by Wilbur Smith
Penrod blanched under his suntan and stared at Adams in horror.
He went on hurriedly: “You have friends here. Everyone knows your worth. Victoria Cross, derring-do, heroic escapes and all that. However, you will have to resign your commission in the Hussars.”
“Resign my commission?” Penrod exclaimed. “I will let them shoot me first.”
“It might come to that. But hear me out.” Adams reached across the table and laid his hand on Penrod’s arm to prevent him leaping to his feet. “Drink your champagne and listen to me. Damn fine vintage, by the way. Don’t waste it.” Penrod subsided, and Adams went on,
“First, I must give you some other background information. Egypt now belongs to us in all but name. Baring calls it the Veiled Protector’ ate, but it’s a bloody colony for all the pretty words. The decision has been taken by London to rebuild the Egyptian army from a disorganized rabble into a firstrate fighting corps. The new sirdar is Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Do you know him?”
“I cannot say that I do,” Penrod said. The sirdar was the Commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army.
“Cross between a tiger and a dragon. Absolute bloody fire-eater. He desperately needs first-class officers for the new army, men who know the desert and the lingo. I mentioned your name. He knows of you. He wants you. If you join him he’ll quash all Wilson’s charges against you. Kitchener is going up the ladder to the top and will take his people with him. You will start at your equivalent rank of captain, but I can almost guarantee you a battalion within a year, your own regiment within five. For you the choice is between ruin and high rank. What do you say?”
Penrod smoothed his whiskers thoughtfully on board ship Amber had trimmed his sideburns and moustache for him and once again they were luxuriant. He had learnt never to jump at the first offer.
“Camel Corps.” Adams tossed in another plum. “Plenty of desert fighting.”
“When can I meet the gentleman?”
“Tomorrow. Nine hundred hours sharp at the new army headquarters. If you love life, don’t be late.”
Kitchener was a muscular man of middling height and moved like a gladiator. He had a full head of hair and a cast in one eye, not unlike Yakub’s. This made Penrod incline towards him. His jaw had been shot half away in a fight with the Dervish at Suakin when he had been governor of that insalubrious and dangerous corner of Africa. The bone was distorted and the kelo id scar was pale pink against his darkly tanned skin. His handshake was iron hard and his manner harsh and unyielding.
“You speak Arabic?” he asked, in that language. He spoke it well, but with an accent that would never allow him to pass him as a native. “Sirdar effendi! May all your days be perfumed with jasmine.” Penrod made the gesture of respect. “In truth, I speak the language of the One True God and His Prophet.”
Kitchener blinked. It was perfect. “When can you come on strength?”
“I need to be in England until Christmas. I have been out of contact with civilization for some time. I must settle my personal affairs, and I shall have to resign my commission with my present regiment.”
“You have until the middle of January next year and then I want you here in Cairo. Adams will go over the details with you. You are dismissed.” His uneven gaze dropped back to the papers on the desk in front of him.
As he and Adams went down the steps of the headquarters building to where the grooms were holding their horses, Penrod said, “He wastes little time.”
“Not a second,” Adams agreed. “Not a single bloody second.”
Before he rode back to Alexandria to rejoin the Singapore, Penrod went to the telegraph office and sent a wire to Sebastian Hardy, David Benbrook’s lawyer, at his chambers in Lincolns Inn Fields. It was a lengthy message and cost Penrod two pounds, nine shillings and fourpence.
Hardy came from London by train to meet the ship when she docked at Southampton. In appearance he reminded Penrod and Amber of Charles Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick. However, behind his pince-nez he had a shrewd and calculating eye. He travelled back to London with them.
“The press has got wind of your escape from Omdurman, and your arrival in this country,” he told them. “They are agog. I have no doubt they will be waiting at Waterloo station to pounce upon you.”
“How can they know what train we will arrive on?” Amber asked.
“I dropped a little hint,” Hardy admitted. “What I would refer to as pre-baiting the waters. Now, may I read this manuscript?”
Amber looked to Penrod for guidance, and he nodded. “I think you should trust Mr. Hardy. Your father did.”
Hardy skimmed through the thick sheaf of papers so rapidly that Amber doubted he was reading it. She voiced her concern, and Hardy answered, without looking up, “Trained eye, my dear young lady.”
As the carriage ran in through the suburbs he shuffled the papers together. “I think we have something here. Will you allow me to keep this for a week? I know a man in Bloomsbury who would like to read it.”
Five journalists were waiting on the platform, including one from The Times and another from the Telegraph. When they saw the handsome, highly decorated hero of El Obeid and Abu Klea, with the young beauty on his arm, they knew they had a story that would electrify the whole country. They barked hysterically as a pack of mongrels who had chased a squirrel up a tree. Hardy gave them a tantalizing statement about the horrifying ordeal the couple had survived, mentioning Gordon, the Mahdi and Khartoum more than once, all evocative names. Then he sent the press away and led the couple out to a cab he had waiting at the station entrance.
The cabbie whipped up his horse and they clattered through the foggy city to the hotel in Charles Street where Hardy had booked a room for Amber. Once she was installed they went on to the hotel in Dover Street where Penrod would stay.
“Never do for the two of you to frequent the same lodging. From now on you will be under a magnifying lens.”
Four days later Sebastian Hardy summoned them to his office. He was beaming pinkly through his pince-nez. “Macmillan and Company want to publish. You know they did Sir Samuel White Baker’s book on the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia? Your book is caviar and champagne to them.”
“What can the Benbrook sisters expect to receive? You know that Miss Amber wishes any proceeds to be shared equally between them, following the example their father set in his will?”
Hardy sobered and looked apologetic. He removed his reading glasses and polished them with the tail of his shirt. ‘I pressed them as hard as I could, but they would not budge beyond ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds!” Amber shrieked. “I did not know there was that much money outside the Bank of England.”
“You will also receive twelve and a half per cent of the profits. I doubt this will amount to much more than seventy-five thousand pounds.”
They gaped at him in silence. Placed in consols, irredeemable government treasury bonds, that sum would bring in almost three and a half thousand pounds per annum in perpetuity. They would never have to worry about money.
In the event, Hardy’s estimate erred on the side of caution. Months before Christmas Slaves of the Mahdi was all the rage. Hatchard’s in Piccadilly was unable to keep copies on its shelves for more than an hour. Irate customers vied with each other to snatch them and carry them triumphantly to the till.
In the House of Commons the opposition seized on the book as a weapon with which to belabour the government. The whole sorry business of Mr. Gladstone abandoning Chinese Gordon to his fate was resuscitated. Saffron Benbrook’s harrowing painting depicting the death of the general, to which she had been an eye-witness, formed the book’s frontispiece. It was reported in a leading article in The Times that women wept and strong men raged as they looked at it. The British people had tried to forget the humiliation and loss of prestige they had suffered at the hands of the Mad Mahdi, but now the half-healed wound was ripped wide open. A popular campaign for the reoccupation of the Sudan swept the country. The book sold and s
old.
Amber and Penrod were invited to all the great houses, and were surrounded by admirers wherever they went. London cabbies greeted them by name, and strangers accosted them in Piccadilly and Hyde Park. Hundreds of letters from readers were forwarded to them by the publishers. There was even a short note of congratulation from the sirdar, Kitchener, in Cairo.
“That will do my new career no harm at all,” Penrod told Amber, as they rode together down Rotten Row, acknowledging waves.
The book sold a quarter of a million copies in the first six weeks, and the printing presses roared night and day churning out fresh copies. They were unable to keep up with the demand. Putnam’s of 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, brought out an American edition, which piqued the interest of readers who had never heard of the Sudan. Slaves of the Mahdi outsold Mr. Stanley’s account of his search for Dr. Livingstone by three to one.
The French, true to the national character, added their own fanciful illustrations to the Paris edition. Rebecca Benbrook was depicted with her bodice torn open by the evil Mahdi as he prepared to ravish her as she courageously sheltered her beautiful, terrified little sister Amber. The indomitable thrust of her bare bosom declared her defiance in the face of a fate worse than death. Copies were smuggled across the Channel and sold at a premium on stalls in the streets of Soho. Even after the payment of income tax at sixpence in the pound, by Christmas the book had earned royalties little short of two hundred thousand pounds. Amber, at the suggestion of Penrod Ballantyne, instructed Mr. Hardy to place this in a trust fund for the three sisters.
Amber and Penrod celebrated Christmas at Clercastle. They walked and rode together every day. When the house-party went out to shoot Sir Peter’s high-flying pheasant, Amber stood in the line of guns beside
Penrod and, thanks to her father’s training, acquitted herself so gracefully and skilfully that the head keeper came to her after the last drive, tugged at the peak of his cap and mumbled, “It was a joy to watch you shoot, Miss Amber.”
January came too soon. Penrod had to take up his post in Cairo. Amber, chaperoned by Penrod’s sister-in-law Jane, went to see him off from Waterloo station on the boat train. With Jane’s assistance, Amber had spent the previous week shopping for the correct attire at such a momentous parting. Of course, price was now of little consequence.
She settled on a dove-grey jacket, trimmed with sable fur, worn over ankle-length skirts and a fashionable bustle. Her high-heeled boots buckled up the sides and peeped out from under the sweeping skirts. The artful cut of the material emphasized her tiny waist. Her wide-brimmed hat was crowned with a wave of ostrich feathers. She wore the amber necklace and earrings that he had given her on the road outside Gallabat.
“When will we see each other again?” Amber was trying desperately but unsuccessfully to hold back her tears until after the train had departed.
“That I cannot say.” Penrod had determined never to lie to her, unless it was absolutely necessary. The tears broke over Amber’s lower lids. She tried to sniff them back, and Penrod hurried on: “Perhaps you and Jane could come out to Cairo to spend your sixteenth birthday at Shepheard’s Hotel. Jane has never been there and you might show her the pyramids.”
“Oh, can we do that, Jane? Please?”
“I will speak to my husband,” Jane promised. She was about the same age as Rebecca, and in the few weeks that Amber had lived at Clercastle they had become as close as sisters. “I can see no possible reason why Peter should object. It will be the height of the grouse-shooting season and he will be much occupied elsewhere. He will hardly miss us.”
Sam Adams came down from Cairo to meet Penrod when his ship docked in Alexandria. Almost his first words were “We have all read the book. The sirdar is as pleased as a cat with a saucer of cream. London was starting to have second thoughts about rebuilding the army. Gladstone and those other idiots were dithering with the idea of using the money to build a bloody great dam on the Nile instead of giving it to us. Miss Benbrook’s book created such a rumpus in the House that they changed their dim minds sharpish. Kitchener has another million pounds, and to the devil with the dam. Now we will certainly have new Maxim guns. As for myself, well, we desperately need a good number two if we’re to have any chance of retaining the Nile Cup this year.”
“After my brief meeting with the sirdar, I estimate that he is not likely to set aside much time for polo.”
Adams’s wife had found and rented a comfortable house for Penrod on the bank of the river, close to army headquarters and the Gheziera Club. When Penrod climbed the steps to the shady veranda, a figure in a plain white jibba and turban rose from his seat beside the front door and made a deep salaam.
“Effendi, the heart of the faithful Yakub has pined for you as the night awaits the dawn.”
The next morning Penrod found out what Kitchener and Adams had in store for him. He was to recruit and train three companies of camel cavalry to travel far and fast, and fight hard. “I want men from the desert tribes,” he told Adams. “They make the best soldiers. Abdullahi has driven many of the Ashraf out of Sudan, emirs of the Jaalin and the Hadendowa. I want to go after them. Hatred makes a man fight harder. I believe I shall be able to turn them against their former masters.”
“Find them,” Adams ordered.
Penrod and Yakub took the steamer to Aswan. Here they waited thirty-six hours for the sailing of another boat that would carry them up beyond the first cataract, as far as Wadi Haifa. Penrod left Yakub at the dock to guard the baggage, and went alone to the gate at the end of the narrow, winding alley. When old Liala heard his voice she flung open the gate and collapsed in a heap of faded robes and veils, wailing pitifully. “Effendi, why have you come back? You should have spared my mistress. You should never have returned here.”
Penrod lifted her to her feet. “Take me to her.”
“She will not see you, Effendi.”
“She must tell me that herself. Go to her, Liala. Tell her I am here.” Sobbing pitifully, the old woman left him beside the fountain in the courtyard and tottered into the back quarters. She was gone a long time. Penrod picked tiny green flies from the flowering fuchsias and dropped them into the pool. The perch rose to the surface and gulped them down.
Liala returned at last. She had stopped weeping. “She will see you.” She led him to the bead screen. “Go in.”
Bakhita sat on a silk rug on the far side of the well-remembered room. He knew it was her by her perfume. She was heavily veiled. “My heart fills with joy to see you safe and well, my lord.”
Her soft, sweet voice tugged at his heart. “Without you, Bakhita, that would not have been possible. Yakub has told me of the part you played in bringing me to safety. I have come to thank you.”
“And the English girl’s Arabic name is al-Zahra. I am told that she is young and very beautiful. Is that so, my lord?”
“It is so, Bakhita.” He was not surprised that she knew. Bakhita knew everything.
“Then she is the one we spoke of. The girl of your own people who will be your wife. I am happy for you.”
“We will still be friends, you and I.”
“Friends and more than that,” she said softly. “Whenever there is something that you should know I will write to you.”
“I will come to see you.”
“Perhaps.”
“May I see your face once more before I go, Bakhita?”
“It would not be wise.”
He went to her and knelt in front of her. “I want to see your lovely face again, to look into your eyes and to kiss your lips one last time.”
“I beg of you, lord of my heart, spare me this thing.”
He reached out and touched her veil. “May I lift it?”
She was silent for a while. Then she sighed. “Perhaps, after all, it would be easier this way,” she said.
He lifted the veil and stared at her. Slowly she watched the horror dawn in his eyes.
“Bakhita, oh, my dear heart, what has happe
ned to you?” His voice trembled with pity.
“It was the smallpox. Allah has punished me for loving you.” The pockmarks were still fresh and livid. Her luminous eyes shone in the ruins of the face that had once been so lovely. “Remember me as I once was,” she pleaded.
“I will remember only your courage and your kindness, and that you are my friend,” he whispered, and bent forward to kiss her lips.
“It is you who are kind,” she replied. Then she reached up and covered her face with the veil. “Now you must leave me.”
He stood up. “I shall return.”
“Perhaps you will, Effendi.”
But they both knew he never would.
The aggagiers found the corpse of Kabel al-Din lying in the courtyard beside the abandoned yoke of the shebba. Osman Atalan called all his men to horse and for many days they scoured both banks of the river. Osman was in a murderous mood when at last he returned to Omdurman without having found any trace of the fugitive. This was a bad time for the women to come to him and tell him that al-Zahra was also missing.
“How long has she been gone?” he demanded.
“Eight days, exalted Khalif.”
“The same time as Abadan Riji,” he exclaimed. “What of the woman al-Jamal?”
“She is still in the zenana, mighty Atalan.”
“Bring her to me, and her servant also.”
They dragged in the two women and flung them at his feet.
“Where is your sister?”
“Lord, I do not know,” Rebecca replied.
Osman looked at al-Noor. “Beat her,” he ordered. “Beat her until she answers truthfully.”
“Mighty Khalif!” Nazeera cried. “If you beat her she will lose your child. It may be a son. A son with golden hair like his mother and the lion heart of his sire.” Osman looked startled. He hesitated, staring at Rebecca’s belly. Then he snarled at his aggagiers, “Leave us. Do not return until I call you.”
They hurried out of the room, relieved to be sent away, for when a khalif and emir of the Beja is angry all men around him are in jeopardy.
