“Yes,” Thomas saw that. Once blood was shed in the matter, the whole Hijaz might well go up in flames.
“That also was for me to do. To get him there, helpless, and when he came in good faith, to take him captive under my father’s roof.”
Thomas nodded. There did not seem to be anything to say that would have much point in the saying.
“At first I refused. But my father talked on and on, and I knew that his arguments were sound, though it was the soundness of military necessity, not of truth. I was with him half the night, and in the end — I took my orders. My father’s man who had brought me there, took me out of the city again, over the wall by the roofs of the lesser caravanserai. And I went back to our camp, and this morning rode in with my escort — Abdin Bey in command, with pennons and kettle drums as befits the Governor of Jiddah. Did you hear us?”
“I was out at mounted sabre practice.”
“I went — oh very publicly — to my own quarters in my father’s house, and within half an hour Shariff Ghalid came down from the citadel with only a token escort, to wait on me. He had been told that I should arrive this morning, and I suppose he had some idea of getting my ear before I had time to speak with my father. I received him in an upstairs chamber, pleading weariness (that was true at all events), and we drank coffee and sherbet and exchanged courtesies for a while. And all the time I felt like the man you once told me of who betrayed the prophet Jesus — Judas Iscariot? When the courtesies were done and he got up to leave, I told him that the stairs and surrounding chambers were full of my men, and that he was no longer ruler of the Hijaz, and that I had orders to send him to the Sultan in Istanbul. I thought he might try to call up his men, but he only said — he said, ‘Allah’s will be done. I have spent my whole life in wars with the Sultan’s enemies, and cannot therefore be afraid to appear before him.’ I wish my father or I came as well out of this as he did at that moment.”
“And then you made him appear at a window and bid his escort go back peacefully to the citadel and wait for him there.”
“You have heard that?”
“From Medhet, who hears all things.”
“He said, ‘How if I refuse?’, but he said it in such a way — as though he was almost amused, interested to see what we would do … I said: ‘If you refuse, it may be that the Hijaz will go up in flames, but you will be the first to die.’ Abdin Bey had come in and had a pistol pointed at his head at fairly close range, but truly I do not think that it was needful. Afterwards he wrote a letter to the commander of the citadel, bidding him not to fight, but to hand all over in peace to Muhammed Ali, the Sultan’s Viceroy in Egypt.” A flicker of a smile woke in the young weary voice: “It seemed to me that I had done enough of my father’s dirty work, and he could take on from there, and set me free for an afternoon’s hawking.”
It seemed to Thomas that he could hear, very faintly, the sounds of the falconers returning. “And what will happen to Shariff Ghalid now?”
“No harm. I have my father’s word that he shall take his family, his slaves and his treasure into whatever comfortable exile the Sultan decrees; and I know that he will keep his word in the matter because he does not wish to earn the title of faith breaker, more than need be, among the tribes. But he has earned it, and made me earn it also. Ghalid is no longer High Shariff of Mecca and ruler of the Hijaz; and my father does not understand how little the wives and treasure and comfortable exile count for, beside that.”
“His Excellency your father has not lived in the desert as we have done; he does not know many things that you and I know.”
“And evil will come of this morning’s work, for all his efforts to turn it aside.”
“Oh yes,” Thomas said. “Evil will come of it; but there was nothing else to be done if the campaign is to push on.”
Tussun had been staring down at his own hand on his horse’s mane. Now he looked up, meeting Thomas’s gaze. “So you — you would have done the same, in my place?”
“Oh yes,” Thomas told him, “I would have done as you have done; and after, I would have felt just as sick as you feel about it, Tussun my brother.”
The chief falconer appeared in the mouth of the scrub-filled hollow, the missing saker sitting angry and bedraggled on his fist. “We have got her back, Excellency — In Allah’s name pray you do not fly her again today.”
“I have done enough harm for one day,” Tussun agreed. And swung himself back into the saddle. “Come, we will return to the city.”
26
Muhammed Ali kept his word as to the wives and treasure. He appointed a distant cousin of Ghalid’s, a man who he knew he could handle, to be Grand Shariff in his stead. He let it be understood that he had received orders from the Sultan to depose Shariff Ghalid, and not merely permission to do as he thought best. But few people believed him, and evil did indeed come of that day’s work, despite all the Viceroy’s efforts to turn it aside.
The dust had scarcely settled behind the outgoing High Shariff and his escort, when Shariff Rajik, his finest cavalry leader, who until then had been acting as Commander of Irregulars for the expeditionary force, gathered his horsemen and rode out of the Hijaz, while many others of the Grand Shariffs Bedouin allies melted away overnight to join the southern Wahabis.
A month later, Muhammed Ali, launching his new campaign, ordered Tussun with three thousand infantry and a thousand horse under Thomas, against the fortress town of Terraba.
The expedition was a disaster from the start.
They should have covered the distance from Teif into the eastward mountains in eight or nine days’ camel march, but the tribes along the way, furious at the Viceroy’s treatment of the Grand Shariff, turned it into a running fight; sniped at the column from behind every rock, forced a skirmish for every well and waterhole, so that the march took more than double the expected time, and the Egyptian troops arrived in poor condition for the storming of fortresses, having suffered casualties — not heavy, but enough — and with supplies already running low.
And of all fortresses, they had no heart for the storming of Terraba, with its black reputation and its witch-widow commander, known to be possessed of the evil eye …
They made their camp within reach of the last well before the town; one well among four thousand men with their horses and camels, the water so strongly alkaline as to be almost undrinkable; but at least without a dead goat in it. Poisoning the wells was the one thing the tribes could seldom afford to do.
On the first day they tried storming the place, after a long softening up by gunfire from their six light field pieces, but were flung back with heavy losses. They brought off their wounded, those they could, at evening; their dead still lay for the most part sprawled among the almond trees below the dark fortress walls.
A couple of long black tents for the wounded had been pitched in the shelter of a rocky outcrop, and the army surgeons were moving to and fro among the shapes on the ground. Thomas, squatting beside one of the shapes, was aware of the familiar sick-tent smell of blood and ordure, the throat-catching reek of hot pitch and astringent herbs and the acrid smell of pain; aware also of a low ceaseless moaning, somebody cursing as ceaselessly through shut teeth, somebody crying out under the hakim’s cautery. Two men lurched by, carrying a third who no longer belonged among the living. The nearest of the lanterns hanging from the tent poles showed him the face of the man, one of his own troopers, beside whom he squatted. Always, after fighting, he would put in whatever time he could spare among the wounded; any wounded, but his own had first claim on him.
He felt the man’s hand tighten convulsively in his, and the dazed eyes clung to his face. If he lasted until morning it was as much as he would do. Thomas knew the look, knew the strangely empty feel of the hand, for all the tense strength of its hold. “You will not leave us to them,” the man said, his blanched lips scarcely moving.
“There is no question of leaving, Musa,” Thomas said. “We are here to take Terraba, not to re
treat from it.”
“That is as Allah wills. But however Allah wills, you will not leave us to them?”
“No.” Thomas said, “Have no fear of that.”
The man’s eyes half closed as the reassurance reached him, the clinging hand grew slack. Thomas’s own grip tightened for an instant; then he withdrew his hand and got up. “Sleep now, my brother.”
He ducked out through the looped-back opening, and made his way up towards the dark crouching shape of the headquarters in the camp, a constant coming and going among the cooking fires and between them and the horse and camel lines; a mood that was not like the normal mood of a war camp at the day’s end; not even like the mood following an unsuccessful attack, which in Thomas’s experience was most often a kind of bloody-minded apathy. This was something different, an uneasiness that made him think of thunder in the air or bees about to swarm. A mood which had little outward sign save for that constant drifting movement and the way men gathered into knots and glanced behind them for no cause, but which was all the more disquieting for that.
Just short of the commander’s tent he glanced without any special intention at the fortress rising above its thickets of apricot and almond trees at the head of the wadi. The sunset light was fading from its walls, twilight spreading up over them like a bruise, though the last glow was still the colour of ripe apricots on the mountain crests beyond. Only at the highest point of the fortress, a light pricked out as though from a tower window. Ghalia’s window, maybe, and the witch looking out of it, down the Wadi to the camp below. For the moment something in Thomas’s normal state of consciousness seemed to slip sideways, and the superstitious Highland blood in him took over and showed him the prick of light as an eye; the golden eye of something watching like a great cat. He was aware of others in the camp beside himself looking the same way, or carefully turning their gaze away as though avoiding the golden stare; as though to meet it would be to let something in.
He shook his shoulders, and turned his own gaze firmly back to the dimly fire-lit entrance of the commander’s tent.
Beyond the heavy back-thrust entrance folds, Tussun and Abdin Bey and the other senior officers were gathered. Thomas joined them. The evening pile of rice and goat flesh on its brass tray was in their midst, and they were talking as they ate. He leaned forward and balled up a neat mouthful of it with the fingertips of his right hand, concentrating on the meticulous performing of the small action, as though it were a barrier against that odd unchancy moment outside.
“If we had bigger guns —” one of the men said.
“If-if-if. How would we get heavy guns up here?”
“Then, Allah knows it, we might as well have none at all, and be spared the company of those accursed artillery camels, for all the use that these light fieldpieces are against strong-built walls such as Terraba.”
“And we cannot sit here on our haunches and starve them out, with our own supply lines gnawed ragged behind us. We shall starve ourselves before they do.”
Tussun said, “I was not there, but was the problem not much the same at Medina?” And turned to look at Thomas, several of the others following suit.
“The walls of Medina are set in earth above volcanic tufa,” Thomas said. “Seemingly Terraba springs from solid rock.”
“More difficult to mine,” Abdin Bey agreed, “but impossible?”
Thomas spread his hands “Who can say?”
“I am thinking that maybe Ibrahim Agha could say,” Tussun told him, and Thomas saw something not far from desperation in his friend’s face. “This I know, that whatever is done must be done swiftly, before the Thing that is abroad in the camp has time to breed.”
There was a silence in which Thomas heard far off the jackals crying behind the uneasy sounds of the camp. The men about him stirred, or grew for a moment unnaturally still. He saw Abdin Bey making the sign against the evil eye with a hand only half concealed by his sleeve. “Allah have mercy on us!” he thought. “We all feel it, the leaders as well as the led. It only needs one more thing — even quite a small thing …”
“With your permission,” he said formally, “I will take two to cover me, and reconnoitre the walls before dawn.”
But the reconnaissance was never made, no mine ever driven under the walls of Terraba.
Not much above two hours later, scarcely past the time of evening prayer, Tussun stood with Thomas at his shoulder, again confronting Abdin Bey and the senior Albanian officers. Tussun Pasha was in a blazing rage. Thomas was not, but only because he had learned over the years that rage, when nothing could be changed by it, was a waste of time and energy and served only to cloud the judgment.
“They say they will not attack Terraba again,” Abdin Bey was repeating stubbornly. “It is abroad in the camp that Rajik and his horsemen are close by in the hills — sent by ibn Saud from Diriyah.”
“There has been no report of them from the scouts,” Tussun said.
“The scouts have already played us false as to the strength of the garrison here at Terraba. Many of them have melted back into the hills. Your Honour, they are no longer to be trusted since —”
“Since?”
“Since His Excellency the Viceroy — let Your Honour forgive me — found it needful to treat the Grand Shariff in — a certain way.”
“His Excellency the Viceroy, my father,” Tussun began, and broke off, aware even in his rage that an undignified shouting match was not the answer.
Abdin Bey went on, staring straight in front of him: “The men say, furthermore, that it is well known the Sheikha Ghalia is a witch, able to throw a cloak of invisibility over those she chooses to befriend, and this camp may be surrounded even now by her Wahabi garrison and by Shariff Rajik’s cavalry.”
“Are they children to be frightened by children’s tales of djinnis and afrits?” Tussun demanded.
“No. Yet they are but mortal men … It is said that she can turn herself into a great cat, and tear out the hearts of men.”
“As much is said of any village crone.”
“And who shall say there is not truth in the saying?” Tussun said, “You too? You too, Abdin Bey? You are no better than the rest of them!”
Abdin Bey did not answer, but stood his ground, giving his commander back look for furious look.
The junior infantry colonel spoke up for the first time: “Excellency, we speak for our men. If the thing that is in their hearts finds a place also in ours, shall we be blamed? It is well known that the Sheikha Ghalia is indeed possessed of the evil eye. The men — all of us — feel it upon us, and we are afraid. Do you not feel it? Ibrahim Agha, do not you? If we attack Terraba again, terrible things will happen; we shall all be destroyed —”
“Are you not soldiers? Is it not for this that you take your pay?”
“It is not only for our bodies that we fear, but for our very souls.”
“Your souls are safe in the hands of Allah,” Thomas put in quickly, also speaking for the first time.
But the memory of those strange few moments on the way up from the hospital tent was with him still; his sense of being watched, held powerless in the sight-line of a great golden cat’s eye. He understood what was within these men, as Tussun, often described as being brave as a lion, but who in actual fact was merely one of those born incomplete, with no normal sense of fear, could not possibly do.
He tried, all the same, loyally backing the pasha’s furious attempt to make the officers change their minds, to talk fresh heart into the rank and file, until the moment came for accepting the ugly truth.
Afterward, alone with him in the torch-lit tent, he put the thing straight to his friend and commander: “There is no way that you are going to take Terraba with these men, if you try forcing them they will fall apart into a disorganised rabble; they will melt into the hills and probably throw in their lot with the Wahabis.”
“So we are to march back to Mecca and say to my father that we failed to attempt Terraba for fear of witchcraft
? I do not think he will be made happy.”
“We have already attempted Terraba, and have heavy losses to show for it,” Thomas said. “We had already lost men enough before we got here, having, as Abdin Bey pointed out, lost the loyalty of the tribes for a certain reason, and received false information as to the strength of the Wahabi garrison. I suggest that we pull out before dawn, while we still have the cover of darkness, and retreat to Teif — some of us should make it — and say that to your father the Viceroy.”
“That also will not make him happy,” Tussun said after a long silence. “But Allah’s curse upon it, I see, I do see Thomas, that we have no choice.”
“None,” Thomas said bleakly.
The officers were recalled and given their orders. And the desperate and all too short night began. Thomas sent up a prayer of thankfulness that there was no moon. There was too much light for comfort even so, for the watch-fires must be kept up as for any other night, while in what there was of darkness between them, men came and went about the business of striking camp. They buried their dead shallowly on the fringe of the camp with rocks piled over. There would be nothing for an enemy scout to think strange in that; no war camp left its dead over from one day to the next. What little food remained was divided up and issued, two days’ rations to each man; water bottles were filled. The small-arms ammunition boxes were stacked ready for last-minute loading on to the artillery camels. To dismantle and load the guns would be sure to catch watching eyes and betray their purpose; the guns must be spiked at the last moment and abandoned. The three long tents must also be left standing, but all that they contained was brought out of them, including those of the wounded who could walk or ride or lie across a camel. For those too sore hurt to be moved, there was another kind of mercy: shadows beginning to disappear into the emptying hospital tents, and come out again stooping to cleanse the blade of knife or dagger in the rough grass between the rocks.
Thomas, eating his morning issue of dates and hard goat’s milk cheese on his way down to the horse-lines, was aware of that shadowy coming and going through every fibre of his being, remembering Musa’s plea of last evening — “You will not leave us to them?” He had given the needful order; but he was thankful that the mercy-stroke was given by friend for friend, kinsman for kinsman, and he had no need to play any further part in the matter.