He cleared his throat self-consciously, sat up straight on his cushion, and began, shakily at first, but steadying and relaxing as he went:
Bonnie Charlie’s now awa’,
Safely o’er the friendly main;
Many a heart will break in twa’
If he ne’re comes back again.
He had in fact a pleasant enough voice, young and true, though without much range, and with the faintly rough edges of his Lowland Scottish heritage. Also he was discovering, as he was to rediscover often enough, that though he had given himself fully to his new world, embraced another faith and other loves, he was not proofed against homesickness, now and then, for the world that he had left behind him. And that, though he was quite unaware of it, was giving an ache to his voice that suited the song well.
… Will ye no’ come back again?
Will ye no’ come back again?
Better lo’ed ye canna be
Will ye no’ come back again?
Silence closed over the last lingering note; and in the silence the faint sounds of Cairo by night that he had been unaware of until now, came drifting over the flat roof tops into the court of the old harem, where the lanterns hung among their bushes of oleander and jasmine. A seashell murmur made up of feet and voices and hooves and threads of other music, pricked by the bark of a scavenging dog, hoot of an owl from the trees around the maidan, challenge and reply of sentries somewhere at a gate; and infinitely small and sad and far off, on the very edge of hearing, the cry of a hunting jackal that was the very voice of the desert itself.
“Sing again!” Nayli demanded imperiously, her face flushed in the lantern light. “I like your Scottish song. Sing another!”
“To a guest and a singer of songs, it is better to ask than to demand,” said the Vicereine, and to Thomas, “You do yourself an injustice, Ibrahim Effendi, when you say that you have not the gift of singing. Will you sing for us again?”
Tussun said nothing, but his eyes met Thomas’s asking also, but not able to ask easily and in words because of that faint unacknowledged barrier that was still between them. And it was for Tussun, a kind of reaching out across the barrier that would still be there when the song was over, that Thomas sang again. A much older and rougher song than the first, and one that he had known as long as he could remember.
“I will sing you ‘The Foster Brother’,” he said. A second time he explained the words, somewhat hesitantly, for his French, learned from his grandfather and the Leith Academy French master and among the Viceroy’s troops, seemed to him suddenly to be somewhat inadequate for the translating of songs. And the translation was for the Vicereine and her daughter, but the song was for Tussun alone:
Alas, Alas, quo’ bold Robert,
For we were brithers bred,
He sang, having as usual a little trouble with the top notes.
And sucked we at the ae breast,
And lay in the ae bed.
Wild callants were we baith,
Chasing the red deer herd;
Each weel kenn’d the ither’s hert
Nor needed never a word.
Twa’ gallants braw were we,
Tae lo’e ae bonnie May,
Oh, woe betide yon fauce fair face,
Wha’ tell’d ye ill o’ me.
Wha twined me frae my brither dear,
Closer tae me than kin.
Oh, I would ride through flood an’ fire
Tae stand by thee again …
Oh, I wad ride the wide world ower,
A thousand leagues and three,
Tae see my brither’s face once mair,
And ken he trusted me.
But when the song was ended and he drew his gaze back from the dark shadows under the oleander bushes, he found himself meeting the brilliant gaze of the Lady Nayli that seemed to have been waiting for him all the while. The Vicereine’s gentle praises were in his ears, but for the moment he saw only her daughter’s sloe-dark eyes lifted to his with something in them that brought the blood surging up from his neck to the roots of his hair, as though, despite his translation, she had maybe been hearing other words to the old haunting tune than those he had actually been singing.
9
Thomas took great care with his appearance on the day of the Viceroy’s levée, settling the folds of his tawny camel hair abba again and again across his shoulders and fiddling with the gold-fringed muslin folds of his turban-scarf, until the grey-bearded one, who could have done it all much better without interference, clucked like an impatient mother hen.
There was a large proportion of high-ranking army officers in the Viceroy’s State majlis, following the morning council. Turkish and Albanian, a few narrow-eyed and wind-burned desert faces, a handful of Mamelukes. (Nothing, Thomas thought, could show more clearly the deep divisions in that strange breed than the men of the Turkish faction, the court faction still keeping up their splendid fighting-cock presence here in Cairo, while the war council made its plans for the expedition against their own kind in the south.) The young Scot, checking with ibn Hussein to slip off his shoes in the sunken area by the entrance, knew most of them by sight, best of all Aziz Bey, staring at him from among a knot of young Mamelukes near the door. He scarcely bothered to return the stare; he was growing used to being watched by Aziz Bey and anyhow he had other things in the forefront of his mind at the moment. He went on with the Bedouin captain to a seat on one of the divans further up the chamber.
The levee was as slow and pompous as such occasions generally were, and he waited with hard-held patience for the best part of an hour. He must not show undue haste, yet to wait too long might be to miss his chance … Without turning his head he whispered to Zeid at his shoulder: “Now?”
“Now,” the other whispered back. “May Allah smile upon you.”
Thomas caught the eye of one of the officials, and when the man came over, gave him his name and rank, and asked him to crave that His Excellency would grant him a few moments audience.
He saw the message given, the glance flick his way, the faint brusque inclination of the head. The official returned to summon him. Then he was on one knee before the dais, looking up into the brigand-bold face bent slightly towards him. His heart hammering in the base of his throat, he waited for permission to speak.
“You have a favour that you wish to ask of me, Ibrahim Effendi?”
“Excellency.”
“Speak then.”
“Sir, I understand that I am to remain in Cairo as a training officer during the Sudan expedition. I beg you to have the order rescinded and allow me to formally volunteer for the campaign.” He had spoken not loudly, but very clearly, taking pains that every word of his careful French could be heard by those assembled in the Viceroy’s majlis, for he had an instinct that this was a thing that must be done very much in public.
It was heard well enough by one of the Mameluke officers sitting just within the door; and even before the Viceroy could answer, Aziz Bey was on his feet. “Excellency, I protest!”
The frown-line deepened between Muhammed Ali’s thick brows. “Aziz Bey, you forget your manners!”
“No, Excellency, I remember that I am a true follower of the Prophet, as are the men of all Your Excellency’s regiments. We need no apostate Christian in our ranks, nor do we need a British deserter to show us the way of loyalty and faith keeping, a coward to show us the way of courage!”
Righteous indignation blazed in his face. But Thomas, not looking round, caught the ugly note of triumph, of jealousy that thought it had found a way of evening the score. He had thought something like this might happen; almost, he was prepared for it, and he braced himself as in the moment before a fight. His eyes never left the Viceroy’s face, but his head snapped up on tensed neck, and he cried out the traditional Arabic phrase:
“I ask for judgment, Oh Lord!”
He felt rather than heard the stir of alerted interest in the crowded majlis. “In the name of Allah the All Compassionate I as
k Your Excellency’s leave to answer to these charges in my own defence.”
The Viceroy pulled gently at his beard; no special interest showed in his face, but no hostility either. “You may stand up. It is easier to speak on one’s feet than on one’s knees.”
“I thank Your Excellency.”
In the act of rising to his feet, Thomas made a quick decision. He could not speak Turkish well enough for the purpose, and in any case, the Turkish officers, like the Mamelukes, would inevitably side with Aziz Bey. If he spoke in French, that would make it easy for the Viceroy, but Muhammed Ali had his extremely competent Arabic interpreter beside him, and the men whose goodwill he, Thomas, felt that he could depend on were the men of the desert.
Standing like a lance before the Viceroy, he began to speak in slow, but reasonably correct Arabic:
“Excellency, Aziz Bey has named me apostate. I was bred a Christian; I have studied the Koran and walked among the Faithful, and my heart has told me that the way of Allah is the way for me. Is that so wrong? When has Islam ever rejected sincere converts?”
Again came the stir and the indrawn breath behind him.
“Excellency, Aziz Bey has called me a British deserter.” He checked, though the pause was barely perceptible, save to those who knew him well. This bit needed care. “British I am, by birth; for the rest, I was wounded and taken prisoner; I have come to know and love the men among whom I have served this past year. I can say no more than this: that I come of a race many of whom follow the wandering ways of the wild goose that take us far from our own land; that many of us sell our swords honourably to other lands of our choice, and, having made the sale, keep our side of the bargain to the death. Aziz Bey has called me a coward; if I were so, would I be volunteering now for the campaign in the south, when I could be sitting safely here in Cairo?”
The interpreter, his lips scarcely moving, translated the words almost as they were spoken.
Thomas heard his enemy begin a furious interruption, quelled by other men near him and drawing no flicker of response from the Viceroy, and pressed on:
“Excellency, Aziz Bey has spat upon my honour three times, and among my own hills it is the custom that a man may defend his honour with his sword. I demand that right now.”
Behind him this time there was absolute silence. The Viceroy blinked; it was a long time since anyone had demanded of Muhammed Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. Thomas’s gaze never swerved from his face, and it seemed to him that he could follow something of what was going on behind it. If he allowed the duel and his Scottish training officer was killed, that would be little loss, though doubtless his young son would grieve for a while. If on the other hand Aziz Bey were to die, that would remove one of the Mamelukes, who was like enough spying on him for the Sultan; and in any case the Ottoman government could scarcely lay the blame at his door, since Aziz had blatantly invited the challenge before all men. If neither should be killed (Thomas was aware that in Egypt, as in Britain, such affairs of honour were supposed to be ended by first blood, though they were frequently fatal all the same), then neither good nor harm would come of it, so far as he was concerned.
He saw the Viceroy come to his decision.
“To each man the care of his own honour,” said Muhammed Ali. “The thing is between you and Aziz Bey.”
Thomas bowed. “I thank Your Excellency.” For the first time he turned from the Viceroy and looked full at his enemy, and for an instant before it was shut away behind a mask of mere disdain, met a blaze of hate such as he had never seen in any man’s face before.
He walked across to the Mameluke officer, who rose to meet him as he came. For a few moments it looked crazily as though the fight was going to begin then and there, with as little ceremony as though two hunting leopards had been loosed in the Viceroy’s majlis.
Then Thomas said in his best French: “Aziz Bey, you have named me by evil names, Apostate, Deserter, Coward, and for that I will have satisfaction,” and lacking a glove to do the thing in proper form, he flicked the back of his hand lightly, insultingly across the other’s face.
An odd expression flickered into the hot blue eyes that widened a little while the dark colour flooded into his cheeks: the hate that had shown before for that unguarded moment, but also a gleam of satisfaction. Thomas recognised it, knowing that Aziz was as set upon this duel as he was himself, knowing also that the young Mameluke was accounted one of the best swordsmen in the Viceroy’s army.
He felt — he was not at all sure how he felt; but he knew that the thing was destined between them; had been destined since the moment their eyes first met on the dusty parade ground at El Jizzan.
*
Two hours before sunset of the following day, the maidan within the citadel was crowded, save for an enclosure marked off with silken ropes at the western end, where cushions had been set for the Viceroy’s sons and a few senior officers. The crowd were making wagers. Thomas, used to the idea that an affair of honour was fought out in the quiet of early morning with no witnesses but the seconds and a surgeon, had not realised that he and Aziz Bey would be the centre of something very like a prize fight or a popular hanging. He wondered what Colonel D’Esurier would have thought of it if he had not been in the Delta overseeing the shipment of guns from Alexandria.
The sky behind the citadel mosque was translucent crystal, and the shadow of the great dome lay all across the maidan though there was still an hour or more of good fighting light left. Thomas, standing stripped to the waist, with Zeid and a knot of Arab and Albanian friends and supporters, felt the faint stirring of the cooler evening air on his skin, saw the umber and indigo mass of the mosque bulked against the singing western sky, the delicate veining of a plane leaf near at hand, caught the first charcoal smoke of evening cooking fires, mingling with the smell of hot humanity and sun-baked dust, all with the familiar sharp-edged awareness of the last moments before battle.
“Now remember what I have told you,” Zeid, who had made the arrangements on his behalf, murmured beside him.
Thomas nodded. He remembered what Zeid had told him; all the good advice of the past twenty-four hours. If Colonel D’Esurier had been there, there would have been twice as much, probably much of it contradictory.
Tussun’s advice there had been to contend with as well. Tussun, excited but wildly anxious, had demanded to be the one to act as his second, to make all the arrangements with the Mameluke officer acting for Aziz Bey. “Don’t be a fool!” Thomas had told him. “You’re the Viceroy’s son, you can’t get tangled up in this kind of thing.” And Tussun had been forced to accept his refusal. But he would have liked to have had the boy standing here beside him, all the same, instead of just now coming into the roped enclosure with his elder brother and the rest of the vice regal party.
His gaze went that way for an instant, then returned to the far side of the maidan, where Aziz would be waiting somewhere among his own supporters. He felt the hilt of the broadsword in his hand, and his thoughts went for a moment to its last owner, fourteen months dead at Rosetta. He was glad that Aziz Bey, having of course, the right of choice in the matter, had chosen sabres. He was well enough trained in the use of both rapier and sabre; but he was happiest with the sabre, and with the superbly balanced blade that had been Colin Mackenzie’s he was happiest of all.
There was a slight stir at the far side of the maidan, where the Mameluke and Turkish officers were gathered at the forefront of the crowd, and Aziz Bey, stripped also to baggy red breeches, tucked into the tops of leather boots, stepped out into the open space.
“Now,” Zeid murmured.
Thomas stepped forward in almost the same instant, and walked out towards the centre. He turned first towards the little group in their roped-off space before the mosque, and, bringing up his sword, gave the Viceroy’s sons the British General Salute. For an instant his gaze and Tussun’s met. Then he turned away to exchange the fencer’s salute in formal courtesy with Aziz Bey. He gave an appraising glance to the m
agnificent gold-hilted Turkish sabre the other carried. It was less curved and slightly longer than the one Thomas had seen him use in practice bouts. He must have heard from his second, of course, that he, Thomas had chosen to fight with his Scottish broadsword. Then he turned his whole awareness to the Mameluke’s eyes. “Always watch the eyes,” his grandfather had drummed into him. “Be aware of the sword hand, but always watch the eyes.”
They engaged cautiously in conventional sabre style, getting the feel of each other, testing for strength and skill and speed of reaction. Thomas knew himself to be lacking in the other’s strength and experience, but he thought his footwork was better and his responses more swift. He had just about reached that conclusion when Aziz broke into a series of swift feints and cuts to the arm and neck that demonstrated his skills all too clearly. Thomas managed to evade the sudden attack by giving ground, but giving ground was not going to bring him victorious out of this fight, nor — odd the things one thought of when it was really no time to be thinking them — would it do him credit in the eyes of the boy watching him from the roped-off enclosure.
He parried a dangerous cut to his right shoulder, and delivered a stop-thrust that just reached his opponent’s breast without breaking the skin. He heard the quickly indrawn breath of the watching crowd above the pad of his own feet, and having brought Aziz to a momentary halt, he stood his ground before the next attack, using the old saltire defence learned from his grandfather in the Broomrigg stable-yard. For maybe two or three minutes the unfamiliar swordplay slowed the Mameluke down; then he set himself to batter down Thomas’s guard by sheer superiority of physical strength.
Thomas felt the jar of the strokes through his wrist and all up his arm; and then, just too slow to avoid a lunge in tierce, felt something like the fiery sting of a hornet on his left shoulder, and heard again the voice of the crowd like the breaking of a little choppy sea on a pebble shore.