Lords of the Nile

by Jonathan Spencer

  The Mamluk listened to Masoud’s translation. He considered the words, then looked back at Hazzard. He looked down at the groaning Bedu in the sand. If the Mamluk drew either of his two swords Hazzard knew he would have only the briefest of moments to react – out of sight, his left hand gripped his sword-scabbard tight, ready. Again with a tilt of the head, the Mamluk regarded him silently.

  After an eternity, he held up the pistol in thanks and bowed his head. He pushed it into a silk sash at his waist beneath his outer robe. He then spoke.

  ‘Azhab ila al-Shamal.’

  Masoud almost expired with relief. ‘He says he goes north…’

  The Mamluk waited until Masoud was finished, then added, ‘Yumkinoka an taqul annaka sawfa tarkab be’ezn min al-Sheikh Ali Qarim.’

  ‘But you may say you ride in the name of Sheikh Ali Qarim.’

  Hazzard bowed his head. ‘Shokran, ya Sheikh Ali, raaka Allah.’ Thank you, may God protect you.

  The Mamluk betrayed no surprise, but tilted his head again, then bowed in acknowledgement of the blessing. Masoud kept his head bowed and walked his horse backward out of respect. Cook and Hazzard held their ground. The Mamluk noted this as well. He shouted to his Bedouin escort, ‘Besoraa, ya majnoun!’

  They gathered the reins of their wounded comrade, now climbed back into his saddle, bent over in pain, and rode back to the distant caravan. The Mamluk looked back at Hazzard. He pointed to the southeast. ‘Al-Qahira. Maa as-salamah.’ Cairo. Farewell. He struck the camel with his switch, ‘Hat-hat-hat,’ and it roared, trotting off.

  Cook rode up next to Hazzard. ‘I’m beginning to feel sorry for the Frogs comin’ up against an army o’that lot.’

  * * *

  By mid-afternoon the wind had become a wall of dust and sand. It hit them with full force. The Bedouin shouted to Hammer and waved their hands for everyone to dismount.

  ‘It is just a short storm,’ called Hammer, ‘but it shall be enough!’

  After the incident with the Mamluk, Izzam and Alahum had grown still more solicitous over Hazzard and Cook – they had no doubt the Englishmen had saved their lives from the Maaza. They hurried to take Hazzard’s reins and dragged the horses to the ground with their backs to the wind, covering the horses’ muzzles and eyes with bands of cloth and huddled in the hollow of their necks and forelegs, all in a tight circle.

  Hazzard had to calm his mount, which kept struggling to rise to its feet, whinnying, its forelegs knocking him back, its hooves thrashing. Masoud shouted over the roar of the wind, ‘The eyes, the eyes, effendi!’

  Hazzard lay on top of the beast and threw the ends of his shemagh headdress over its muzzle and eyes, and it calmed, his forehead on its broad cheek. ‘There’s a boy… easy…’ But Hazzard was left exposed and could feel the sand peppering his back and arms like hail, into gaps in his robes, his neck, his wrists and hands, and he felt the onset of thirst with the same familiar fear of drowning, breathe, breathe.

  Izzam dropped next to him and covered him with an arm, propping a corner of his robe up with his switch to form a makeshift shelter. The sand rose slowly around them and they lay still, waiting, Hazzard feeling his head burning.

  Within half an hour the storm passed, dying away as abruptly as it had come. Hazzard heard only a whisper, and could see only darkness. He had made a hollow for his mouth in the crook of his arm, the horse’s breath loud and strong. The grains ebbed and flowed. The whispering continued, sand in his headdress, in his ears.

  He felt Izzam move and pull at his shoulders. They emerged, the horse clamouring to get up, shaking itself. The wind had passed, the sky bright, the sun ravaging in a torrent from overhead, the hillocks in places higher and, in others, lower.

  Izzam looked Hazzard over, and they shook the sand from their arms and necks. This time Izzam was not laughing. ‘Na? Yais?’ he asked.

  Hazzard nodded. ‘Al-hamdulillah.’

  The Bedouin smiled. ‘Hazar-effendi!’ It was the great joke, they said, that he would be buried in the sand for protecting his horse. Izzam looked about for a moment to orientate himself. Then, presenting it as a reward, he pointed over a low dune. ‘Jizah…?’ he asked.

  Cook said, ‘Hang on, that’s what the Frogs banged on about on the Orient. Jeeza.’

  ‘Jizah,’ repeated Izzam. ‘Jizah.’ He pointed.

  Hazzard looked left of the dune, then right, but could see nothing. He followed Izzam, stumbling through the soft ground, part of him wondering, then hoping, yet not wanting to hope too much for fear of disappointment. Jizah?

  Cook came after him, the Bedouin calling out, and he reached the top of the rise.

  Only a few miles away to their left the green lowlands of the Nile spread wide and long, tall palms mere sprigs marking the roads and fields, intermittent towns leading to the distant sprawl of Cairo. But he saw only the rising ground to the south.

  Giza.

  Across an undulating sea of low dunes, possibly half a mile in the distance, there rose an unnatural and unmistakable mountain of stone, out of place, thrust upward from the earth, as if in defiance of the desert all around.

  Sphinx.

  No more than a head, neck and shoulders, a broken face staring – and behind, almost invisible in the light of the sky, the monuments Herodotus claimed had once been at the edge of the sea, and had shone like silver.

  Pyramids.

  Hazzard stared in silence. He wanted to run to them, to plunge across the sand dunes, floundering his way over the dun waves of ochre to see, to touch. But he stayed still, and looked.

  A great weight rose from his shoulders, flying from him. There had been so little time those past weeks, so little time to think, searching for Sarah, chasing Bonaparte, pushing him to this dry, empty world. But here, time ended. It had no place, no strength, no meaning. The need, the consuming urge to rush to Cairo fell away. The towns and cities of Man had become mere dust on distant sands. How many cities and kings had risen and fallen beneath the gaze of these stones – what difference could yet another ruler make, forgotten in another thousand years.

  At last he understood the power of Fate in such a world – insha’allah: God willing.

  ‘Jizah. Giza.’ Izzam whispered, as if the Sphinx might overhear, even at such a distance, ‘Aboul Haoul…’

  Masoud was not as afraid as the Bedouin, but said to Hazzard, ‘The statue of the Sphinx is forbidden, and he calls it the “Father of Terrors”.’

  Staring yet sightless, no more than a pharaonic head, a terrible curse.

  ‘Thought I’d seen it all…’ muttered Cook. ‘Christ lord above…’

  ‘No Christ here, Sergeant,’ said Hammer, gazing out beside him. ‘This is the land of Pharaoh.’

  ‘Why are they so frightened?’ asked Hazzard.

  ‘Not frightened, Captain,’ said Hammer, ‘merely aware. Evil spirits dwell among pagan idols.’

  Perhaps they did, thought Hazzard.

  ‘Tell them not to fear,’ he said. ‘Tell them, it is really the “Father of Mysteries”. And that God knows even these.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Cook.

  Masoud translated for the Bedouin. They listened, then Izzam bowed his head.

  ‘Al-hamdulillah, Hazar al-hakim.’

  Masoud bowed in reply to their compliment. ‘They say praise be to God, effendi, and call you wise.’

  They reached the Nile, passing through the villages and markets clustered along the western bank. The fields had been harvested but green leaf abounded along the swollen banks beneath stands of palms, thickets of alder brush. Teams of oxen and drovers turned the earth in silted mud shallows, goats in large herds cropping more distant stubbled fields. The river had flooded to some extent, but Hazzard could see some stretches of dried-out crops denied their water, even this far south. But compared to the area near Alexandria, it was lush.

  ‘Nahr al-Nil,’ said Izzam, once again presenting the scene, ‘Marhaban fil Qahira.’

  ‘The Nile,’ said Masoud. He bowed
his head. ‘He says welcome, Hazar-effendi. Welcome to Cairo.’

  The river was vast. It snaked through the valley, a mirror to the sun beating down from glowing skies, casting the scene in molten bronze. It seemed broader than the Thames to Hazzard’s eye, dotted with craft, some being towed upstream, others drifting with the current on lazy sails to the Delta. They followed a road to an antique bridge, crossing to a large river island, upstream of another, larger still. The arches of an aqueduct sheltered beneath tall, thin, tousle-headed date palms, beside a mosque and its towering minarets bright in the sun. Sycamores spread their shade, and the river breeze was refreshing. He began to cool, and could feel the sweat trickling on his skin again. He looked across the span of water to distant walls surrounded by clumps of trees, figures at its gates, at the riverside. He felt like a gawping visitor to ancient Rome. Cook rode up beside him. His mood was more prosaic.

  ‘Eight French divisions coming in,’ he muttered. ‘They’ll blow this place to Kingdom Come.’

  * * *

  Very protective of Hazzard, the two Bedouin rode close on the flanks, fending off beggars and traders, crowds of children hoping for food or employment.

  More at home than ever, Hammer led the way, finding a path down Cairo’s narrow streets. Some were lined with high buildings dotted with colourful awnings, crowding out the light overhead, robed women in doorways, some veiled, some working, sewing, scrubbing – at first looking up with suspicion, then looking away back to their work. Sudden squares opened before them, small tables at shopfronts, groups of men taking coffee, some with the simple taqeyyah cap on their heads, others in the Turkish fez, some in fashionable Ottoman linen coats with European cravats, most in kaftans and galabeyyah, sitting, smoking. The noise and smells were such an assault on Hazzard’s senses after the silence of the sands he felt a dull roar in his ears.

  They came to a wide road lined with gardens and terraced stuccoed palaces behind high walls, palm fronds lolling in the stifling heat. It was worse than anything Hazzard had felt so far. Poor, dispossessed fellahin and beggars sat in the shade of the walls, motionless with dead eyes, some lying fanned out in a semi-circle, their heads close together for talk, small monitor lizards and geckos scuttling through the dust.

  They walked their mounts slowly, Hammer leading them to Ezbekiya Square. They found Mamluk troops everywhere, bare-chested spear-carriers in red turbans and sleeveless jerkins, gathered by their sheikhs, and on the perimeters barefoot youths with shaven heads and bronze armbands carrying bucklers and swords, packs, or tending mules braying in the heat.

  ‘Slaves,’ said Masoud. ‘The Mamluk is a slave-warrior, effendi, from Turkey and the Russias. They have been in Egypt for many centuries. Paid soldiers for lords and princes. They rule the land but, traditionally, are still born as slaves to their sheikh. They too acquire slaves as they rise, earning their freedom only in battle. Do not look upon them, Hazar-effendi, it is dangerous.’ Fierce black eyes followed their passage, but Hazzard accepted Masoud’s good counsel.

  Hammer sent Izzam ahead to give notice of their arrival – for identification Hammer had given him a note stamped with the seal of the Viennese Consul. By the time they reached the gates of Al-Elbe, Izzam was waiting.

  The square was unlike anything Hazzard had seen in Europe or India: it was gargantuan, the size of a royal London park. More of an oblong, flat sections of lawn were cross-hatched by a grid of roadways leading to vast sandstone buildings of three and four storeys high, many with mature trees and gardens on terraces and balconies on upper levels, overhanging tall facades crowded with Gothic-style arches more than twenty feet in height. These in turn were dwarfed by the broad domes and minarets of mosques, which pierced the soft gold of the sky.

  The square was packed with Mamluk forces. Troops in gowns and turbans assembled on the roads, horses prancing in review before pavilions and Byzantine canopies giving shade to amirs and sheikhs, their horse-tail standards and banners fluttering overhead.

  Hammer slowed as they were met by a squad of moustachioed Mamluk guardsmen, easily the height of grenadiers, in bright red ballooning trousers and turbans. They marched ahead of them as escort through one of the tall arches, its vaulted ceiling bright with ceramic tile. Everywhere, eyes followed them. Their hoofbeats struck stone cobbles as they entered a paved yard, clattering, echoing, a spraying fountain in the centre. Hazzard saw a number of women in decorative gowns and shawls look down from gardens above, fruit vines and trees hanging from balconies and tall windows.

  By the fountain was a group of men, some Mamluk cavalry, others in the flowing robes of noble rank. They parted as Hazzard and Hammer approached.

  ‘Be careful what you say and say it through me, not Masoud,’ said Hammer. ‘My foreign accent allows me some leniency if our words cause affront. Murad has been a statesman and general here for some twenty years and is the most feared warrior in the East, his name known beyond Acre and Constantinople. With one stroke of his sword, it is said, he can decapitate an ox.’

  They dismounted but went no further. A ferocious figure in black turban and dark robes stormed out to them, a crumpled note in his hand, a curved sword swinging at his side. He was the size of Cook, with broad moustaches and a thick beard beneath a large hooked nose. He roared across the compound in outrage. ‘Hammar-effendi!’

  Hammer whispered, ‘Murad.’ He bowed and said aloud, ‘As-salamu aleikum ya Murad Bey.’

  Murad fairly snapped back, ‘Wa aleikum as-salam.’ He thrust a note into Hammer’s hand. It was in both Arabic and German. It came from the offices of the Viennese Consul, Carlo Rosetti, Hammer’s immediate superior.

  Hammer read it.

  He handed it to Hazzard with a sad bow of the head. ‘I am sorry.’

  It was a note relayed from a Turkish merchantman recently docked in Rosetta. It was short and to the point: French ships sighted. Landing imminent Alexandria.

  Hazzard glanced at Cook. ‘We’re too late.’

  Napoleon Bonaparte had arrived.

  Strike

  The call to prayer of the muezzin drifted from the minarets of the mosques across the palms and rooftops of Alexandria. Some continued to work in the waterways of the port and on the quaysides, some knee-deep along the waterfront, loading the barges and large twin-masted djerms, while others heeded the call.

  A cry went up, more strident than the muezzin. Some noticed an unnaturally heavy swell on the water; boats rocked and bumped each other, their sloping yards swinging. Weather-beaten faces looked out to sea. They stared, some unable to comprehend what they saw. The foreman of the dock turned and ran. Everyone began to run. The women on the nets by the grain jars, the fishermen, the traders, all began to run, the respectable men of town also began to run, their reddah robes tripping them up in their flight, old men, fat men, complacent men now in fear, some praying, some crying out for Nelsoun Amir.

  ‘Al-Bahr, al-bahr!’ The sea, the sea!

  The Turkish troops at the dockside tried to restore order but their labourers stampeded. An elderly imam called for calm but was ignored, his hand taken by a Coptic curate and led to safety, beggars and cripples in tow, mouthing prayers to God – for the sea had become as land, and had come upon them, they said, and a thousand masts darkened the heavens, their banners blaspheming the skies with warlike pride.

  The French Sultan, of whom Al-Sayyid Muhammad Kurayyim had been warned not days earlier, had come.

  * * *

  Sarah Chapel moved from the gathering of officers towards the portside taffrail at the lofty stern of Orient, towering high over the rushing water below. She looked out at the Promised Land.

  Her eye sought anything familiar, much as Hazzard had done before her, but everything that greeted her eye was frightening. A foreign domed mosque glowed in the insufferable heat. Behind ochre fortresses of alien design, men and women in robes were running, everyone running, the harbour filled with Levantine ships and riverboats, their crews frantic, trying to make sail, blocking
the channels.

  Not far away, further along the rail, Bonaparte stood with his eyeglass raised, scanning the harbours, beside him Casabianca, Brueys, and several of his generals.

  Admiral Brueys lowered his telescope and spoke, but she could hear little for certain, the wind and creaking of the stays drowning his words. ‘I must press you again to let us land at Aboukir…’

  Sarah could hear no more. Bonaparte’s stepson, Eugène, burst forward into her secret world, gripping the rail. ‘There it is!’ called one of the junior officers beside him. ‘The Pillar of Pompey!’ She looked at him and he smiled, thrilled. ‘Will it not be magnificent, Mademoiselle Isabelle? Are you not simply overcome, as I?’

  ‘Yes, Eugène,’ cried Sarah, her heart collapsing within. ‘Magnificent…!’

  Jeanne and the comtesse joined her, the old lady taking her hand. ‘It is so exciting, General,’ cried the comtesse with enthusiasm, her trembling grip tightening, a secret indication of her fears. Generals Caffarelli and Kléber moved closer, the hard-faced Swiss on his peg-leg with the tall, dominating Alsatian.

  ‘Now comes the more difficult part of it all, madame,’ Caffarelli said with a tight smile.

  ‘I disagree, Maximilien,’ said Kléber. ‘That voyage was utterly dreadful. This should be easy.’ They laughed. ‘Though you have brightened the journey, mesdames.’

  The comtesse slipped her arms around the girls’ waists and held them both close. ‘It has happened,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Yes,’ the comtesse whispered, ‘and you must both head for safety to Rosetta with the savants, or the French Consul.’

  ‘How, madame?’ asked Jeanne. ‘They said we all go to Cairo.’

  ‘Isabelle knows how.’

  Sarah looked at her. ‘And you, madame?’