by Wilbur Smith
“Nay,” Penrod whispered. “But perhaps I could still twist off the head of one of his chickens.” He showed the jailer his hands. The man slammed the door hurriedly and locked it.
Standing within his reach were three large pitchers of water in place of the usual one, and a meal that in comparison to those he had previously been offered was a banquet. Rather than having been thrown on to the bare floor, the food had been placed in a dish. Penrod was so exhausted that he could hardly chew, but he knew that if he were to survive he must eat. There was half a shoulder of roasted lamb, a lump of hard cheese and a few figs and dates. As he munched he wondered who had provided this fare, and if Osman Atalan had ordered it. If that was the case, what game was he playing? They let him rest on the following day, but on the next his jailers woke him before sunrise.
“Up, Abd Jiz! The emir presents his apologies. He cannot join you in the gazelle hunt this day. He has urgent business at the palace of the Mahdi. However, al-Noor, the famous aggagier, invites you to hunt with him.” They placed the rope round his neck before they removed his chains.
Penrod’s feet were so swollen and torn that standing on them was agony, but after the first few miles the pain receded and he ran on. They found not a single gazelle, although they scoured the desert for many leagues. By the time they returned the nails on three of Penrod’s toes had turned blue.
They hunted again, day after day. Osman Atalan did not accompany them and they killed no gazelle, but al-Noor ran him hard. The nails fell off his injured toes. Many times over the next few weeks Penrod thought that the infected wounds and scratches on both feet might turn gangrenous and he would lose his legs.
By the onset of the new moon that signalled the beginning of Ramadan, both his feet had healed and the soles were toughened and calloused as though he wore sandals. Only the sharpest thorns could pierce them. He was as lean as a whippet. The fat had been stripped from his frame, replaced with rubbery muscle, and he could keep pace with al-Noor’s horse.
Penrod had not seen Osman Atalan since the first unsuccessful gazelle hunt, but when he returned to Omdurman from the field on the third day of Ramadan, he was running strongly beside al-Noor’s stirrup. He looked like a desert Arab now: he was lean and bearded, sun-darkened and hard.
As they reached the outskirts of the holy city, al-Noor reined in. “There is something amiss,” he said. “Listen!” They could hear the drums beating and the ombeyas blaring. The music was not a battle hymn or the sound of rejoicing. It was a dirge. Then they heard salvoes of rifle fire, and al-Noor said, “It is bad news.”
A horseman galloped towards them, and they recognized another of
Osman Atalan’s aggagiers. “Woe upon us!” he shouted. “Our father has left us. He is dead. Oh, woe upon us all.”
“Is it the emir?” al-Noor yelled back. “Is Osman Atalan dead?”
“Nay! It is the Holy One, the Beloved of God, the light of our existence. Muhammad, the Mahdi, has been taken from us! We are children without a father.”
For weeks they waited at the bedside of the Mahdi. Chief among them was Khalifa Abdullahi. Then there were the Ashraf, the Mahdi’s brothers, uncles and cousins, and the emirs of the tribes: the Jaalin, the Hadendowa, the Beja and others. The Mahdi had no sons, so if he should die the succession was uncertain. There were only two women in his sickroom, both heavily veiled and sitting unobtrusively in a far corner. The first was his principal wife, Aisha. The second was the concubine al-Jamal. Not only was she his current favourite, but it was well known that she possessed great medical skills. Together these two women waited out the long and uncertain course of his disease.
Rebecca’s Abyssinian cure seemed highly effective during the first stages of the illness. She mixgd the powder with boiled water, and she and Aisha prevailed upon the Mahdi to drink copious draughts of it. As with Amber, his body was drained of fluids by the scouring of his bowels and the prolonged vomiting, but between them the two women were able to replace the liquid and mineral salts he had lost. It was fourteen days before the patient had started along the road to full recovery, and prayers of thanksgiving were held at every hour in the new mosque below his window.
When he could sit up and eat solid food, the city resounded to the beat of drums and volleys of rapturous rifle fire. The following day the Mahdi complained of insect bites. Like most of the other buildings in the city the palace was infested by fleas and lice, and his legs and arms were speckled with red swellings. They fumigated the room by burning branches of the turpentine bush in a brazier. However, the Mahdi scratched the flea bites, and soon a number were infected with the faeces of the vermin that had inflicted them. The temperature of his body soared, and he suffered alternating bouts of fever and chill. He would not eat. He was prostrated by nausea. The doctors thought that these symptoms were a complication of the cholera.
Then, on the sixteenth day, the characteristic rash of typhus fever covered most of his body. By this time he was in such a weakened condition that he sank rapidly. Near the end he asked the two women to help him sit up and, in a faint, unsteady voice, he addressed all the important men crowded around his angareb. “The Prophet Muhammad, who sits on the right hand of Allah, has come to me and he has told me that the Khalifa Abdullahi must be my successor on earth. Abdullahi is of me, and I am of him. As you have obeyed me and treated me, so must you obey and treat him. Allah is great and there is no other God but Allah.” He sagged back on the bed and never spoke again.
The men around the bed waited, but the tension in the crowded room was even more oppressive than the heat and the odour of fever and disease. The Ashraf whispered among themselves, and watched the Khalifa Abdullahi surreptitiously. They believed that their blood-tie to the Mahdi superseded all else: surely the right to take possession of the vacant seat of power belonged to one of their number. However, they knew that their claim was weakened by the last decree of the Mahdi, and by the sermon he had preached in the new mosque only weeks before he fell ill. Then he had reprimanded his relatives for their luxurious living, their open pursuit of wealth and pleasure.
“I have not created the Mahdiya for your benefit. You must give up your weak and wicked ways. Return to the principles of virtue I have taught you which are pleasing to Allah,” he had ranted, and the people remembered his words.
Even though the claim of the Ashraf to the Mahdiya was flawed, if one or two powerful emirs of the fighting tribes declared for them, Abdullahi would be sent to the execution grounds behind the mosque to meet his God and follow his Mahdi into the fields of Paradise.
Sitting quietly beside Aisha at the end of the room Rebecca had learnt enough of Dervish politics to be aware of the nuances and undercurrents that agitated the men. She drew aside the folds of her veil to ask Aisha if she might take a dish of water to bathe the fevered face of the dying Mahdi.
“Leave him be,” Aisha replied softly, “He is on his way to the arms of Allah who, even better than we can, will love and cherish him through all eternity.”
It was so hot and muggy in the room that Rebecca kept her veil open a little longer, making the most of a sluggish movement of air through the tiny windows across the room. She felt an alien gaze upon her, and flicked her eyes in its direction. The Emir Osman Atalan of the Beja was contemplating her bare face steadily, and though his dark eyes were implacable she knew he was looking at her as a woman, a young and beautiful woman who would soon be without a man. She could not look away: her eyes were held by a force beyond her control, as the compass needle is held by the lodestone.
Though it seemed an age, it was only a few moments before Abdullahi leant towards Osman Atalan and spoke to him so softly that his lips hardly moved. Osman turned his head to listen, and broke the spell that had existed between him and the young woman.
“How do you stand, noble Emir Atalan?” Abdullahi whispered, and his voice was so low that nobody else in the room could overhear.
“The east is mine,” Osman said.
�
�The east is yours,” Abdullahi agreed.
“The Hadendowa, the Jaalin and the Beja are my vassals.”
“They are your vassals,” Abdullahi acknowledged. “And you are mine?”
“There is one other small matter.” Osman procrastinated a moment longer, but Abdullahi was ahead of him.
“The woman with yellow hair?”
So he had seen the exchange of glances between Osman and al-Jamal. Osman nodded. Like the rest of them, Abdullahi lusted after this exotic creature with her pale golden hair, blue eyes and ivory skin, but to him she was not worth the price of an empire.
“She is yours,” Abdullahi promised.
“Then I am the vassal of Abdullahi, the successor of the Mahdi, and I will be as the targe on his shoulder and the blade in his right hand.”
Suddenly the Mahdi opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He uttered a cry: “Oh! Allah!” Then the air rushed from his lungs. They covered his face with a white sheet, and the opposing factions faced each other across the cooling body.
The Ashraf stated their case, which was based on their holy blood. Against this the Khalifa Abdullahi’s case was manifest: he did not have the blood but he had the word and blessing of the Mahdi. Still it hung in the balance. The newborn empire teetered on the verge of civil war.
“Who declares for me?” asked the Khalifa Abdullahi.
Osman Atalan rose to his feet and looked steadily into the faces of the emirs of the tribes that traditionally owed him allegiance. One after the other they nodded. “I declare for the word and wish of the holy Mahdi, may Allah love him for ever!” said Osman. “I declare for the Khalifat Abdullahi.”
Every man in the room shouted in homage to the new ruler, the
Khalifat, of the Sudan, although the voices of the Ashraf were muted and lacked enthusiasm.
When Rebecca returned to the hut in the zenana, Amber greeted her ecstatically. They had been parted for all the long weeks of the Mahdi’s last illness. They had never been separated for so long before. They lay together on one angareb, hugging each other and talking. There was so much to tell.
Rebecca described the death of the Mahdi and the ascendancy of Abdullahi. “This is very dangerous for us, my darling. The Mahdi was hard and cruel, but we managed to inveigle ourselves into his favour.” Rebecca did not elaborate on how this had been achieved, but went on, “Now he is gone, we are at the mercy of this wicked man.”
“He will want you,” Amber said. She had grown up far ahead of her years while they had been in the clutches of the Dervish. She understood so much Rebecca was amazed by it. “You are so beautiful. He will want you just as the Mahdi did,” Amber repeated firmly. “We can be sure he will send for you within the next few days.”
“Hush, my sweet sister. Let us not go ahead to search for trouble. If trouble is coming it will find us soon enough.”
“Perhaps Captain Ballantyne will rescue us,” Amber said.
“Captain Ballantyne is far away by now.” Rebecca laughed. “He is probably at home in England, and has been these many months past.”
“No, he is not. He is here in Omdurman. Nazeera and I have seen him. All the town is talking about him. He was captured by that wicked man Osman Atalan. They keep him on a rope and make him run beside the emir’s horse like a dog.”
In the lamplight Amber’s eyes glistened with tears. “Oh, it is so cruel. He is such a fine gentleman.”
Rebecca was astonished and dismayed. Her brief interlude with Penrod seemed like a dream. So much had happened since he had deserted her that her memory of him had faded and her feelings towards him had been soured by resentment. Now it all came flooding back.
“Oh, I wish he had not come to Omdurman,” she blurted. “I wish he had stayed away, and that I never had to lay eyes on him again. If he is a prisoner of the Dervish, as we are, there is nothing he can do to help us. I don’t even want to think about him.”
Rebecca spent most of the following day bringing up to date the journal she had inherited from her father, describing in small, closely written script all that she had witnessed at the death bed of the Mahdi, then her own feelings at the news that Penrod Ballantyne had come back into her life.
From time to time her writing was disturbed by the shouts from the vast crowds in the mosque, which carried over the zenana wall. It seemed that the entire population of the country had gathered. Rebecca sent out Nazeera to investigate. Amber wanted to accompany her, but Rebecca forbade it. She would not let Amber out of her sight in these dangerous, uncertain times.
Nazeera returned in the middle of the afternoon. “All is well. The Mahdi has been buried, and the Khalifat has declared that he has become a saint and that his tomb is a sacred site. A great new mosque will be built over it.”
“But what is all the noise in the mosque? It has been going on all day.” Rebecca demanded.
“The new Khalifat has demanded that the entire population take the Beia, the oath of allegiance to him. The emirs, sheikhs and important men were first to do so. Even the Ashraf have made the oath. There are so many of the common people clamouring to swear that the mosque is overflowing. They are administering the oath to five hundred men at a time. They say that the Khalifat weeps like a widow in mourning for his Mahdi, but still the populace crowds around him. Everywhere I walked in the streets I heard the crowds shouting the praises of the Khalifat and declaring their promises to obey him as the Mahdi decreed. They say the oath-taking will go on for many more days and even weeks before all can be satisfied.”
And when it is done, the Khalifat will send for me, Rebecca thought, and her heart raced with panic and dread.
She was wrong. It did not take that long. Two days later AH Wad came to their hut. With him were six other men, all strangers to her. “You are to pack everything you own, and go with these men,” AH Wad told her. “This is ordered by the Khalifat Abdullahi, who is the light of the world, may he always please Allah.”
“Who are these men?” Rebecca eyed the strangers anxiously. “I do not know them.”
“They are aggagiers of the mighty Emir Osman Atalan. Nazeera and al-Zahra are to go with you.”
“But where are they taking us?”
“Into the harem. Now that the holy Mahdi is departed from us, he has become your new master.”
There was much work to be done. The Khalifat Abdullahi was a clever man. He understood that he had inherited a powerful, united empire, and that this had been built upon the religious and spiritual mysticism of the Mahdi and the political imperative of ridding the land of the Turk and the infidel. Now that the Mahdi was gone, the cement that held it together was dangerously weakened. The infidel would soon gather on his borders and the enemies within would emerge and gnaw away, like termites, the central pillars of his power. Not only was Abdullahi clever, he was also ruthless.
He called all the powerful men to him in a great conclave. Their numbers almost filled the new mosque. First he reminded them of the oath they had sworn only days before. Then he read to them the proclamation that the Mahdi had issued the previous year in which he had made abundantly clear the trust that he placed in Khalifa Abdullahi: “He is of me, and I am of him,” the Mahdi had written in his own hand. “Behave with all reverence to him, as you do to me. Submit to him as you submit to me. Believe in him as you believe in me. Rely on all he says, and never question his proceedings. All that he does is by the order or the permission of the Prophet Muhammad. If any man thinks evil or speaks evil of him, he will be destroyed. He has been given wisdom in all things. If he sentences a man to death, it is for the good of all of you.”
When they had listened earnestly to this proclamation he ordered the emirs and the Ashraf to write letters that were sent out with fast horsemen and camel-riders to the most remote corners of the empire to reassure and calm the population. He announced the creation of six new khalifs. In effect they would become his governors. His brothers were elevated to this rank, and so was Osman Atalan. The Khalif Osman was awa
rded a new green war-banner to go with the scarlet and black, and granted the honour of planting this at the gates of Abdallahi’s palace whenever he was in Omdurman. All the eastern tribes were placed under his banner. Thus Osman now commanded almost thirty thousand elite fighting men.
It took several months for all this to be accomplished, and when it was achieved Abdullahi invited Osman Atalan to hunt with him. They rode out into the desert. There are no eavesdroppers in those great empty spaces, and the two mighty men rode a mile ahead of their entourage. When they were alone Abdullahi disclosed his vision of the future.
“The Mahdiya was conceived in war and the flames of the jihad. In peace and complacency it will rust and disintegrate like a disused sword. Like spoilt children, the tribes will return to their old blood feuds, and the sheikhs will bicker among themselves like jealous women,” he told Osman. “In the Name of God, we lack not real enemies. The pagan and the infidel surround us. They gather like locust swarms at our borders. These enemies will ensure the unity and strength of our empire, for their threat gives reason for the jihad to continue. My empire must continue to expand or it will collapse upon itself.”
“You wisdom astounds me, mighty Abdullahi. I am like an innocent child beside you. You are my father and the father of the nation.” Osman knew the man well: he fed on flattery and adulation. Yet the scope of his vision impressed Osman. He realized that Abdullahi dreamed of creating an empire to rival that of the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople.
“Osman Atalan, if you are a child, and Allah knows that you are not, you are a warlike child.” Abdullahi smiled. “I am sending Abdel Kerim with his jihad ia northwards to attack the Egyptians on the border. If he is victorious, the entire country of Egypt from the first cataract to the delta will rise up behind our jihad.”
