And he lived! No debt unsettled save the debt of gratitude that he acknowledged, unexpected and deep within himself, to Sulieman and even maybe to the Lady Nayli.
Across the chamber his eyes rested with quietness on the beautiful wall-hung carpet behind the divan, on the Tree of Life which filled the centre panel, on the birds in its branches, and every bird singing …
“Did you really kill eight men?” Tussun asked suddenly.
“Unless they were all shamming very dead when I left.” Thomas would have liked to feel triumph, but could feel none, now that the thing was over; all through his life, killing would be at times an ugly necessity to him, never a cause for triumph when once the red mist of the moment was gone.
The boy thrust him back, a hand on his shoulders, to look up at him from arm’s length, his flushed face suddenly alight. “That must have been a fight for heroes! I wish that I had shared it with you!”
Thomas began to laugh, and found it difficult to stop laughing even when the room began to swim, and he found that he had reopened the wound and was bleeding like a stuck pig all over the beautiful tiled floor.
*
In the fountain court of the women’s apartments where the splash and whisper of falling water confused sound and made it hard for any listener more than a few paces off to overhear what passed between them, the Vicereine and her daughter sat together over their embroidery the following evening.
“And so you see,” the Vicereine was saying, bending over a piece of delicate gold thread work that had occupied her whenever she wished to be seen engaged in embroidery for the past six months, “the time has come when we must begin to think of making ready for your wedding.”
The Lady Nayli checked her needle in the silken Koran cover that was her own task, and sat up straighter on her cushions with the air of one tensing to the hint of possible danger. “To Mustafa Bey?”
“Who else have we been talking about?” her mother asked patiently.
“I do not wish to marry Mustafa Bey. He’s dull — he’s like an ox.”
“Of course,” agreed her mother. “But since when has that been a good reason for not marrying the husband of your parents’ choice?”
“My father would not force me —” the girl began.
“Your father has always been softer with you than with his sons. Because he knew that you did not wish the marriage he has let the negotiations drag their feet in the hope that you would learn wisdom and come to like it better. Because of that” — the Vicereine set another stitch and stroked it into place with a careful forefinger — “and because he does not know, or has deliberately turned from knowing, certain things concerning you which are only too well known to me.”
Nayli stared at her mother with dilating eyes. “What things? I do not know what you mean.”
“Do you not? Oh, but it is too pleasant an evening to mar with the discussion of ugly details.” The older woman let the gauzy needlework sink into her lap and turned the full focus of her brilliant gaze upon her daughter for the first time. “It is enough that you should understand this: that you will marry Mustafa Bey and be a faithful and, if Allah wills it, fruitful wife to him, remembering to your heart’s core that if any harm comes to him — or to Ibrahim Effendi — then it is you who will pay the death-price, as happens when a woman of our Faith dishonours her family and has father and brothers to make the family honour clean again.”
“No harm came to Ibrahim Effendi —” the girl began, and checked, hearing what she had said.
There was a long silence filled with the silken whisper of the fountains.
“No harm in the world, thanks to his own powers as a fighting man,” said the Vicereine. “No thanks to those who sought the harm, or those who planned it.”
“You have no proof,” said the Lady Nayli, white to the lips so that the paint stood out livid on her face, but still fighting.
“I daresay I could find it. But it is a more ordinary dishonour that I had in mind. I do not think that Sulieman has been your only lover.”
The words were softly spoken but the cut of them was like a whiplash, and the girl’s head went back as though she felt the sting.
“Even if Sulieman was — what you say — he escaped, did he not? He is clean away by now, my Mother.”
“It would still be easy enough to lay hands on certain other gentlemen of your acquaintance.”
“If you knew all this, why did you not —”
“Your father would not wish to lose the means of forming a useful marriage alliance.”
Again the silence. This time the Lady Nayli broke it. “How you hate me,” she said through lips that she scarcely seemed able to move.
“No. I do most devoutly wish that I had never borne you, but that is another thing.” The Vicereine took up her embroidery again. “So we will make plans for your marriage. The harem will be delighted; they have been wanting a wedding to give them an excuse for new pretty clothes for a long time.” She even smiled.
And seeing the smile, the Lady Nayli knew that she was defeated. She, too, took up her embroidery again and spoke with her head bent over it. “Mustafa Bey and Ibrahim Effendi are both soldiers. How if the harm comes to them that way?” She must at least get her position clear.
“Death in battle, I will accept,” said her mother. “For the rest, I can only advise that you take good care of your husband’s health and that you pray to Allah five times a day for the safety of Ibrahim Effendi.” She began to fold up her work. “There is much to do in the house where a wedding is soon to take place and it is time that we were going within doors.”
But her daughter seemed not to hear her; seemed not to be aware of the slow, crimson drops weeping on to the Koran cover from the wound in her hand where she had clenched it on her needle and held it closed. She was face-to-face with retribution, staring with wide eyes at the horrifying prospect of lifelong fidelity and enforced childbearing without chance of escape, to the ox-like Mustafa Bey.
16
Colonel D’Esurier had been right in the conclusions he had drawn nearly three years before from the transport and escort ships being made ready at Port Suez. The preparations were complete now and, on the orders of the Sultan and his Sublime Porte, Muhammed Ali was launching an expeditionary force against the Wahabis for the freeing of Mecca and the Muslim Holy Land.
But there were other matters to be attended to first and the Viceroy duly attended to them, including the Cairo Mamelukes …
On an evening thick and breathless with the heat of late summer less than a month before the expedition was due to sail, the light of a hundred lamps mingled with the music of lute and zither, spilled out from the many windows of the vice regal reception chambers into the high-walled palace gardens. The banquet for the Cairo Mamelukes was drawing to a close.
A very splendid banquet for the purpose of ushering in better relations between the Ottoman party and that freebooting, soldier-slave fraternity. The Viceroy had sent out the courteous summons to the Mameluke lords and their followers, and throughout the length and breadth of the city and its surroundings the Mameluke lords and their followers had responded.
They had come mounted on their most mettlesome horses and brave in the fighting-cock splendour of their finest attire. They had feasted in the company of the Viceroy himself, with his senior officers and certain other honoured guests such as Colonel D’Esurier, and watched the best troupe of dancing-girls in Cairo perform the Bee Dance which left the wild-eyed dancers by the end virtually naked save for their jewellery and their out-flung maenad hair. Even the interminable coffee had come to an end, and the Negro slaves had brought in the perfumes and the smoking incense burners which signalled the end of the entertainment, and one after another the guests were touching hands and foreheads with the heavy fragrance of jasmine and tuberose, holding out the loose folds of their mantles to receive the scented smoke of frankincense and sandalwood. They were taking courteous and deeply formal leave of their host and passin
g out into the night, into the torch lit courtyard where the palace grooms had their horses waiting for them.
When Colonel D’Esurier also would have taken his leave, Muhammed Ali stayed him, drawing him aside, and a few moments later they were standing in one of the windows, the Viceroy expressing, not for the first time, his regret that on the very eve of the Arabian expedition, his French gunnery adviser was being recalled, giving place to a successor as yet unknown. But even as he spoke he had the air of a man whose mind was not entirely on what he said; the air of a man who was waiting for something.
He had not long to wait.
As the departing guests crossed the maidan, the smother of horses’ hooves and men’s voices raised in talk and laughter which had been blanketed by the buildings in between broke free and came clear to the window where the two men stood. The sound of retreating festivity endured for a short while, then grew hollow between the flanking walls as the Mameluke party poured into the broad processional way that curved down to the gates.
A few moments more and the sharp rattle of musket fire reached the two in the window and the night was torn apart and made hideous by the desperate shouting of men under sudden attack and the screams of stricken horses.
“My God — what —” began D’Esurier, and before the unruffled calm of his companion, checked on the words and on the instinctive movement that would have sent his hand for his pistol had he been armed.
Almost as quickly as it had flared, the tumult was dying, dead, only one voice raved on, one last musket shot cracked out and the voice was silent.
“Pity about the horses,” said the Viceroy of Egypt. Colonel D’Esurier said nothing at all.
Shortly after, a low quick mutter of voices sounded outside and the captain of the citadel guard entered and crossed to stand before Muhammed Ali in the window. “Excellency, the thing is done,” he reported.
“All dead?” the Viceroy enquired.
The captain fidgeted a moment with his ceremonial dagger. “One forced his horse over the low place where they are rebuilding the wall. It’s a twenty-foot drop there — the horse broke its back but the rider got away. I have men out hunting him now.”
“If they catch him, so much the better. If not, there is little harm,” said the Viceroy magnanimously. “No support to be called upon; no secret to be betrayed since the matter will be public property throughout Cairo by dawn in any case, and I think small grief felt in any quarter.”
And when the man, obviously much relieved as to the safety of his own neck, had departed, he said musingly, half to himself, half to the Frenchman beside him: “I wonder what possessed them, every one of them in Cairo, to accept my invitation.”
“Over-confidence, perhaps,” said D’Esurier in a voice that sounded dry in his throat. “A monumental self-confidence that could not conceive of any cause for fear; pride that would not permit of refusal, no matter how strong the smell of danger.”
“Or simply trust in the laws of hospitality,” said Mohammed Ali. “Oh, my friend, I am not apologising. I am a realist. I have known for a long time that the task of ridding Egypt of the wolf pack must be completed before half the regular forces are shipped off to Arabia, leaving the country wide open to their power-hunger. Tonight’s work was not pretty, but it was work that must needs be done.”
“Not pretty,” D’Esurier agreed. “But I fully understand the need … Excellency, need you have made me a part of it by inviting me to this evening’s entertainment?”
There was a shadow of a smile under the Viceroy’s luxuriant moustache and the strong brows lifted a little. “I believe so. You are returning to France as soon as your successor arrives, and we would not have you carry too harsh a report of us back to your Emperor.”
The Frenchman’s lean, sardonic face echoed the smile for an instant in perfect understanding. “Which, being however slightly implicated … Of course, Excellency, that was foolish of me.”
He drew himself together in a small, formal bow. “Now that the purpose of my presence here is served, may I have Your Excellency’s leave to withdraw?”
*
In the narrow chamber whose windows peered for ever down into the dust-dark crown of one of the hospital shade-trees, the two young Scots had been discussing the forthcoming campaign over the inevitable tiny brass cups of coffee.
“And so I am thinking that the content is in you, this time,” Donald was saying.
“Because there’s a new campaign?”
The big Lewis man smiled. “Not so much because there’s a new campaign as because this time you go with the expeditionary force.”
“Aye — my turn to follow the drums and yours to bide behind,” Thomas said. “Are ye sore for that?”
“Ach no. I have had enough of the drums. Now, and for a long while past, I am Osman al Hakim.”
“You were glad enough to be going, the last time, even so.”
“I was wanting the experience. For a surgeon, it is good to be on campaign now and then — that way he will be gaining knowledge and practice in the mending of broken bodies. But for now it is the skills of the physician that I need to practise; such skills as are best gained here in this great hospital that the French left behind them.”
“This is all ye’ve ever really wanted, is it no’?” Thomas said. “An’ you the drummer tae a Grenadier company.”
“It is not so easy to qualify and make one’s way as a surgeon or physician without the price of one’s apprenticeship in one’s pouch,” Donald said simply. “A drummer at least combines it with being a medical orderly. I was a laddie when I joined, with a laddie’s high hopefulness in me.”
They had spent several evenings together in the weeks since Thomas and Zeid ibn Hussein had returned with the Bedouin cavalry from more than a year of service in the south under Ibrahim Pasha, now Governor of the new Southern Province. A few of those evenings they had spent in one of the riverside gardens where the cool came up off the water after the scarifying heat of the July and August days. More often, as this evening, when Donald was on call and must be at hand and easily found, up here in his own small chamber in the hospital. Quiet evenings of long companionable silences, of setting the world to rights, of exchanged “shop”, of occasional heated arguments, and leisurely talk that ranged out into the future or peaceably backwards over days in the windswept islands of the Outer Hebrides or the green hills of the Border Country.
But after this one, there would be no more such evenings, for the time being anyway. Not until after the Arabian campaign was over and the Holy Cities free.
“And it came,” Thomas said. “To both of us the chance came.”
Donald looked into the bottom of his empty coffee cup for a long moment, then set it down with a small careful clink. “Chance — or the Will of Allah,” he said simply.
And Thomas wondered, not for the first time, whether having made the choice, Donald was not more comfortably at home in his new faith than he was himself.
Hurried footsteps came scuffing along the corridor, and there was a scratching at the door which stood ajar for the passage of air between it and the window. “Osman Effendi, it is the man with the lung-bleeding. Come.”
“I come,” Donald said, and got up from the bench where they had been sitting beneath the window, picking up the metal box that was always with him. “Wait for me,” he said to Thomas. “There is still coffee in the pot. I’ll be back when I can.”
Thomas heard the low quick voices in question and answer, and the two sets of footsteps dwindling into silence, or rather, into the faint multitudinous sounds of the great hospital; a voice raised somewhere and cut off by a slamming door, distant footsteps that came and went, the chink of metal receptacles, the slap and swish of a floor being swabbed down, all with the faintly cavernous note that came of huge wards and long empty corridors. From below in the hospital garden came a snatch of laughter and voices raised in dispute where the gardeners were at the evening watering, the cool hush of water finger-s
prayed from the great jars and the scent of earth wet and refreshed after the day’s thirst. He leant his head back on the base of the window, relishing the first cool stirring of the evening air, and let his weary gaze drift free about the room.
It was more like a prison cell even than his own, and lacking in most comfort and all ornament. No golden carpet of Ispahan to give beauty to the roughly lime-washed walls; only a coarse blanket on the sleeping mattress, a brass lamp of extreme ugliness and the medical books stacked in the wall niches, mostly shabby and battered from the handling of many previous owners, to stand for comfort and beauty and the things of the mind or spirit. But it was a good place for straightening out one’s tangled ideas — gathering up loose ends before moving on to the next thing. There was a serenity about it that was lacking from his own quarters above the old armoury, in which he still seemed to catch the whiff of musk and rose-oil from time to time.
Musk and rose-oil …
Leaning against the window ledge with the scents of the wet garden whispering up to him and the shadows gathering in the corners of the room, his mind wandered back over two and half years to the night when he had fought for his life on the turnpike stair. Years in which, in the outside world, Talavera and Torres Vedras had been fought, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, now become the Duke of Wellington, had caused Bonaparte to describe the Peninsula campaign as a running sore. Thomas of course knew of that but it seemed far off and just now his mind was running on his own affairs. There had been no keeping the attempt on his life hushed up, not with ten men to be accounted for, eight bodies to be cleared away, and old Abdul returning from his nephew’s wedding feast in the midst of the clearing-up process and rousing half of Cairo under the somewhat confused impression that the men carrying it out had murdered his master. Not that Tussun had shown the slightest desire to have it hushed up, seeming, indeed, embarrassingly set on proclaiming the story to the greater glory of Ibrahim Bey, his friend and brother. Above in the quiet room, Thomas smiled a little at the memory of the boy Tussun had been, and wondered, not for the first time, what had passed between him and his father, between him and his elder brother returning next day with the main body of troops from the Sudan. Tussun had emerged from the latter interview, by all accounts, ashen-faced and for once in his life speechless. Nothing had ever connected the Lady Nayli with what had happened, but Thomas, with nothing but an instinctive feeling to go on, had remained convinced that somehow, in some way, she had formed a part of the pattern; and indeed for a while he had slept with his long Somali knife under his pillow, and taken care to eat only from the communal dishes in the mess hall; but it seemed that she was too indolent to try again, or had grown bored with that particular ploy. And soon after she had been married off to Mustapha Bey — now commander of the Albanian regiments with the expeditionary force — and maybe that had given her something else to think about.