Last Stand At Majuba Hill (Simon Fonthill Series)

by John Wilcox

  The caravan had quickly left behind the Nile-watered lushness of the country around Cairo, and now, with the high white sun beating down, the camels were picking their way across a stony plain, broken here and there by dry wadis, irritatingly difficult to negotiate. It was a relief, then, when the sand underneath the animals’ pads began to increase until it formed a soft white carpet over a harder stratum. It was perfect terrain for the beasts, and without urging, they picked up their pace. The particles of sand were clean and polished and Simon found that they reflected the sun strongly, forcing him to pull his head sheet low over his eyes to reduce the glare.

  A midday break was taken in the shade of a few stunted scrub and palm trees, solitary in a moist depression. Handfuls of dates and raisins were shared, a little water sipped - although the camels were still replete from their stay at Cairo - and then the people of the funduq hung blankets across the scrub and curled up like scorpions in the scraps of shade so formed. Simon, his left leg now aching from its position coiled around the saddle pommel, followed suit, as did Jenkins, who was asleep within seconds.

  The break lasted little more than an hour and then the caravan resumed its gentle progress across the desert, which had now truly become a sea of sand, with long, slowly rising waves of dunes reducing visibility to some two hundred yards all around. Simon, head swaying on his precarious perch, became almost hypnotised as he watched his camel place each splayed, padded foot on the sand, allow it to sink through the surface and then retrieve it with a flick that sent sand crystals spraying to all sides. Monotony seemed to be the main feature of desert travel.

  It was another blessed relief, then, when, at about four p.m., palm fronds standing clear above the next sand dune announced that they had reached their first village - also their first trading point and overnight stay. They topped the dune and looked down upon a verdant patch of life set amidst the arid whiteness of the surrounding sand. The village consisted of about thirty huts made of crudely cut blocks of dried mud, set around a number of wood- and stone-lined wells and fringed with the tall date palms. Narrow irrigation channels spoked out from the wells and meandered between the palm roots, allowing enough moisture to sustain the trees and what Simon presumed to be tiny rice patches and clumps of fig trees.

  The arrival of the caravan was obviously a cause of great joy to the little community, for children of all sizes ran out to meet the leading camel, women appeared smiling at the doors of the huts and swathed men, working the buckets at the wells, straightened their backs and grinned. With practised ease the leading camels were unloaded and blankets spread upon the ground beneath what little shade could be gained from the palms above. Minutes later the blankets were covered with a glittering cornucopia of products from beyond the shores of Egypt: knives, axes, nails and hammers from Birmingham; tinned food from France, set beside a delicately arranged pyramid of can openers; gaily coloured shawls, gowns and headdresses from India and Manchester; musket balls from Morocco; and drinking mugs from Stoke-on-Trent. These were supplemented by artefacts of more ethnic and regional origin: refurbished jerzails, daggers set with fake jewels, curled slippers, rings and bangles that radiated shafts of sunlight and bags of flour that wheezed white dust as they were set down.

  ‘ ’Ow the ’ell do they pay for this stuff?’ wondered Jenkins.

  The answer was provided within seconds as the village brought out its own produce: mainly dates, figs, and bags and baskets woven from palm fronds. Some coins exchanged hands, but at least half of the business was a matter of bartering, and it all proceeded so smoothly that it was over within the hour. What was left was immediately repacked for loading again on to the camels the next day and the payment in fruit was carefully covered in muslin, sprinkled with water and put away in one of the huts until the morning.

  While the men were trading, the women of the funduq were smoothly unloading the tents and erecting them under the palms, while the children relieved the camels of the remainder of their burdens and then kneehaltered them.

  Simon and Jenkins stood a little to one side, observing the disciplined muddle with interest and admiration. The scene was one of civilised but traditional behaviour and must have been repeated, except for changes in the products bartered, for hundreds of years previously. It was clear that the arrival of the caravan was an event - Simon presumed that Mahmud varied his route, so that each oasis was visited probably only once a year - and part of the long-nurtured culture of the desert. Looking at the bright eyes of the women and children of the village as they eyed the treasures on the blankets, Simon’s thoughts returned to the conversation of the morning.

  He turned to Jenkins. ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’

  The Welshman nodded slowly. ‘This is good, this is, bach sir. Bit like the market on Saturday mornings in Rhyl, with the kids ’n that. What right ’ave them Bedwhatsit people got to spoil it, eh?’

  ‘Quite. I still hope that we don’t meet them because I don’t want to cause trouble for Mahmud and his people. But if we do, perhaps we should give them something to remember us by.’

  ‘Well, look you. I’ll go along with that.’

  The money that Mahmud had received from Simon paid for food for the two passengers and also overnight accommodation for them in the caravan leader’s big tent. When all the work was done and the sun had gone down, bringing an immediate drop in the temperature, the pair gathered around a big fire lit outside Mahmud’s tent with the leader and his brother Abdul - a younger replica of the big man, matching his cheerful smile but lacking the leader’s gravitas - together with the elders among the men of the funduq. They all sat cross-legged in a circle, sipping syrup-like green tea from elegant little cups.

  ‘Do ’emselves well on this caravan thing, don’t they?’ whispered Jenkins. ‘Though I wouldn’t mind a drop of something stronger, look you.’

  ‘No chance of that. They’re Muslims and never touch the stuff.’

  ‘Blimey. There’s strange for you.’

  When the food came, it smelt delicious. One of the older women - she could have been Mahmud’s wife, or one of his wives - brought a steaming bowl of saffron rice, over which pieces of boiled lamb had been spread. Then boys carried in small cauldrons and copper vats from which they ladled out over the main dish shreds of offal from the lamb, swimming in cooking fat in which pieces of butter were fast dissolving. Immediately Mahmud intoned some kind of grace in his native tongue, quickly translating it as ‘In the name of God, the merciful’ for his two guests, and then the men squatted around the central dish in a ring, peeled back their right sleeves to the elbow and began dipping their thumbs and first two fingers into the rice and meat, cautiously, for the fat was scalding hot.

  They made room for Simon and Jenkins and the two copied the eating procedure of the others. Carefully using only thumb and two fingers - it was clear that it was impolite to soil the palm of the hand - they kneaded rice and small pieces of meat into a package, dipped the result into the fat, squashed the ball into the curved forefinger and then flicked it into the mouth with the thumb. Although Jenkins became impatient with the ritual and eventually began using all of his fingers, no one seemed to mind. After a considerable dent had been made in the rice mound, Mahmud produced his knife and began cutting away pieces of meat from the larger bones left and spearing treasured portions of liver and kidneys and placing them all on the plates of Simon and Jenkins. When it seemed that there could be no more room in their bellies for further food, watermelons and pistachio nuts were produced. It was hospitality of the most gracious kind and Simon warmed anew to the ways of this desert Egyptian and his happy band of travelling families.

  After they had rubbed their hands with soap cake and rinsed them in wooden bowls of water, they sprawled contentedly on rugs alongside Mahmud, drinking more green tea. Simon thanked him for the hospitality they had received.

  ‘I envy you your way of life,’ he said.

  Mahmud sipped his tea and grinned. ‘Ahmed makes more
money from his hotel in a month than I will in two years of leading my camels across the desert, but I would not change my life for his.’

  ‘Were you born in the city?’

  ‘No, the three of us grew up in a little village on the green edge watered by the Nile. Our father was a poor farmer whose bit of land was on the higher section, away from the main canals fed from the dams. He could not afford to pay the bribes to the water engineers, so we had to take water to irrigate our land up from one level to another by buckets. It’s called shaduf. You know,’ he shook his head, ‘the fellaheen of this country have a terrible time of it.’

  ‘Because of the water problem.’

  ‘Of course. With that shaduf system, it takes six fellaheen, working from dawn to dust, to water two acres of barley or one of cotton or sugar cane. As there is only about one able-bodied man to three acres of cultivated land in Egypt, it is clear that shaduf cannot irrigate the whole country.’ He spat away from the rug. ‘That is why most of the country is desert.’

  Simon wrinkled his brow. ‘But modern methods of water pumping - I’ve seen them in operation in South Africa - could change things in less than ten years.’

  ‘Ah, but who is going to pay for this big - what do you call it? - capital investment? I will tell you who. The financiers of Europe, the very same people who built what is supposed to be our great Suez Canal, the Canal which poor old Ismail Pasha had to sell back to the bankers in London and Paris before they kicked him out.’ Mahmud threw away his tea dregs in an angry gesture. ‘Give them any more chance of moving into this country and they will take it over completely. No.’ He shook his head. ‘It is better that we carry on bucketing our water and the desert stays the desert so that I can trade across it.’

  A silence fell on the little group. The other men had listened in silence to the strange language spoken by their leader, not understanding a word, but they realised that he had been expressing views of great profundity, and as he finished, they nodded their heads in solemn agreement. It was Jenkins who broke the silence.

  ‘That’s all very well, Mah . . . er . . . Mah . . . mate,’ he said. ‘But what about these bandits that rob you all the time? You can’t put up with them for much longer, can you?’

  The Egyptian’s face clouded. ‘That is true. If it gets worse, something will have to be done. Maybe we fight. Maybe the Government sends soldiers again. I don’t know. Allah will provide. He always does.’

  Hearing the name of the deity, the others nodded their heads again.

  Simon stood. ‘Thank you again. Now I must sleep. What time tomorrow do we load up and move on?’

  ‘I do not have a watch, but we keep God’s time. We move at dawn.’

  The pattern of the first day was repeated on the next and the next, with the caravan winding its way sinuously across the dunes, sometimes making faster time over harder, pebble-strewn terrain, sometimes stopping to trade at a village overnight, sometimes at midday. Once a fierce sand storm whipped up from nowhere and the camel drivers were forced to turn the rumps of their beasts towards the direction of the wind, bow their heads, cover their faces with their head shawls and wait until it had passed. On the fourth night, a similar blast hit them from out of the darkness when everyone was asleep. But the tents stood firm, their low profiles allowing the sand to sweep over them and away, so that little discomfiture resulted for those inside.

  By the sixth day, Simon had even stopped scanning the desert behind them for a band of police pursuing them with questions about an affray in the jewellery suk of Cairo. They had successfully slipped away, it seemed, from that trouble in the city. Suez and a steamer south beckoned from just over the horizon.

  Yet they had not left danger behind.

  It was the sharp-eyed Jenkins who first saw the Bedawis. Leading as usual, he turned back to Simon and pointed to his right, to where the dunes had flattened and a plain of sorts had been formed by a freak of the wind. Simon shielded his eyes and squinted into the glare. Far away - perhaps a mile to the south - he could make out six tiny black figures, approaching them at some speed. A shout from Mahmud showed that he had seen them too.

  Immediately the caravan lost its air of somnolence. Riders slipped from their camels and began tucking away under the loads items of particular value which could be easily hidden and so avoid the casual acquisitive eye. Simon had long since divided their gold coins into two small bags and he now gestured to Jenkins to untie his bag from the saddle pommel and tuck it away beneath the folds of his robe. He did the same himself and then looked at their rifles, on the camel ahead, still wrapped in their hessian coverings in the middle of the packs but protruding provocatively. He sighed, for there was nothing to be done about them.

  Turning to his right, he tried to focus again on the intruders. They were now much nearer, of course, for they were clearly urging on their camels, but they were shimmering in the heat haze so that heads were horizontally parted from bodies and the bodies severed from the animals that bore them. It was an eerie, menacing illusion and Simon licked his lips - abortively, for he had no saliva to moisten them. Jenkins gently eased his camel back so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Simon.

  ‘What do you think, bach sir?’ he said. ‘Challenge’em right away?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘No. We promised Mahmud that we wouldn’t cause any trouble. Let them have anything they want except the coins and the rifles. If they take our gold we’ll never get to South Africa, and if they have our rifles they will certainly use them against these people, probably for years. Is yours loaded?’

  ‘Yes. One up the spout.’

  ‘Hide a few cartridges in your left hand in case it becomes a shooting match. I’ll do the same.’ He gulped and tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Don’t act until I do.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  After the initial consternation, the caravan had resumed its even progress, as though the Bedawis had not even been noticed. But there was a definable air of tension among the Egyptians and some of the men, Simon noticed, had even produced old jerzails and slung them across their saddles. Would they fight if they had to? Certainly young Abdul, Mahmud’s brother, looked in the mood. He was visibly excited, his eyes wide, and he kept twisting in his saddle to observe the approach of the Bedawis.

  They were now close enough to be individually defined. They were completely shrouded in black, with headscarves wound low over their foreheads and around their lower faces, so that only their eyes could be seen. Each man carried a jerzail in his right hand, but these muskets looked far more lethal than the old weapons carried by the Egyptians, and the handles of long, curved scimitars poked from the sashes round their midriffs. Despite the pace at which their tall camels approached, these men rode indolently, at ease on their high wooden saddles. They looked like what they were: predators.

  Mahmud pulled his camel out of the line and urged it towards the visitors. But they completely ignored him and spread out, seemingly to inspect the line of pack animals. Mahmud called after them, but the Bedawis paid no attention. It was as though the leader of the caravan was a person of no relevance to them. Instead, the six men slowed their camels to a walk and, without dismounting, began moving slowly along the caravan line, poking and prodding the packs, slashing at the binding cords with their sharp swords and inspecting the goods strewn on the sand.

  It was too much for Abdul. He urged his camel forward with hand upraised to intervene. Immediately, the Bedawi behind him swung his sword and sent the flat of his blade crashing into the young man’s head so that he tumbled from his mount and lay still on the sand. A young boy, no more than five years old - Simon recalled that he was one of Abdul’s many progeny - ran forward with a cry and knelt by his father’s side. The raider calmly leaned down from his high saddle and swung his sword again, this time with the blade aimed directly at the boy’s neck. A cry from Mahmud made the lad jump to one side and the blade whistled by his face. It was a deliberate attempt to kill.

  Im
mediately a hiss - of horror, outrage, fear? - rose from the traders along the line. The Bedawis paid no attention, but continued to work their way along the loaded camels, pulling away coverings and indicating with peremptory gestures the objects they would take. The swordsman took his place among them, as though the attempted decapitation of the boy had been merely an idle indulgence, not worth repeating.

  ‘Bastard,’ murmured Jenkins. ‘I’ll ’ave ’im, see if I don’t.’

  ‘Keep your temper, 352,’ breathed Simon. ‘I don’t see how we can take them all on.’

  So they waited in line. The man who had knocked down Abdul now shouted in impatience at finding nothing that interested him and he pulled out and looked down the line. His eye lit on the bound end of the rifle sticking out of Simon’s pack. He urged his camel forward, and as he did so, Simon prodded his own beast into action so that he plodded forward to meet the Bedawi.

  Without moving his head Simon whispered to Jenkins: ‘While I divert this bastard’s attention, see if you can quietly withdraw your rifle. Don’t make a fuss now.’

  ‘An’ don’t you do anythin’ stupid. I told you ’e is mine.’

  Simon greeted the swordsman with a half-bow.

  ‘Good morning, arsehole,’ he said, his face breaking into a beaming smile worthy of Jenkins. ‘Pray tell me why you are such an ugly bugger.’

  The Arab checked, frowned at the sound of the strange language and then waved Simon aside with his sword and reached for the rifle.

  ‘Ah, the rifle. Does this interest you, sir? Then allow me to demonstrate.’ Still smiling, Simon slowly reached forward and tugged out the Martini. Engaging the eyes of the Bedawi, he began unwrapping it. The brigand shook away the lower folds of the headdress which obscured his jaw, mouth and nose, and Simon saw that his face was as black as his eyes. He was, indeed, from the south. Those eyes now gleamed avariciously as the long barrel of the rifle was revealed, then the loading and cocking lever around the trigger and the oiled stock.