The Guns of El Kebir (Simon Fonthill Series)

by John Wilcox

  ‘Thank God,’ shouted Simon. ‘Quickly. Help me with Alice.’

  Jenkins, the mouth of his Colt still smoking, ran from the corridor doorway, climbed on to the cane chair and, with Simon’s knife, sawed through the tough rope. At that point, further pistol shots sounded at the front door and Ahmed, Colt in one hand, his scimitar swinging from the other, burst into the room.

  ‘Get after that swine,’ yelled Simon, desperately trying to undo the great knot above Alice’s throat and gesturing with his head towards the open corridor leading to the rear.

  Ahmed stood for a moment. ‘Ah, sorry,’ he said. ‘What swine? I don’t see nobody.’ George had obviously fled from the smoke-filled room before the little man had entered.

  ‘I’ll go,’ shouted Jenkins. He gently handed Alice’s slumped form to Simon and, pistol in hand, disappeared up the corridor.

  The flames were now ravaging the wooden wall against which the shavings had been strewn and creeping along toward the main entrance. ‘Help me lift her,’ said Simon. ‘We must get her out of here.’

  Together the two men picked up Alice and, stepping around the corpses, half ran, half shuffled with her towards the doorway, which was now ringed in flames. They ducked through it into the blessed air outside to find that a throng had gathered. Fearing attack, Simon grabbed Ahmed’s Colt. But there was no danger. The Egyptians held back in awe at the flames and amazement at the sight of the European woman lying on the ground, a noose around her throat and her arms and legs bound.

  Simon was now able to slip the accursed rope over Alice’s head, and he cradled her in his arm while he desperately sought to feel her pulse with his other hand. He was conscious that an elderly Egyptian lady was kneeling at his side. Without thinking, his eyes wide with relief, he shouted at her, ‘She’s alive, I think. I can feel a pulse. She’s alive!’

  The woman smiled at him, turned her head and shouted something in Arabic at the crowd. ‘We fetch water,’ explained Ahmed, ‘and damp things for forehead and throat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Simon. ‘Where’s my knife? Let’s get these bloody things off her legs and wrists. No. We’ll have to carry her away first. The whole building is aflame.’

  They did so, with the crowd making way for them. Two women now appeared, and as Simon and Ahmed hacked away at Alice’s bonds, one of them poured a little water from a goatskin on to her lips. She did not stir and her face looked waxen by the light from the leaping flames. Cloths were then soaked in the cool water and gently applied to her forehead, cheeks and throat, where the rope had left an ugly blue mark.

  ‘Oh God, she’s not dead, is she?’ Simon asked of the women. Ahmed, his face sombre, translated. But the first woman shook her head and spoke quickly.

  ‘Unconscious is all,’ said Ahmed. ‘We told to rub her hands and feet to get blood circu . . . circula . . . going round. Yes?’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ And the two men began rubbing Alice’s feet and hands vigorously.

  They were still doing so when Jenkins reappeared. Inevitably, he had lost his esharp, and was perspiring and puffing. ‘Lost the bastard, I did,’ he confessed. ‘Little bugger was as slippery as an eel, look you. Lost ’im in the lanes. ’Ow is the little love, then?’

  It was Alice herself who provided the response. Her eyes flickered and then opened. Simon put his arms around her and lifted her towards him, and then sat rocking her gently. The crowd, who had been silent, now began chattering and some of them ran to help the men who were relaying buckets of water to sluice down the walls of neighbouring buildings and so restrict the fire to the guttering house.

  ‘No, don’t try to speak,’ said Simon, cradling Alice’s head. ‘Here, take some more water.’ She tried, but the effort of swallowing made her gasp in pain. Simon bit his lip in sympathy. ‘Stay still for a while,’ he murmured, ‘then we will get you out of here. Don’t try to talk.’ He wiped her lips gently with the damp cloth and then looked up at Jenkins. ‘I heard shots and thought you’d both been done for. What happened?’

  Jenkins sniffed. ‘I’d got a feelin’ that we’d been spotted and that someone was goin’ to try an’ take us. So I split us up, to spread the target, so to speak, old Amen on one side of the street an’ me on the other. Brainwork, see. You’d ’ave been proud of me, bach sir.’ He grinned. ‘They fired a couple of shots at us and missed, see. Terrible shots they are. Then they ran at us with swords, four of ’em. I got two straight away and dear old Amen, bless ’im, got one with ’is Colt before nearly shootin’ ’is own foot off with the second round. But I finished off the last bloke. That delayed us a bit, see, an’ I’m sorry if we was a bit late arrivin’ like. Mind you, it looked as though you was lookin’ after yourself quite well, though,’ his brows came down, ‘it was terrible to see Miss Alice strung up like that. Nearly put me off me shot.’

  ‘Yes, the swine. The man is obviously a sadist, but I am not going to worry about him now. That can come later. You arrived just in time, and thank you both.’ Simon summoned up a grin for Ahmed, who was now standing abjectly, his sword dangling from his hand, looking down at Alice. ‘Well done, Ahmed. For a hotel keeper, you fight like an old soldier.’

  The little man gave his hotelier’s bow and rolled his eyes. ‘Thank you, Simon. But I hope we finish with the fighting for a while. I nearly shoot my foot off.’

  ‘I hope so too. Now, be a good fellow and thank these ladies. Then see if someone in this crowd has a cart or something on which we can lay Alice, so that we can take her back to Fatima’s.’

  Eventually, a cart pulled by a donkey was produced and Alice was laid in it, wrapped in Simon’s burnous. Then they set off, Ahmed leading the donkey and Simon and Jenkins walking either side, their Colts at the ready, in case George still had underlings who had the stomach for a fight.

  The journey back to the hotel, however, was uneventful, and Alice was found a room, where Fatima fussed over her and put her to bed, after persuading her to sip some milky substance that she had warmed and applying cool poultices to her neck and swollen eye.

  The next morning, a Greek doctor was found to visit Alice. He commended Fatima on her treatment and prescribed more of the same, together with rest. He clearly thought it none of his business to probe too deeply into why this English lady had so narrowly escaped hanging but he attributed her good fortune to the fact that the table on which she had stood had not been high, the rope had been taut, and consequently the drop had not been long enough to break her neck. Her throat would be swollen and painful for a few days, he explained, but no lasting harm had been done to her vocal cords.

  A relieved Simon paid a quick visit to the consul, and, after having given the briefest of explanations, gained permission for Alice to move into the consulate under the care of Mrs Cookson. He felt it was not safe for her to remain at Fatima’s hotel – given that George knew of their presence there – nor to stay at the Victoria Hotel. Alice was now able to whisper and she tried to protest, but Simon overrode her demurral.

  The two had a moment together before the consulate carriage, with the two armed Nubians as guards, came to take her away. Simon knelt by her stretcher as Alice related how, on the way back to her hotel, she had been waylaid by George’s men, bundled into a covered cart and taken to the wooden house. With tears in her eyes, she whispered that she had stupidly revealed her assignation with Simon the following day, as a threat to show that she would be missed and a search begun. It was, of course, just what George wanted to hear. In despair she had fought with her captors and been beaten as a result.

  ‘Simon,’ she breathed, ‘I have never been so frightened as when they put that noose around my neck. And then, when you appeared, I thought we were both going to die. How I wished I had never started that stupid game . . .’

  Simon gripped her hand. ‘I am glad you did, despite all your agonies. At least we have flushed the man out.’

  She summoned up a smile. ‘I don’t think he likes women, somehow. Where is he now, do you t
hink?’

  ‘I would guess that he has slipped back through Arabi’s lines and bribed his way on to the train to Cairo. With British forces due to land here any day, and with us still alive, he knows he couldn’t last an hour in Alex now. I will report all that has happened to Wolseley when he gets here and see that the people at Cook’s know exactly what sort of viper they have been employing. One way or the other, I shall make sure he doesn’t survive this war.’

  Alice nodded and held Simon’s gaze for a moment. Then she frowned, looked away and began to speak, as though addressing the far wall. ‘Simon, I am so ashamed of myself for getting you into this terrible situation and so grateful to you for saving me. Seeing you being thrown through that door raised such a conflict of emotions in me . . .’ A half sob came into her voice, and she paused. ‘It was such a relief to know that you had found me, and then when they began hitting you . . .’

  ‘Don’t say anything more. It is all of no consequence now.’

  They fell silent but held each other’s gaze again. Simon realised that he was still holding Alice’s hand. Awkwardly, he withdrew it and Alice turned her head away. She did not turn it back to say goodbye to him as she was lifted into the carriage.

  Chapter 11

  Troops from Sir Archibald Alison’s force from Cyprus, Wolseley’s advance guard, had landed in Alexandria, and they combined with the marine and blue-jacket patrols now regularly policing the streets to ensure that further rioting was discouraged. They also began the task of cleaning up the city, organising gangs to take away rubble and clear the streets. Their presence finally removed any lasting fear that Simon might have had that George remained in Alexandria, so posing a continuing threat. He visited the shell of the house in Abdullah Row and found nothing there of George’s treasures. If any had survived the blaze, they would not have lasted long in a city still pulsing with looting fever. Nor could he detect any sign of the three men who had been killed there. Fire, he reflected dourly, was a great cleansing agent. There had been no repercussions from the city authorities or the British patrols. One more blaze in a city that had sustained so many was obviously of no concern to anyone.

  Arabi still showed no sign of moving on the city, and General Alison had begun to probe the Colonel’s defences some ten miles away. Accordingly, Simon felt it his duty to call upon Alison with his report of the scouting he and Jenkins had already carried out around the Egyptian lines. He was not allowed to see the General, however, and was forced to leave his report with a stout little major who seemed quite unimpressed with – or, more accurately perhaps, disbelieving of – Simon’s explanation that he was working in Egypt directly for Sir Garnet Wolseley. He did, however, find a young subaltern who was able to update him with the latest news from England.

  Wolseley, it seemed, was well on his way and was expected to arrive in Alexandria any day now with an expeditionary force. In the House of Commons Mr Gladstone had asked for and received a vote of credit for £2,300,000 to fund the invading force, which he proposed to meet by an increase in income tax. The force would include a contingent from India. The Prime Minister had denied that Arabi was a national leader and charged the ruin of Egypt upon ‘lawless military violence, aggravated by wanton and cruel crime’. Egypt, he said, would be retaken for the Khedive. If this was so, then it would be done, it seemed, without the aid of the French, whose chamber had refused to vote funds for the protection of its Egyptian asset on the grounds that this might be prejudicial to French interests in Tunisia. Turkey also was reported as being happy merely to hold an insouciant watching brief. England would have to invade alone.

  Simon’s visit to General Alison’s headquarters, abortive as it was, at least enabled him to take his mind off Alice for a few hours. After much thought, he had decided that he would not visit her at the consulate. At least he knew that she would be safe enough there, and he could not bear the agony of renewing a relationship that, it was quite clear, could only be platonic. Now that she was secure and had, it seemed, suffered no lasting injuries, he must leave her to herself and, more to the point, her husband, who would be arriving soon.

  Lieutenant General Sir Garnet Wolseley, indeed, sailed into Alexandria three days later. The fleet that filled the harbour and the bay was prodigious. In all Wolseley had brought with him fifteen thousand men, plus horses and ordnance, to add to the two battalions of infantry, one battalion of marines and assorted contingents of sailors now under the command of Alison. Admiral Seymour’s nose had been tweaked and the British lion had roared. But was the force large enough to engage the twenty thousand troops that Arabi had ranged across the isthmus at Kafr Dewar, plus the many thousands he had in the hinterland of Egypt?

  Simon was now making daily calls at Thomas Cook, and the summons to meet Wolseley came via that route gratifyingly quickly. The same afternoon he was being ushered into the Commander-in-Chief’s stateroom aboard the flagship of the newly arrived fleet. His first reaction was one of dismay. The General had, it seemed, suffered a recurrence of a fever contracted in Africa many years ago, and it had left him thin in the body and white in the face. He had now taken to waxing the ends of his moustache, but his fashionable conceit did nothing to take away the impression of a man recovering from a serious illness. Yet his good eye still glowed with inward drive and determination and his voice retained the bounce lacking from his thin frame.

  ‘Good morning, Cousin.’ He smiled. ‘Take a pew.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘First-class stuff you sent me. As a result, I added extra troops of cavalry and four more batteries of artillery. I didn’t get that sort of detailed advice from our political people in Cairo.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, sir. I have written a full report, filling out the bare bones I was able to give you in the cables.’ He handed the document across the desk. ‘But you still plan to advance south from Alex?’

  Wolseley smiled and sat back in his chair. ‘What? My dear fellow, ignore your advice? I wouldn’t dream of doing that. Whatever would you think of me?’

  Simon stirred uncomfortably. He had always disliked irony. Was he being mocked? ‘What do you intend to do, sir?’

  The General leaned forward, the smile gone. ‘I have every reason to trust your discretion, Fonthill, so I am asking you to keep this under your hat – and your collar stud, for that matter, my boy. All of this lot,’ he waved his hand airily, ‘will be out of here in a few days. I am making a feint, as you recommended. I want dear Colonel Arabi – dammit, whoever heard of a colonel taking on a lieutenant general, the very impudence! – I want him to hang around here with his twenty thousand men across that isthmus and protecting his precious railway line. I shall leave General Hallam here with sufficient troops to harass him and persuade him that the main thrust will come from Alex. Then I shall slip away with the majority of the force to Port Said, at the top end of the Suez Canal, and occupy it. At the same time, a considerable number of troops from Bombay will land at Suez and seal the southern end. We shall then join up, disembark the force at Ismailia and march across the northern desert to take Cairo. There!’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Just as you recommended. Don’t know why you’re not the general, Fonthill, bless me if I don’t. Mind you,’ he grinned, ‘if it goes wrong, it’ll be this general who will get the blame, not you.’

  Simon grinned back. ‘Sounds a fine plan to me, sir. Congratulations on thinking of it.’ He pondered for a second or two. ‘At the moment, Arabi has few troops at Ismailia, and I doubt if he is a good enough field commander to get an army together and move it quickly enough to oppose your landing, if you strike quickly. After all, he has had little battle or logistical experience. But the march across the desert won’t exactly be easy for you in midsummer. Arabi has plenty of infantry, cavalry and artillery around Cairo. He will march east to stop you and he will obviously cut the railway line.’

  ‘Quite so. It will take me time to disembark, of course, and to assemble the army for the advance. He will be able to pic
k his spot. I want you to get down to Ismailia right away – before we enter the Canal – and scout the desert and let me know where you think he will make a stand. I want to be ahead of this game all the time, Fonthill. The rest of Europe, particularly the French – who, of course, have walked out at the last minute – will have its eyes on us, willing us to get this wrong. I don’t intend to give them that satisfaction. I am relying on you again, my dear fellow. Of course, I can have cavalry out scouting as soon as we land, but they won’t be able to range far without support. I want you there early, as my eyes. Understand?’

  ‘Of course, sir. How do I contact you?’

  ‘You’ll have to use your wits for that.’ He pushed a slip of paper across the desk. ‘Here is the cable address in Port Said. Our people there will make sure that whatever you say is forwarded to me, wherever I may be. There are cable facilities, I understand, at the pilots’ offices in Ismailia. But de Lesseps – you know, the Frenchman who planned and built the Canal?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘His base is there and he’s very anti-British, so I am told.’ He chortled. ‘Probably hates us because old Dizzy bought the Canal from under French noses. Anyway, you will have to be careful. I suppose it will be back to the family code, although under the circumstances, I should think anybody could see through that. I will just have to leave it to you. Use your initiative, I know you have plenty of that.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘You must be running out of funds by now, so go and see my paymaster here.’ He scribbled a note and murmured as he wrote. ‘Were the arrangements I made for you satisfactory?’

  Simon sighed. ‘Satisfactory in every way but one, sir.’ He took a deep breath and began relating the story of Mr George. He was careful, however, to remove from the tale any implication that the pursuit of George by Alice and himself was some sort of intellectual game to while away their time in Alex. Their object, he explained, was to try and establish how the clerk could move so easily between Cairo and Alexandria, in the hope that the information could be valuable. As the story unfolded, Wolseley, who had at first seemed only politely interested, listened with increasing incredulity, and as Simon related the attempted hanging of Alice and the shooting in the blazing house, he became positively agitated.