The Animal Stars Collection

by Jackie French

  But to my surprise it wasn’t the weight of a tent that I felt upon my back. It was just the skins of the sheep we’d eaten at a feast the night before.

  I snorted at the smell of those fresh skins, of the blood and meat that had recently been living sheep. But at least the load was light.

  Bilhari clapped his hands and I stood up while he grabbed my rein.

  And then we began to walk across the rocky hill, the head man and Bilhari and I.

  I didn’t realise what was happening at first. Hadn’t I walked every day of my life, up mountains and across sandhills?

  It was only as Bilhari began to lead me down the other side of the hill that I understood…

  The three of us walked alone. The other camels stayed behind, and the caravan too. My mother, and the black tents, and all that I had ever known.

  I would never see them again!

  CHAPTER 6

  Dost Mahomet’s Story

  Northwest Indian Frontier, July 1859

  At eight years old I first travelled with my father, helping lead our camels laden with sheepskins to sell, or rice, or other trade goods.

  At fourteen I married, the bride gold borrowed from a neighbour, though it would be five years before my wife was old enough to leave her father’s house.

  At fifteen I killed a man, an enemy of the neighbour who had lent me the bride money, slitting his throat from behind as he watched his goats. I cleaned my knife before I put it back into my belt, but left a red rim at the hilt, to remind myself I was now a man.

  At sixteen I sat on the blue and red carpet with my father and my uncles as they decided my fate.

  Out in the dusty courtyard the women chattered as they ground the wheat for tomorrow’s bread, and waited for the leftovers of our meal so they could eat as well. The summer heat shimmered above the mudbrick walls the colour of the hills.

  My father reached into the platter before us with his right hand, the knuckles swollen with age and work, and scooped out rice, rich with spices and greasy with goat. My mother was glad to have us home from our last trip. ‘It is good money.’

  My oldest uncle spat. He had fought the British three times since they had first marched into our land before I had been born. ‘Ferenghi money!’

  ‘A river is not dirtied by having a dog drink from it,’ said my father. ‘The British may be bastard sons of pigs. But they pay.’

  I said nothing. I had known what I wanted since the news had leapt from village to village, like goats jumping from rock to rock. A ferenghi was hiring men. But not to fight. This ferenghi wanted men who knew camels.

  Men like me.

  My father knew what I wanted, too. My father wasn’t the oldest of our family. But in the end he’d get his way.

  I scooped out more rice as the men talked around me. The ferenghi was offering ten pounds a month, for three years, or four! Clothes too, and blankets, rifle and ammunition. And for all this I would only have to help him buy some camels, then take them to a new land the British owned. We would take the camels in a caravan across the country and back again. So little for so much! Then they would pay me, and pay my fare, and I would come home.

  Rich.

  I smiled to myself. How like the British sons of dogs, to think they owned a land they hadn’t even seen. But money was money, as my father said, no matter from whom it came.

  I tried to work out what four years of ten pounds a month would be in rupees while the talk flowed over me. It would be a fortune. Much more than enough to pay back the borrowed marriage gold. My wife would wear gold bangles. I would lend money to others, too. Grateful men would cut the throats of my enemies…

  ‘It is settled then,’ said my father calmly. He called to the women to come in and fetch the leftovers to eat, and then embraced me. ‘We will find the ferenghi tomorrow. We will tell him young Dost Mahomet is the finest camel driver in the world.’

  He smiled. His teeth were as white as his turban in the darkness of his beard. ‘It is even true.’

  I felt warm with pride.

  My oldest uncle nodded. ‘There are things you must understand about working for the British,’ he said. ‘I know this, from your cousin’s wife’s first brother, who the British paid well to fight for them in the war when I fought against them. First of all, they are Unbelievers…’

  ‘Dost Mahomet knows that,’ began my father impatiently.

  Uncle held up a hand for silence. ‘And they smell. They do not wash. They use either hand to wipe themselves. Some shave their faces so when their beards grow they look like hairy goats.’

  I touched my beard automatically. I hoped it would thicken up soon. I was afraid it too still looked like a hairy goat’s.

  ‘They are also ignorant,’ added Uncle. ‘And stupid when they are drunk. But you must not smile, no matter how silly they are. You must call them “sahib”. And when they insult you, as the sons of pigs will do, you must be silent and think of the money you will earn. Always remember that he who can be killed with sugar need not be killed with poison.’

  I sighed. Uncle would tell a camel how to spit, and a crow how to tear out eyeballs. ‘What is the ferenghi’s name?’ I asked.

  ‘His name is Landells,’ said my father. ‘And the name of the new land is Australia.’

  CHAPTER 7

  The Camel’s Story

  Northwest Indian Frontier, September 1859

  The head man and Bilhari and I kept walking. Soon I could smell men, more than I had ever smelt before. I grew…no, not afraid. I am never afraid, young camel! But I grew wary, though I was curious as well.

  We passed a hill, bare and stony, where many men had done their business. The smell was so strong I snorted and tried to pull away. But Bilhari pulled the lead rope firmly.

  And then I saw it: a great crowd of men and animals. There were sheep and goats, camels and chickens, and more humans than I thought could fit into the world. There was dust from all the feet and noise and smells and yelling. It was called a market. And Bilhari and the head man led me into it all.

  Chickens clucked from inside sacks and cages. Men chewed chunks of meat. A flock of sheep ran between the stalls. Their rumps were dyed red, to show that they were all from the same flock.

  I had to be careful where I put my feet. It was hard to think, with all that noise.

  Finally we found a spot by a mud wall. There was no grass, not even a thorn bush to nibble. The dust irritated my eyes too. So when Bilhari pulled my rein I sat down willingly, and shut my second eyelid and my nose to keep out the dust, and regurgitated my cud to chew. Bilhari squatted at my side, looking sad, while the head man eyed the horses at the far side of the market.

  Horses! Phut! Little wonder I hate them, after what happened to me that day!

  Men wandered by, and sometimes a veiled woman with dusty feet. The men stopped to admire me, for I was the most handsome camel in the market, and it goes without saying that a camel is a far more admirable beast than a chicken, a sheep or a horse.

  Now and then a man stopped and opened my mouth to check I was as young and healthy as I seemed, then squatted beside us, and asked, ‘How much?’ But each time the head man answered the man just shook his head and walked away.

  The day grew hotter. I swallowed, then brought up some more cud to chew. I waited for Bilhari and the head man to get tired of all this foolishness and take me back to the caravan. The caravan had been my world forever. How could I know what was ahead?

  ‘It’s no use,’ said Bilhari at last. ‘His price is too high.’

  Suddenly there was a buzzing at the other side of the market. The head man peered over the bleating sheep and strolling men and women. ‘A ferenghi!’ he uttered. ‘A foreigner!’

  I craned my neck to see what all the fuss was about.

  It was a man with a strange thing on his head, not a turban like every other man wore, but a thing with a wide rim that I later learnt they call a hat. (Of course you know all about those, young camel.) He wore funny cl
othes, as well. His beard was long and brown, and his moustaches long and droopy, and his hair straggled from under the weird head covering.

  He walked up to us and I discovered he smelt peculiar too. He was with two other men, one young, in a turban and with his beard just beginning, and an older man, also turbanned, with a sword at his side.

  The head man nudged Bilhari. They stood up, and Bilhari signalled for me to rise too.

  I groaned and muttered. I had just got to my feet when the young man knelt down and felt my legs, then peered into my mouth and eyes. I decided to let him. His smell was good. He didn’t rush at me, but treated me with knowledge and the respect due to such a fine camel as I am.

  ‘What do you think, Dost Mahomet?’ asked the man in the hat.

  ‘He is a strong camel, Mr Landells,’ said the young man.

  I grinned, showing my fine camel gums, and spat my cud in Mr Landells’s face.

  Why? I didn’t like the way he smelt. Besides, I didn’t want to swallow. You need a peaceful stomach to swallow your cud. There had been no peace for many hours now, so my stomach was upset.

  ‘Heyyyyyyoop!’ Mr Landells yelled. He wiped my cud from his face, and stared at me.

  The young Dost Mahomet patted my side. He spoke again, more urgently. ‘He is the best, the biggest camel we have seen. He will carry anything you give him.’

  ‘A fine camel, this,’ said the head man eagerly. ‘A great, oh, a magnificent camel. And we only want—’

  ‘Grunt, phooey!’ I interrupted. I began to lie down again and to vomit up another bit of cud.

  Bilhari gave me a slap. ‘Hup!’

  I groaned, prepared to kick him if he tried it again.

  Mr Landells pulled a flask out of his back pocket. I smelt the horrid sweet stuff inside as he took a swig before putting it back. But at last he nodded and pulled out pieces of metal. ‘That’s all we’ll need, I think, Dost Mahomet.’

  The head man’s eyes lit up at the sight of those bits of metal. ‘You will not be sorry,’ he started to say. ‘He is a great camel, a strong fine camel—’

  ‘Phut, phooey!’ I interjected again.

  Bilhari stroked my side. ‘You have been a good companion, Bell Sing,’ he told me quietly. ‘May your way follow the good grass. Go with Allah.’

  Then he handed my lead rope to the young man.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Camel’s Story

  Lahore, Northwest Indian Frontier, September 1859

  Have you ever been hobbled, young camel? Of course you haven’t. If you’d been old enough to be hobbled you could never have escaped and come here.

  When you’re hobbled the humans tie a rope around your front legs and join them together with a short piece of chain, so you can only take small steps. If you try to stride—or run—you fall over.

  Hobbling is one of the extreme indignities that a camel ruled by humans has to bear.

  The young man took my rope and led me to the outskirts of the market. There were many other camels there, though none as big or fine as I. All had the rope and chains around their legs. But even then I didn’t guess what the young man planned to do until he’d knelt and fixed the first rope to my leg.

  Was I a village dog that had to be tied?

  And so we camels stood there on the outskirts of the market, while hens clucked and humans yelled and bartered. There was no grass. Even the bushes were almost stripped bare. The dirt was hot, the sun was hot. There was no water either. What was going to happen now? I wondered. What new caravan had I joined?

  Then I saw Bilhari and the head man, heading up into the hills and back to our caravan. The head man was riding a white horse. Ha, I thought. That animal will probably go lame on the first hard mountain range. Bilhari clambered up the rocky slope behind him. Neither one looked back as the horse’s tail swished at the flies.

  Horses! I spit upon them! Phooey! Phut!

  CHAPTER 9

  Dost Mahomet’s Story

  Lahore, Northwest Indian Frontier, September 1859

  I will never forget that first night with Mr Landells and the camels.

  My father had told me when I was small that every journey begins with a single step. No matter how long the journey is, one more step is all it takes, and then another and another…

  This is my first step, I thought that night, as I sat about the fire after the evening prayers to Allah, and watched the sparks flicker in the dark like stars. I had helped the ferenghi buy his camels. He hadn’t even known a riding camel from a pack camel, and we had paid too much. It seemed he had money to waste.

  There were twelve of us about the fire, eight cameleers, Mr Landells—the ferenghi—and the guards he’d brought from India. But at least the guards were polite, not like the soldiers who had rampaged through our village when I was small.

  Mr Landells didn’t speak my language, and only a few words of the guards’ tongue. But I had learnt a bit of English, trading with my father, enough to make him understand. Ferenghis mostly only know their mother’s tongue, my father said. They are too stupid to learn the languages of others.

  I looked at the other cameleers, eating their goat meat and bread by the firelight. There were none from my own land. They were as foreign to me as Mr Landells. One wasn’t even a Muslim. Simla was a Hindu, a small thin man with a bare chin and wild moustaches that looked like they were trying to fly off his face.

  The rest of us were all Believers. Belooch was a stocky man who had worked for the Ferenghis before. At times I wondered if he had been born of camel parents, for there was no camel he could not calm. Esau Khan was from Kalat, tall and wiry, Nur from…

  I shook my head in the darkness. It was hard enough to remember the names, much less where we all came from. None of us shared a mother tongue, though we could all make ourselves understood in Hindi, and apart from Simla we had the language of our prayers in common, and some English words too.

  I had never travelled with men who were not my kin before. But I was finding that once you have sat together in the darkness, each holding a good British breech-loading rifle that Mr Landells had supplied (for who knew who might attack us in the night?), you begin to feel the men beside you are your kin. As old Uncle would say: ‘The first day you meet, you are friends. The next day you meet, you are brothers.’

  For as long as Mr Landells hired us, anyway. I caressed the rifle on my lap, and smiled to myself in the darkness. I had never held such a fine weapon in my life.

  Old Uncle had been wrong about one thing, at least. Mr Landells’s beard was so thick an eagle could nest in it. But Uncle had been right, too. Mr Landells knew little about camels. And he liked men who called him ‘sahib’, and believed he knew a lot.

  Nur had been longest with Mr Landells. (He was good at nodding and saying ‘yes sahib’ too.) Nur told me that despite the ferenghi money it had been hard to hire men. The memories of the British wars were too fresh for fathers to trust their sons to a ferenghi, and Mr Landells had wanted men who spoke some English as well as camel experts. Many Hindus, too, refused to cross the ocean. It had taken Mr Landells more than a year to hire us eight, and to find the twenty-four camels the expedition needed.

  ‘Expedition?’ I tried to fit my tongue around the English word.

  Nur nodded. ‘We will be part of what the British sons of dogs call The Great Victorian Expedition. Mr Landells and Mr Burke will lead this expedition right across Australia.’

  ‘What will we be trading?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I stared at him across the fire. ‘Even the British are not so stupid.’

  Nur laughed. ‘No one has ever been across this country! We will be the first. Other caravans can follow our route, and men can claim new lands for their farms.’

  I was silent at the thought. Could there really be a place where no man had trod before? ‘But why not use their own camels?’

  ‘The British like horses. But the centre of this Australia is hot and dry, like here. The horses die
of thirst. They need camels to cross the deserts—and us to tend the camels.’

  Nur’s words stirred something deep within me.

  An unknown land. A land where no man could go without my aid. I looked at the faces in the firelight and thought: Together we will find a path across the deserts of Australia. In a hundred years men will say ‘Dost Mahomet and his brothers found this way…’

  It will be like vanquishing an enemy, I thought, but this time we will use camels instead of knives. This time it will be the land we conquered.

  Suddenly a camel shrieked behind us. Mr Landells started. ‘What the…?’ he swore. ‘Are those beasts trying to murder each other?’ He took another swig of rum from his flask.

  I stood up. ‘I see to them,’ I said. I would have liked to explain to him that there is always trouble with new camels at first. Camels are like men. They need to get to know each other. But I didn’t have enough English words to tell him.

  I grabbed a chunk of bread then slipped beyond the firelight. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness I could see the big black shapes of the camels, shuffling in their hobbles as they reached for the leaves on the bushes. All but two of them, who stood there nose to nose.

  Trouble, I thought, as one of them lashed out and tried to gum the other’s neck. I smiled in the darkness, remembering my father’s words: ‘Softly, steadily. Never be rough with a camel, my son. Move slowly but surely with your camels. Speak softly. Then they will know you are the leader, and obey.’

  ‘Shoosha, shoosha,’ I said quietly. Both camels turned as I approached.

  I recognised them now—the big one that Mr Landells rode, called Rajah, and one almost the same size, a large pack camel called Bell Sing. Even as I watched, Bell Sing tried to savage Rajah again.

  I had to separate them. I walked forward and grabbed Bell Sing’s lead rope. ‘Koosh,’ I ordered.