King of Kings

by Wilbur Smith

  Ryder turned to the veiled lady, who was watching these reunions with a friendly eye and bowed very low.

  “Bakhita, I heard rumors of your illness, and I am glad to see you well again,” he said.

  She inclined her head. “Thanks to Allah, the most merciful, I have been blessed. The illness took all my beauty and my vanity with it.”

  Amber blinked rapidly. So this was the famous Bakhita, trader of antiquities and a woman who had managed to amass great fortune and influence in a world of violent, dangerous men. She had once been Penrod’s lover, and had helped rescue them both from Osman Atalan. Part of Amber was grateful to her and sorry for her to have lost so much, but part of her was glad that Bakhita was not beautiful anymore, because she had known what it was to be with Penrod, to run her hands over his body, to pull him into her. The very idea of it made Amber’s eyes fill with hot, jealous tears.

  She managed to curtsy and said, in a rather choked voice, “I am so glad to meet you. You helped save me. Thank you.”

  Bakhita took her hand and Amber lifted her gaze to look into her wide, dark eyes. Whatever the smallpox had done to her famously lovely face, those eyes were still beautiful.

  “And I am glad to meet you, al-Zahra. You were well named, and I would do anything to serve a friend of Penrod Ballantyne.”

  “Do you . . .” Amber spoke very quietly. “Do you have any news of him?”

  •••

  Bill Peters appeared in the Courtneys’ yard an hour or so later looking for Ryder. He found Saffron seated outside with the baby in her arms. She was chatting quietly with some of the ladies of Bakhita’s entourage, delighted to be speaking Arabic again and swapping stories of babies and their care. They also had some excellent ideas about how to recover from a difficult birth.

  Bill waited at a distance until she noticed him and looked up with a welcoming smile.

  “I’ve come in search of your husband, Mrs. Courtney. I’m sorry, I did not mean to disturb you.”

  “Oh, not at all,” Saffron replied with great cheerfulness. Penelope sneezed in her arms, then sighed happily and shut her eyes again. “Ryder’s met an old friend and they have gone off to tell each other stories. We shall not see him again today. And our friend Bakhita is telling Amber tales of Penrod Ballantyne, which is making them both cry, so they are doing that inside while we have a comfortable evening out here.”

  Bill frowned. “Ballantyne. I know that name.”

  Saffron lifted the baby on her shoulder and patted her back. “Yes, he was a war hero and all sorts of things. He and Amber were engaged for a little while before we came to the mine.”

  “I thought he meant to marry the daughter of some aristocrat?” Bill said lightly.

  “What, Lady Agatha? No, he never loved her. Penrod was fond of Bakhita too, but Amber is the only woman he ever loved, I think.”

  The baby began to fuss and Saffron turned her attention to her child, marveling at her small perfection, her thick eyelashes and the soft down of her hair. When she looked up again, Bill was gone.

  Bakhita emerged a little while later and took her entourage with her. Saffron was surprised when Amber did not come out to see her off, so went in search of her. She found her sister curled against the wall of the hut, trying to stifle her sobs in her scarf.

  “Amber! What is it? Are you ill?”

  Amber gulped and looked up at her sister with swollen eyes. “Oh, Saffy! Bakhita says Penrod is dead!”

  Saffron felt the strength leave her legs and she sat heavily on the ground next to her sister, holding Penelope’s fragile weight to her with one hand while she felt for her sister’s fingers with the other.

  “After he ruined the duke, he disappeared in Cairo, and Bakhita was told by people she trusts that he died in one of the opium dens!” Amber cried. “If I had only gone back when I had the chance . . . I could have saved him.”

  “Gone back?” Saffron said wonderingly. “What do you mean?”

  She pieced the story together from Amber’s tear-soaked account: how she had bought a ticket and boarded the ship, but fled again when she had worked out Dan was a traitor.

  “I thought as soon as the mine was safe, I’d go back. But now it’s too late!”

  “Oh, Amber. I’m so sorry,” Saffron said, and let her tears fall with her sister’s onto the beaten earth of the floor. “But you saved us—me and Ryder and the mine. I’m so sorry you couldn’t save Penrod too.”

  Amber swallowed hard. “I just keep thinking of that line from that Italian novel, The Betrothed: Questo matrimonio non s’ha da fare, né domani, né mai. It’s haunting me.”

  “What does it mean?” Saffron asked, leaning closer so their foreheads touched.

  “This marriage will not be performed, not tomorrow, not ever.” Amber pulled away and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Saffy, it was not much, but I had just a little hope and now it is gone.”

  •••

  They spent several weeks in Addis while Saffron recovered from the birth, painted the portrait of the empress and spent a few of their precious dollars. The city was filling up with all sorts of interesting items being shipped in by enterprising traders, and while Amber kept quietly to their compound, Saffron hunted through their stocks for cheap cooking pots and hurricane lamps and a case of reasonably priced whisky. The rest of their money would be spent on quicksilver.

  Saffron steadily regained her strength, but Amber looked sick and pale, and Saffron caught her several times weeping when she thought no one was looking. Saffron told Ryder and Bill that Penrod was dead, and asked that they return to the mine at a gentle pace. Amber needed time to recover from the news and she hoped that the peace of the journey and the sight of the flowering rain-recovered lands would give her some comfort. Bill offered to go on ahead at once to start work and Ryder sent him with his thanks.

  A day’s ride from the mine, they heard the shepherd boys calling to each other in the high singing voice they used to communicate over long distances. They were spreading news of their arrival and word that Mrs. Saffron had a baby girl.

  Patch came to meet them. He fussed over the baby and seemed to delight in Saffron’s account of the coronation, but Ryder’s first thought was for the mine. Patch was able to report that Bill was already settled in and proving to be worth his weight in pure silver. The second seam had been opened and was producing ore of excellent quality. When Ryder told him they had the money for more quicksilver, Patch clapped his hands.

  “We might manage it yet, Mr. Courtney! I can set out for Massowah tomorrow,” he exclaimed. “Three days out of every five here I think we’ve been mad to try, but I think you might be proved right at last.” He hesitated. “We certainly have men enough willing to wield a pick now, when they have the strength for it.”

  “What do you mean, Patch?” Ryder asked.

  “I’ve been wondering how to tell you, Mr. Courtney,” he said, and scratched his chin, “but you’ll see for yourself in a minute. The cattle plague has spread from Asmara to Adowa, and the harvest has been poor. Not enough beasts were left to plow the land properly. People are starving.”

  Amber put her hand on Patch’s arm. “Have any of them come to us?”

  If he noticed this was the first thing she’d said since they met, or the shadows under her eyes, Patch didn’t remark on it.

  “See for yourself, Miss Amber.”

  As he spoke they climbed the rise that would lead them to the great plateau above the mine and camp.

  “Oh, Lord,” Amber said.

  Before them, around the kitchen building and shelters Amber had built through the rainy season, and across the wide back of the hill, were small groups of men, women and children among the waving grasses. They looked up as Amber and the others appeared on the horizon. All of them appeared dazed, gaunt and exhausted. Some of the children had swollen bellies. Others lay without moving, as if they had no strength left to even lift their heads. She guessed they numbered at least a hundred. />
  Amber heard Saffron gasp, and her own eyes stung with hot tears. She thought of the luxuries of Addis, those roasting oxen, the profusion of the marketplace, and she felt a hot rush of anger and shame. Tigray was suffering and starving even as the flowers bloomed around them in such beauty; it seemed terribly cruel.

  Amber recognized Patch’s wife, Marta, and other women of the camp moving among them, offering handfuls of bread from their baskets and filling beakers of water from the skins they carried over their shoulders.

  “They began arriving a week ago, Miss Amber, from all over Tigray, and it’s the same story every time: bandits or soldiers taking what food they have, and the cattle dying in their droves,” Patch said, scratching at the stubble under his chin. “Young Tadesse and my missus have been organizing the help until you returned. And I tell you now, I’m sorry for every cross word I gave you while you were stealing my prop wood for those shelters, and being so strict with your supplies. The women have been baking bread all night in shifts and the priest prays here with them every day. It seems to give them some comfort.”

  Amber did not answer him, but walked across the low grass to join Marta. No help would come from Addis while Menelik and Ras Alula were at odds. It was up to them.

  Saffron watched her sister go. She did not think for a moment caring for these people would stop her sister grieving for Penrod, but at least it would keep her working and stop her disappearing into that grief entirely. For a moment she was grateful for the plague, then she caught herself and shook her head. The baby gurgled.

  “Sometimes, Penelope, your mother is not a good person at all,” she whispered to the child. Then with Ryder and Patch, she followed Amber toward the camp.

  Penrod left the colony, quietly, the day after he defeated the three men trying to rob them. He said goodbye only to Farouk, who told him to keep the translation of the Rumi, and to the silk merchant, who gave him the ivory queen from his chess set. The men spoke few words of farewell, but they did with warmth on both sides.

  Penrod walked the ten miles into Cairo thinking about the violence of the previous day. His skills as a fighter did not seem to have suffered from lack of use, and his mind felt clearer, his senses sharper than they ever had before. He had felt no anger during the fight and had killed the man who threatened his own life with neither pleasure nor guilt. He had acted as he had to defend the people he cared for, and that made him stronger. The simmering rage, which had for so long been his companion, had left him, his pride was tempered by compassion and he saw the world around him with a new clarity. When he reached the city, however, and heard the babble of voices around him, the assault on his senses of noise and color, he felt again that joy he had experienced in the infirmary and on the rooftop in the sun. It made him smile. He hitched his bundle over his shoulder and went to find Yakub.

  Penrod embraced him and was surprised to see his old friend burst into tears. Adnan appeared, wondering what the noise was, and Penrod was shocked to see the boy he had chased across the rooftops was now a youth, tall and slim with his jet-black hair cut rather long.

  Once they were sure he was not a ghost, they set about making Penrod look like a European again. Yakub had kept a trunk of his old possessions waiting for him, including a number of items of value. Gold tiepins and cufflinks, and the 18-carat half-hunter pocket watch that Amber had given him. Penrod kept the watch. The rest he asked Adnan to sell. Then he used the money to buy cricket equipment and a pretty tin of rosewater sweetmeats for Cleopatra, and had it all sent to the colony so his friends would know he was still thinking of them.

  Yakub insisted on doing Penrod’s barbering himself and when he presented Penrod with a mahogany hand mirror, Penrod looked at himself in surprise. He was looking at a familiar stranger.

  Yakub brushed the stray hairs from his collar. “So, effendi, where next?”

  •••

  Colonel Sam Adams was at the club as usual that evening. He had spent the day buried deep in telegrams and briefings from London, trying to work out which way the political winds were blowing in Europe, and now was keen to put such concerns behind him. Yet they still flickered through his mind as he drank his first cocktail at the bar. One of his junior officers was trying to impress him with his own thoughts on the current climate in Africa, the latest conferences in Berlin, the ambitions of the French and the current situation in Sudan. Sam tried to keep up a pretense of polite grunts while ignoring the man, when he sensed a presence at his side. It was another junior officer, fresh off the boat, but looking strangely nervous. Sam sensed the boy’s disquiet was due to more than finding himself in such a crowd of senior officers. Sam held up his hand to stop the flow of the other fellow.

  “What is it, Patterson?”

  “Sir, a man is waiting to see you. He would not come in. He says he is no longer a member.” Patterson ran a shaking hand through his hair and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Sir, he says his name is Penrod Ballantyne.”

  Sam put his glass down on the marble bar and immediately followed Patterson through the hall, past the fountains and ferns, the women draped in jewels and the men in their uniforms or evening dress, through the popping of champagne corks and hubbub of self-satisfied conversation, into the cool lobby and out onto the driveway.

  A man was standing in the shadows on the far side of the drive. Sam hurried toward him, at first skeptical, then as he saw again that familiar face and figure he almost broke into a run. He came to a halt a yard away from the man. It was him, though Sam thought he could see something different in his bearing. He looked older and was lean, but his hair and mustache were neatly trimmed and his dress, a well-cut but unassuming suit in the European style, was pristine.

  “Penrod!” Sam said. “I thought you were dead!”

  Penrod laughed. “I came close, Sam.” He put out his hand and his eyes grew serious. “I have come to ask your forgiveness, Sam. You tried to help me, and I treated you very badly.”

  He said no more, and offered no self-justification. He had no arrogant sneer in his voice to render an apology meaningless, just that sincere tone and open hand.

  Sam took it and pulled Penrod into a rough embrace, then held him by his shoulders at arm’s length. He was surprised to feel his throat tighten and his own voice cracked a little as he replied.

  “I am glad you are alive, Penrod.”

  “That is much better than I deserve, my friend. Now, I find myself at something of a loose end. Can you or Her Majesty make use of me, do you think?”

  The torches that lined the driveway flickered in the light evening breezes, chasing shadows across their faces. Sam thought of the piles of paper on his desk, the strange currents chasing each other across Europe and Africa, and the reports he had been reading about the relationship between the government in Rome and the new Emperor of Ethiopia, an interesting warrior king named Menelik.

  “So you are back?” Sam said. “And you wish to put on a uniform again? Serve as my intelligence officer?”

  “I am, and I do, if you’ll have me.”

  He thumped Penrod on the shoulder. “I’ll have you, dear chap. Of course I’ll have you.”

  •••

  Colonel Sam Adams first broached the subject of the fall of the Duke of Kendal with Penrod a few days after their reunion. Penrod refused to confirm that he had been in any way involved. Sam goaded him, tempted him with wild rumors, flattered him and ordered the best champagne up from the cellars, but still Penrod remained impassive. Eventually Sam conceded defeat and threw up his hands.

  “Keep your secrets, then! Good Lord, you could teach an oyster to be close-mouthed.”

  They were seated in a quiet corner of the veranda at Shepheard’s Hotel, a bottle of perfectly chilled Krug, swaddled like a baby in crisp linen, in the silver ice bucket between them. Outside, beyond the wicker armchairs and linen tablecloths, the usual dramas of Cairo rolled past them in explosions of color and a babel of competing tongues.

  “Surely dis
cretion is not a bad characteristic in an intelligence officer,” Penrod said mildly.

  “True enough,” Sam grunted, “but I suppose, even though you have no personal connection with the case, you might be interested in an eyewitness account of the finding of the duke’s body?”

  “I suppose I would,” Penrod replied, lifting his glass to examine the bursting of the bubbles with an expert eye. Rumi called over-richness a subtle disease, but then the poet also recommended living life with enthusiasm, and the 1881 vintage was superb.

  Sam told him all he had seen: the destruction of the house, the locked office, the empty safe and the horribly disfigured corpse. Penrod’s face maintained an expression of polite interest throughout.

  “And did you find the secretary, Carruthers?”

  “Not a trace of him,” Sam said, stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles. “We looked, and we weren’t the only ones. He had no family living, and though we kept an eye on some of his known haunts and associates in Paris and London, he never turned up.”

  “Strange,” Penrod said quietly. “And the safe was completely empty, you say?”

  “It was. Why do you ask?”

  Penrod drank his champagne, savoring the complex flavors of flint and fruit with proper attention.

  “Idle curiosity, Sam. That is all.”

  •••

  After a month in Cairo, Penrod traveled to England to see his brother, the baronet, and his sister-in-law, Jane. They were overwhelmed with happiness to see him alive and forgave his disappearance with an alacrity that humbled him. For some weeks Penrod was kept in London in talks with the War Office about the situation in the Sudan, and dining with senior officers and politicians. At last they managed to escape to the Scottish estates for some shooting and Jane took the opportunity to ask about Amber.

  “I grew very fond of Miss Benbrook,” she said as he raised his gun. “Do you have any news of her?”

  “I have not,” he said and fired. It was the only shot he missed all day and Jane did not try to press him further.