by Wilbur Smith
“Ah, Yakub of the quick knife! How many throats have you ‘slit recently?” Bacheet’s tone was every bit as chilled.
“From where I sit yours looks soft enough to tempt me.”
“Stop this childish squabbling,” said Nazeera sternly, although she found it more than a little flattering that she could still be at the centre of such rivalry for her waning charms. “We have important things to discuss. Bacheet, tell him what you have already told me.”
“My master, al-Sakhawi, and I escaped from Khartoum on his steamer, the night that the Dervish attacked and captured the city. We found the girl-child, Filfil, and took her with us. Once we were clear of the city, we moored the steamer in the Lagoon of the Little Fish. My master sent me back here to seek out al-Jamal. However, he can tarry no longer at the lagoon. The Dervish are diligently searching both banks of the river for him, and within a short while they will surely find him. He is forced to flee further up the Blue Nile into the kingdom of the Emperor John of Abyssinia where he is known and respected as a trader. When he is secure there he will be able to make careful plans for the rescue of al-Jamal and al-Zahra. My master is not yet aware that you and your master are here in Omdurman, but when I bring him this news I know that he will wish to join his efforts with your master’s to achieve the rescue of the two white women.”
“Your master is called al-Sakhawi for his generosity and liberality. It is rumoured that his courage surpasses that of a buffalo bull, although no man has ever seen him fight. Now you tell me that this renowned warrior intends to run away and leave two helpless women to their fate. On the other hand, I know that Abadan Riji will remain here in Omdurman until he has procured their escape from the blood-drenched clutches of the Mahdi,” Yakub said scornfully.
“Ha, Yakub, how edifying to hear you talk of blood-drenched clutches,” said Bacheet smoothly. He stood up to his full height and sucked in his belly. “The yapping of a puppy must not be mistaken for the baying of the hound,” he said mysteriously. “If Abadan Riji wishes the assistance of al-Sakhawi in arranging the rescue of al-Jamal, he may desire to send a message to my master. He can do so through Ras Hailu, an Abyssinian grain trader from Gondar whose dhows trade regularly downriver to Omdurman. Ras Hailu is a trusted friend and partner of my master. I will not waste more breath and time in arguing with you. Stay with God.”
Bacheet turned his back on Yakub and stalked away.
“You are like a small boy, Yakub. Why do I allow you to waste my time and breath?” Nazeera asked the sky. “Bacheet was speaking good sense. It will need more than reckless courage to lift my girls from the zenana of the Mahdi, and to carry them thousands of leagues across the desert to safety. You will need money to place as bribes within the palace, more money to buy camels and provisions, still more money to arrange relays along your escape road. Does your master have that much money? I think not. Al-Sakhawi does, and he also has the patience and brains that your master lacks. Yet in your arrogance and conceit you turn away the offer of assistance that will certainly make the difference between success and failure in your master’s enterprise.”
“If al-Sakhawi is a man of such merit and virtue, why do you not marry your beloved al-Jamal to him, rather than to my master, Abadan Riji?” Yakub demanded angrily.
“That is the first sensible thing you have said all day,” Nazeera agreed.
“Are you against us? Will you not help us to free these women? Knowing how much I love you, Nazeera, will you turn me away in favour of that beardless creature, Bacheet?” Yakub assumed a piteous expression.
“I am newly arrived in Omdurman. I know very few people in this city. I have no way to enter upon the pathways of power and influence. There is little in which I can help you. One thing only is certain. I will not risk the lives of the two girls I love to some wild and reckless scheme. If you want me to give you what help I can, you must work out a plan that has more chance of success than of failure. It must be a plan that above all, takes into account their safety.” Nazeera began to pack up her pots and dishes. “It must be a plan in which I can place my trust. When you have made such a plan, you can find me here every sacred Friday morning.”
“Nazeera, will you tell al-Jamal that my master is here in Omdurman, and that soon he will rescue her?”
“Why would I kindle false hope in her heart, which has already been broken by her captivity, the death of her father, the loss of her little sister Fifil, and the sickness of her other sister al-Zahra?”
“But my master loves her and will lay down his own life for her, Nazeera.”
“As he also loves the woman Bakhita and fifty others like her. I do not care if he lays down his life for her, but I will not let her lay down her life for him. Have you never seen a woman stoned to death for adultery, Yakub? That is what will happen to al-Jamal if your plans fail. The Mahdi is a man without mercy.” She tied a cloth round her dishes and lifted it on to her head. “Come to me again only when you have something sensible to discuss with me.” Nazeera walked away, balancing the parcel gracefully on her head.
How much money do you have?” asked Yakub’s putative uncle, Wad Hagma. Penrod looked into his guileless eyes and replied with a question. “How much will you need?”
Wad Hagma pursed his lips while he considered. ‘I will have to bribe my friends in the Mahdi’s palace to clear the way and they are important men whom I cannot insult with a paltry sum. Then I will have to find and pay for the extra camels to carry so many people. I must provide fodder and provisions along the road, pay the guards at the border. All this will cost a great deal, but of course I will take nothing for my own trouble. Yakub is like a son to me, and his friends are my friends also.”
Of course, he does this willingly and without thought of his own rewards.” Yakub endorsed his uncle’s altruistic intentions. They were sitting together by the small fire in the soot-blackened lean-to kitchen of the caravanserai, and eating the stew of mutton, wild onions and chilli. Considering the insalubrious surroundings in which it had been cooked and the-venerable age of the flyblown ingredients, the dish was tastier than Penrod had expected.
‘I am grateful to Wad Hagma for his assistance, but my question was, how much does he need?” It was only as a last resort that Penrod had agreed to enlist the assistance of the uncle in his plans. Yakub had convinced him that Wad Hagma knew many of the Mahdi’s entourage and members of his palace household. With his uncle to help them, Yakub had considered it unnecessary to bring to his master’s attention the offer of assistance conveyed by Bacheet on behalf of his own master, al-Sakhawi. In any case, his animosity towards Bacheet was so deep that he could not bring himself to do anything that might redound to his rival’s credit or profit. He had refrained from mentioning to Penrod his meeting with Bacheet.
“It will not be less than fifty English sovereigns,” Wad Hagma said, in a tone of deep regret, watching Penrod’s reaction.
“That is a small fortune!” Penrod protested.
Wad Hagma was encouraged to be dealing with a man who considered fifty sovereigns only a small fortune, rather than an extremely large one, so he immediately raised the bidding. “Alas, it could be a great deal more,” he said lugubriously. “However, the fate of these poor females has touched my heart and Yakub is dearer to me than any son. You are a mighty man and famous. I will do my best for you. In God’s Name I swear this!”
“In God’s Name!” Yakub agreed automatically.
“I will give you ten pounds now,” said Penrod, ‘and more when you show your intent in deeds rather than in fine words.”
“You will see that the promises of Wad Hagma are like the mountain of Great Ararat, on which the ark of Noah came to rest.”
“Yakub will bring the money to you tomorrow.” Penrod did not want to reveal where he kept his purse. They finished the meal and wiped the last drops of gravy from the bottom of the dishes with scraps of dhurra bread. Penrod thanked the uncle and wished him goodnight, then he signed to Yakub to follow him.
They walked out into the desert.
“There are already too many people in Omdurman who know who we are. It will be unsafe to stay any longer in your uncle’s house. From now onwards we will sleep every night at a different place. Nobody must be able to follow our movements. We must see but never be seen.”
It was some months after she had been confined in the zenana before the Mahdi took any further notice of Rebecca. Then he sent her and Amber new wardrobes of clothing. Amber received three simple cotton dresses and light sandals. Rebecca was sent apparel of a more elaborate but modest design, as befitted a concubine of Allah’s prophet.
The clothes were a welcome distraction from the boredom of the harem. By this time Amber had recovered sufficiently from her illness to take an active interest, and they tried on the dresses and showed them off to Nazeera and to each other.
The zenana was an enclosure the size of a small village. There was only one gate in the ten-foot-high wall of mud-brick that surrounded the hundreds of thatched huts that housed all the Mahdi’s wives and concubines, the slaves and servants who attended them. The women were fed from the communal kitchen, but it was a monotonous diet of dhurra and river fish fried in ghee, clarified butter, and blindingly hot chilli. With so many mouths to feed, the Mahdi obviously believed that some economies were called for.
Those women who had a little money of their own could buy additional provisions and delicacies from the female vendors who were allowed within the walls of the zenana for a few hours each morning. From her hoard of coins Nazeera bought legs of mutton, thick cuts of beef, calabashes of soured milk, and onions, pumpkins, dates and cabbage. They cooked these in the small fenced yard behind the thatched hut that AH Wad had had his men build for them. On this nourishing diet their bony bodies, the legacy of the long siege, filled out, the colour returned to their cheeks and the sparkle to their eyes. Twice during this time Nazeera had returned secretly at night to the ruins of the British consular palace across the river in the abandoned city of Khartoum. On the first visit she had brought back not only money but David Benbrook’s journal.
Rebecca had spent days reading it. It was almost as though she was listening to his voice again, except that on these pages he was expressing ideas and feelings she had not heard before. Between the sheets she discovered her father’s last will and testament, signed ten days before his death and witnessed by General Charles Gordon. His estate was to be divided in equal shares between his three daughters, but kept in trust by his lawyer in Lincolns Inn, a gentleman named Sebastian Hardy, until they reached the age of twenty-one. Newbury was as remote as the moon, and the chance of any of them returning there was so slim that she paid scant heed to the document and placed it back between the pages of the journal.
She read on through her father’s closely written but elegant script, often smiling and nodding, sometimes laughing or weeping. When she reached the end she found that several hundred pages remained empty in the thick book. She detefmined to continue with his account of family joys and tragedies. When next Nazeera crossed the river Rebecca asked her to find her father’s writing materials.
Nazeera returned with pens, spare nibs and five bottles of best-quality Indian ink. She brought also more money and some small luxuries that had been overlooked by the looters. Among these items was a large looking-glass in a tortoiseshell frame.
“See how beautiful you are, Becky.” Amber held up the mirror so they could both admire the long dress of silk and silver thread that the Mahdi had sent her. “Will I ever look like you?”
“You are already far more beautiful than I am, and you will grow more so every day.”
Amber reversed the mirror and studied her own face. “My ears are too big, and my nose too flat. My chest looks like a boy’s.”
“That will change, believe me.” Rebecca hugged her. “Oh, it’s so good to have you well again.” With the resilience of the young, Amber had put most of the recent horrors behind her. Rebecca had allowed her to read their father’s journal. This had helped her recovery, and alleviated the terrible mourning she had undergone for him and Saffron. Now she was able to reminisce about the happy times they had all spent together. She was also taking a more active interest in their alien surroundings and the circumstances in which they now found themselves. Using her natural charm and attractive personality she struck up acquaintances with some of the other women and children of the zenana. With the money that Nazeera brought home, there was enough for her to take small gifts to the most needy of the other women. She was soon a favourite in the zenana with many new friends and playmates.
Even Ali Wad softened under her warm, sunny influence. This forbidding warrior had renewed the intimate friendship with Nazeera that they had once enjoyed. On many occasions recently Nazeera had left their hut immediately after they had eaten the evening meal, and only returned at dawn. Amber explained her nocturnal absences to Rebecca. “You see, poor Ali Wad has a bad back. He was unhorsed in battle. Now Nazeera has to straighten his back for him to stop the pain. She is the only one who knows how to do it.”
Rebecca alleviated her boredom by attempting to bring some order into the social and domestic chaos she found all around them. First, she concerned herself with the lack of hygiene that prevailed in the zenana. Most of the women were from the desert and had never been forced to live in such crowded conditions before. All rubbish was simply tossed outside the doors of the huts, to be scavenged by crows, rats, ants and stray dogs. There were no latrines and everybody answered the call of nature wherever they happened to be when they received it. To navigate the labyrinth of pathways between the huts required nimble footwork to dodge the odoriferous brown mounds that dotted open ground. For Rebecca the final provocation was coming upon two small naked boys competing to see which could urinate across the opening of the single well that supplied water to the entire zenana. Neither competitor was able to reach the far side and their puny streams tinkled into the depths of the well.
Rebecca, with the backing of Nazeera, prevailed on Ali Wad to set his men to dig communal earth latrines and deep pits in which the rubbish could be burned and buried, and to make sure that the women used them. Then she and Nazeera visited the mothers whose offspring were wasting away with dysentery and the occasional bout of cholera. Rebecca had remembered the name of the monastery from which Ryder had obtained the cholera powder, and Nazeera persuaded Ali Wad to send three of his men to Abyssinia to fetch fresh supplies of the medicine. Until they returned, the women used what remained of Ryder
Courtney’s gift sparingly and judiciously to save the lives of some infants. This earned them the reputation of infallibility as physicians. The women obeyed when they ordered them to boil the well water before they gave it to the children or drank it themselves. Their efforts were soon rewarded, and the epidemic of dysentery abated.
All of this kept Rebecca’s mind from the threat that hung over them. They lived close to death. The smell of bloating human bodies wafted over the enclosure and their nostrils soon accepted this as commonplace. In the zenana Rebecca and Nazeera prevailed upon AH Wad to enforce the Islamic custom: the bodies of the cholera victims and those who died of other illness were removed by his men and buried the same day. However, they had no control over the execution ground, which was separated from the zenana by only the boundary wall.
A line of eucalyptus trees grew along the back wall of the zenana. The children and even some of the women climbed into the branches whenever the braying of the ombeya horns announced another execution. From this viewpoint they overlooked the gallows and the beheading ground. One morning Rebecca even caught Amber in the branches, watching in white-faced and wide-eyed fascination as a young woman was stoned to death not more than fifty paces from where she was perched. She dragged Amber back to their hut, and threatened to thrash her if she ever found her climbing the trees again.
Yet her first thought when Rebecca awoke each morning was the dread that this day the summons from the Mahdi to attend him in
his private quarters of the palace would be delivered. The arrival of the gift of clothing made the threat more poignant.
She did not have long to wait. Four days later AH Wad came to inform her of her first private audience with the Chosen One. Nazeera delayed the inevitable by pleading that her charge was stricken by her moon sickness. This excuse could work only once, however, and AH Wad returned a week later. He warned them that he would come back later to fetch Rebecca.
In the small screened yard at the back of their hut Nazeera undressed Rebecca, stood her naked on a reed mat and poured pitchers of heated water over her head. It was perfumed with myrrh and sandalwood that she had bought in the market. It was well known that the Mahdi detested unclean odours. Then she dried her and anointed her with attar of lotus flowers and dressed her in one of her new robes. At last AH Wad came to escort her to the presence of the Chosen One.
Nothing was as Rebecca had expected. There was no grand furnishing or tapestries, no marble tiles upon the floor, no tinkling water fountains. Instead she found herself on an open roof terrace furnished only with a few quite ordinary angarebs and a scattering of Persian rugs and cushions. Instead of the mighty Mahdi alone, three men were reclining on the angarebs. She was taken aback and uncertain of what was expected of her, but the Mahdi beckoned to her. “Come, al-Jamal. Sit here.” He indicated the pile of cushions at the foot of his bed. Then he went on talking to the other men. They were discussing the activities of the Dervish slavers along the upper reaches of the Nile, and how this trade could be increased tenfold now that Gordon Pasha and his strange Frankish aversion to the trade was no more.
Although she hung her head demurely, as Nazeera had cautioned her to do, Rebecca was able to study the other two men through her half closed lashes. The Khalifa Abdullahi frightened her, though she could barely admit it to herself. He had the cold and implacable presence of a venomous snake; an image of the sleek, glittering mamba came to her mind. She shivered and looked to the third man.
