by M. M. Kaye
“Because,” said Rory unkindly, “you are not going to be given the option. Not in the long run. You can’t argue with a gunboat if all you have is a canoe and a throwing spear—no aspersions on your fleet, you understand, I was speaking metaphorically. There is a certain tiresome and time-honoured argument that has been in use since the dawn of history and can be best summed up by that elegant sentence: “If you don’t, I’ll kick your teeth in.” That, my friend, is what you are up against!”
The Sultan wagged his head and said sadly: “There are times when I fear you may be right.”
“I wish I only feared it instead of being sure of it,” said Rory with regret. “This is only the morning of the White Man’s Day, Majid. The sun hasn’t reached its zenith yet, and it won’t sink until every Western nation in turn has done its best to foist its own particular Message onto the older civilizations of the East. And by that time, the lesson will have been learned too well and there will be nowhere left in all the world where a man can escape from Progress and do what he damn’ well pleases—or find room to breathe in!”
The thought of it seemed to suffocate him and he came suddenly to his feet, and swinging round to face the low parapet, looked out at the vast sweep of the ocean and the immensity of the far horizon, and threw his arms wide as though to fill his lungs with the free wind that blew off Africa.
He stood there for a full minute, his long body dark against the night sky and his blond head silver in the starlight: then his arms dropped, and he turned back and said with low-voiced violence: “Pray God I do not live to see it!”
“Or I,” said the Sultan devoutly.
He peered up at the tall figure of his friend, and reaching out a hand that was as soft and plump as a woman’s, tugged imperatively at the hem of the gold-embroidered jubbah, “Do not tower over me like a hawk. It is an unrestful attitude and it makes me feel tired. I have had a trying day, and now all I wish to do is to sit quietly and enjoy the night air and some pleasant conversation. Sit down.”
Rory laughed and complied: “But you needn’t think you are going to get round me by telling me what a tiring day you have had. I haven’t had a very restful one myself, and I did not come here tonight to make idle conversation.”
“I know, I know. You came here to tell me that my brother Bargash is plotting against me, which I already know. Well, you have warned me and I thank you. Now let us talk of something else. I hear that the English Lieutenant catches Pedro Fernandez with a full load of slaves, and that he takes off all who still live and all the sails as well, so that the ship runs aground three days later in a storm, and Fernandez, who cannot swim, is drowned. Which is an excellent thing, since such men are no better than animals. Why trouble to ship three hundred negroes where only a third of that number can hope to survive, and land those who live in such poor condition that they fetch the lowest prices? It is madness! And poor business, too.”
“It is crass stupidity; which is even worse. But we are not discussing the late Fernandez and his ilk. We are, or were, discussing Bargash. Why are you so anxious to avoid the subject?”
“Because if we continue to talk of him you will only end by making me do something about him. And that I do not wish to do. I am not like you. Or like him. In you it is your white blood that makes you wish to stand on your feet and stride to and fro while I wish to sit. And though my brother and I are equally Arab on our father’s side, his mother was an Abyssinian, and it is her dark blood that drives him like a whip. But mine was a Circassian woman, and as placid as a beautiful cow who sits among flowers and chews the cud; which is perhaps why I too prefer to sit-and not be worried to do things.”
“That is just your bad luck,” said Rory inflexibly. “Because I am sailing again on the dawn tide tomorrow, and as I may be away for a couple of weeks you are going to be worried to do things here and now.”
“I knew it!” sighed the Sultan with a rueful shake of the head. “Let us leave it until you come back. Then, I promise you—”
“It may be too late by then,” interrupted Rory brusquely. “No, Majid, it must be now. Now, at once!”
“Very well then, I shall do something. But not tonight. It is impossible to do anything tonight. It is too late—you must see that. Perhaps tomorrow I will think about it. Yes, certainly I will think about it tomorrow.”
“And decide to do nothing until next week, when you will decide to put off deciding until next month—or next year. But it is time that you realized that your brother is not being idle. He’s been collecting adherents and bribing your own ministers and officials, and plotting a rising that will clear you off the throne and land you in Paradise a good deal sooner than you bargained for. He’s seduced the chiefs of the el Harth tribe and young Aziz and three of your sisters into supporting him, and they’ve got the whole thing planned. Bargash’s house is to be their headquarters, and while your brother has been stocking up firearms, your sisters have been baking scores of flour-cakes that have been handed over by night and stored against a siege. I know you’ve been watching him in a half-hearted manner and having his servants stopped and searched and some sort of check kept on his visitors, but you’ve never kept any watch on your sisters or their nieces, and they’ve been allowed to go where they please and do what they like. And what they like is plotting to depose you!”
The Sultan stirred unhappily among his silken cushions, picking at the gold tassels and frowning, and presently he said: “So I have heard. My wife and my other sisters and many of my aunts and cousins at Motoni tell me that Cholé has joined Bargash in plotting against me…Salmé and Méjé too. They keep urging me to punish them, and say that they should be fined, imprisoned, banished, flogged—even strangled! It is strange how vindictive women can be towards each other. Especially towards those with whom they have quarrelled! But I cannot believe…”
“That what they say is true? I assure you it is.”
“True, yes. But I cannot believe that they mean me any real harm. They are young; and since my father’s death, life has not been the same for them. They have sorrowed and been dull, and longed for the old days when we all lived out at Motoni and rode races and sailed our boats and were happy in my father’s shadow. And because those times are gone and even God cannot give them back, they are restless and unhappy, and so they pick quarrels with the other women, and with me, and cast about for something with which to fill the long days. Bargash has given them this, and he is a snake that should be scotched (yes, that I know as well as you!—better perhaps, for I have not heard that he has tried to kill you yet!), but with my sisters it is different How can I be hot against them and visit punishments upon them? Or be angry with little Aziz, who is no more than a child and thinks his brother Bargash a hero? It is better to do nothing and hope that in time they will see how foolish they are being, and it will all die away.”
Rory said brutally: “The only thing that seems likely to die, and that in a painful manner and in the immediate future, is yourself. And if you are not interested in saving your own skin, I must tell you that I am more than interested in saving mine. Bargash is no friend to me, and if you are going to permit him to raise a revolt against you and become Sultan in your place, then the sooner I cut my losses and quit these waters the better. Just how long do you suppose I’d last here once you were dead?”
The Sultan turned on his elbow and regarded his friend with a sly smile: “Long enough, perhaps, for you and your crew to fire the town and loot half Zanzibar, and get away before order had been restored?”
“It’s a thought,” agreed Rory with a grin.
The Sultan lay back on his cushions and laughed aloud, and wiping away the tears of mirth, said: “Ah, my friend, what a pity that you were not born an Arab! Had you been, I swear I would have made you Sultan in my place and left you to deal with those twin snakes, my brothers Thuwani and Bargash, knowing that you would do so with complete success.”
“The East India Company,” observed Rory, “would seem to h
ave dealt with your brother Thuwani with a moderate degree of success, and without any help from me. But no one but yourself is going to be able to stop Bargash, and you’ll have to do it at once for there’s no time to waste. Even tomorrow may be too late.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
“Send a guard to arrest him.”
“Now? At this hour? My dear friend, be reasonable! It is too late—It is—”
“If you arrest him by day there’ll be a riot. He’ll see to that! But in an hour or so the city will be quiet and the beggars and bazaar loafers and all the riff-raff from the African Town will be deep asleep, so that there’ll be precious few people about to watch the fun and start any trouble. Besides, I happen to know that he’ll have several of the chiefs visiting his house tonight to settle up a few last details and probably collect their share of bribes, and it won’t do them any harm to have to explain what they’re doing there. Put him in irons and send him off to the Fort in Mombasa under a strong guard, and when the city wakes up tomorrow morning it will be too late for anyone to do much about it There may be a few isolated demonstrations and an official protest or two, but they’ll be easy enough to deal with, for the chiefs of the el Harth, who are his main supporters, are only in it for what they can get, and once they see you mean business and intend to put a stop to their nonsense, they and the other malcontents will come to heel soon enough. Will you do it?”
“I might imprison him in his own house. Yes, that is what I could do. I could send armed guards to surround it and allow no one and nothing to go in or out, not even food, until such time as he has come to his senses. That would serve, too, as a good lesson to my sisters, who would see it and be warned. We Arabs have a saying, ‘All the sea is not deep enough to wash away blood relationship’ and they are women—or girls, if you will—of my blood. Of my father’s blood. I would not be harsh with them.”
Rory remarked caustically that it was a pity that his brother had not heard of that proverb; or if he had, he evidently considered that murder could do what the sea could not: “As for your bloodthirsty little blood-relations, blockading their brother is not going to worry them over-much. Particularly as they must know he is well provided with food.”
“With food, perhaps. But water will not be so easy. There is no well in that house, and water evaporates very quickly in this weather. I do not think it would take very long to bring him and the guests in his household to a more reasonable frame of mind. And there is another thing. This store of arms that you tell me he has been collecting; they will be in his house and he would not be able to get them out and distribute them among his followers. Nor would he be so foolish as to fire on my guards once he saw that his house was surrounded, so when he makes his submission we shall have the arms.”
“That’s all you know! Don’t do it, Majid. Send your men in to take him by surprise and ship him out of the island. Have him locked up in Fort Jesus, or somewhere else on the mainland. Can’t you see that as long as he is here on this island you’ll have no peace? Have you ever seen a rifle?”
“No, but I have heard of them,” said Majid, relieved at this abrupt and unexpected change of topic: “They are some new kind of muskets that can kill at five hundred paces, are they not? You shall get me some. They will be most useful when we shoot deer.”
“To fire them,” continued Rory inexorably, using an index finger to emphasize each point in the manner of a schoolmaster lecturing a class, “one fits a small brass cap over a nozzle, and when the trigger is pulled a hammer descends upon that brass cap, striking it and exploding the fulminate of mercury with which it is filled. The spark from that explosion travels down the nozzle and ignites in turn the charge of powder that expels the shot. It’s quite simple—always provided one has the small brass cap! Bargash is like that cap: or, if you prefer it, like the fulminate of mercury. Without him the shot cannot be fired and the weapon is useless. Get rid of him, Majid. If you value your life, send him out of Zanzibar at once. Tonight!”
The Sultan sat silent for a time, and presently he rose and began to pace agitatedly to and fro across the flat white rooftop that still held the heat of the tropic sun.
Below him the heaving harbour water reflected the riding lights of ships and the warm gleam and glitter of the Palace windows, while to the left the city was a spangle of lights and still noisy with voices, music and laughter that would soon give place to silence and sleep. But here, high above the sea and the city, the night already seemed quiet and very still, and the tranquil sky and bright, incurious stars no more than a roof that a tall man might reach up and touch with his hand.
Majid paused in his pacing to look up at it, and wished fervently that people would leave him alone. It was not, he thought resentfully, as though he had ever expected or wanted to become Sultan of Zanzibar, and if it had not been for the death of Khalid there would have been no question of it and he would have been left to live his life in peace. But now that he was Sultan an obstinate streak in him, together with a love of money and ease and the good things of life, made him resolve to retain that position.
Not that there had been much ease so far, and precious little money; for between the exorbitant tribute that, by treaty, must be paid to the senior Seyyid, Thuwani of Muscat and Oman, and the necessity of paying heavy bribes to the raiding pirates from the Persian Gulf who periodically descended upon Zanzibar, and had to be paid to leave again, the Exchequer was in a parlous state and he often wondered where he was to turn next for the mere expenses of everyday life. And now Bargash must plot a new rebellion, and lure from their allegiance no less than three of those little sisters with whom he had played so happily in the days when they had all been children together…
He found himself thinking of those days with a passion of longing that equalled Salmé‘s. The games among the flowering shrubs and fruit trees of his father’s favourite palace of Beit-el-Motoni: the laughing, shrieking children who had chased the tame antelope and teased the peacocks, and pelted each other with petals. The riding lessons which, when the boys had learned to master their horses, had always ended with races—the winner receiving a handful of sweetmeats and uproarious applause…Was that where the rivalry had begun, and the bitterness crept slyly in like an insect eating away the heart of a rose, unseen and unsuspected until the day when the flower, full blown, unfolds to disclose the ugly ruin within?
It had taken that vicious fusillade of shots to teach him that Bargash meant to be rid of him and would be content with nothing less than his death, and now he could no longer shut his eyes to it and he would have to do something. To do what he had always hated and would always hate doing: make up his mind, and act.
The lights of the city went out one by one until there were only a few scattered spangles of gold to break the starlit darkness, and except for the surf and the dry, interminable rustle of the palms the night was quiet at last. Along the far horizon a wash of pale light heralded the rising of the moon, and presently, as it lifted out of the sea, the silence was broken by the mournful howling of pariah dogs serenading it from the dark lanes of the city and the slums of the African Town across the creek.
Majid turned from the parapet, his shadow lying black before him on the white level of the roof, and Rory said softly: “Well?”
“I see that you are right,” said Majid heavily. “I will send for Nasur Ali and the Commander of my guard.”
“Good,” said Rory, and came to his feet in a single swift movement that suggested the release of a coiled spring. “And your sisters? Whatever you say, you’ll have to do something about them too.”
“No. I will not war with women.”
“Now listen, Majid—”
“No, no, no! I will not listen. Bargash, yes—for if he could kill me he would, and it is for that end that he buys muskets and arms his followers. But I too have such things and if necessary I will meet him with them, so for the present I will see that he is arrested, because while he is free I shall clearly have no
peace. But I will not punish my sisters, who had it not been for his lies and his wiles would never have turned against me.”
Rory said deliberately: “And if I tell you that it is those same dear sisters who have already armed Bargash’s followers with the weapons you hope to find in his house? What then?”
“I do not believe it.”
“You should. Half the loafers in the bazaar could have told you as much; and if your Chief of Police is not well aware of it, I’m a Dutchman. The only reason they don’t tell you these things is that they know you’d prefer not to hear them—and would probably refuse to believe them if you did I Well you can believe it this time, because I’m telling you and it wouldn’t pay me to lie.”
Majid wrung his hands in a gesture that was oddly feminine, and his weak, pleasant face was contorted with pain and bewilderment. “You must be mistaken. You cannot be right, for there is no way in which they could have done such a thing. How could they distribute arms from Beit-el-Tani when they receive no men there other than their brothers? It is not possible. Some evilly-disposed person has been deceiving you.”
Rory said quietly: “It is you who are deceiving yourself, Majid. The arms were not distributed from Beit-el-Tani. Your sisters and an assortment of their female relatives, accompanied by a large retinue of waiting-women and slaves, have recently made several visits to a certain mosque in the city.”
