The Sultan's Daughter rb-7

by Dennis Wheatley

  The Loves of the Exiled

  Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Roger stared about him. Empty of furniture, the room seemed larger than when he had last been in it. For an instant he thought that he might have entered the wrong house; but he had not. He recognized the intricate pattern of the lace-like woodwork of the enclosed balcony that protruded over the narrow street.

  Swinging on his heel, he again yelled for Marbois, then for the Arab servants. The echo of his voice came back to him, but no other sound broke the stillness. Pounding down the stairs three at a time he rushed through to the kitchen quarters. There was no one there, the fire was out, the cooking pots had gone and the cupboards stood open. Only some decaying vegetables and a little spilled fat on a stone slab, both now black with flies, showed that the place had ever been occupied.

  Still he could hardly credit that he was not suffering from an appalling nightmare. The mental pictures he had been conjuring up of his return to Zanthe were still so clear in his mind that it fought desperately against accepting the fact that he had lost her. After a few minutes he persuaded himself that she would not have fled from him deliberately, and that there must be some other explanation for her disappearance.

  Although already subconsciously aware of it, the thought that Marbois had also disappeared suddenly became uppermost in his mind; and Marbois must know what had happened. Next moment Roger was out in the street and running hard in the direction of a Flamam in which his servant's Company had been quartered. On reaching it he controlled himself with an effort, broke into a swift walk and strode inside.

  There, amid a splendour of Moorish arches, tiled walls and bathing pools, some fifty soldiers were lounging, playing cards, polishing their equipment or simply dozing on straw-filled palliasses.

  Marbois was among them. On seeing Roger enter, he stood up then, suddenly white-faced and apprehensive, came hesitantly towards him.

  'What are you doing here? ' Roger demanded. '1 ordered you to remain in the house until my return.'

  '1 ... I left it only because it was empty, Monsieur le Colonel' stammered the young Provencal.

  'Empty! ' cried Roger. 'What the hell do you mean? Who emptied it? Explain yourself this instant! '

  ' The people who owned the house,' replied the trembling Marbois. ' They came back two days after you left Cairo. A father and three younger men that I took to be his sons. They talked for some time with the Arab servants, then went away. That night they came back with carts and carried all the furniture out to them. . . .'

  ' And you let them? ' Roger blazed. ' You, a soldier of France, allowed these people to render my lodging uninhabitable and put you out into the gutter! '

  ' Monsieur, I was one and they were many. They set on me and tied me up, then emptied the house and left me there. It was morning before I managed to free myself and report what had happened.'

  ' To whom did you report? '

  ' To the Commander of my Company, Captain Lestrange.'

  ' Very well. Get back to the house. Beg, borrow or steal something for me to sleep on tonight and food for the morning.' Abruptly, Roger turned on his heel and, followed by the amused glances of a score of soldiers who had listened in silence to his outburst, stalked from the baths.

  It took him an hour to run Lestrange to earth and when he did he received scant satisfaction. The Captain agreed that an assault on a French soldier was punishable by death, but pointed out that justice could not be done on the culprits when their identity was unknown.

  Roger angrily demanded why he had neglected to find out the name of the owner of the house and have him searched for. Lestrange excused himself by saying that it was not as though

  Marbois had been murdered; he had many other duties to attend to, and surely now that Roger had returned to Cairo he could easily find himself another comfortable lodging.

  Roger did not care a fig about having been left with an empty house. It was the loss of Zanthe that was driving him almost berserk. But nothing could be gained by telling the Captain about her, and what had occurred was already clear to him. Like hundreds of other well-to-do citizens of Cairo, the owner of the house had fled owing to the riots that had followed the Battle of the Pyramids. Some days later, learning that Bonaparte had restored order in the city, he had returned to resume possession. Finding that it had been taken over by a French officer, and realizing that he had no hope of turning him out, he had decided to make sure that he was at least not robbed of his belongings. So he had removed everything and had taken Zanthe with him.

  Hurrying back to the house Roger questioned the people who lived on either side of it. At first they denied all knowledge of their neighbour, but eventually admitted that his name was Hassan ben-Jussif and that he was a dealer in precious stones. However, neither threats nor offers of money would induce them to give any information about his relatives, or suggest where he had gone.

  By then it was dusk, but Roger would not yet give up. He spent another hour and a half seeking out the Provost Marshal. Having described what had taken place, he asked that an intensive search be set on foot for both Hassan ben-Jussif and Zanthe. But he had been able to secure only a very vague description of the former, and when he attempted to give a word picture of Zanthe that would make her identifiable he found it far from easy.

  To his intense annoyance he now realized that he had not troubled to ask her full name or that of her dead husband. He could only say that she was about seventeen, of medium height, dark-haired but fair-skinned, had a well-developed figure and a beautiful face, with tawny eyes, eyebrows that turned up at the ends, a full mouth and gleaming white teeth.

  The Provost Marshal shook his head and said, ' I'll do what I can, my dear fellow, but I cannot hold out much hope of tracing these people. Cairo has a population of near half a million and there are a thousand streets and alleys in it. As ten days have elapsed since this occurrence, any trail they may have left has gone cold by now. There are hundreds of places in which this man ben-Jussif might remain concealed for months without my police obtaining word of him. As for the girl, she will have been put in some harem or other and is unlikely to emerge again. Besides, the fact that you bought her from some soldiers for a hundred louis gives you not a jot of title to her under Mohammedan law. And you must know the orders that the General-in-Chief has given. He is so anxious to woo these people that it has been made a crime to molest them in any way. He allowed the troops a limited licence for those first few nights in Cairo, but now my instructions are that even street women must be treated with reasonable decency.'

  With this cold comfort, and now ready to drop with fatigue, Roger once more returned to the house. Marbois had, meanwhile, made him up a shake-down in the big bedroom. Gazing round its echoing emptiness with lack-lustre eyes, he thought bitterly of the scene that during the past few days he had so consistently envisaged as taking place there; then he threw off his clothes and, almost crying with distress, fell asleep.

  Next morning he gave Marbois money to buy new pots and pans and told him to engage a houseman and a cook. Then he went out himself and bought divans, cushions, handwoven rugs and other items, sufficient to furnish about one-third of the house, which was all he intended to occupy. Having completed his purchases he went to headquarters and sought out Bourrienne, in order to learn from him what had been taking place recently in Cairo.

  Industrious as the Chef de Cabinet was by nature, his master's departure from Cairo had eased the pressure of business; so he was pleased to see and talk with his one-time assistant. He said that during the fortnight that the General-in-Chief had spent in the Egyptian capital he had displayed more than ever his extraordinary ability to tackle scores of problems with sound judgment and despatch.

  General Bon, with his Division, had been permanently installed in the great Citadel outside the city, to overawe such groups of malcontents as remained in it, and, as a warning to possible trouble-makers, Bonaparte still had the heads of half a dozen men who were guilty of small
offences cut off publicly in the streets every evening. On the other hand, he had been greatly impressed with the bravery of the Mamelukes, so was now forming those taken prisoner into Companies, to be incorporated into the French Army and, as a mark of his confidence in them he had taken two, Roustan and Ibrahim, into his personal service.

  Without waiting a day he had appointed nine prominent Sheiks to form a Divan, invested with authority to keep order in the city. Two days later he established four similar Divans in the provinces of Alexandria, Rosetta, Ghizeh and Kelyoub. Thus he gave the inhabitants the illusion that they were to be governed by men of their own race, while in reality he kept local control himself and vested it in the provinces in Kleber, Menou, Belliard and Murat. He had also appointed Intendants, to collect for him all taxes formerly paid to the Mamelukes, had done much by a series of proclamations to get the wheels of commerce turning normally again and had given an order that wherever the victorious Tricolour of France was flown, the Crescent of Islam should be hoisted to fly beside it.

  He had, too, lost no time in informing the Directory of his immediate needs to convert Egypt into a pleasant and thriving French colony, and Bourrienne showed Roger a copy of the list he had sent. It read: a company of actors, a company of dancers, four marionette shows, a hundred Frenchwomen, the wives of all the married men in the Army, twenty surgeons, thirty apothecaries, ten physicians, some founders, some distillers and dealers in liquor, fifty gardeners and their families and seeds of every kind of vegetable, a hundred thousand litres of brandy, thirty thousand ells of blue and scarlet cloth and a supply of soap and oil.

  Roger thought the priorities somewhat strange but, as he handed the list back, his only comment was, '1 fear it will be a long time now before we see either the marionettes or the whores.'

  Bourrienne gave a wry smile. ' Yes. This, of course, was sent off before we heard about the destruction of our Fleet. That is a terrible blow to us. When I received the despatch our little man was out in the desert, and I sent it on to him. Temporarily, I think, he was quite shattered, but he has remarkable resilience. In no time, he was going about saying such things as, '' This is the moment when characters of a superior order assert themselves. The English have compelled us to do greater things than we expected " and '' We must now die in this country or come out of it as great as the Ancients."'

  The last sums up our situation in a nut-shell,' remarked Roger gloomily.

  ' But think of the countries we shall see, if we survive. Having secured our rear by conquering Syria, we shall descend the Red Sea, invade and subdue India, turn north-west through Persia, overrun Turkey and arrive home by way of a crushed Austro-Hungary.'

  'Heavens above! C^n you mean this? *

  ' Not seriously,' Bourrienne smiled, ' but at times that is the way our master talks. Personally, I think the duration of our ordeals in the East depends upon events in France. Although he fancies himself in the role of another Alexander, it is upon France that his eyes are really fixed. By leaving the stage there he has given the Directors enough rope to hang themselves, and as soon as they are ripe to swing he will somehow manage to return.'

  'What! And leave us in some damned jungle to be eaten by cannibals? '

  Bourrienne laughed. '1 don't think he would leave me, but he would have to leave a lot of other people and, perhaps, you would be among them.'

  ' Enough! ' Roger cried, standing up. ' I've ample to depress me without listening to prognostications of so black a future.' And, leaving his friend, he went back to his lodging to superintend the installation of the new furniture he had bought.

  During Bonaparte's absence the gallant Desaix had been left in command in Cairo. Roger, in an attempt to take his mind off the loss of Zanthe, attached himself temporarily to him. As Desaix had his own aides-de-camp, Rapp and Savary, Roger was given no special tasks, but he attended the General on an interesting inspection of the Citadel. There was a magnificent collection of armour in it, taken from the Crusaders. Some of the helmets hung outside one of the great interior gates of the fortress and, although they had been there for six hundred years, owing to the dry climate of Egypt they showed little sign of deterioration.

  He also rode out with Desaix and some hundred others to the Pyramids. There they marvelled at those vast monuments formed from great blocks of stone, so perfectly aligned that one could not put even the blade of a dagger between them. With a dozen or so of the younger officers, Savary and Roger climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid. It was a most exhausting exploit; but when they reached the summit they found that the apex of marble casing had been torn away, so there was plenty of room to sit down and enjoy the stupendous view.

  Yet these distractions failed to keep Roger's thoughts for long from Zanthe. Every morning he harried the Provost Marshal with fruitless enquiries for news of ben-Jussif. Whenever he walked the streets he peered at the face of each woman, however poorly dressed, hoping that above her yashmak he might recognize the lovely, tawny eyes that still haunted his daydreams.

  After a week's absence Bonaparte returned. On August 11th he had met and defeated Ibrahim Bey's force at Salahiyeh and had driven the remnants of it back to the Syrian frontier.

  On the 18th the Nile was declared to have risen to the maximum height it could reach that year and Bonaparte, desirous of gaining the goodwill of the people, joined with his Staff in the annual rejoicing. Two days later there fell the great festival of the Birth of the Prophet. The Sheiks and Imams, now anxious to propitiate the weedy little Corsican who had been clever enough to endow them with a semblance of power and before whom they now bowed low, addressing him as 'The Exalted One', invited him to attend the celebrations.

  Accordingly, accompanied by several Generals and the principal members of his Staff, he went to the house of the Sheik El Bekri. Like the hundred or more Sheiks assembled there, they sat down on carpets, with their legs crossed. The Sheiks then recited many verses from the Koran recording the life of the Prophet and, as they uttered their sing-song litany, swayed their bodies to and fro rhythmically. Afterwards a great supper was served of foods, mostly very highly spiced, and an abundance of sweetmeats. Everyone used his fingers to eat with, which surprised most of the French guests; but Roger, having travelled in the East, was used to this custom.

  Through his interpreter, Bonaparte made it clear that he thought more highly of the Mohammedan than the Christian religion; so he was pressed by the Imams to become a convert to their faith. With his usual duplicity he led them on by saying that he would like to do so, but did not feel that he could submit to circumcision or give up wine, which was a necessity to people who had been reared in a cold country.

  His objections gave the Imams much to wrangle over during the months that followed. They eventually agreed that circumcision could be dispensed with and that wine might be drunk in proportion to the good works accomplished by the drinker. But by that time Bonaparte had other fish to fry and, in any case, he had never had the least intention of antagonizing the millions of convinced Christians in Europe by becoming a Muslim.

  The nearest he ever got to that was to have a Turkish costume made for himself and appear in it one morning at breakfast, to amuse his officers; but he soon found it so uncomfortable that, having had his joke, he threw it off.

  On August 22nd he founded the Institute of Egypt on the model of the famous lnstitut de France. It had four Sections—Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, and Literature and Art. Monge was made President, Bonaparte modestly reserving for himself the Vice-Presidency. Berthollet, Denon and all the other intellectuals who had accompanied him to Egypt made up the membership. Also included was a number of his officers, selected by him in this instance only on their standard of education. Caffarelli —his one-legged, highly gifted Chief Engineer—was among them, and Bourrienne; also Roger, on account of the many languages that he spoke and the fact that his general knowledge far surpassed that of his courageous brother aides-de-camp.

  At the very first meeting
of the Institute Bonaparte requested its members to deliberate and report on: how to improve the baking ovens of the Army; could any substitute for hops be found for making beer; were there any means of purifying the waters of the Nile; would windmills or watermills prove more serviceable in Cairo; could saltpetre be found in Egypt, or some other ingredient that would enable gunpowder to be made locally. He also charged the Institute to examine measures for improving the education of the natives and to bring out a newspaper every ten days, in French, to be called ' Decade Egyptienne'.

  The Institute was housed in a palace of one of the Beys. All the machines and technical instruments brought from France were set up in it, a big laboratory for chemical experiments was installed and soon a number of rooms began to be filled with objects of interest dug up by the archaeologists. Some of them measured the Pyramids and the Sphinx, others made drawings of temples, statues and mummies. Others again set themselves the colossal task of translating the hieroglyphics.

  Meanwhile Bonaparte set up scores of small factories—a mint, foundries, distilleries, gunsmiths, shoemakers, clothiers, saddlers, ropemakers and others—in which he employed all the tradesmen of his Army. Rarely, if ever, has so much been accomplished with so little by one man in so short a time.

  Yet, after a month in Cairo, the Army was seething with discontent. Both officers and men found Egypt far from being, as had been depicted to them, the fabled land of the Ptolemies. Food was short and monotonous. No man might go out alone in the streets at night or wander far from a camp in the desert without risk of being set upon and killed. They were not even allowed the consolation of robbing the native traders and making free with their women. Wine was unobtainable, and strong liquor far beyond the price they could afford. Above all, they were now cut off from their homes and beginning to fear that they would never see them again.