by Martin Dukes
Alex was summoned from his bed in the middle of the night.
“What’s going on?” came Henry’s voice from the neighbouring bed as Alex slipped on his trousers and jacket.
“I don’t know,” said Alex quietly. “There’s a squad of the Sultan’s bodyguard outside saying he wants me urgently. It’s probably nothing. He’s probably woken up and fancies a game of chess or something.”
“Right, see you in five then,” said Henry with a yawn. “Unless he’s up for best of three.”
“Hah, hah,” said Alex evenly, slipping on his shoes. “See you later,” and then under his breath, “I hope.”
Alex could tell there was something wrong the moment he walked into the Sultan’s apartments. Tension was electric in the air and the Grand Vizier was there as well as the loathsome Murad, his Chief of Police. The Grand Vizier favoured him with a cold glare. The Sultan, who had been pacing up and down, came straight across and embraced him.
“Alex, Alex, Alex,” he said, stepping back after a moment but gripping Alex’s shoulders and staring him straight in the eye. “It is good to see a friendly face at a time like this.”
“What’s going on?” asked Alex, glancing from face to solemn face.
“Tell him Hussain,” said the young Sultan, with an imperious click of his fingers.
“Very well, Your Highness,” said the Grand Vizier with the slightest of bows. “It appears that we have detected a plot.” He let the dread words hang in the air for a long moment, during which Alex felt a flush of colour in his cheeks that he felt sure must mark him down as a conspirator. It had been the same that day at school when the Deputy Head, Mr Aitken, had come into his form room to demand who was responsible for the vandalism to the ceramics display in the entrance hall. Mr Aitken had peered into each face in turn, hairy nostrils bristling, in search of a guilty conscience. Alex, whilst being completely blameless, had been quite unable to meet his eye. He felt the same enfeebling false guilt now as the Grand Vizier’s eyes flickered over his own.
“Oh,” he said. And then, conscious that this might be thought an inadequate response, “That’s terrible.”
“Indeed,” said the Grand Vizier with a slow nod.
“It’s Suja,” said the Sultan grimly. “Suja. He has been as close to me as my own right hand these last two years.”
“Are you sure?” asked Alex with a strange but relieving sense of being off the hook.
“Absolutely sure,” said the Sultan. “He has already admitted his guilt. One of his co-conspirators slew himself before he could be apprehended, and another has fled to Madagascar. There may be more.”
“Suja is being investigated as we speak,” said the Chief of Police with a tight smile. “So more information will doubtless come to light.”
“I want to see him,” said the Sultan on a sudden impulse. “I want to look him in the eye and see the naked treachery that lies there.”
“Are you sure that is wise?” asked the Grand Vizier doubtfully.
“I’ll decide what’s wise,” snapped the Sultan in a manner that caused the Grand Vizier to blench. “Come with me, Alex. I want you to see this.”
Alex had no wish to see what had become of the noble warrior Suja. He had a fair idea what to expect, but even so he was shocked by the reality. The sober and dignified leader of men was stripped of clothes and of dignity, suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling of a cell that stank of fear and of human filth. A brazier glowed red in one corner of the cell, and the stench of burned flesh added to the general melange of foulness in the air. The creature that had been the Lord Suja hung limp in the chains, head slumped forwards. His flesh bore the marks of the savage blows and burns he had been subjected to as his tormentors coaxed the truth from him. A burly man with a bullwhip stepped back into the shadows, bowing low as the Sultan entered, and a shaft of lamplight from the passage cast a vague yellow glow on this little glimpse of hell.
“So, Suja. You would betray me, would you?” asked the Sultan in a low voice, approaching the dangling figure.
“Not… you. Not… who you were,” slurred Suja through broken teeth, lifting his head slightly.
“Treachery is treachery,” said the Sultan. “And oaths are oaths. You dared to conspire with others to kill me, did you not?”
“You may wish to ask whose hand lies behind this plot,” murmured the Grand Vizier at his shoulder.
“I think I already know,” said the Sultan cryptically. “But I shall ask him all the same. Who encouraged you in this folly, Suja? Who urged you to this foul treachery? Tell me that and your pain shall be ended.”
“Damn you,” muttered Suja, a string of bloodied saliva falling from his lips.
At this point the Sultan, whose behaviour had been calm and measured, became abruptly transfigured into something terrifyingly different. Alex shrank back as the Sultan aimed a fierce kick, driving upwards between Suja’s legs, which jerked him upright, chains rattling for a moment before he slumped, swinging once more. He moaned and Alex turned away, conscious that he was digging his fingernails hard into the palms of his hands. The Sultan continued to abuse the dangling, groaning prisoner, slapping him, punching him, all the time shouting abuse and obscenities in a way that was not the Sultan Alex had known, a way that made Alex shudder to his core. At length Suja croaked, “I will tell you. Come hither,” he gasped in a voice that was barely audible.
The Sultan approached. Suja drew back his head, and with what little strength remained in him spat full in the Sultan’s face.
“It was horrible,” Alex told Henry later, when the ‘ordeal was ended and he had been released to return to his apartment. “I can’t tell you how horrible it was.”
“‘Course you can,” said Henry simply, sitting up in bed.
“When Suja did that, he just stepped forward with a knife and…” he gulped, swallowing hard.
“And? Go on…”
“And spilt his guts steaming on the floor,” said Alex at last.
“Oh… my… god!” Henry exclaimed as he slumped back on his pillow. “Yuck!”
“I can see it now,” said Alex, burying his head in his hands. “I’m never going to stop seeing it as long as I live.” His hands were still trembling, he realised, and he spread them palm upwards to look at them. “I tell you, I’m going to need years of therapy.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he continued. “It’s not safe anymore. The Sultan’s friendship means nothing now. He’s gone stark raving mad.”
“But how?” asked Henry. “Where would we go? And what about Will?”
“As soon as Will comes back,” said Alex grimly, “we’re out of here.”
Life in the palace continued, although the mood was dramatically changed. Suja’s conspiracy and his death cast a long shadow across the consciousness of all who dwelt there. There was a tense and bitter atmosphere of mutual suspicion. More courtiers were arrested and the Grand Vizier’s torturers drew from them confessions that justified his police in casting their net wider and wider. Soon it seemed that every household had had at least one of its members invited to Murad’s grim and forbidding headquarters in the west wing of the palace. For some these ‘routine enquiries’ were just that and they were able to return, much relieved, to the bosom of friends and family. But for others, and in particular those known to be connected to Shaquira’s faction, enquiries became investigations and the initial civility of Murad’s outer offices was replaced by the sinister brutality of the blood-splashed cells further within.
It seemed to Alex that the Sultan had been split into two personalities. There was the friendly, personable young man he had first encountered, with his restless ambition to do well for his country, and there was the darker side that had emerged so recently, a monster of impulsive rage and brooding suspicion. It seemed that the lighter side of the Sultan was on occasion almost apologetic for the creature of measureless violence and hatred that lurked within him.
“There are certain thing
s I must do, Alex,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Things that I feel I must exclude you from. You have been a good friend to me. Every aspect of my government has been your care as well as mine, but there are things I must do that go beyond the calls of friendship and I will not trouble your conscience with them. It is for my conscience alone, the conscience of Zanzibar to bear, and a heavy weight that is.”
He bowed his head.
“I regret that you had to see Suja… like that,” he finished at last. “It grieves me that a friend should see such things.”
And so Alex was spared the necessity of watching the torture and the executions that became so much a feature of existence in the palace during the course of the next month. He was not spared the consequences, however. He began to receive urgent summonses from the Sultan at all hours of the night and day. Then the Sultan would pace up and down his apartments and engage him in simple, ordinary conversation about food or geography or horsemanship or anything, in fact, except the evil in which he had been so recently engaged. The pallor of his features and the haunted expression in his eyes spoke eloquently of these things, more clearly than if the blood of his victims had remained smeared on his hands. It was a dark time for Alex. It was a dark time for Henry, too. Khalid, one of his cricketing friends, was arrested by Murad’s secret police and disappeared without trace within the dark bowels of the prison. His family’s urgent enquiries at the police headquarters yielded nothing except a grim warning that they should avoid making a fuss unless they wished to be the subject of further investigations. Khalid’s broken body was found floating, face down, by fishermen amongst the rocks below the prison. No explanation for his death was offered or, after the police’s sinister warning, sought. Another brief shudder passed through the palace, but by this time such occurrences had become commonplace. And the noose was closing in on Shaquira. The Grand Vizier’s web had already entangled many of her closest associates when Alex received a new summons to attend upon her.
Once more he was intercepted in the corridor by Hassan, her steward, but this time there was nothing imperious and commanding about him. It was evening, shadows lengthening across the rose gardens outside, and he stood before Alex looking worryingly shifty, glancing over his shoulder as a couple of servants passed behind them.
“Will you attend upon my mistress?” he asked, his squeaky voice shot through with a surprising note of pleading. “She urgently desires to see you.”
Zulfiqar was at Alex’s side and shot him a warning glance.
“I can’t,” said Alex uncertainly, more from instinct than from any internal ordering of arguments.
Hassan made no attempt to block Alex’s path. He seemed to consider Alex’s reply, biting his lip.
“Might I enquire why not?” he asked as Alex was about to step past him.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t,” said Alex desperately. “Look, I’ve really got to go.”
“You acted wisely,” murmured Zulfiqar as he and Alex hurried away. Alex glanced back to see Hassan, huge but somehow diminished, regarding them sadly from behind.
Much later that night a messenger summoned Alex into the Sultan’s presence. He was not asleep, although he had tried hard enough to sleep, seeking the string factory once more as he had done so many nights. The paths that led that way eluded him once more. He could not find the way. Although he lay uneasily in his bed, his mind’s eye stirred restlessly beneath closed eyelids as the evening’s encounters played themselves out over and over again. He wasn’t even surprised when the soft knock came on the door and Zulfiqar admitted the messenger. Quickly pulling on his clothes he slipped out of the apartment without waking the others, a sense of grim foreboding gathering in his breast.
He found the Sultan in tears, eyes red, in a face drained of its habitual healthy colour. Nor did he even speak to Alex until he had chased all guards from the chamber and they found themselves alone. Alex found himself dreading the disclosure that he somehow knew was coming. Nevertheless, there was a lump in his own throat as the Sultan embraced him, his body wracked with great heaving sobs, his tears wet on Alex’s cheek.
“Alex, I have done a terrible thing,” he gasped. “So terrible I can hardly bring myself to tell you.”
It was as though Alex was compelled to read from a script that had been placed before him and in which each line brought with it a new and dreadful horror.
“What have you done?” he asked, as he knew he must, but fearing to hear the answer even as a cold sense of inevitability settled upon him.
“She drove me to it,” said the Sultan, drawing away from him and shaking his head violently from side to side. “What must you think of me? Such a shocking, unnatural crime I have committed. It flies in the face of nature.” He clawed at his own face, where, Alex noticed, there was already a livid row of red marks.
“Tell me what you have done,” he said, stepping forward and placing a hand on the Sultan’s shoulder. “You must tell me… Jalil.”
Instinctively, he knew this was what was required of him. Self-preservation dictated that he must not deviate from the script.
“I am a monster, Alex,” said the Sultan, holding his gaze steadily. “A monster. And I must surely burn in hell for all eternity for what I have done.”
“Tell me,” said Alex grimly, looking into those dark, tormented eyes and wondering what dreadful things were last reflected there. But not wondering. Not really. He knew.
“I have killed my mother,” he said, lingering grimly over each syllable.
There was a moment of silence that seemed to last forever. What could Alex say? ‘Oops’ didn’t come close to covering it.
“I have destroyed she who gave birth to me,” he moaned, burying his head in his hands. These hands he presently held up before him, tensed into claws, as though he wished to disown them.
“With these I strangled the life from her,” he said. “And I saw her indomitable spirit depart from her eyes.” He turned suddenly to Alex. “Can you imagine what that was like?”
Alex shook his head. He wasn’t going to trouble his imagination with that kind of nonsense. “Why, Jalil, why?” he asked, keeping things moving along in the way he felt compelled to do.
The Sultan’s mood abruptly changed, in the manner that Alex had become all too accustomed to in recent weeks. His eyes suddenly blazed with anger.
“Because I had to!” he spat. “Do you think I wanted to? Eh? Do you?” He lurched towards Alex, who stepped back fearfully, shaking his head. “She drove me to it. Her plots and her restless malice left me no choice. No choice, Alex. It was destroy or be destroyed. Do you see?”
All Alex could see was that the Sultan was a dangerous and volatile lunatic with the capacity to kill him should the fancy take him.
“Of course,” he said, feeling sick to his stomach. “You were driven to it.”
“I was. I really was,” said the Sultan with feeling, clenching his fists in front of him. “She left me no choice. She was a danger to the state, Alex, and a danger to me. I am the state, Alex. Do you see? I am Zanzibar, and all who threaten Zanzibar must die.”
There seemed no way to respond to this, so Alex stood, pale-faced and helpless, whilst the madman that the Sultan had become stared at him with a chilling intensity that froze his bone to the marrow.
“Go,” said the sultan at last in a voice made faint by fatigue. “Go now. I must make peace with myself.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that!” said Alex under his breath as the Sultan’s steward showed him to the door.
“Something terrible has happened,” said Kashifah to Kelly, early the next morning.
Kelly rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed as Kashifah crossed to open the curtains. The clear morning light showed that Kashifah’s hair was uncharacteristically unkempt, her night robe pulled carelessly about her.
“Uh, what?”
It was immediately clear that Kashifah was terribly shaken. Nusrat came in behind her, mouth h
eld in a tight line.
“The Sultan has murdered his mother,” she said, her eyes fixed on Kashifah, who suddenly burst into tears.
Kelly slipped out of bed and put her arms around the princess. All the strength seemed to go out of her as she wept onto Kelly’s shoulder.
“It’s all so awful,” sobbed Kashifah. “My brother is mad. What will become of us?”
“How do you know?” asked Kelly wide-eyed, regarding Nusrat anxiously. “I mean… what you said?” It was as though she couldn’t even name the awful crime.
“It was witnessed by a servant,” said Nusrat, sitting on the other side of Kelly’s bed. “She fled in fear of her life. All the city is in a tumult with it. It is said he slew Hassan, too, when the man tried to protect his mistress.”
She shook her head sadly.
“I fear for us all. The people will stand for only so much. He imagined plots where there are none, but now the imagined plots have become real. He lashes out and strikes heads from the hydra, but his days are numbered as surely as night follows day. The hydra will bear him down in the end. A wise tyrant surrounds himself with those who are tainted by the same crimes that bloody his own hands. Our tyrant is no longer sane, and his friends are too few.”
“Friends…” said Kelly, her thoughts turning reluctantly to Alex.
“I do not count Alex in that number,” said Nusrat reading her thoughts. “He has no power to influence events. Rather, he is the plaything and confidante of the Sultan. If the Sultan is destroyed he will share his fate, blameless though he may be.”
Tanya came into the room, a sheet wrapped around her.
“I’m worried about Alex,” she said. “What if he gets ‘sassinated or something?”
