promised her, ‘and I shall be able to repay all the love and kindness that you lavished upon me.’ She wept again with happiness. Then, trying to make it sound casual, he asked the question, and waited for the answer he dreaded. ‘What news of little Yasmini? She must be a woman by now, and long ago have been sent to India to marry her Mogul princeling.’

  ‘He died of the cholera before she could go to him,’ Tahi said, and watched his face shrewdly.

  He tried to disguise his feelings from her, and sipped at the cup of sherbet. ‘So they found another noble and important husband for her?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Yes,’ Tahi agreed. ‘The Emir of the al-Bil Khail in Abu Dhabi, a rich old man with fifty concubines, but only three wives, the eldest having died two years ago.’ She saw the hurt and resignation in his green eyes.

  ‘When was she married?’ he asked.

  She had to take pity on him. ‘She is betrothed but not yet married. She will sail to meet her bridegroom when the winds change and the kusi blows again. In the meantime she waits sadly in the zenana here on Lamu.’

  ‘Yasmini is still here on Lamu?’ He stared at her. ‘I did not know.’

  ‘I was with her in the garden by the fountain this morning. She knows you are here. Everyone in the zenana knows it. You should have seen Yasmini’s eyes when she spoke your name. They glowed like the stars of the great cross. She said, “I love al-Amhara, as a brother and more. I must see him one last time before I become an old man’s bride and disappear from the world for ever.”’

  Dorian jumped up from the rug and strode to the end of the terrace. He stood there, gazing over the bay where his dhows rode at anchor. He felt a strange sense of elation, as though the wheel of his destiny had made another turn. During the hard years in the desert his memories of Yasmini had grown dim, but he had refused the offers of the sheikhs of the Saar to find him a wife from among their own daughters. He had not known until now that he had been waiting for something or someone else, for the memory of the little monkey-faced girl with the mischievous smile.

  Then he felt a touch of dismay. There was so much that stood in their way. She was imprisoned in the zenana and betrothed to another man. In the eyes of Allah she was his sister, and he knew that the penalty for incest was a hideous death. If he violated a royal virgin and defiled the sanctity of the zenana, even the Caliph could not save him from death by stoning or decapitation. And what would they do to Yasmini? He shuddered as he remembered the tales, repeated in whispers, of Kush’s treatment of any of his charges who strayed. They said that one girl had taken four days to die and that her screams had prevented anyone in the zenana from sleeping during all that harrowing time. ‘I cannot let her take the risk,’ he said aloud, and hugged shoulders, torn by emotions that swung him first one way then the other. ‘And yet I cannot resist my heart’s urging.’ He turned and smashed his bunched fist into the wall of rough coral ragging and revelled in the pain. ‘What shall I do?’

  He strode back to where Tahi squatted patiently on the rug. ‘Will you take a message back to her?’

  ‘You know I will. What shall I tell her, my son?’

  ‘Tell her that at moonrise tonight I will be waiting at the end of the Angel’s Road.’

  He would not let Batula accompany him, but at nightfall he took a horse and, heavily robed and veiled, rode out of the town towards the north. He remembered every track, stream, clump of forest and stretch of mangrove swamp.

  He circled back through the palm groves and saw the walls of the zenana ahead, tall, massive and dark before the moonrise. He found the old ruin and tethered his mare in a patch of bush near by, where she would be hidden from anyone using the woodcutter’s track. He did not expect any islander to be abroad at this hour, for they were superstitious and terrified of the forest djinns.

  He climbed over the piles of fallen masonry and pushed his way through the thicket of bush and scrub until he stepped down into the hidden saucer in the centre. The entrance to the tunnel was overgrown and he could see that no one had used it in all the years that had passed.

  He found a seat on a block of coral where he could watch both the entrance to the tunnel and keep an eye open for
intruders. He did not have long to wait for soon the moonglow filled the eastern sky, and then, as it rose above the tops of the palms, it struck down into the saucer with a silver light.

  He heard a soft sound, light footstep and a whisper from the entrance of the tunnel. ‘Dowie? Are you there?’ Her voice was more husky than he remembered, and goose pimples rose along his forearms, stirred the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

  ‘I am here, Yassie.’

  The branches that screened the entrance parted and she stepped out into the moonlight. She wore a simple white robe and a cloth over her head. He saw at once that she had grown inches taller, but her body was still slim and supple as a vine, her step quick and alert as a frightened gazelle. She saw him and stopped dead, then slowly reached up and drew aside the veil that covered her face.

  He gasped. In the moonlight she was beautiful. Although no longer a child, her face was delicate and still elfin in quality, with high cheekbones and huge dark eyes. When she smiled her lips were full, her teeth white and even.

  He stood up, and pulled back his own veil. She started. ‘You have grown so tall, and the beard—’ She broke off and stood, uncertain.

  ‘And you have grown into a lovely woman.’

  ‘Oh, I have missed you so,’ she whispered. ‘Every single day—’

  Suddenly she ran to him, and he held out his arms. She was trembling and sobbing softly against his chest. ‘Don’t cry, Yassie. Please don’t cry.’

  ‘I am so happy,’ she sobbed. ‘I have never been so happy in all my life.’

  He drew her down on the coral block and she stopped weeping, pulled back at arm’s length to gaze into his face. ‘I have heard news of you even in the zenana, how you have become a mighty warrior, how you won a great fight in the desert and rode with our father to Muscat and won another fierce battle there.’

  ‘Not single-handed.’ He smiled and traced the line of her mouth with his fingertip. They talked quickly and eagerly, breaking in upon each other and leaving much only half said, before flitting on to another idea.

  ‘What happened to your pet monkey, Jinni?’ he asked.

  Tears welled up into her eyes, sparkling in the moonlight. ‘Jinni is dead,’ she whispered. ‘Kush found him in his precious garden and beat him to death with a spade. He sent his little body to me as a gift.’

  Dorian changed the subject then, distracting her with other more pleasant childhood memories and soon she was laughing again. Then they both fell silent, and she lowered her eyes shyly. Without looking at him she whispered, ‘Do you remember how you took me to swim in the sea when we were children? That was the first time I ever remember leaving the zenana.’

  ‘I remember.’ His voice was gruff.

  ‘Will you take me again tonight?’ She looked up at him. ‘Please, Dowie.’

  They went down through the trees hand and hand, and found the beach deserted and glistening in the moonlight. The shadows of the palms were purple-black on the sands and the water shone with the oily luminescence of a black pearl.

  Since last they had been here, the cave in the sandstone had been excavated deeper by the wave action of the high tides. They paused at the entrance and turned to each other. ‘Is what we are doing a sin?’ she asked him.

  ‘If it is I do not care,’ he replied. ‘I know only that I love you and that being with you does not feel to me like a sin.’

  ‘I love you also,’ she said. ‘I could not love anyone or anything more, though I live a hundred years.’ She untied the ribbon at her neck and let her shift drop onto the sand. She wore only pantaloons of silk.

  Dorian could not breathe as he gazed at her. Her breasts had swelled, and the tips were dark and pointed. Her skin was smooth and gleamed like the lining of an oyster shell. ‘You used to tease me that I looked like a monkey,’ she said, half defiant and half timid, fearing his rejection.

  ‘Not any more.’ He had caught his breath. ‘I have never seen anything more beautiful.’

  ‘I was so afraid I would not please you. I want you to like me, Dowie. Tell me that you like me, please.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I want you to be my woman and my wife.’

  She laughed with joy, took his hands and placed them on her breasts. They were warm and pliant, and the nipples hardened as he rolled them gently between his fingers. ‘I am your woman. I think I have always been your woman. I do not know how it is done but I want to be your wife here tonight.’

  ‘Are you sure, my darling? If others learned of this, it could mean disgrace and a terrible death.’

  ‘To be without you would be a death far worse than anything that even Kush could contrive. I know that it cannot be for ever, but give me this one night to be your wife. Show me how, Dowie, please, show me how.’

  So he spread his robes on the sand and laid her down upon them, and slowly, with infinite gentleness, small sounds of love and wonder, gasps of surprise and, in the end, a single long shuddering spasm of pain that was soon lost in the transport of joy that followed, they became lovers.

  Over the days that followed, Dorian was embroiled in the planning of his coming campaign on the mainland across the channel. He purchased most of the draught animals and horses that were available on Lamu, and sent one of his captains with three dhows south to Zanzibar to do the same thing there. He also bought up much of the available grain stocks and trade goods in the markets.

  Then he spent hours each day talking to the caravan masters, and the Arab traders who had been in the caravans the marauders had attacked and looted. He tried to find out the identity of the bandits, their numbers, how they were armed and the methods they used to carry out the attacks. He tallied the losses these men had suffered and the totals shocked him. Over three lakhs of gold dust had been stolen, twenty-seven tons of new ivory and almost fifteen thousand freshly captured slaves. The Caliph had every reason to be worried.

  As to the marauders themselves, the reports were vague and contradictory. Some said there were white men, Franks, with black archers and spearmen. Another said they were but savages who fought with spear and arrow. One said that they carried out their raids only during the night when the caravans were encamped. Another told how they ambushed his long files of slaves and porters during the day, and murdered all the Arab escorts, and that he alone escaped. Another merchant told how they had spared him and all his men and set them free after stripping them of all their possessions. Dorian realized that there was no agreement as to who they were, and no clear pattern to their methods. Only one thing was clear: the marauders appeared like forest djinns out of the southern wilderness and disappeared back the same way. ‘What do they do with the slaves they capture?’ he asked, and the Arabs shrugged. ‘They must sell them somewhere?’ he insisted. ‘They would need a fleet of large ships to transport such numbers.’

  ‘There has been no sighting of such a fleet along the Fever Coast,’ they told him, and Dorian’s puzzlement increased.

  He had so little certain information on which he could base his plans. All he could concentrate on was protecting the caravans and getting them moving again, for the trade had almost dried up. Faced with such heavy losses, few of the Arab merchants on Lamu and Zanzibar would take the risk of financing further expeditions.

  His other planning revolved around taking the war to the bandits, following them into their fastnesses, tracking them down like the wild animals they were and destroying them. For this purpose he recruited all the scouts and caravan guides who had been left idle by the cessation of trade.

  He could not begin the campaign until the weather on the mainland changed, for this was the season of the Big Wet, when the coastal lowlands were inundated with the rains and the Fever Coast lived up to its fearsome reputation. However, he must be ready to sail as soon as the rains ceased and the kusi wind started to blow again.

  Thinking of the start of the kusi always brought his mind back to Yasmini. That same wind would carry her ship north to the Gulf and her marriage. The t
hought made his guts sour with anger and frustration. He thought of writing to the Caliph in Muscat and asking him to cancel the marriage plans. He even considered confessing his love to his adoptive father and asking him for dispensation to marry Yasmini.

  They met each evening after dark, but when he broached this idea to her, Yasmini was terrified and trembled with fear. ‘I think not about myself, Dowie, but if our father even suspects that there is the love of a man and a woman between us, no matter how much he loves you, he will be honour-bound to place your case before the mullahs to be judged by the Shari’ah laws. There could be only one verdict for both of us. No, Dowie, there is no escape that way. Our destiny is with God, and He is not always merciful.’

  ‘I will take you away,’ Dorian declared. ‘We will take one of the dhows and a few of my best men and sail away, find some place where we can live out our love.’

  ‘There is no such place,’ Yasmini told him sadly. ‘We are both of Islam, and there would be no place in Islam for us. We would be outcasts and wanderers for ever. Here, you are a great man, soon to be greater. You have the love and respect of our father and of all men. I will not let you throw all that away for me.’

  They spent much of their precious time together discussing their terrible predicament. They lay in each other’s arms in the moonlight and whispered endlessly. When they saw that there was no escape or release for them, they made love with an almost savage passion, as though to divert the fate that loomed before them.

  Before dawn each morning, Dorian led her back to the entrance tunnel, where she kissed him as if for the last time, and took the Angel’s Road back into the zenana. During the days the girl who had once been playful and happy, loved by all in the zenana, was now pale, silent and lethargic. Her friends and all the servants gradually became alarmed. And there was nothing that happened in that little enclosed world that did not come at last to the ears of Kush.

  Their flawed idyll of love and desperation lasted through the months leading up to the change of the monsoon winds. The expeditionary force to the mainland was almost ready to sail, and the final preparations for Yasmini’s wedding were complete. Her dowry had been sent from Muscat to her bridegroom in Abu Dhabi, her trousseau was packed and ready to go aboard the dhow that would carry her away to her new home thousands of miles to the north, and the confines of another royal zenana, in which she would pass the rest of her life.