by Mark Hodder
Unfamiliar sounds reached him from the nearby road: horses' hooves, the rumble of wheels, the shouts of hawkers.
He stood and straightened the reproduction mid-Victorian-era clothes that he'd worn beneath his time suit, placed the top hat on his head, and made his way to the edge of the thicket. As he emerged from the trees, a transformed world assailed his senses, and he was immediately shaken by a profound uneasiness.
There were no AugCom illusions now, and only the grass was familiar. Through dense, filthy air, he saw a massive expanse of empty sky. The tall glass towers of his own age were absent, and London clung to the ground. To his left, Buckingham Palace, now partially hidden by a high wall, looked brand new. Quaintly costumed people were walking in the park-no, he reminded himself, not costumed; they always dressed this way! — and their slow pace appeared entirely unnatural.
Despite the background murmur, London slumbered under a blanket of silence.
He started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.
Behind him, unseen, the unconscious man regained his wits, snatched up his things, staggered to his feet, and stumbled into the trees.
“Steady, Edward,” Oxford muttered to himself. “Hang on, hang on. Don't let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit!”
He reached the wide path. The queen's carriage would pass this way soon. My God! He was going to see Queen Victoria! He looked around. Every single person was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or had moustaches. The women held parasols.
Slow motion. It was all in slow motion.
He examined faces. Which belonged to his ancestor? He'd never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford-there were none-but he hoped to recognise some sort of family resemblance.
He stepped over the low wrought-iron fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, turned around to face the hill, and loitered near a tree. People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that sounded wholly artificial. Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog shit on the grass; the stains and worn patches on people's clothing; rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs; accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs; pockmarks and consumptive coughs.
“Focus!” he whispered.
He noticed a man across the way, standing in a relaxed but rather arrogant manner and looking straight at him with a knowing smile on his round face. He had a lean figure and a very large moustache.
Can he see that I don't belong here?
A cheer went up. The queen's carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its four horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle; two more behind.
Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?
Ahead of him, an individual wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches reached under his coat and moved closer to the path. Slowly, the royal carriage approached.
Is that him?
Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside. The blue-coated man stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.
Oxford yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.
They detected Zanzibar first with their nostrils, for, prior to the island darkening the horizon, the sultry breeze became laden with the scent of cloves. Then the long strip of land hove into view at the edge of the sapphire sea, its coral-sand beaches turned to burnished gold by the fierce sun.
“By Jove,” William Trounce whispered. “What's the word for it? Sleepy?”
“Tranquil,” Krishnamurthy suggested.
“Languidly basking in sensuous repose,” Swinburne corrected.
“Whatever it is,” said Trounce, “it's splendid. I feel as if I'm inside one of Captain Burton's tales of the Arabian Nights.”
“More so than when you were actually in Arabia?” the poet enquired.
“Great heavens, yes! That was just sand, sand, and more sand. This is…romantic!”
“Seven weeks!” Krishnamurthy grunted. “Seven weeks on a blasted camel. My posterior will never recover.”
Ahead, the land swelled seductively, coloured a reddish brown beneath its veils of green, which wavered and rippled behind the heavy curtain of air.
“What do you think, Algy?” Trounce asked. The members of Burton's expedition were all on first-name terms now-one of the more positive effects of their gruelling trek through central Arabia. They were also all burned a deep brown, with the exception of Swinburne, whose skin was almost as crimson as his hair had been before the sun bleached it the colour of straw.
The poet looked up at the detective, then followed his gaze to the prow of the ship-the Indian Navy sloop of war Elphinstone-where he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton standing with Isabel Arundell.
“If you're asking me whether the romance of Zanzibar is infectious, Pouncer, then I take it you haven't read Richard's account of his first expedition.”
“There's little time for reading at Scotland Yard, lad. And, for the umpteenth time, don't call me Pouncer.”
Swinburne grinned cheekily. “Apparently, the island's infections are nothing to celebrate. By the same token, I'd suggest that Richard and Isabel's relationship is probably not exactly as it appears from here.”
He was correct. In fact, had he been able to eavesdrop upon their conversation, Swinburne would have reported to Trounce that Isabel was giving Burton “what for.”
“You're a pig-headed, self-absorbed, stubborn fool,” she said. “You have never failed to underestimate me or to overestimate yourself.”
Burton fished a cigar from his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“You'll not drive me away with tobacco fumes.”
He put a flame to the Manila, inhaled the aromatic smoke, and gazed down at the water that gurgled and sparkled against the hull below. A few yards away, a shoal of flying fish shot out of the sea and glided some considerable distance before plunging back in.
Isabel pulled a small straw-coloured cylinder from a pouch at her waist and raised it to her lips. She struck a lucifer and lit its tip.
Burton smelled the tart fumes of Latakia and looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“Good grief! Surely that's not a cigarette?”
“All the rage since the Crimea,” came her murmured reply. “Do you object to a woman smoking?”
“I-well-that is to say-”
“Oh, stop stammering like an idiot, Dick. Let's set it out plainly, shall we? You disapprove of my lifestyle.”
“Nonsense! I simply asked you why you have chosen to live as a Bedouin when you belong to the House of Wardour, one of the richest families in Britain.”
“The implication being?”
“That you could have Society at your feet; that the comforts and advantages of an aristocratic life are yours to enjoy. You aren't Jane Digby, Isabel. She fled England after her scandalous behaviour made it impossible for her to remain there. Not so, you. So why endure the hardships and dangers of the nomadic life?”
“Hypocrite!”
“What?”
“How often have you railed against the constrictions and restraints of the Society you now endorse? How often have you purposely provoked outrage and challenged social proprieties at dinner tables with your shocking anecdotes? How often have you styled yourself the outsider, the man who doesn't fit in, the noble savage in civilised clothing? You glory in it, and yet you denounce Miss Digby! Really! They call you Ruffian Dick. I call you Poseur Dick!”
“Oh stop it, an
d tell me why you've settled upon this extraordinary lifestyle.”
“Because I'm a woman.”
“Indubitably. How is that an answer?”
“Just this: I accepted your proposal of marriage not just because I loved you, but because I saw in you the solution to my problem, and in me the solution to yours.”
“Mine?”
“When we met, you had no security. You were adrift. I could have given you a sense of belonging.”
A breath of wind pushed at them, driving away the scent of cloves and replacing it with the odour of putrefying fish. Burton wrinkled his nose, puffed at his cigar, and looked at the looming island.
“And in you,” Isabel continued, “I might have found liberation from the suffocating corsets of the English gentlewoman. I mean that metaphorically, of course.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Well, perhaps not entirely metaphorically.”
Burton flashed a savage smile and turned his attention back to her.
“What I mean to say,” Isabel continued, “is that I require something the Empire is not willing to give to a woman.”
“You mean liberty?”
“And equality. I am not one to be laced-up and condemned to the parlour to while away my days crocheting antimacassars. Why should I allow my behaviour to be dictated by the protocols of a society in which I'm granted neither a voice nor representation?”
“I hardly think Bedouin women have a better time of it,” Burton murmured.
“That's true. But at least they don't pretend otherwise. Besides, I'm not a Bedouin woman, am I? And the Arabs don't know what to make of me. To them, I'm a curiosity, whose foreign ways can be neither understood nor judged. I've found a niche where the only rules that apply are the ones I make myself.”
“And you're happy?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, Isabel-believe me-I don't disapprove. I detected both courage and resourcefulness in you very soon after our initial meeting, and I've always admired you for them. I salute your spirit of independence. And, incidentally, while it may be true that I was at one time uncertain of myself, I assure you that's not the case now. As the king's agent, I have a purpose. I no longer feel that I don't belong.”
She sought his eyes. “But still there's no room for a wife.”
He took another drag at his cigar, then looked at it with dissatisfaction and flicked it over the side of the ship. “When I called off our engagement, it was because I thought my new role would be dangerous for anyone too closely associated with me. Now I know for certain that I was right.”
“Very well,” she said. “And accepted. But if I can't support you as Isabel the wife, I shall most certainly do so as Al-Manat, the warrior.”
“I don't want you in harm's way, Isabel. It was good of you to escort us through the desert to Aden, but there was no need for the Daughters of Al-Manat to sail with us.”
“We will march with you to the Mountains of the Moon.”
Burton shook his head. “No, you won't.”
“Do you still imagine that, as my husband, you would have been in a position to command me? If so, I must disillusion you. Besides which, you are not my husband, and I take orders from no one. If I see fit to lead my women alongside your expedition, what can you do to stop me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then our conversation is done.”
With that, Isabel dropped her cigarette, crushed it beneath her heel, and paced away.
The Elphinstone manoeuvred through sharp coral reefs and steered toward a white Arabic town dominated by a plain square fort, which rose from among the clove shrubs, the coco-trees, and the tall luxuriant palms. Though the sun was high in the azure sky, the light it cast over the settlement was hazy and mellow, perhaps an effect of the high humidity, making the place appear beautiful in the extreme. However, twenty minutes later, when the steamer glided past the guard ship and into the mirror-smooth harbour waters where the rank stench of rotting molluscs and copra became overwhelming, the illusion broke. The idyllic landscape, seen up close, proved anything but. The shoreline was marked by a thick line of refuse, including three bloated human corpses upon which cur dogs were chewing, and the buildings were revealed to be in dire need of renovation.
Small fishing vessels now swarmed around the arriving sloop, and from them men shouted greetings and questions, and requested gifts, and demanded bakhshish, and offered fish and tobacco and alcohol at exorbitant prices. They were a mix of many races; those with the blackest skin wore wide-brimmed straw hats, while those of a browner cast wore the Arabic fez. Their clothing was otherwise the same: the colourful cotton robes common to so much of Africa.
Burton watched the familiar details unfold and thought, I no longer feel that I don't belong.
He'd been reflecting upon that statement ever since he'd made it. Now, while deck hands milled around making preparations to secure the vessel, it occurred to him that he hadn't adapted himself to British society at all-rather, British society was changing at such a pace, and with so little planning and forethought, that it had become extremely volatile, and, while this precarious state caused most of its people to feel unsettled, for some reason Burton couldn't comprehend, it was an environment he practically relished.
He stretched, turned, and walked over to Swinburne, Trounce, and Krishnamurthy.
Trounce grumbled, “It's not quite the paradise I expected, Richard.”
Burton examined the flat-roofed residences, the Imam's palace, and the smart-looking consulates. Beyond them, and ill-concealed by them, the decrepit hovels of the inner town slumped in a mouldy heap.
“Zanzibar city, to become picturesque or pleasing,” he said, “must be viewed, like Stanbul, from afar.”
“And even then,” Swinburne added, “with a peg firmly affixed to one's nose.”
The ship's anchors dropped, and, with gulls and gannets wheeling and shrieking overhead, she came to a stop in the bay, nestling among the dhows and half a dozen square-rigged merchantmen. The British collier ship Blackburn was also there, waiting forlornly for the Orpheus.
As tradition demanded, the Elphinstone loosed a twenty-one-gun salute, and the detonations momentarily silenced the seabirds before rolling away into the distance. Strangely, no response came, either in the form of raised bunting or returned cannon fire.
“That's a curious omission. I wonder what's happening,” Burton muttered. He turned to his friends and said, “The captain will order a boat lowered soon. Let's get ourselves ashore.”
They had spent seven weeks in the Arabian Desert, two weeks in Aden, and ten days at sea. The expedition was considerably behind schedule. It was now the 19th of March.
Time to disembark.
Time to set foot on African soil.
Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Honesty, and Krishnamurthy were met at the dock by a half-caste Arab who placed his hand over his heart, bowed, and introduced himself, in the Kiswahili tongue, as Said bin Salim el Lamki, el Hinawi. He was of a short, thin, and delicate build, with scant mustachios and a weak beard. His skin was yellowish brown, his nose long, and his teeth dyed bright crimson by his habitual chewing of betel. His manner was extremely polite. He said, “Draw near, Englishmen. I am wazir to His Royal Highness Prince Sayyid Majid bin Said Al-Busaid, Imam of Muscat and Sultan of Zanzibar, may Allah bless him and speed his recovery.”
Burton answered, in the same language: “We met when I was here last, some six years ago. Thou wert of great help to me then.”
“I was honoured, Sir Richard, and am more so that thou doth remember me. I would assist thee again, and will begin by advising thee to accompany me to the palace before thou visit the consulate.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Aye, there may be, but I should leave it for Prince Sayyid to explain. He is looking forward to seeing thee.”
Eight men had accompanied Said. They were Askaris-a title created some years ago by the prince's grandfather, Sultan bin Hamid, to distinguish those Africans
who took military service with him. Through means of immoderately wielded staffs, they now kept the hordes of onlookers, beggars, and merchants away from the group as it moved into the town.
“His Highness has been ill?” Burton enquired.
“With smallpox,” Said answered. “But by Allah's grace, the worst of it has passed.”
They entered a deep and winding alley, one of the hundreds of capricious and disorderly lanes that threaded through the town like a tangled skein. Some of the bigger streets were provided with gutters, but most were not, and the ground was liberally puddled with festering impurities, heaps of offal, and the rubble of collapsed walls. Naked children played in this filth, poultry and dogs roamed freely through it, and donkeys and cattle splashed it up the sides of the buildings to either side.
The fetor given off by the streets, mingled with the ubiquitous odour of rotting fish and copra, made the air almost unbreathable for the visitors. All of them walked with handkerchiefs pressed against their noses.
Their eyes, too, were assaulted.
Initially, it was the architecture that befuddled Burton's companions, for they had seen nothing like it before. Built from coral-rag cemented with lime, the masonry of the shuttered dwellings and public establishments to either side of the alleys showed not a single straight line, no two of their arches were the same, and the buildings were so irregular in their placement that the spaces between them were sometimes so wide as to not look like thoroughfares at all, and often so narrow that they could barely be navigated.
Slips of paper, upon which sentences from the Koran had been scribbled, were pinned over every doorway.
“What are they for?” Krishnamurthy asked.
“To ward off witchcraft,” Burton revealed.
As for the inhabitants of Zanzibar, they appeared a confusing and noisy melange of Africans and Arabs, Chinamen and Indians. The Britishers saw among them sailors and market traders and day labourers and hawkers and date-gleaners and fishermen and idlers. They saw rich men and poor men. They saw cripples and beggars and prostitutes and thieves.
