by Seth Hunter
The only wildlife Nathan saw were vultures, circling high above the mountains. And at night he heard jackals and once, he could have sworn, the coughing grunt of a tiger. When he asked Sahin about it in the morning, he shrugged and said that it had probably been a leopard and that they were common in these parts.
On the afternoon of the third day they emerged from yet another pine forest and found themselves looking down upon Aleppo.
It was one of the oldest cities in the world, Sahin informed them proudly, and had been at the crossroads of several major trading routes for over 4,000 years. From a distance, it certainly looked impressive, even beautiful, with hundreds of minarets and watchtowers rising out of the haze of heat and dust that hung over the plain, and a massive fortified citadel on a steep glacis in the centre. But the haze was not entirely composed of heat and dust. It soon became clear that it was mostly smoke, and as they drew closer they heard the sound of gunfire.
They had arrived in the middle of a war.
Chapter Five
Aleppo
‘It started two days ago,’ said Mr Abbott, ‘but it has been building up for some time – in fact, you could say for over a thousand years.’
They were holed up in the British consulate in Aleppo. It was dark outside and the firing was spasmodic now, only the occasional distant report breaking the almost oppressive silence that hung over the city.
They had ridden in through the Antioch gate during an earlier lull in the fighting, passing through streets that clearly had seen more than their fair share of violence. Several buildings had been burned to the ground, others bore the scars of battle – the walls pitted with the impact of musket balls or grapeshot, windows and shutters smashed, sometimes doors. They saw blood in the streets, even bodies not yet dragged away. Well over a hundred must have died already, the consul estimated, with many more wounded. Large parts of the city had become a battleground – all over a quarrel that had started with the death of the Prophet Mohammed in AD 632.
‘I confess that the exact nature of the dispute is beyond me,’ he confessed. ‘But it seems to have involved a battle for the succession – one faction supporting the Prophet’s father-in-law, and the other his son-in-law. Doubtless there are deeper theological differences that evade my poor understanding but they have persisted for centuries.’
‘And this is the reason they are killing each other now?’
‘My dear sir, Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other in Europe for at least two hundred years over the meaning of a few words that may or may not have been spoken by Our Lord at his Last Supper. I do not think we may claim any intellectual or moral superiority on that score.’ The consul’s tone was more sardonic than critical. He was not a man given to rebuke.
‘I did not mean that we could,’ Nathan retorted. ‘I simply wondered if there was a particular reason for the fighting to start now. Is it an anniversary or some such?’
‘Possibly. I really have no idea. I am a man of trade, not a doctor of theology. And I very much doubt if they know either.’
Robert Page Abbott was in his early seventies, browned and wizened as an old owl, which creature he somewhat resembled with his hooded eyes and his dark complexion, a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his large, hooked nose. Born in Turkey of an English father and a Greek mother, he had spent all of his life in the Levant and was as steeped in the complexities of its business culture as an olive in brine, but he made no pretence to an understanding of its political or religious differences. Save to know how convoluted they were and how impossible to explain.
‘The Greeks hate the Turks, the Turks hate the Arabs, and the Arabs hate everyone,’ he declared. ‘There seem to me to be as many different religions as there are mosques and madrassas – or churches, for that matter – for the Ottomans are tolerant rulers and permit all manner of belief, provided you pay your taxes and do exactly as they say. Not that anyone does, of course. Byzantine it was and Byzantine it will remain until the Apocalypse and beyond – if you believe in the Apocalypse,’ he added hastily. ‘I mean no offence if you don’t, or even if you do.’
‘So it could have nothing to do with Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt?’ Nathan persisted.
‘Ah. Well, there you may have it. There are a great many French agents in Aleppo and it would be very much in the French interest at this moment in time to have the Ottoman Empire in a state of turmoil, with its citizenry cheerfully butchering each other instead of the invader.’
‘And where does the army stand in all of this?’ Spiridion wanted to know. They had seen little sign of any soldiers in the streets and their own escort had ridden off as soon as their charges were safely delivered to the British consulate. Sahin had said something about reporting to the governor, but Spiridion suspected he meant the governor in Iskanderun, not Aleppo.
‘Where does the army stand?’ the consul repeated. ‘A good question. Unhappily, they have been doing most of the killing – the Janissaries being one of the chief parties in the dispute. Quite why, I have no idea.’
The Janissaries formed the backbone of the Ottoman army. Taken as young boys from Christian communities in the Balkans and the Caucasus, converted to Islam, and trained as an elite force of infantry, they had led the Ottoman advance across central Asia and Europe. But like the Ottomans themselves, they were long past their Golden Age. As the Ottoman Empire had dwindled in power, so had the Janissaries in prestige. Many now regarded them as the scum of the empire, a dissolute, bullying soldiery imposed on the populace by a distant authority.
‘They are considerably fewer than the Shi’ites in number,’ said Mr Abbott, ‘but from what I have heard, they have had by far the better of the fighting. The governor has called on them to return to their barracks but I am not sure they are in the mood to obey. It is not the best time for you to arrive in Aleppo.’
Nathan was aware of this. He was more concerned now with how he might leave it.
He walked over to the open window, taking care to lean his body into the wall so as to present less of a target – though as the window looked down into a gated and guarded compound there was little risk of being shot at. The consulate occupied one side of the Great Khan, the biggest of the city’s many caravanserais, built to accommo date the camel trains that passed through the city to and from Baghdad and points East. It was bordered on the other three sides by a long colonnade leading to the stabling for the camels. On the first floor were the rooms for the travellers and the salesmen, who made their living from the goods they transported along the Great Silk Road. But they were all empty now and had been, according to Mr Abbott, for some time.
‘So how are we to get out of here?’ Nathan said, almost to himself.
‘Well, it is no good waiting for a camel train,’ the consul advised him. ‘We have not had a camel train in Baghdad since early June. Nor will we have until the autumn. It is too hot for the camels.’
‘You astonish me,’ Nathan confided. ‘I thought camels could tolerate the heat. I thought that was what camels were for.’
‘Camels have many merits,’ the consul assured him, ‘but tolerance is not one of them. They do not like hills and they do not like uneven ground on account of their sensitive feet …’
This was another surprise.
‘They are very sensitive beast,’ the consul maintained. ‘I think they do not like people overmuch, but God has obliged them to be beasts of burden, and they can do nothing about God, for the present, though they store up resentment against Him and I would not like to be in His shoes when there is a reckoning.’
‘So what are we to do?’ Nathan demanded. ‘I must reach India long before autumn.’
‘Well, a camel train will not help you there. They can take as long as two months to reach Baghdad.’
‘Two months! But we could walk there in that.’ Baghdad was about 450 miles from Aleppo, according to Nathan’s maps. He had anticipated a journey of about two weeks.
‘Yes, and that
is what you do in a camel train. Walk. Pulling the camel after you.’ He observed Nathan’s look of incredulity with amusement. ‘But the camel will carry your baggage for you – and your tent – and more importantly, it will carry your water. You would not get very far without it. No, I believe, we must get together a very small camel train – of riding camels and pack animals – so that you may travel fast and light.’
‘And how are we to do that?’ Nathan dared to hope.
‘We must ask the pasha for assistance,’ Mr Abbott declared. ‘First thing in the morning. If the war does not resume.’
The war did not resume. Not, at least, in the streets of Aleppo. When Nathan threw back the shutters of his room, he was greeted by the sound of the muezzin, summoning the faithful to prayer, and a view across the rooftops to the towers and battlements of the great citadel on its rocky promontory. There was only a little smoke in the air and no gunfire. The only sound, in fact, beside that of the muezzin, was the welcome clatter of pots and pans from the consul’s kitchen.
After they had breakfasted, they changed into their finery for the visit to the pasha. On the Admiral’s insistence, before leaving the fleet Nathan had been issued with full dress uniform, hastily knocked up by one of Nelson’s servants who had been a tailor in a previous life. He had used the uniforms of at least two smaller officers, possibly victims of the French guns, and its many scars, tucks and seams were disguised by a large quantity of gold lace and cord, so that Nathan felt, as he put it, like Solomon in all his glory. His companions were only slightly less gorgeous. Tully had assumed his own dress uniform, which had somehow survived his various escapades since leaving the Unicorn; Spiridion had forsaken his Arab robes for the rather more formal attire of a British consular official; Blunt wore his best blue jacket and white canvas ducks with some very pretty ribbons worked through the seams and a pair of black pumps with silver buckles; and George Banjo astonished them all with the full ceremonial rig of a Kuroghli officer in the army of the Pasha of Tripoli, which he had acquired by means known only to himself and its previous owner.
‘All we need is a marine guard and a brass band and we could march through Asia,’ remarked Nathan as they assembled in the consul’s hallway.
The march through the streets of Aleppo promised to be taxing enough, for though the firing had stopped, the atmosphere was charged with menace, or fear, or both. The windows of the houses remained shuttered but Nathan was conscious of many hidden eyes peering down at them. He hoped there were not hidden guns, but if there were, they remained unfired.
‘So is pasha the equivalent of governor?’ Nathan enquired of Mr Abbott, who was to make the formal introductions. Nathan was often confused by the pro liferation of Ottoman titles and forms of address, but he supposed a Turk must feel the same way in London.
‘No – the name for the governor is the agha,’ the consul replied tolerantly. ‘But in Aleppo we have both an agha and a pasha. The agha commands the citadel and the military, the pasha commands the city and the people. And never the twain shall meet.’
‘They do not like each other?’
‘They hate each other. Do not mention the agha to the pasha, I beg of you, or the pasha to the agha, should you ever meet him. It is going to be difficult enough as it is.’
Being a diplomat, Nathan thought, was a great deal more complicated even than being the captain of a ship. He supposed it was easier if you were born to it. Or if you were of a phlegmatic nature, like Spiridion and Mr Abbott. He was glad they were to do most of the talking.
He was more than a little surprised that the pasha had agreed to see them – if indeed he had, given his current preoccupations. But Mr Abbott insisted that it was necessary, and that it was of the utmost importance to convey the news of Nelson’s victory to him as soon as possible.
‘It might stiffen his resolve,’ he said, ‘when it comes to confronting the French party in the city, or even in the empire as a whole. He is cousin to the Great Sultan and may have some influence with him, or then again, he may not. And it is doubtful if the sultan has much influence himself these days. Policy is invariably determined by one of his wives, or one of the eunuchs, but they rise and fall so rapidly, it is useless to try and keep track of them.’
The palace was heavily guarded and there were numerous delays as they were checked through a series of doorways and passageways, but it was clear that Mr Abbott knew his way around – and was acquainted with most of the officials – for they proceeded quite smoothly and were kept waiting for little more than an hour in an ante-chamber before being ushered into the presence of El Sharif Mohammed Pasha himself.
He was a much younger man than Nathan had anticipated, with a dark wisp of beard that conspicuously failed to make him look any older, and an anxious frown that diminished what little natural authority he possessed. He greeted the visitors courteously enough, but if the news of Nelson’s victory stiffened his resolve, he disguised it well. Possibly he reflected that Nelson’s ships were of little use to him in Aleppo. Not with the city tearing itself apart and Bonaparte waiting next door to pick up the pieces. If he and his troops decided to march on India, very likely the pasha would wish them bon voyage, provided they did not decide to come by way of Aleppo.
The only thing that seemed to cheer him was the news that Nathan was also planning to go to India – and wished to leave the city as soon as possible.
‘“A plague on both your houses”,’ murmured Spiridion discreetly, and a little obscurely from Nathan’s point of view. ‘Shakespeare,’ the Greek informed him shortly. ‘Romeo and Juliet. One of the plays you have not yet seen.’
‘He will appoint one of his dragomen to help us find suitable transport,’ Mr Abbott reported, after a lengthy discussion in Turkish. ‘It is the best we can hope for. Give him your best bow and back out slowly.’
Nathan did as instructed.
The office of dragoman was some way down in the Ottoman hierarchy but essential nonetheless. He was a general factotum, or facilitator, usually with some skills in translation. Nothing much was done in the empire without the dragomen, Spiridion affirmed, or the eunuchs. ‘If you want to get on in this part of the world,’ he assured Nathan, lest he have some ambition in this direction, ‘you either have to use your tongue or sacrifice your manhood.’
The dragoman assigned to them was a Greek – ‘they usually are,’ said Spiridion – called Grammatico. As well as Greek, he spoke Turkish, Arabic, English, French and Romanian. He was less proficient in the procurement of camels.
‘They do not like to travel at this time of the year,’ he said, shaking his head regretfully.
‘I know,’ said Nathan, who was learning fast. ‘Because of the heat.’
‘Also, they moult,’ said the dragoman. ‘They do not care to travel when they are moulting.’
Nathan was beginning to form a dislike of camels, even on such a flimsy acquaintance.
He would ask around, Grammatico said, but he feared they might have to wait for the next camel train.
‘I hope Naudé is having the same trouble,’ Nathan remarked to Tully, ‘because at this rate, Bonaparte and his entire army will be in India before we have left Aleppo.’
But on this occasion fortune favoured the British. The very next day, they were interrupted at breakfast by the arrival of Grammatico with astonishing news. There was a camel train approaching from the East.
They hurried to the Baghdad Gate to watch its approach. From the city walls it could be seen stretching far into the distance, a long line of camels and cameleers emerging from the haze of heat and dust. And at its head was the impressive figure of the sheik – the leader of the train – as grand and remote as any prelate or potentate, sitting astride a magnificent dromedary, with a look of absolute disdain for any lesser mortal. ‘And that is just the camel,’ said Tully when Nathan drew his attention to this marvel. Directly behind him rode his standard bearer with a huge green flag, and then a number of armed guards, riding their beasts w
ith their firearms across their knees and a look that was clearly copied from that of their leader, entirely impervious to the yapping, yelling horde of dogs and young children who had run out to meet them.
The dragoman concluded that the caravan would be heading for al-Joumrok Khan – the customs caravanserai – where all the foreign traders were obliged to conduct their business under the watchful eyes of the Ottoman customs officials, and they followed him through the streets so that they might obtain a grandstand view, as it were, from the balconies. Mr Abbott was already there, having discovered by some mystical means that this was the caravan’s destination, and they joined him at the railings. The place was already packed, mostly with foreigners, distinguished by their Western dress and their hats – every foreigner had to wear a hat in public, Mr Abbott had informed them – and he pointed out the French contingent, which was larger, Nathan thought, than any other. He was slightly disturbed that several of them were gazing back with the same rapt attention – Mr Abbott had advised him against wearing Arab clothing for fear he might be taken as a spy, and though he was wearing the drabbest of his uniforms, it was still a uniform and he wished now he had thought of something less noticeable.
