King of Kings

by Wilbur Smith

  On his return to Cairo some months later he was summoned to the offices of the commander-in-chief, General Kitchener. He found Sam Adams in the sirdar’s office as he arrived and delivered to them both his report on the current condition of the camel cavalry corps, along with his suggestions for further training. Kitchener approved his suggestions without comment.

  “Very good. At ease, Major.”

  Penrod clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Major Ballantyne, you have done a good job with these men, but your behavior has not always been what I would expect from a man of your rank and experience. Colonel Adams tells me that I may trust you and I have a task for which you are uniquely suited. It requires a man on whom I can rely to act independently, but not like a damned renegade. Are you that man?”

  “I am, sir.”

  He felt the general’s penetrating gaze on him. Kitchener was a bold, decisive commander in the field and a superb leader. He was demanding, but he was also loyal and he trusted his instincts. Penrod knew that the decision this muscular gladiator of a man made now would be the deciding factor in his future military career. He found, to his surprise, he did want to take his place in the center of events again. Farouk had been right.

  “Very well,” Kitchener said at last. “I need you in Massowah. I want to know what the Italians are doing in Eritrea and what they’re planning. I need an assessment of the Mahdist strength and leadership in south Sudan and I want to know if our friends in Aden and Somaliland need to concern themselves with this new Emperor Menelik. I want regular reports, and I expect you to get the best possible information from the senior Italian officers. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll be on your own. Our agreement with our Italian friends is that you are to advise them on their battles with the dervish and exchange information about the recruiting and training of native troops. They are damned proud of their askari. See if we can learn anything of use to our own forces. And get me that information too.”

  “Sir.”

  “I understand you have friends in royal circles. The Italians wouldn’t be so welcoming to any other officer,” Kitchener added. He glanced at a briefing paper on the polished desk in front of him, covered with Sam Adams’s neat, heavy writing. “What on earth is the Order of the Guardians of Rome?”

  “I understand I may sell goat’s cheese in the forum, sir,” Penrod said. “But only on certain Saturdays.”

  Kitchener’s mouth twitched in a rare smile. “Excellent. You will leave for Massowah on Friday.”

  •••

  Penrod made arrangements for his departure. Yakub and Adnan lavished great attention on his kit, and his lodgings echoed with their orders and curses when they found any item of clothing less than perfect.

  Penrod’s new role was to be something between an intelligence officer and a diplomat. He was to observe and advise the Italians, but more than that, he needed to give Kitchener his own opinions about the shifting currents in Eritrea. His fluent Arabic as well as his fluent Italian would give him the opportunity to study the land and the people, and he felt sure the clarity and thoughtfulness he had discovered in the colony would prove equally advantageous.

  And he would be closer to Amber. She was never far from his thoughts and his old arrogant assumption that she was his by right still pained him. He would never love another woman as he had loved her, and he hoped if their paths ever crossed again she would see he had changed. In the meantime he wished sincerely for her happiness and prepared for his mission with quiet diligence.

  The number of refugees that arrived at Courtney Camp in the following months, desperate for help, waxed and waned. As soon as people had recovered their strength, most either tried to return to their farmlands or headed south toward areas still untroubled by rinderpest or drought. Some stayed. The men asked for work at the mine and their families built more permanent homes near the church. The population of Courtney Camp swelled, but such was the richness of the second seam, work was available for any who wanted it.

  Not every family reached them in time. More than once a mother, emaciated and exhausted, put her child into Amber’s arms, sat down on the ground and never got up again. The little graveyard grew full.

  The refugees were fed on bread, goat’s milk, nuts and fruits. It was a meager enough diet, but it gave them some respite and a chance to recover their strength. But Ryder made it clear that the workers must be fed first. Hunger led to carelessness, and in the punishing world of the mine, that led to accident and death. They still had to strain every sinew to meet Menelik’s targets. The workers’ families must remain well fed too. If a man’s children were hungry, he would share his ration with them, so it was vital they were all kept well supplied no matter the want of the refugees. Nevertheless, Ryder noticed some of his workers seemed to be losing weight, and discovered to his rage that the women were still taking rations to the refugees. It was then he decided to issue each man and boy with rifle and ammunition from the camp armory. When they were not working in the mine, they were sent hunting. The small deer and game birds they shot were taken to the refugee kitchen to be made into nourishing broths and soups. Morale improved dramatically, and the men began to boast of their prowess with a rifle.

  The months became a year, then two. Travelers and traders stopped from time to time at the camp and brought them news of the outside world. Menelik issued an official protest to the Italian King Umberto about the disputed clause in the treaty, while Ras Alula and Mengesha had made an uneasy peace with Italy. Once they received a letter from Bakhita. She told them she had seen their sister Rebecca, that she was the favorite wife of Osman Atalan and had now two children: a son and a daughter as brave and beautiful as she had once been. Bakhita’s own health, however, was fading and they should not expect to hear from her again.

  Amber went hunting too in the gorges and valleys near the camp. The responsibilities she had assumed weighed on her, but she found she could forget them for a while as she followed the trails deep into the mountains. Tadesse was the companion she normally took with her. He never tried to distract her with chatter and had no interest in shooting. He came in search of plants and herbs he could use to heal. He still kept clear of Ryder and worked mostly with Amber among the refugees.

  One afternoon, toward the end of the dry season, they had gone further from the camp than usual, traveling in a wide arc into a section of the mountains they did not know. As they crested a ridge, Amber noticed an isolated tukul half a mile away on the next rise. She pointed it out to Tadesse.

  “No smoke, no people, Miss Amber. We should stay away. I can smell death on it from here.”

  Amber hesitated, then shook her head. “Come or not as you wish, but I shall go. Perhaps someone is still alive inside, too weak to leave.”

  Tadesse rolled his eyes. “No animals, and the field is unplowed. They are dead and have been for some time. I do not wish to see it. Enough death walks into camp every day.”

  Amber’s temper flared. “Stay here then,” she said. “I shall not be able to rest without going to see.”

  Tadesse sat down, and Amber stamped off without looking back at him. Her irritation carried her into the sandy gully and up the rise to the narrow plateau where the round, thatched hut stood. As soon as she reached the level ground, her heart sank. Tadesse had been right. She could feel the suffering in the air. The thorn hedges built to protect the livestock were tumbled and broken. A few animal bones, tossed about by predators and scavengers, lay in the dust. And the silence—it had a depth to it, a quality that Amber knew meant she was in the presence of death. She looked over her shoulder. Tadesse was sitting on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest, plucking at the pale, dry grasses at his feet. Amber felt a flash of anger, but not with Tadesse. This was a terrible place to set up a homestead. The earth was thin and the vegetation sparse. How they had expected to survive the dry season even in a good year amazed her. She wove her way through the t
horn barricade and called out a greeting. No answer came. Even the natural sounds of wind and bird song seemed to have dropped away to nothing. She paused in the doorway of the hut as a wave of a sweet, dusty smell hit her and she covered her mouth with her scarf. Three bodies lay in the middle of the earth floor, semi-mummified in the dry air. Judging by what remained of their clothing, it was a family—a man, woman and child. They lay close together, the mother cradling the child and the man with his arm around them both, drawing them to him with his last strength. Amber wondered if they had already been dead when he took his place next to them.

  The animals that had feasted on the bodies of the livestock had left them undisturbed. Amber spoke a few words of the funeral ceremony of the Coptic Church—Lord knows she had heard it often enough since the refugees had started arriving—then she slipped out of the door and pushed the thorn bushes back across. They were probably young, too young to afford decent farming land, but they had married anyway. She imagined them coming here, full of hope with one or two oxen, how that hope must have turned to desperation when the animals suddenly sickened and died.

  She began to walk back down the trail again, lost in her imaginings of the dead family, and it was not until she was halfway down the slope that she looked up and saw Tadesse gesticulating at her. She wondered why he didn’t call out to her. Perhaps a dik-dik or a wild goat was hidden in the cover at the bottom of the gully. She stood still, took her rifle from her shoulder and loaded it, then looked at Tadesse again, waiting for him to point out where her prey might be. She wondered how he would mime to her what was hidden in the undergrowth. Perhaps he’d flap his arms for a mountain partridge, or give himself horns with his hands for a kudu, though it was unlikely one of those creatures would have allowed her to get so close. Tadesse spread out his fingers and mimed great swiping claws.

  Amber froze. Tadesse was pointing down and to her right. At once she heard a low snarling growl and turned. It was a lioness, less than ten feet away, her ears back, her lips pulled back from her three-inch fangs, head down and shoulders raised, ready to spring forward. Time stopped as the great beast made her leap, a blur of movement, tawny hide, muscle and light, and the flash of those terrible yellow eyes. Amber shot from her hip, the bullet tore through the lioness’s fore-shoulder, but she was carried through the air by the momentum of her jump. Amber stepped backward, just out of reach of the swiping claws, and the lioness fell sprawled in front of her. Her huge paws scrabbled in the dust as she struggled to stand again. Amber reloaded and fired a second time, carefully aiming between the lioness’s glaring yellow eyes. The creature bucked backward and collapsed on its side.

  Amber felt her legs turn weak, and she found she was sitting on the track, a sudden shivering running over her as if she had been doused in cold water. Tadesse ran down the slope toward her, but when he arrived she could do no more than gape at him.

  “What . . . ?” Tadesse gasped.

  He put a hand on her shoulder while she continued to shake.

  “Miss Amber?”

  “Dehina nenyi—I’m fine, Tadesse,” she said and reached for her canteen of water, but her fingers were trembling too violently to undo the screw of the lid. He took it from her, opened it and handed it to her, then turned his back until she could recover her composure.

  She drank deeply and the edge of the canteen rattled against her teeth.

  Tadesse had bent down and was stroking the warm flank of the lion with great reverence. Amber got to her feet. To kill a lion was a badge of great honor in Tigray. The lions had learned as much and kept a decent distance from humans, unless they were sick or hungry, and even then they would only take straying animals from the edge of villages. Amber could not understand why the creature had attacked. She had a sudden vision of teeth and claws again and, shuddering, picked up her rifle.

  “Shh . . .” Tadesse hissed, and pointed toward the wavering scrub. Amber struggled to reload, but her fingers were clumsy now and she could hardly see. The world became a confusion of light and her eyes misted. Then she saw Tadesse relax, and she blinked hard to clear her vision. A cub, no more than a few weeks old, appeared at the edge of the cover and examined them, its head on one side, flicking its black ears. They did not move, and so it padded forward and pushed its muzzle into its dead mother’s flanks. It gasped and mewled, then sat down rather awkwardly and sneezed.

  “Kill it, Miss Amber,” Tadesse said. “It is kinder to waste a bullet than to let it starve here.”

  Amber looked at the cub. It had got back onto its four feet, its black-tipped tail sticking out straight behind it. Again it grunted and keened as it shoved its nose into its mother’s side and received no response from the cooling corpse. Amber ran her hand through her own golden hair, watching it, a little beast alone in the wilderness.

  “No. It is mine, I’m taking her home.”

  Tadesse looked up at her sideways. “Mr. Ryder will not be pleased. It will kill the chickens and frighten the women.”

  Amber lifted her chin. “I shall call her Hagos and I shall take her up above the orchard. I will teach her to hunt. Mr. Ryder is not my husband—he cannot tell me what to do.”

  “Hagos—you name the lion ‘happiness’? You are crazy, Miss Amber,” Tadesse said.

  “I need some joy, Tadesse, and perhaps I am crazy, but now I am a crazy lady with a lion.”

  •••

  Amber moved her things up to the ground above the orchard that afternoon, pitched a tent and made herself comfortable with her little lioness. Hagos cried the first night, little mewling gasps that broke Amber’s heart, and she refused to eat, but shortly before dawn she found her way to Amber’s camp bed and agreed to take goat’s milk in the morning.

  It was two days before Amber dared go back into camp and face the music. She found Saffron with her children on the pebbled riverbank. Leon had been inclined to be jealous of the baby when they came back from Addis. He thought Penelope was a gift, like Saffron’s paints and Amber’s typewriter, and kept telling them to give her back. Over the last few months, however, he had grown rather protective of the little girl and was almost as pleased as her parents when she took her first steps.

  Penelope obviously thought her brother was some sort of god, and cried when he ran off with his friends faster than she could toddle after him. Now she had him to herself as he showed her the secrets of the riverbank, while Saffron watched from a careful distance. Amber came and sat down next to her sister.

  “Is Ryder very cross with me, Saffy?” she said after a moment.

  Saffron didn’t turn around, but Amber saw her smile.

  “Yes, he is rather. He calls it another of your stunts. Don’t worry, they are trying out a new method to save more of the quicksilver on the arrastra tomorrow, and he won’t be able to think about anything other than that for a week or two. Just make sure you keep Hagos out of his way.”

  Amber twisted the trailing edge of her thin headscarf between her fingers. “I’m sorry.”

  Saffron shrugged. “I don’t mind. But you do keep fighting with him, Amber. And fighting with Ryder is my job.”

  She shifted her seat so she could look at her sister. Amber lifted her shoulder a bit, trying to hide from that rather searching look.

  “You don’t want to marry Bill, do you? Then you could fight with him.”

  Amber shook her head, but Saffron persisted.

  “Are you sure? He is a bit old, but he knows about books and you need someone who can talk to you about things like that. And he likes you. I’ve seen him staring; we all have.”

  Amber reached down and picked up one of the gray, smooth river pebbles and turned it over and over in her palm.

  “No. I don’t like the way he stares, Saffy. Something is not quite right about him. Don’t you think? He says all the right things, and behaves in the right way, but it’s as if he’s made of paper. I feel like I could poke a finger straight through him. Does Ryder like him?”

  Saffron fidgeted. “
Not really. He said almost the same thing, though not in such a writerly way.”

  They were silent for a while. Leon handed Penelope a stone and she stared at it, transfixed with gratitude, while he wandered a little further away. Amber let the stone she was holding fall back on the shore.

  “I can’t help it, Saffy. Unless I meet another man like Penrod, I think you are stuck with me. And I don’t think I’d make a very good Ethiopian wife.”

  Saffy gave a little gurgling laugh. “No, you’d be hammering away at your typewriter while the stew burned, and spend so long staring at the stars you’d never get up early enough to make breakfast.” She put her hand over her sister’s. “You think of Penrod all the time, don’t you?”

  Amber stared into the water. “Yes.”

  “But you know, even if you had gone back to Cairo, you couldn’t have saved him from the opium, don’t you?”

  “I know, Saffy. It hurts me, but I know Penrod was the sort of man who needed to make his own path. I suppose, though, I always hoped it would lead back to me. Part of me will never accept he’s gone.” Saffy squeezed her fingers and Amber straightened her back. “Hagos and I will stay up above the orchard. I’ll still take care of the gardens and the refugees, and I’ve started writing again, Saffy. Really writing.”

  Saffron sighed lustily. “That’s good, I suppose. You won’t get lonely, will you?”

  Amber laughed. “I shall see you every day, my darling. So no, I will not get lonely.”

  When Penrod arrived in Massowah, he found the port of the new colony of Eritrea bustling and confident. Italian settlers had begun cultivating the land around Asmara. The port itself was full of new buildings and the streets were thronged with Italian uniforms. He went first to the governor’s residence to present his credentials and letters of introduction. One of the latter came from Lucio, and if ever Penrod needed a demonstration of his schoolfriend’s power and influence, he found it in the reaction to his signature and seal. Penrod was shown into the presence of General Baratieri, military and civilian governor of the new colony.