Blood and Sand

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  “You will not return to Teif or Mecca for a considerable time.” Muhammed came to a halt, and the two stood facing each other. “You will, I make no doubt, have heard that Quera al Din, the Governor of Medina, is lately dead?”

  “I have heard something,” Thomas said guardedly. He had heard, among other things, that the Governor — the Amir — of Medina had died by poison.

  “That is small cause for grief, the harshness of his rule and his mishandling of the tribes made it certain that he must shortly have been removed in one way or another. The fact remains that his place is now empty and must be filled with all reasonable speed.”

  Thomas waited.

  Muhammed Ali said conversationally: “I therefore intend — Tussun, who is of course the direct representative of the Sultan in the Hijaz, is with me in this — to appoint you as his successor, to clean up the trouble he has left behind.”

  For a moment Thomas was not quite sure that he had heard correctly, or, if he had heard, that he had understood. “Excellency, I am not worthy,” he said at last. It was the correct response, but he felt the truth in it as well. “The Governor of Medina must surely be of the Prophet’s world — have you forgotten that I am a Scot?”

  “There is nothing in the Koran to say of what race the Governor of Medina shall be.” The Viceroy moved on again, speaking more as man to man than ever he had spoken to Thomas before. “Are you afraid that this comes only because you are my son’s friend? There is no need. I assure you that I do not bestow such honours, such extremely demanding honours, for such reasons … You are known to be well liked and well trusted by the Medinans and by the Beni Harb. The reputation you have gathered to yourself through Jedaida, the capture of Medina and the retreat from Tarraba leaves no doubt as to your courage and skills as a soldier and a leader of men. You are one of the very few among my senior officers who I know that I can absolutely trust. These be good enough reasons?”

  Thomas, still feeling slightly winded, said, “These be good enough reasons.” And then: “For my part, I swear on the name of Allah the All Compassionate that, while I live, I will not betray that trust.”

  “I know it.” The Viceroy had returned to his more vice regal manner. “I shall not invest you until the last day of the Haj celebrations, but I give you this forewarning that you may have a short time to grow accustomed to your advancement, and to make any domestic arrangements that may be necessary. But I need hardly tell you the matter is not to be made public until the day of the investiture.”

  *

  Thomas went back to the three rooms above the goldsmith’s shop, and did not make the matter public, even to Anoud. It was not that he did not trust her to keep silence. But it had always seemed to him that the Viceroy’s word, once given, was binding until and unless something happened that made it advisable that he should take it back. If something happened before the last day of the Haj that made it seem advisable that he should change his mind … Thomas wanted the governorship of Medina. He was not overwhelmingly ambitious, not more than any career soldier who knows his own worth; but now that his climb from the ranks of the 78th Highlanders had brought him within sight of such a shining goal (and he knew that it was one that he could handle; that he had it in him to make a good Governor of Medina) he wanted it desperately, and had the feeling that if he spoke of it in advance, even to Anoud, it would disappear like the faery gold that changes overnight to withered leaves.

  The days passed, Mecca throbbing like a drum with its preparation. The souks were spilling over with wares, from gold and fine silks to the meanest tourist trash to catch the eye and loose the purse strings of the pilgrims; dealers in horses and camels converged from all quarters of the Hijaz to encamp under the walls alongside the tents and horse-lines of the garrison, which had for the most part been withdrawn from inside the city to make room for the influx. The holy places broke out in fresh coats of garish paintwork.

  Thomas, on duty with the cavalry still within the walls; saw the great pilgrim caravans come in, filling the wide streets with surging rivers of men, women and beasts, the shouts and cries of the camel drivers, the dry-throated and weary ecstasies of the pilgrims, the great caravan masters leading the way in the luxury of litters slung between swaying soft-footed camels decked with tassels and ostrich plumes and the slow clonking bells; rich men on fine riding camels, hidden women in shawl-hung litters; the poor or especially holy on bare feet, some gazing about them in awed realisation that their life’s longing was upon them and they were in the Holy City at last, some too numb with weariness to gaze anywhere but straight ahead, as they stumbled by towards their appointed caravanserai or camping space. Over two or three days they came from Damascus, from Istanbul and the Gulf cities, from Cairo bearing in their midst the Holy Carpet; and with them tumblers and fire-eaters, musicians and performing beasts.

  On the days that followed, they performed the established rituals. In the forecourt of the Great Mosque they circled the Ka’aba seven times like swarms of soldier ants, thrusting and jostling to get near enough to kiss the Black Stone set into its wall. They visited the Place of Abraham and drank from the sacred well of Zam-Zam. They ran between the twin hills of Safa and Martha. They went shopping for a riding camel or a bolt of silk, a silver bracelet or a crude pottery model of the Ka’aba.

  On the eighth day of the festival, the crowds swarmed off to camp at the Oasis of Mina six miles away, and on the day after, pushed on to Mount Arafat where the Prophet Abraham had shown himself willing to sacrifice Ishmael his elder son at the command of Allah. There they listened to a sermon delivered from the slope of the mountainside, before returning to Mecca next day to throw stones at the Devil, and finally take part in the great Feast of Sacrifice, the Id-al-Adha, to celebrate Abraham’s willingness and Allah’s Mercy in the last instant providing a ram to take the young man’s place.

  Muhammed Ali played a leading part in all this, entertaining the great ones of the caravans, walking himself bare headed and bare footed in the processions to the Holy Places, providing two camels and six sheep for sacrifice at the Id-al-Adha, a sign of piety and charity (since the sacrifices, save for the sacred portions, were eaten by the poor) that bordered on the ostentatious. Some of the Medinans, some of the garrison also, joined in the rituals, though, as they had not had to make the journey, this did not count as making the Haj, but only as a meritorious act. Thomas did not; he had prayed in the Great Mosque often enough, kissed the Black Stone, drunk from the Holy Well when he first came to Mecca, and had found less of God in these things than he had found in the empty desert. He wished that he could have made the show of piety, even so. How was it different from his rigid abstinence from alcohol, his regular praying five times a day, his ritual washing every time he lay in the way of love with Anoud? He was not sure, but the difference was there, and he held aloof from the great public demonstration of the Faith.

  On the last day of the Haj ceremonies he was formally summoned to the citadel.

  He went, followed by Medhet in a state of game-cock pride, and clad in his best abba of honey-brown camelhair with the gold edging on the shoulders, his fringed turban-scarf swathed with more than usual care, his sword hilt and cartridge belt polished by Jassim Khan until they glinted in the sun. And in the State majlis of the Governor’s quarters in the citadel the Viceroy received him, surrounded by officials and senior officers. An unhooded saker on its stand in the corner of the room watched the scene with an intense golden stare as Thomas, with a court official on either side of him, crossed the rug-strewn floor to kneel with due formality before the cushioned divan on which the Viceroy sat.

  “Salaam aleikum. God’s greeting to you, Ibrahim Agha,” said the Viceroy, as Thomas bowed his head an instant over his joined hands.

  “Salaam aleikum. You sent for me, Excellency.”

  “I have sent for you, for the purposes you know of,” said the Viceroy.

  Thomas waited, his eyes quiet on the other’s face.

  “Takin
g cognisance of your worth and qualities, it is my will and the will of Tussun my son that you should become Amir of Medina.”

  “What can I say, save that I am honoured,” Thomas said.

  Muhammed Ali held out a hand to an official beside him, who placed in it a parchment scroll tied with threads of golden silk.

  “Swear that you will faithfully uphold the Sultan and his Empire, that you will carry out the duties of Governor with all the strength and skill that in you lies, that you will have no false dealings …”

  The list lengthened.

  “All these things I swear,” Thomas said when it ended. “In the name of Allah the All Merciful, the Lord of the Ages, and of Muhammed his Prophet.”

  The repetition of the words, the solemn oath-taking, threw up most unsuitably into his mind the other ceremony of a like kind in which he had played the central part. And for the moment the wide airy majlis above the rooftops and minarets and the swarming crowds of Mecca in the throes of the Haj dissolved away; in its place was the small dark room over the armourer’s shop, with the wheels and footsteps of the Edinburgh streets outside, and his father and Mr Sempill and himself standing round the table on which lay his indentures. He saw again the close-written sheet catching the grey light of the rainy afternoon beyond the window; heard Mr Sempill intoning from it as though he was in kirk, and his own sixteen-year-old voice repeating after him the long string of promises — to be sober and honest and responsible for his own laundry … Ten years ago; nearly eleven. It seemed a whole lifetime away; and yet in that moment it did not seem to have taken long in the by-going.

  The narrow office room faded and he was back in the Viceroy’s majlis with the voice of rejoicing Mecca washing in through the windows.

  “In the name of myself, Muhammed Ali, and of Tussun Pasha of Jiddah and representative of the Supreme Sultan here in the Hijaz, I appoint you Amir of Medina,” Muhammed Ali was saying.

  He held out the scroll with its dangling gold threads. Thomas took it with a deep obeisance and raised it to his forehead.

  Muhammed Ali made a summoning gesture to another man who stood by with a garment that was creamy and rich with goldwork folded across his forearms. The man stepped forward and shook out the folds of a magnificent burnous of milk-white camelhair laced with more gold then seemed to Thomas quite seemly.

  “Ibrahim Agha, Amir of Medina, you are already a man with three swords, which is enough for any man to serve Allah,” the Viceroy said. “Therefore receive instead this cloak of honour from our hands.”

  The hand of Medhet appeared from somewhere beside him, to take the scroll and leave his own hands free. Muhammed Ali leaned forward and spread the burnous over his shoulder. He slipped his arms into the long loose sleeves, over the abba he already wore. He made obeisance again with joined palms. “Excellency, I thank you for the honour that you do me.”

  There was a ring too, a big rough-cut ruby. “Receive lastly the signet of the governorship.” It hung heavy on his forefinger, the colour of fire, of pride, of blood …

  The Viceroy had risen; he raised Thomas and kissed him on the beard. “You will ride for Medina on the sixth day from now, in command of the escort, with those who continue their pilgrimage from Mecca, and take up your appointment on arrival.”

  “As you command, Excellency.” The straight creamy folds falling about him, Thomas stood taller than any other man in the room, and aware of it. Then he added, a little hurriedly lest he should be dismissed with the thing not yet asked, “Is it permitted that I take two days leave?”

  “Immediately?” asked the Viceroy, with a trace of amusement.

  “As soon as I have arranged matters as to the escort, and handed over to my second-in-command here.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “That I may ride to Teif, and make certain arrangements of my own.”

  “Two days and one night, then.” The Viceroy’s lips twitched under the splendour of his moustache. “See that she does not keep you longer.”

  *

  Thomas, followed by four troopers, rode to Teif wearing his Cloak of Honour. After this, it would be put away in a camphorwood chest and only brought out for the greatest and most formal occasions. But now he was riding to Anoud in his new glory, no matter how travel-stained it got in the process, with a boy’s triumph and a man’s joy in doing honour to the woman he loved. It was a foolish gesture, he knew, but somehow necessary.

  It was evening when he entered Teif, gritty from head to foot with hard riding, left his horse in charge of the troopers and headed for the three rooms above the goldsmith’s shop.

  In the garden behind the house the roses were over. Next year there would be dark damask roses again to scent the narrow court, but he would not see them, and Anoud would not pick the permitted one a day for her tall blue and white vase. For a moment regret touched him, for something that had been lovely and was now past, but the shadow was gone as quickly as the shadow of a bird in flight.

  At the foot of the outside stair he passed a woman with a bundle coming down, too tall and narrow to be Kadija, anonymous as usual in the black street-going robe. Nothing remarkable in that, there was a good deal of coming and going among the women at all times, and he did not wonder who she might be, as he stood aside to let her by, then took the steps himself two at a time.

  As he entered the stair-head door, calling her name, Anoud came through from the inner room to meet him.

  He held his arms wide as he always did, and she came into them, slim pale arms rising from the loose sleeves of her abba to clasp him round the neck, her body, thin as ever — he had never managed to get any flesh on to her — pressed against his, her face in the hollow of his neck, the scent of iris and sandalwood whispering out of her hair. They always greeted each other in silence in the first moment of coming together.

  In a little, she leaned back in his arms, her hands still loose-linked at the back of his neck, her eyes gravely questioning. “Oh my love, what brings you to me so fast and so dusty in this fine new mantle that I have never seen before?”

  He laughed ruefully, glancing down at himself. “I did not know that I was so dusty, and now I have made you dusty, too. But I have a thing to tell you that will not wait.”

  “Tell me, then,” she said.

  “I am this morning appointed Governor of Medina.”

  “So-o. Then Medina has a worthy Governor,” Anoud said, and came in close to him again. “My heart is joyful for the city, and for you, and for me because I am your woman and your joy is mine.” And then after a few moments: “We shall be leaving this place soon?”

  “On the sixth day from now. We travel with the Haj caravan. I must be away from here tomorrow morning, for I command the escort. But I will send Medhet for you. Can you and Kadija be ready so soon?”

  “We were ready in fewer days than that, before. But Tho’mas, I also have a thing to tell you that will not wait.”

  “Tell me then,” he echoed her words.

  “I am with child.”

  Quite why it should have seemed so astonishing, Thomas never knew. Women did have children, often enough. But this was different; this was Anoud. An almost painful shaft of joy lanced through him. He wanted to hug her fiercely close, and at the same time he was almost afraid to hold her at all, lest he harm her or the child in her belly.

  “Anoud — a child? — my child?”

  He did not realise that it sounded like a question until she laughed.

  “Who else’s?”

  “Fool that I am! But are you sure there is a child?”

  “Quite sure. I have missed two moons; and also — that was the hakimi you must have passed at the foot of the stair.”

  Thomas usually spoke love to Anoud in the Arabic terms of endearment that would sound familiar to her ears, but in this moment he reverted to the tongue and the homely ways of his youth, his arms around her, rocking her from side to side, his face buried in her hair.

  “My Bonnie Love,” he sa
id, “my Bonnie Dearie …”

  30

  At the gates of Medina Thomas ordered the escort to fall back, that the caravan might enter well ahead of them. The arrival of the Haj, and the new Governor’s entry into his city were two separate things, and he felt, with a Scottish sense of the fitness of things, that the separateness should be carefully maintained. When the religious procession was lost to sight and sound, and not until then, he ordered the escort to advance once more, and made his own entry to the bright song of bugles at the gate and the liquid throb of kettle drums, in the way that his own men, and maybe the Medinans also, would consider fitting. Anoud, far into the city in her shawl-draped dragonfly litter, would be listening for the skirl of his coming, too.

  Next day he presented himself to the senior sheikhs, took over from Nayli’s husband, Mustapha Bey, who as lately made commander of the garrison had been acting as deputy, and took up residence in the Governor’s Palace, with Anoud once more safely lodged in the women’s quarters.

  Less than a fortnight later, Tussun rode in from Jiddah by way of Mecca bringing with him news, somewhat stale, from the outside world that Napoleon Bonaparte had capitulated in the spring and been exiled to an island called Elba. Bringing with him also, eight hundred foot and five hundred cavalry at his heels, and a fair-sized camel train swaying and bubbling in the rear. And an hour or so later, when he had had time to wash off the dust of the long march and have something to eat, he and Thomas were standing together in the eastern bastion of the citadel, well out of hearing of the sentries who moved to and fro along the rampart walk of the square keep above them.

  Leaning on the breastwork, Thomas looked out over Medina, thinking, not for the first time, that the layout of the city was like a plaid brooch, with the citadel for the central boss, and the broad courts of the outer city raying out round it as the spokes of a wheel, and beyond, the winter greenness of date and fig gardens against the lighter green of melon fields, and away beyond, tawny in the evening sunlight and streaked with the crocus-purple shadows of the defiles, the mountains rising range beyond range in the Kassim and the Najd. Tussun, he realised, glancing aside at his companion, was gazing in the same direction, and not merely as a man looks at a distant view, but with speculation and a very definite purpose in his gaze.