The shadows were lengthening and the early winter evening growing cool, when Thomas and Abu Salan, he who had commanded the unfortunate second troop at El Hamha, led their squadrons on to the makeshift Maidan, and drew them up facing each other across the dusty open space. And the roofs of the nearest houses, the slightly rising ground to the north, and even the feathery crowns of the date palms were crowded with the men and boys of the village.
Thomas flicked a glance at the two youngsters sitting their fidgeting mares on either side of him. Daud ibn Hussein, his bugler and a junior half-brother of Zeid’s, and Jassim Khan his standard bearer and personal orderly. They were so young and much would depend on them in the coming display. “The honour of the Arab cavalry is in your hands,” he said to them both, aware of the answering pride flashing out from them like a sword from its sheath; and to Daud, “Sound me the Advance.”
The two squadrons, following each its own silken pennant, swept forward at the trot, to meet and wheel in two long lines to face the spot under the few shade-trees where fine rugs had been spread and the sheikhs of the Beni Jehaine sat with Tussun in their midst.
Thomas’s hand was on the hilt of his sabre, whipping it up in salute, and to left and right in the same splinter of time two hundred and fifty blades sprang clear, splintering back the evening light; two hundred and fifty voices raised the ritual shout “In the name of Ali ibn Talib, the Sword of Allah!” And “Ali ibn Ali Talib! The blessing of Allah be upon him!” the crowd shouted back. Hearing this response, Thomas was aware for the first time just how dear-held was the memory of the Prophet’s warrior son-in-law among the desert tribes. He gave the next signal, the bugle sounded again, and the two squadrons peeled apart and withdrew once more to their own ends of the area. At the third bugle call they broke forward again, straight from a stand into a canter, as they swept towards each other.
One after another they went through the disciplined and complex evolutions of Western-style cavalry manoeuvres, providing a display which could not, Thomas felt with pride, have been greatly bettered by the British cavalry itself. It was what Tussun had asked of him; but despite the long-drawn breaths of approval from the onlookers, he knew that, though they must be suitably impressed, it was not the kind of thing that would really make sense to these wild riders of the desert. Well, the next part of the entertainment might take care of that.
He shouted an order, and the men sheathed sabres and sat loose in their saddles. He called a name and Abu Salan called another, and from each squadron a man drew his sword again and headed at full flying gallop to meet in the dusty centre of the arena and lock instantly into what looked like mortal combat.
This was more within the understanding and experience of the Beni Jehaine. All round the open space the excitement ran like a little wind through standing corn. Thomas felt the rise and sway forward, heard the high-pitched applause. He called out another man, to be matched again by Abu Salan, and so continued until a dozen matched pairs of the regiment’s best men were closely engaged, sabres glinting through the dust cloud flung up by the horses’ trampling hooves.
He sat quietly alert in his saddle and let the sham fight continue for a few whirlpool minutes, keeping an eye well open for any sign of blood getting overheated, which among the Bedouin horse was always a danger at such times. Then, with the onlookers still gripped by the spectacle, still waving and shouting encouragement to this man or that of the swirling riders, made a signal to his bugler.
Again the bugle sang across the sandy space, and the two dozen fighters broke off, turned towards the group under the shade-trees and raised their sabres in salute, then rode back to their squadrons.
It was time for the final flourish.
Thomas snatched a quick glance to where Tussun’s white mare should be waiting, hidden beyond the camel thorn that hedged the nearest of the melon patches. The gleam of a milky flank through the barbed branches told him that she was where she should be. He heeled his own mare lightly forward into a canter, heading for the group under the shade-trees; and reining in at what seemed the last instant before he was among them, achieved an expert levade. Then bringing her flickering hooves down again to the baked ground — he would not have cared to try that so near the brains of the senior sheikhs of the Beni Jehaine and his own sword-brother among them if she had not had a mouth like velvet and a trust in him as complete as his trust in her — he saluted first Sheikh Muhammed, his host, and then Tussun Pasha, his commander.
“Tussun, Brother of Nayli,” he issued the challenge in the Bedouin fashion, “Grant to my poor Sword the honour of single combat.”
A gasp broke from the tribal sheikhs, their faces kindled with eagerness to see what would happen. He and Tussun had both known the effect such a challenge would have, and catching each other’s gaze, shared a flicker of inner laughter. Every Arab knew that Turkish etiquette did not permit such informality between a three-tailed pasha and one of his officers, even though they were known to be friends, and they had not yet learned that Muhammed Ali and his family made their own laws of etiquette to suit themselves and the needs of the occasion, as they went along.
“With all the joy in the world, my brother.”
Tussun came to his feet all in one movement. In almost the same instant the white mare was out from behind the camel thorns, dancing at the end of her rein, to which a young groom clung. Tussun stepped out from among the sheikhs and setting his hands on her withers swung into the saddle, drew his sabre with a flourish worthy of Ali ibn Talib himself, and urged her straight at Thomas.
For ten minutes or so, alone in the midst of the open space, the two young men put on a display of mounted sabre fighting combined with horsemanship that Thomas reckoned was different both in kind and quality from anything that had been seen in these parts before. Circling and intently focused, they wove their intricate patterns of bright and savage action, smiling at each other straight-lipped and bright eyed with a kind of cool delight through the dust cloud of their own raising.
“Have I not taught thee well?” Thomas said as their blades locked.
“Indeed thou hast taught me well — but first I taught thee how to fly a hawk,” Tussun returned, breaking free of the lock to come in under Thomas’s guard, and they swung the horses dancingly apart and came at each other again, pleasuring in their own and each other’s skill as they had done in so many practice bouts before, but never with quite this added edge to their delight.
“Enough?” Thomas signalled a few minutes later, after a particularly swift and brilliant flourish of sword strokes.
“Enough,” Tussun Pasha signalled back.
They lowered their blades, backed their horses a few paces, and gravely saluted each other. Then as the orderlies came running to the horses’ heads, they sheathed their swords and dismounted, and strolled back together towards the group under the shade-trees, while the squadrons turned and rode off.
“… And by Allah! They breathe scarcely faster than if they were but now risen from sleep!” one of the sheikhs was murmuring to his neighbour as they came.
*
Sheikh Muhammed’s feast for the pasha and his officers took place in a long five-bay tent pitched among the palm trees behind his house. A young camel had been killed and broiled. Thomas appreciated the honour and hospitality, but doubted if he should ever get used to the gelatinous texture of camel foal, even when served with mountains of rice, yellow with saffron and pungent with herbs. He did his best to eat as much as custom and courtesy demanded, while still leaving a little space for the savouries and camel-curd sweetmeats that were pressed upon them from all sides, until to his relief, the food was done and the armed Negro slaves were bearing round the first of the endless cups of coffee.
“Forgive my poor fare. Indeed thou hast scarcely touched the food,” moaned their host, following the ritual of good manners.
“Nay, the food was most excellent, and we have eaten as much as would suffice for a whole army,” Tussun responded with
equal good manners, and, Thomas thought, considerably more of truth.
He leaned back and belched to express his own satisfaction, feeling, though overfull, beautifully at home; and thought again with gratitude of the months up beyond Aswan that had given him more than his cavalry training. And when the story-telling started, he slipped easily into taking part in it; and the crowding darkness became the darkness of El Hamha, and the jackals crying out beyond the oasis were the jackals of the frontier desert, and the dark faces intent in the upward light of the coffee hearth were the faces of Zeid and the rest … These were his people as they could never be Tussun’s. They would come to admire and respect the young pasha who was so unlike what they had come to believe a pasha of the Turkish world must be; they would follow him, some would come to love him; but they could never be his people, as they were Thomas’s people; and he felt oddly protective towards his commander, as though the younger man were a stranger in Thomas’s country.
Next morning the council continued, if council it could be called, and after hours spent in political digression, long and detailed by-ways of tribal history, and almost as great a wealth of pious platitudes as on the day before, Sheikh Muhammed, his new gold-rimmed spectacles still on his nose, made a long speech summing up the position of the Beni Jehaine. His voice droned on like a fly on a window pane as he told off point after point on his blue-nailed fingers.
It must be understood that almost the whole tribe were on the side of Tussun Pasha in this campaign to free the Hijaz from Wahabi oppression.
But it must be understood also that while they were prepared at any time to fight ibn Saud and his followers, they had, also, a ten-year truce solemnly sworn on the Koran with the sheikhs of the Beni Harb.
Tussun Pasha would assuredly understand that this could not be broken; also that they could not fight the Wahabis without also fighting the Beni Harb.
The dark faces bent in agreement.
They would seek by all peaceful means to persuade the Beni Harb to break their alliance with ibn Saud; and they held out good hope that the capture of Medina would bring over most of the Harb tribes anyway, thereby freeing the Jehaines of their oath, to move against any of the tribes under the Wahabi banner.
Again the bowed heads and the murmurs of agreement. “All will be well, Insh’ Allah.”
They would furnish guides for the Turkish army through the Harb country, as far as the Pass of Jedaida, provided that the guides were not asked to draw sword. Also they would protect Tussun’s lines of communication through their own country against all corners, Harb or Wahabi.
Thomas, scribbling notes, took particular care to get that point straight, pressing, through Tussun, for the answers to certain questions, with gentle persistence when the old man sought to brush them aside. One thought in terms of victory, but possible defeat had also to be taken into consideration, and lines of communication were also one’s line of retreat.
Finally, the old sheikh wound up. Should ibn Saud send another force against Mecca while the Turks were still busy with Medina, the Beni Jehaine would go to the aid of the Grand Shariff.
And that was all. Of present support, open support, despite the ceremonial abbas of gold-worked poppy-coloured silk, no word at all.
Beside him, Thomas felt his commander, who had held himself on an increasingly tight rein throughout, waiting for more, and then, as he realised that there was no more, about to drop the reins and let fly. And they could not afford to make enemies of the Beni Jehaine. He said quickly and quietly, “Sir, have I your permission, since I have the notes here, to answer on your behalf?”
“You have my permission,” Tussun said through shut teeth.
And Thomas went through the various points, referring with care to the notes on his knee, that the sheikhs might be fully aware that they were written down and on record. Of the Beni Jehaine’s own position, he spoke with a mixture of understanding and courteously implied reproach. The pasha and his forces had hoped — had been led to hope — for several thousand Beni Jehaine fighting men to march with them upon Medina, but a sacred oath was a sacred oath, and not to be lightly broken.
He wondered whether Montrose, towards the lag end of the Annus Mirabilis had felt much the same as this, when trying to cope with his own Highlanders. If so, Montrose had his, Thomas Keith’s sympathy. The sense of belonging, of being among his own people that had come up on him yesterday evening was strained to the utmost; but, torn and exasperated, it held.
*
“And still with those red silk abbas dripping with tinsel like dancing girls on their backs!” Tussun exploded for the second time, later in his own tent while they were making ready for the evening meal.
Before Thomas could answer, a sentry’s challenge sounded outside the tent; a shadow moved at the corner of his eye, and looking round, he saw Yusef, Sheikh Muhammed’s youngest son, standing in the tent opening.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said. “I may enter?”
Tussun returned the greeting, “Enter and be welcome, in Allah’s name.”
The young man came forward, and wasted no time on the usual flowery preliminaries, “Excellency, I come to ask that when you ride against the Wahabis, I may ride with you.”
There was a moment’s surprised silence, and then Tussun said, “Does your father, Sheikh Muhammed, know of this?”
The young man smiled, a flash of white teeth in a big-boned olive face. “When you and Ibrahim Agha sheathed your swords yesterday evening, my father said to his sons, ‘By Allah! If I were your age, I would ride with those two to the gates of Diriyah and beyond,’ and I said to him, ‘By Allah, I will ride with them, if they will accept my sword.’ He pretended not to hear me, but he knows.”
“But the Beni Harb?” Thomas said.
“I am the son of a lesser wife, and can be spared from the family honour easily enough. If any question be asked, my father can say that I went without his knowledge — Did I not say that he pretended not to hear me?”
Tussun said gravely, laying his arm about the other’s shoulders, “Then Yusef ibn Muhammed, bring your sword and ride with us to the gates of Diriyah and beyond.”
Across his shoulder, his eyes and Thomas’s met. All the planning and effort and long-drawn diplomacy that had gone into this council meeting at Yembo el Nakhl had not been quite wasted; their own exhibition of swordsmanship had brought them one solitary volunteer.
19
Thomas had experienced the Pass of Killiecrankie more than once, on route marches, from Perth to Blair Atholl before the 78th was drafted south, and had thought it a dreich and deadly place enough. But in memory it seemed no more than a rough valley by comparison with the Pass of Jedaida viewed from the edge of the palm groves beyond Jedaida village.
The long wall of the mountains reared up, seeming to menace, as though it were live and hostile, the low country and the straggle of palm-fringed villages beneath. Jagged masses of black rock rising in giant heaps from ridge to ridge till the savage crest slashed the sky. And at the nearest point to the village, the chief reason — save for the wells which in the desert are the first reason for any village — for being there, opened the yawning darkness of the pass; the way through the mountains to Medina, running, so the scouts had told them, for three miles, and in places less than a hundred yards wide. Easy to see why ibn Saud, acting through the Beni Harb, had chosen this place for his centre and main collecting point for the dues exacted by virtual blackmail from the pilgrim caravans.
At dawn when the advance guard had reported the village and palm groves deserted by the Beni Harb, they had entered into possession, and, leaving the business of making and securing the camp going on behind them, Tussun had cantered forward with Thomas and a couple of scouts to reconnoitre the pass. In the clear morning light Thomas could see how on the lower ridges on both sides of the track the Beni Harb had built rough breastworks of rock and small boulders from behind which they could fire on all comers in comparative safety.
Eve
n as he looked, there was a crack like a whiplash, and a puff of white smoke wisped away from one of the nearest of the sangars, and a bullet at extreme range spat up a shower of dust and rock-splinters not much more than a spear’s throw ahead.
“Near enough, I think,” Thomas said, and the little party reined in, while a scatter of random and at that range useless shots rattled the echoes from rock faces, and dust spurted up from the track ahead.
“The message is received,” Tussun replied grimly, but steadying his startled mare with a gentle hand. “We shall have to bring them down into the open. If we try to clear the ridges one by one, and the Harb are the fighters and the marksmen they are reputed to be, we shall lose half the army in a day.”
“Best order up the guns,” Thomas said as they rode back to the main force.
The six pounder field-pieces had already been unloaded from the artillery camels, and in half an hour were assembled and ready for action, though it was another twenty minutes or so before the gunners, short of experience for all Thomas’s efforts in that direction, began to bring reasonably accurate fire on to the lower breastworks. Thomas, sitting his horse at the head of one of the flanking squadrons of cavalry, ready to strike inward if the Beni Harb should try to rush the guns, cursed the lack of Colonel D’Esurier. But once the shots started landing on target, results came quickly. By midday when the heat that ricocheted off the black rocks was almost unbearable, all the lower breastworks at the mouth of the pass and for several hundred yards inside it had been destroyed or evacuated. But the sangars on the higher ridges were still untouched, being beyond the elevation of the small field pieces.
Tussun reluctantly ordered a ceasefire and called a meeting of his senior officers in two hours’ time.
*
Now, men and horses took what rest they could in the shade of the palm groves, with strong vedettes posted in case of any sudden Harb attack; and in the fig garden behind what had been the headman’s house, Tussun’s meeting was deep in argument. The two infantry commanders were protesting strongly against the plan of an infantry attack up the steep slopes in the face of jezail fire from the breastworks. “Doubtless we shall clear the ridges, though with heavy loss,” Salah Agha was saying, “but as we do so, the enemy will fall back with comparatively little loss, to the ridge above. By the end of the day we shall be substantially outnumbered.”
Blood and Sand Page 21
