The Triumph Of The Sun

Another shot from the tannery floor hissed past Ryder’s head and kicked a slab of plaster and cement dust from higher up the wall. He glanced down in time to see the Egyptian guards who had escorted the last delivery of grain run back into the warehouse. He realized they must have seen the flames and heard the gunfire. They were blazing away wildly, stabbing with bayonet and sword at Bacheet’s men. The one who had fired at Ryder reloaded his carbine, then swung up the stubby barrel and took deliberate aim at him. Helpless, Ryder watched the flash of the muzzle blast, and the swirling bouquet of black powder smoke. Another bullet clanged on the steel foot plate inches above his head. It galvanized him and he hauled himself up the last few feet on to the catwalk. He jumped to his feet and raced after al-Faroque.

The Egyptian had disappeared through the low door at the far end of the catwalk. Ryder reached the opening, expecting another bullet from the marksman below, but when he glanced down he saw the trooper flopping about on the concrete floor like a fresh-caught catfish in the bottom of the boat. Bacheet was standing over him with one foot on his throat, trying to pull the buried spearhead out of his chest. Just then one of the enemy charged at him. Bacheet gave one last heave, the spear came free and he levelled it at his new assailant.

Ryder saw that his own men on the floor below were heavily outnumbered, and although they were fighting like gladiators they were gradually being overwhelmed. He was on the point of letting al-Faroque escape and turning back to join them when another two men ran into the warehouse through a rear door.

“More power to the glorious 10th!” Ryder roared, as he recognized Penrod Ballantyne and Yakub with him, dagger in hand. Penrod parried the bayonet thrust that the Egyptian lieutenant levelled at his face, then caught him with the riposte, sabring him cleanly through the throat; the silver blade parted the lieutenant’s vertebrae, and was blurred with pink blood as it came out through the back of his neck. Penrod recovered his blade smoothly, and the Egyptian fell to the ground. His heels drummed spasmodically on the concrete as he went into his death throes. Penrod had a moment to wave casually at Ryder, who pointed through the door at the end of the catwalk.

“It’s al-Faroque!” he yelled at Penrod. “He went that way. Try to cut him off.” That was all he had time for, and he did not know if Penrod had heard, let alone understood. The flames were roaring like a mighty waterfall, and the entire contents of the warehouse were burning furiously, flames racing up the dry timber beams that supported the walls and roof.

So much for my reward, Ryder thought bitterly. Coughing in the smoke, he ran on after al-Faroque. He reached the low door at the end of the catwalk through which the man had disappeared, and stuck his head through it. He sucked in a deep breath of sweet night air and, through streaming eyes, saw that beneath him another ladder ran down the rear wall of the tannery, to the towpath of the canal.

Al-Faroque was still struggling with the folds of his cassock on the bottom rungs of the ladder, but when he saw Ryder’s head he let go and dropped the last six feet to land on his hands and knees. He scrambled up, unhurt, and looked up at Ryder. “Get back!” he shouted. “Don’t try to stop me.” He tried again to hoist the tangled skirts of his cassock, and succeeded in reaching the holster on his belt. He drew the revolver and aimed it at Ryder. The light of the flames through the rear windows of the tannery lit the towpath brightly. Ryder saw that the major’s hand was shaking. Oily drops of sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped from his double chins. He fired two quick shots, which struck the wall on each side of the door. Ryder ducked back inside and heard al-Faroque’s footsteps running away along the towpath.

If he reaches the alley, he might get away, Ryder thought, as he clambered out of the door and swung on to the top rungs of the escape ladder. He went down it swiftly, dropped the last ten feet and landed with such force that he bit his tongue. He spat out the blood, and saw that al-Faroque had a lead on him of at least a hundred yards. He had almost reached the corner of the building.

Still carrying his club Ryder raced after him, but al-Faroque dodged round the corner and was gone. Seconds later Ryder reached it, and saw he was half-way down the alley, moving with amazing speed for such a portly figure. Ryder launched himself after him. Once al-Faroque reached the end of the alley he would disappear into the tangled maze of streets beyond. He’ll not wait for us to catch him. He’ll clear out of Khartoum tonight, Ryder thought grimly. By dawn he will be across the river and converted into the Mahdi’s most faithful disciple. What mischief he can do us over there! He was starting to gain on him. But not fast enough, he thought.

As al-Faroque reached the end of the alley, an elegant figure stepped out of a dark doorway and kicked his back foot across the other. Al-Faroque crashed to earth with a force that drove the air from his lungs. However, he wriggled forward on his plump belly and tried to reach the revolver that had flown from his hand as he went down, but as his fingers closed over the butt Penrod stamped hard on his wrist, pinning his hand.

Ryder came up, stooped over him, and cracked him across the back of his skull with the club. Al-Faroque’s face dropped and he snored into the filth of the alley floor.

“A perfect flying trip,” Ryder said to Penrod, with admiration. “Doubtless perfected on the rugger fields of Eton.”

“Not Eton but Harrow, my dear fellow. And don’t confuse the two,” Penrod corrected him. Then, as Yakub appeared at his side, he changed easily into Arabic: “Tie him up tidy and tight. Gordon Pasha will be interested to talk to him.”

“Perhaps he will allow me to watch the execution?” Yakub asked hopefully, as he unbuckled al-Faroque’s belt and used it to strap his arms behind his back.

“Gentle Yakub,” said Penrod, “I have no doubt that he will prepare a place for you in the very front row of the entertainment.”

By now the sky and the rooftops of the city were brightly lit by the blazing tannery. They left al-Faroque to Yakub, and ran back to the main gate. The heat of the flames was so intense that the combatants were being driven out of the building into the open. As they emerged from the doors or jumped from the windows, Bacheet and his Arabs were waiting for them. There were pugnacious shouts and bellows, the clash of blades and a few shots, but gradually most of the renegade Egyptian garrison troops were rounded up. A few managed to escape into the alleys, but Yakub went after them.

Dawn was breaking as the survivors were marched in clanking chains up to the gates of Mukran Fort. General Gordon watched their arrival from the battlements, and sent for Penrod. His benign expression turned to cold fury when he learnt of the destruction of three thousand sacks of his precious dhurra. “You let a civilian take command of the raid?” he demanded of Penrod, and his blue eyes blazed. “Courtney? The trader and black-marketeer? A shabby fellow without a patriotic scruple or a shred of social conscience?”

“I beg your pardon, General, but Courtney was every bit as committed to the recovery of the missing grain as we were. In fact, his agents discovered where it was hidden,” Penrod pointed out mildly.

“His commitment went as far as twelve shillings a sack, and not a penny further. If you had taken command this fiasco might well have been avoided.” Gordon stood on tiptoe to glare at him. Penrod stood rigidly to attention and, with an effort, kept his mouth grimly shut.

With an obvious effort Gordon regained his equanimity. “Well, at least you were able to apprehend the ring leader. I am not at all surprised to find that it was Major al-Faroque. I am going to make an example of him to stiffen the remainder of the garrison. I am going to have him and his accomplices shot from the mouth of a cannon.”

Penrod blinked. This was a particularly savage military punishment reserved for the most outrageous crimes. As far as he knew, it had last been performed on the captured sepoys after the suppression of the mutiny in India almost thirty years ago.

“I would shed no tears if that scoundrel Courtney were to share the same fate.” The little general stamped to the window of his headquarters and scowled across the river at the enemy lines. “However, I don’t suppose I can do that to an Englishman,” he growled, ‘more’s the pity. But I will decide on something that will leave him in no doubt of my true estimate of his conduct and his moral worth. It will have to be something that affects the contents of his purse. That is where he keeps his conscience.”

Penrod knew that by far his best policy was silence. The good Lord knows I cherish no great affection for Ryder Courtney, he thought. No doubt we will soon be at daggers drawn over the favours of a young lady of our mutual acquaintance. Yet it is difficult to suppress a sneaking admiration for the fellow’s brains and courage.

Gordon turned back from the window and pulled his gold hunter from his pocket by its chain. “Eight o’clock. I want this rogue al-Faroque and his minions tried, sentenced and ready for execution by five this afternoon. I want it done in public on the maid an to make the deepest impression on the populace. I cannot abide black-marketeering in this city where most of the populace is starving. You are in charge, Ballantyne, and I want it done properly.”

It had all gone off very well, Penrod decided, as he wandered down the terrace of the consular palace before he retired for the night. He came to a stately tamarind tree whose branches overshadowed half the terrace and leant against the trunk. He was smoking the Cuban cigar that Ryder Courtney had pressed upon him when they parted. Cour-teney had declined the invitation to attend the executions. ‘I don’t blame him. I myself would rather have been employed elsewhere,” he murmured.

He felt slightly queasy as he thought about it now, and he took a long, deep draw on the cigar. At five o’clock that afternoon almost the entire garrison of Khartoum had paraded on the maid an to witness punishment. Only the minimum strength was left to man the de fences of the city. Although they had not been ordered to do so, it seemed that the entire civilian populace, too, lined the perimeter of the parade ground three and four deep. The eight Krupps guns were lined up wheel to wheel and aimed at maximum elevation toward the besieging Dervish hordes in Omdurman. The ammunition shortage was too severe to waste even these eight rounds: after they had completed the primary destruction they would fly on across the river to burst among the legions of besiegers and, with luck, kill a few more of the enemy.

The first to be marched out were the black-marketeers and merchants of the city who had been caught red-handed with stocks of al-Faroque’s grain. Ali Muhammad Acrani was at the head of the file. When Penrod had searched his premises behind the hospital he had found six hundred sacks hidden in the slave cells under the barra coons

The prisoners were lined up close behind the guns. Gordon Pasha had sentenced them to watch the executions. In addition all their possessions, including the contraband dhurra, were confiscated. Finally they were to be expelled from the city to take their chances on the clemency of the Mahdi and his Ansar across the river. Penrod considered their fate. Given the same choice, I think I would have preferred the kiss of the gunner’s daughter, he decided.

His mind went back to that afternoon’s programme of entertainment on the maid an When all the spectators were assembled, Penrod had given the order and Major al-Faroque and the seven other condemned men were marched, out from the cells of Mukran Fort. They wore full dress uniform. Each man stood to attention in front of the artillery piece to which he was allocated. The regimental sergeant major read out the charges and sentences in a stentorian voice that carried to every one of the spectators. They craned forward to catch the words ‘… that they shall be shot from guns.” A hum of anticipation went up from the packed ranks. This was something none of them had ever witnessed. They held up their babies and young children for a better view.

They watched the sergeant major roll up the charge sheet and hand it to a runner, who carried it to where Gordon Pasha and Captain Ballantyne stood. The man saluted and handed the roll to the general. “Very well.” Gordon returned the salute. “Carry out the sentences.”

The sergeant marched smartly down the rank of condemned men, halting before each in turn and ceremoniously ripping the insignias of rank and merit from their shoulders and the breasts of their tunics. He threw the golden crowns, chevrons and medals into the dust.

When the eight men stood in their torn clothing, forlorn and dishonoured, he gave another order. One at a time the condemned were led to the waiting guns and spreadeagled over them. The gaping muzzles were aimed into the centre of their chests and their arms strapped along each side of the shining black barrels. From this grotesque embrace they would receive the kiss of the gunner’s daughter. Al-Faroque threw himself down in the dust of the parade ground. He howled, wept and drummed his heels. Finally he had to be carried to his gun by the soldiers.

“Prepared to carry out the sentence,” the sergeant major bellowed.

“Carry on, Sergeant Major!” Penrod snapped back, his face and voice expressionless.

The sergeant major drew his sword and raised the bare blade. The drummer-boy at his side raised his sticks to his lips, then dropped them to the drumhead in a long roll. The sergeant major dropped his sword blade, and the drummer stopped abruptly. There was a momentary silence and even Penrod drew a sharp breath. The first gun bellowed.

The victim disappeared for an instant in a cloud of dense grey powder smoke. Then the separate parts of his torso were spinning high in the air. There was a stunned silence after the explosion, then a spontaneous burst of cheering from the spectators as the head fell back to earth and rolled across the sunbaked clay.

The sergeant major raised his sword again. The drum rolled, and was again abruptly cut short. Another thunderous discharge. This time the spectators were anticipating the result and the wild applause was mixed with hoots of laughter. Al-Faroque was last in the line and as his turn came closer he screamed for mercy. The crowd yelled in imitation, and al-Faroque’s bowels voided noisily. Liquid faeces stained the back of his breeches. The hilarity of the watchers swelled to a bellow as the drum rolled for the eighth and last time. Al-Faroque’s head leapt higher in the air than that of any man who had preceded him.

Penrod examined the stub of his cigar and decided regretfully that he could not take another draw without scorching his fingertips. He dropped it on to the flags of the terrace and ground it out under his heel. Although it was late and he had already made his nightly rounds of the city’s de fences he still had a pile of paperwork to complete before he could think of bed. Gordon would want all his lists and reports first thing in the morning. The little martinet made no allowances for the contingencies of the siege and the heavy load he had already placed on Penrod’s shoulders: “We have to keep up to scratch, Ballantyne, and set an example.”

At least he spares himself even less than he does me, Penrod thought.

He straightened up from the tree, preparing to make his way up to the quarters that David Benbrook had allocated to him, when a small movement on one of the second-floor balconies caught his eye. The door to the balcony had opened and he was able to see into the room beyond it. The interior was lit by an oil lamp that stood on a ladies’ dressing-table, and he could just make out the upright posts and canopy of the bed. The wallpaper was patterned with red roses and sprigs of greenery.

A slim feminine figure appeared in the doorway, backlit by the lamp, which spun a golden nimbus about her head, like a medieval painting of the Madonna. Even though he could not see her face, he recognized Rebecca immediately. She wore a robe of some lustrous material with a pale blue sheen, probably crepe-de-Chine. It fitted her closely, emphasizing the curve of her waist and hip, and leaving her arms bare below the elbows. She came to the front of the balcony where the moonlight added subtle silver tones to the golden lamplight behind her.

She gazed down on to the garden and terrace below her but did not see him, half concealed by the wide branches of the tamarind. She gathered her skirts and, with a graceful movement, swung her lower body up until she was sitting on the balcony wall. Her feet were bare, and her legs exposed to the knees. Her calves were shapely, her feet small and girlish. Penrod was enthralled by their elegance. Now the lamplight struck her in profile and left the other half of her face in mysterious moon shadow. She held an ivory-backed brush in one hand, and her long blonde hair was loose. She stroked the brush through it, beginning at the pale parting that ran down the centre of her scalp and ending at her waist, where the tresses danced and rippled. Her expression was serene and lovely.

Penrod wanted to move close enough to study every plane and angle of her face and perhaps even to catch a trace of her perfume. Despite the gloves, the long sleeves and the wide-brimmed straw hat that she wore habitually during the day, the skin of Rebecca’s bare arms and legs was not fashionably milky but a light gold. Her neck was long and graceful, her head tilted at a beguiling angle. She began to hum softly. He did not recognize the tune, but it was a siren song he could not resist. He moved closer to the balcony with the caution of a hunter, waiting for her to close her eyes briefly at the completion of each brush stroke before he took another small step towards her. Now he could hear the intake of her breath at the end of each bar of the tune and almost feel the warmth and texture of her lips under his own. He imagined the tremulous way in which they would part to allow him to taste the apple-sweet juices of her mouth.

At last she set aside the brush, twisted her hair into a thick rope and coiled it on top of her head. She drew a long hairpin with a jewelled head from the lapel of her gown and reached up to secure her hair. As she did so she turned her head away and Penrod took advantage of this to step forward again.

She froze like a gazelle sensing the stalk of the leopard. He stood still and held his breath. Then she turned to face him and her eyes flew wide. She stared down at him for a moment, then swung her legs back into the balcony and sprang to her feet. Her lips framed a silent accusation: “You were spying!”

Then she whirled away through the open door and closed it behind her, with just a faint click of the latch, as though she did not want anyone else to hear. As though the fact that he had been spying on her was a secret between them. Penrod’s heart was drumming and his breath came faster. He regretted that he had frightened her away. He wished he had been able to watch her a little longer, as though he might have learnt some secret by studying her unsuspecting face.

He left the terrace and, as he mounted the main spiral staircase to his own quarters, his predatory instinct, which, for a brief interlude, had been replaced by an almost reverential awe, reasserted itself. He smiled. At least we now know where to find Mademoiselle’s boudoir, should the need arise, he thought.

Unlike her twin, Amber was unperturbed by what they had witnessed when they burst in upon their elder sister and Ryder. She was the only one of the Benbrook sisters who returned to his compound the following day. She arrived at the usual hour with Nazeera in tow and immediately took charge of the team of three dozen Sudanese women who were manufacturing the precious green-cake. She relished not having to share the authority with Saffron.

Bacheet found his master in the workshop at the harbour and whispered his report. Ryder looked up from the this’s main steam line, which he and Jock McCrump were welding. “Her sisters?” Ryder demanded. “Miss Saffron and Miss Rebecca?”

Bacheet shook his head. “Only Miss Amber.” This was not a conversation that Ryder wanted to share with Jock McCrump and the this’s stokers and oilers. He jerked his head towards the door and Bacheet followed him out.

They were half-way back to the compound before Ryder broke the silence. “What happened, Bacheet?” Bacheet looked innocently uncomprehending, but Ryder was certain that he had shared Nazeera’s mattress last night and knew every detail of what had transpired during the past twenty-four hours in the ladies’ quarters of Her Britannic Majesty’s consular palace.

“Tell me what you know,” he insisted.

“I am a simple man,” said Bacheet. “I know horses and camels, the cataracts and currents of the Nile. But what do I know of a woman’s heart?” He shook his head. “Perhaps you should enquire of these mysteries from one much wiser than I.”

“Send Nazeera to me.” Ryder stifled a smile. “I shall wait for her at the monkey cages.”

Nazeera approved of Ryder Courtney. Of course, he had the parboiled look of most ferenghi, and his eyes were a disconcerting and unnatural shade of green, but a man’s looks and age counted for little if he was a good provider. This one’s wives would never starve: he was a man strong in body and resolve, and he would protect his own. Yet there was a gentleness in him. He would never beat his women, unless their behaviour truly invited it. Yes, she approved of him. It was to be regretted that, so far, al-Jamal had not displayed equal good sense.

She came to the animal compound, and whispered to old Ali that he should stay within call but out of earshot. She might be a widow and almost forty years of age, but she was a devout, respectable woman. She had convinced herself that she was the only one who knew of her discreet friendships with Yakub and Bacheet.

She greeted Ryder, asked the blessings of the Prophet for him, touched her heart and lips, then squatted at a polite distance from him. She drew her shawl over the lower part of her face and waited for him to speak.

Ryder asked after her health, and she assured him that she was well. Then he asked after the health of her charges.

“Al’Jamal is well.”

“I am happy to hear that. I was worried about her. She has not come to help the women today.”

Nazeera inclined her head slightly but made no comment.

“Nazeera, is she angry with me?” he asked.

She drew a sharp breath of disapproval. The question lacked even a semblance of subtlety. She should not dignify it with a reply. However, this time she would make allowances for him: after all, he was an infidel.

“Al-Jamal feels that you took advantage of her trust. She was in need of comfort and counsel so she came to you as a friend, but you behaved like a lecher.”

Bacheet saw Ryder’s face crumple with dismay.

“Lecher?” he asked. “She is wrong. I bear her great respect and affection. I am not a lecher.”

Nazeera was balanced on a knife edge of loyalty. She could not tell him that the real offence was that they had been discovered not only by the twins but also by the pretty captain. But she liked him enough to give him a light word of comfort. “I love her like my own daughter, but she is a young girl and understands nothing, not even her own heart. She will change with the moon and the wind and the current, like a dhow without a captain. When she says she wishes never to see someone again, she means at least until midnight, but probably not until noon tomorrow.”

Ryder pondered this as he offered a morsel of green-cake through the bars of the cage to Lucy, the vervet monkey. She was due to give birth at any moment. She seized his wrist and licked the last crumbs from his fingers.

“What should I do, Nazeera?” He asked.

She shook her head. Men were such children. “Anything you do now will only make matters worse. Do nothing. I will tell her how much you are suffering. Most young girls like to hear that. When it is time to do so we will speak again.”

Ryder was much cheered, by this offer of assistance. “But what of Saffron? Why has she not come to help Amber?”

“Filfil feels as strongly about your behaviour as her eldest sister.” Filfil was the Arabic word for pepper, and also Saffron’s nickname. “She also has expressed an intention never to speak to you again. She says that she wishes to die.”

Ryder looked alarmed again. “A single kiss, and a fairly chaste one at that. Now she wants to die?”

“Long ago she chose you as her future husband. She has even discussed the details with me. I should warn you now that she will never allow you to have more than one wife.”

Ryder burst out in incredulous laughter. “What a sweet and funny child she is, but a child nevertheless.”

“In a few short years she will be of marriageable age,” Nazeera did not smile, ‘and she has made her plans.”

Ryder laughed again, but this time with a note of trepidation. “Nazeera, I do not wish to encourage her to believe in the impossible, but nor do I wish to hurt her. Will you give her my message? Will you tell her that there is important work for her to do? I need her here.”

“I will tell her, Effendi,” Nazeera rose to her feet and bowed, ‘but she will need more encouragement than that to forgive your infidelity. But now I must go to help al-Zahra,” Amber’s Arabic name meant ‘the Flower’. “We can never make enough of the green-cake to feed so many hungry mouths.”

After she had gone Ryder lingered a few minutes longer at the monkey cage, pondering his predicaments. Lucy perched at the bars, belly bulging between her knees, and offered her head to his caress. She loved to be scratched behind the ears, and to have her fur searched for vermin. At last Ryder sighed and made to leave the cage. Lucy seized his hand as he tried to pull it out through the bars, and sank her sharp white fangs into his thumb.

“You creature, you!” He cuffed her lightly. She shrieked, as though in mortal anguish, and shot to the top of the cage where she gibbered at him furiously.

“A plague on you, and all female wiles!” he scolded, and sucked his thumb as he left the enclosure to go down to the harbour. Today Jock McCrump hoped to complete the repairs to the hull and engine, and he was planning to take the this out on her trials.

Penrod stood on the parapet of the forward redoubt on the riverbank opposite Tutti Island. He stamped on the sandbags to test their solidity. As the stores of dhurra were used up he had the empty sacks filled and worked into weak points in the fortifications. “That will do!” he told the Egyptian sergeant in charge of the work detail. “Now we need a few more timber baulks in the embrasures of the gun pits.” Under General Gordon’s orders, he was stripping the abandoned buildings, and using their timbers to strengthen the fortifications.

He strode along the top of the sandbagged wall, pausing every fifty or hundred paces to survey the riverbank below. He had placed marker pegs in the strip of muddy earth between the foot of the wall and the edge of the water. A month ago the Nile had lapped the wall three feet from the top. Two weeks ago a few inches of mud had appeared at the foot of the wall. Now the strip of bank was six feet wide. Each day the river was falling. Within the next few months it would enter the stage of Low Nile. This was what the Dervish were waiting for. The wide banks would dry out to give a safe mooring for the dhows ferrying their legions across the river, and a firm footing from which to launch a final assault on the city.

Penrod jumped down on to the mud flat and moved his pegs out to the edge of the receding river. In places there were now fifteen or twenty feet of exposed bank. They will need a lot more ground from which to launch a full’ scale attack, he decided, but the river is falling rapidly. The Mahdi had shrewd and experienced warlords commanding his army, men like Osman Atalan. Soon they would start probing the de fences with midnight raids and sorties. Where will they strike us first? he wondered. He walked on along the perimeter, looking for the weak spots. By the time he reached Mukran Fort he had picked out at least two points where he could expect the first raids to strike.

He found General Gordon at one of his favourite lookouts on the parapet of the fort. He was seated under a thatched sunshade at a camp table on which were laid out his binoculars, notebooks and maps. “Sit down, Ballantyne,” he said. “You must be thirsty.” He indicated the earthenware water jug on the table.

“Thank you, sir.” Penrod filled a glass.

“You may rest assured that it has been boiled the full half-hour.” It was a barbed jest. Under threat of flogging, Gordon had ordered all the garrison water to be boiled to those specifications. He had learnt the necessity of this during his campaigns in China. The results were remarkable. Although at first Penrod had believed this was another whim of Gordon’s he had since become a fervent believer. Cholera was raging among the civilian populace of the city, who openly flouted Gordon’s decrees and filled their waterskins from the river and the canal, into which discharged the city sewers. By contrast the garrison troops had suffered only three cases, and all of those had been traced to disobedience and the use of unboiled water. All three victims had died. “Damned lucky for them,” Penrod had remarked to David Benbrook. “If they had lived Gordon would have had them shot.”

“The death of the dog, they call it. Reeking torrents of your own hot excrement and vomit, every muscle and sinew of your body knotted in agonizing cramps, a desiccated skeleton for a body and a head like a skull!” David shuddered. “Not for me, thank you very much. I’ll take my water boiled.”

Penrod felt his skin crawl as he recalled that description: it was so accurate. Yet thirst could kill as swiftly as the cholera. The heat and the desert air sucked the moisture from his body so his throat was parched. He raised the mug, savoured the smell of woodsmoke, which proved it was safe, then drained it in four long swallows.

“Well, now, Ballantyne, what about the north bank?” Gordon never wasted time in pleasantries.

“I have marked a number of weak spots in the line.” Penrod spread his field map on the table and pinned down a corner with the water jug. They pored over it together. “Here and here are the worst. The river level is dropping sharply it’s down another three inches since noon yesterday. Each day exposes us more. We will have to strengthen those places.”

“Heaven knows, we are hard pressed for men and material to keep pace with the work.” Gordon looked up shrewdly at Penrod. “Yes? You have something to suggest?”

“Well, sir, as you say, we cannot hope to maintain the entire line impregnable …” Gordon frowned. He could not abide those he referred to as ‘dismal Johnnies’. Penrod hurried on before he could level the accusation. ‘… so it occurred to me that we should deliberately leave some gaps in our outer de fences to entice the Dervish to attack them.”

“Ah!” Gordon’s frown lifted. “Poisoned gifts!”

“Exactly, sir. We leave an opening, then behind it we set a trap. We run them into one of the blind alleys, and cover it with enfilading fire from the Gatlings.”

Thoughtfully, Gordon rubbed the silver stubble on his chin. They had only two Gatling guns, the rejects of Hicks’s expedition. He had declined to take them with him on the march to El Obeid as he had considered them too cumbersome. Each weapon was mounted on its own heavy gun-carriage, a sturdy axle and two iron-shod wheels. It needed a span of at least four oxen to drag it into action. The mechanisms were fragile and prone to stoppages. Hicks had believed in traditional volley fire from squares of infantry, rather than sustained fire from a single exposed position. He conceded that the Gatlings might be useful in a static defensive position, but he was convinced that there was no place for them in a flying offensive column. He had left the two guns and a hundred thousand rounds of the special .58 bore ammunition in the arsenal at Khartoum when he marched away to annihilation at El Obeid.

Penrod had found them stored in a dark recess of the arsenal, where he had collected a pistol to replace the one Yakub had lost, under dusty tarpaulins. He was familiar with the Gatling. He had selected two teams of the most likely Egyptian troopers under his command, and within a week had taught them to serve the weapons. Even though it was a complicated firing mechanism, they had learnt swiftly. The copper-cased rimfire .58 bore cartridges were fed by gravity from a hopper on top of the weapon. The gunner turned a hand crank, and the six heavy brass barrels rotated around a central shaft. As each bullet dropped from the hopper it was seized by one of the six cam-operated bolts, locked into the breech, fired and ejected by gravity. The rate of fire depended on the vigour with which the gunner turned the crank handle. It required strength and stamina to keep up a sustained fire for longer than a few minutes, but in practice Penrod timed one gun at nearly three hundred rounds in a half a minute. Of course, as soon as it heated it jammed. There was no machine-gun he knew of that did not.

In one respect Hicks had been correct, the Gatling guns were not very mobile. Penrod had realized that, in the event of a surprise night attack, it would not be possible to move them swiftly from one position to another on the ten-kilo metre perimeter of the city’s defence works.

Penrod summarized his plan: “Suck them through the pretended weak spots on to the Gatlings and cut them up, sir.”

“First rate!” Gordon beamed. “Show me again where you propose to set your traps.”

“Well, sir, I thought that here below the harbour would be the most obvious point.” Gordon nodded approval. “The other spot would be here, opposite the hospital.” Penrod prodded the map with his forefinger. “Behind both those positions there is a maze of narrow streets. I will block them with piles of rubble and timber baulks, then site the Gatlings behind strong brickworks…” They discussed the plan over the next hour.

“Very well, Ballantyne. Carry on.” At last Gordon dismissed him.

Penrod saluted and headed for the ramp that led away from the parapet of the fort. Half-way down he paused to peer into the north. Only eyes as sharp as his could have picked out the tiny dark speck in the cloudless steel blue sky. At first he thought it was one of the Saker falcons coming in over the wastes of the Monassir desert from the north. He had noticed that a pair of the splendid birds were nesting under the eaves of the arsenal roof. He watched the tiny shape approaching, then shook his head. “Not the typical falcon wing beat The distant shape grew in size and he exclaimed, “Pigeon!”

He was reminded sharply of his last ride down from the north when he and Yakub had cut the loop of the river. He watched the pigeon’s approach with keen interest. As it approached the river, it began a wide circle high in the steely sky with the city of Omdurman as its centre.

“Pigeon returning to loft.” He recognized the manoeuvre. A pigeon nearly always began a long flight with a number of circles to orient itself, and ended in the same way before it descended to its home. This bird swung wide over the river, then passed almost directly overhead where Penrod stood.

“It’s another bloody Dervish carrier!” He had seen the tiny roll of rice paper tied to its leg. He pulled his watch from his hip pocket and checked the time. “Seventeen minutes past four.” He had bought the watch from Consul Le Blanc at an exorbitant price to replace the one that had been doused on his last crossing of the river.

He watched the pigeon come round in another sweeping circle that carried it over the grounds of the consular palace, then begin a long, slanting descent across the broad waters of the Nile. The last glimpse he had of it was as it dropped in steeply towards the whitewashed dome of the small mosque on the southern outskirts of Omdurman.

As he slipped the watch back into his pocket he had the feeling he was being watched and looked round. General Gordon’s head showed above the parapet. “What is it, Ballantyne?” he called down.

“I can’t be certain, General, but I would wager a gold sovereign to a pinch of dry pigeon droppings that the Mahdi is running a regular bird mail with his army in the north.”

“If you are right, I would give more than a gold sovereign to get my hands on one of his messages.” Gordon stared grimly across the river at the mosque where the pigeon had landed. It was almost a month since Penrod had arrived in the city. Since then they had received no news from Cairo. There was no way of guessing what had happened to General Stewart and his relief column. Had they begun the march? Had they been beaten back? On the other hand perhaps they were only days away.

“Ballantyne, how can you get me one of those pigeons?” Gordon asked quietly.

A little before four the following afternoon Penrod was waiting on the terrace of the consular palace with his head thrown back to watch the northern sky.

“Right on time!” he exclaimed, as the speck appeared in the north sky, slightly to the east of where he had expected it. As it passed over his head he estimated the bird’s speed and height with narrowed eyes. “Two hundred feet if it’s an inch, and going like its tail’s on fire. A long call!” he murmured. “But there is no wind, and I have taken pheasant higher than that.” He stroked his moustache, which was approaching its former glory.

The consular dinner that evening was formal. There were a dozen guests, all that remained of the diplomatic corps and the civil administrators of the Khedive in Cairo. As usual, Rebecca was her father’s hostess. David had sent an invitation to Ryder Courtney, without consulting either Rebecca or Saffron, either of whom would surely have exercised a veto if they had had the chance.

Ryder had been cherishing a young buffalo heifer in the expectations of selling it for an enormous profit when the city was relieved. The prospect of salvation was becoming daily more remote, and the buffalo had a voracious appetite that was increasingly difficult to satisfy. When he received David’s invitation he slaughtered the animal and sent a haunch with two bottles of Cognac to the consular kitchens.

Rebecca recognized the gift as a peace-offering, and it placed her in a terrible quandary. Could she refuse it, when it would make the evening a triumphant success? It would mean acknowledging Ryder’s existence, which she was not yet prepared to do. She solved the dilemma by sending him a note, delivered by Amber, accepting the gift on behalf of her father. She knew this was weakness on her part, but she salved her conscience by derermining not to address a single word to him if he attended the dinner.

Ryder, as was his wont, was the last guest to arrive. He was looking so elegant in his dinner jacket, and seemed so at ease with himself and the world that Rebecca’s anger was exacerbated.

Nazeera lied, she thought, as she watched from the corner of her eye as he chatted affably with her father and Consul Le Blanc. He isn’t suffering in the least.

At that moment she became aware that she, in her turn, was being watched. She glanced round sharply to see Captain Ballantyne studying her from across the room with the knowing smile that had begun to infuriate her. He is always spying, she thought. Before she recovered her poise and looked away, she noticed that his hair and his whiskers had grown out in a rather fetching fashion. She felt her cheeks burn and that disconcerting sensation in her lower belly. She turned to

Imran Pasha, the former governor of Khartoum who was now subservient to General Gordon.

Ten minutes later she glanced around surreptitiously to see whether Captain Ballantyne was still spying on her, and felt a twinge of annoyance when she saw that he was engrossed with the twins or they were with him. Both Amber and Saffron were shrieking with laughter in a most unladylike fashion. She regretted that she had given in to their blandishments and allowed them to join the company instead of making them eat their dinner with Nazeera in the kitchen. She had scored a small point by seating Saffron beside Ryder Courtney: the child would have difficulty holding firm to her vow never to speak to him again. She had placed Captain Ballantyne as far away from herself as possible, at her father’s end of the table.

The buffalo haunch was a glorious pink in the centre, and running with juices. The company fell upon it in ravenous silence. No sooner were the plates removed than Captain Ballantyne whispered a few words to her father, stood up, bowed to her and strode from the room. She knew better than to expect an explanation for his departure. After all, they were at war, and he was responsible for the city’s de fences However, she regretted that she was to be deprived of the opportunity to snub him more profoundly.

She glanced down the table at the second object of her disapproval, and saw that Saffron had obviously forgiven Ryder. At the beginning of the meal he had ignored her haughtiness and had concentrated all his attention on Amber at his right hand. This had brought Saffron close to tears of jealousy. Then he had switched tactics and turned all his charm on her. She had been unprepared for this. “Saffron, did you know that Lucy has had her babies?” Before she realized the trap, she was listening avidly as he told her Lucy had given birth to twins, what the babies looked like, how proud Lucy was of them. He had named them Billy and Lily.

“Oh, can I come and see them tomorrow? Oh, please, Ryder,” Saffron cried.

“But Saffy, Nazeera told me you were not feeling well,” Ryder said.

“That was yesterday. I was feeling rather pea ky Ryder gathered that pea ky was one of her new words. “But I am very well now. Amber and I will be with you at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.” The trial of wills had ended with a complete capitulation on her part.

Rebecca made a small moue at the silliness of the child, and turned her attention back to Consul Le Blanc. She had overheard her father remark to Ryder that he was as queer as a duck with four legs. It was a pity that she was unable to ask Ryder what that meant. It sounded intriguing, and Ryder knew everything. I suppose I will have to forgive him in time, she thought, ‘but not just yet.”

The dessert was pate of green-cake with warm honey sauce: at David Benbrook’s instigation Bacheet had robbed the nest that wild bees had built in the palace roof. He had been sternly restricted to the removal of a single honeycomb David had a sweet tooth and was hoarding the bees’ output. This dish was also warmly received, and the Limoges porcelain dessert bowls were scraped clean.

“I have not enjoyed a meal as much since my last visit to Le Grand Vefour in eighty-one,” Le Blanc assured Rebecca.

Despite his four legs, he is rather a dear old ass,” she thought. In this new mood of benevolence she glanced back at Ryder, caught his eye, then nodded and smiled. His obvious relief was really quite gratifying. Am I becoming fast? she questioned herself. She was not certain what being fast entailed, but her father disapproved of fast women, or said he did.

After their guests had departed and they had climbed the spiral staircase to the bedroom floor her father placed his arm round her shoulders, hugged her and told her how proud he was of her, and what a lovely woman she was growing into.

So he does not think I am becoming fast, Rebecca thought, but nevertheless she felt strangely discontented. As she prepared for bed she whispered, “There is something missing. Why should I feel so unhappy? Life is so short. Perhaps the Mahdi will storm the city tomorrow and it will all be over, and I won’t even have lived.”

As if the monster had heard_ her and stirred in his lair, there came the crash of artillery fire from across the Nile. She heard a shell shriek overhead, then burst somewhere in the native quarter near the canal. With her hair in a golden cloud upon her shoulders she threw on her silk dressing-gown, turned the lamp down low and opened the door to the balcony. She hesitated, feeling guilty and uncertain. “There won’t be anybody there,” she told herself firmly. “It’s after midnight. If he’s still awake, he’ll be at the waterfront with those Gatlings.”

She stepped out on to the balcony and before she could stop herself she glanced down and searched beneath the outspread branches of the tamarind tree. She felt a nasty twinge of disappointment when she realized she had guessed right. Nobody was there. She sighed, leant her elbows on the wall and stared out across the river.

The Bedlam Bedouin is having an early night, she thought. Since sunset there had been only that single cannon shot, and now all was silent. In the moonlight she watched the bats diving and circling as they hunted insects in the top branches of the ficus tree at the bottom of the terrace. After a few minutes she sighed again and straightened up. I’m not sleepy, but it’s late. I should go to bed, she thought.

A vesta flared in the shadows beneath the tamarind tree, and her heart tripped. The flame settled to a yellow glow, and she saw his face lit like the portrait in a cameo, while the rest of him remained shrouded in darkness. He had a long black cigar between his teeth. He placed the tip of it to the match and drew deeply. The flame burned up brightly. “Oh, sweet Jesus, he is so beautiful.” The blasphemy was out before she could quell it. Still holding the burning match in front of his face he looked up at her. She stared back. He was fifty yards away but she was mesmerized, like a bird by a cobra.

He blew out the vesta, and the image of his face was gone. Only the glow of his cigar remained, brighter then fading as he drew on it. The pain came over her again, pervasive and debilitating, until she no longer had control of her emotions. Like a woman in a trance she turned slowly, went back through her bedroom and out into the corridor beyond. She passed the door to her father’s suite, and her bare feet danced faster over the silken carpet that led her to the head of the staircase. She ran down, and was suddenly stricken with the fear that he would be gone by the time she reached the terrace. She fumbled with the latch of the front doors it seemed an eternity before they opened. She ran across the lawn, then stopped dead when she saw his dark shape exactly where it had been.

He took the cigar from his mouth, dropped it on to the stone flags and waited. Her feet moved again, of their own accord, slowly at first then faster. “I don’t - I won’t she stammered.

“Don’t talk,” he commanded. And she was overwhelmed by deep gratitude although she did not understand why. She went into his arms, which closed round her. She lost all contact with reality. His mouth tasted of cigar smoke mingled with precious musk, a distillation of masculine ambergris, a rare elixir of desire. She felt terrified and helpless, yet as safe and secure as though she had been spirited into the keep of a fairy fortress.

Her silk robe and the light cotton nightgown offered no obstacle to him. Her skin beneath them was burning hot, but his cunning fingers ignited deeper and more intense fires within her. She closed her eyes, threw back her head and surrendered to his touch. Suddenly she gasped and her eyes flew open at a sensation almost too exquisite to be borne. The painful knot in the pit of her stomach burst, and a new, wonderful sensation replaced it and diffused through her whole being. She looked down and realized that the front of her gown was open to her navel and his mouth was pressed to her breast. She could feel his teeth upon her nipple, and thought he might bite through to her very heart.

He picked her up and she felt weightless. He laid her on the lawn, and the grass felt cool and soft under her back. He lifted the skirts of her robe and the night air caressed her thighs and belly. She felt his weight come over the top of her. He was touching her where she had never been touched before. Her thighs fell apart.

The cannon across the river roared. She heard the shriek of the approaching shell, and her legs snapped together like the blades of a pair of scissors. The shell flew so close overhead that it took her breath : away so that she could not scream. It crashed into the east wing of the palace, and burst in a cloud of flame, dust, flying plaster and bricks.

With all her strength she thrust him away and rolled out from under him. She jumped up and, long pale legs flashing, ran like a fawn startled from its forest bed, back across the terrace and up the stairs. Frantically she raced to the twins’ room, beside her father’s suite. The door was never locked. She ran in to them, gathered them up and held them tight. She was sobbing with relief to find them safe, and for her own escape. “Are you all right, my darlings? Oh, dear Jesus, thank you for keeping us all safe.” She hugged them closer, but the twins were sleepy and grumpy.

“Why did you wake us up?” demanded Saffron.

“What’s wrong with you, Becky? Why are you crying?” Amber yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Why are you being so silly?”

Before she could reply her father came in through the door, carrying a lantern. “Are you girls all right?”

“What happened? What is all the fuss about?” Saffron clamoured.

“Didn’t even wake you up, what?” David laughed. “The Bedlam Bedouin will be mortified. He’s been shooting at the palace for months. The first time he manages to hit it, you go on sleeping as though nothing had happened. Shows a lack of respect, I’d say.”

“Oh, was it a shell?” Amber said. “I thought it was a dream.”

“Where, Daddy? Where did it hit?”

“The east wing, but it’s deserted. Nobody hurt. No fires. Everything safe.”

The twins were asleep before Rebecca left them, but after she got back to her own bed she could not drop off. She tried a prayer. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, thank you for looking after Papa and the twins. Thank you saving me from…” She did not think it necessary to elaborate: He knew everything. ‘.. . for saving me from a fate worse than death.” She had read that expression somewhere, and now seemed an appropriate time to use it. “Please keep me from temptation.” But the prayer did not seem to help. She did not truly feel as though she had been saved; on the contrary, she felt as though she had been cruelly deprived of something of great value, something as dear as life itself.

She thought about how he had touched her and began to ache again, where his fingers had been. Timidly she ran her own hand down to make sure he had not hurt her. She started with panic as she felt that she was bleeding, all hot and running wet. She pulled away her hand and held it up to the moonlight streaming in through the window. Her fingers were indeed damp but not with blood. She replaced her hand, and felt the pain swelling up inside her. She was panting, and wicked images flashed before her tightly shut eyelids. Penrod Ballantyne standing over her, naked, with the knife in his hand. She imagined his fingers where hers were now.

The huge ball inside her exploded, and the pain was gone. She felt a wonderful sense of elation and freedom. She felt herself falling backwards through the mattress, sinking down into a warm dark nest of sleep. When Nazeera woke her, sunlight was streaming in through the open balcony door.

“What happened to you, Becky? You are glowing like a ripe peach on the bough with the morning sun upon it.”

Arabic is such a romantic language, Rebecca thought. It suits my mood perfectly. “Darling Nazeera, I feel as though this is the very first morning of my life,” she replied, in the same language, and wondered why Nazeera suddenly looked so worried.

Penrod understood David’s reluctance to part for even a few hours with his precious double-barrelled twelve-bore London best guns by James Purdey & Sons. They were extraordinary weapons and had probably cost him as much as fifty pounds each, he guessed. “One hundred and fifty,” David corrected him. “Tsar Alexander of all the Russias and Kaiser William of Germany both have guns almost identical to mine.”

“I assure you that they are needed in the furtherance of an excellent cause, sir. I give you my solemn word of honour that I will look after them as though they were my firstborn,” Penrod wheedled.

“I hope you treat them better than that. It is always possible to beget brats. Purdeys like mine are another matter entirely.”

“Perhaps I should explain why I need to borrow them,” Penrod suggested.

David listened attentively. He became more intrigued as Penrod continued. In the end he sighed with resignation. “Very well, but there is a condition. The twins go with them.” As he saw Penrod’s nonplussed expression he went on, “They are my loaders and I have taught them to pay proper respect to my guns.”

Both girls were delighted to be chosen for the commission, Amber even more so than Saffron. This was an opportunity for her to have her hero to herself for a while. They were ready and waiting on the palace terrace an hour ahead of the appointed time.

When Penrod arrived they insisted on coaching him in the skills of passing and handing the guns. He soon saw how seriously they took their duties: to humour them he pretended ignorance and asked a few asinine questions. “Where do you put the bullets in?”

“They are not bullets, silly. They are cartridges,” Amber explained importantly. She was chief instructress. She and Saffron had debated this issue the previous night, when the lights were out and they were supposed to be asleep. Finally Amber had settled the matter: “Saffy, you can have Ryder as your special friend, but Captain Ballantyne is mine. Remember that!”

When it came to handling the guns, Penrod was deliberately clumsy and slow so that he did not deprive Amber of the pleasure of correcting him.

“When I pass it to you, you must try to remember to hold out your left hand with the palm up, Captain Ballantyne, so I can place the fore-end into your hand.”

“Like this, Miss Amber?” He managed to keep a straight face, as he reflected that he had been about the same age that Amber was now when he had first been allowed to attend his family’s grand shoot at Clercastle on the Borders, and to take his place in the line like a man.

“Don’t hold your hand so high, Captain Ballantyne, otherwise I can’t reach.” She hated to draw attention to the discrepancy in their heights. At last she was satisfied. She even commended him on his progress: “I must say, you do learn quickly, Captain Ballantyne.”

“I think that you and I make an excellent team, Miss Amber,” he replied seriously, and Amber felt quite giddy with gratification.

“Yes, but have you actually ever shot before?” Saffron was feeling left out, a sensation to which she was unaccustomed.

“Once or twice,” Penrod reassured her.

“My papa is one of the best shots in England,” Saffron informed him grandly.

“I am sure Captain Ballantyne will do very well.” Amber pulled a disapproving face at her twin. Could not Saffy keep quiet for once?

“Well, we shall see about that,” said Saffron haughtily.

All three waited impatiently on the terrace, the twins vying with each other to be the first to spot the pigeon. They saw it in the same instant, and squealed with excitement. The bird’s wing tips were bone white. They flashed in the sunlight. It was high as it came in across the river, much too high as it passed overhead. The Purdeys were choked full and full, giving them an effective pattern of pellets at a range out to sixty yards, but this pigeon was at least three hundred feet high.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” Saffron demanded, as it flew on.

“It was well out of range,” Penrod told her. “If I prick the bird and send it wounded to its loft, the Dervish might tumble to what we are up to. They will stop using the birds. We must have a clean kill.”

“Daddy would have killed it easily.”

“Look, it’s coming round again.” Amber tried to prevent her sister baiting the captain.

The pigeon turned wide beyond the scattered buildings of Omdurman, then came back across the river, angling in towards the waterfront, losing height gradually.

“That should do well enough,” Penrod murmured, and brought up the gun. The movement was unhurried, almost casual. His left arm was extended almost straight in line with the barrels, his right cheek pressed to the comb of the butt-stock. He picked up the bird from behind its tail, and swung smoothly through its line of flight. At the final instant, as his forefinger tightened on the trigger, he gave the gun an extra forward flick. It fired and the muzzle kicked up at the recoil. Smoothly he remounted the gun, his hands, shoulder and head dropping into the same position as before. The gun thudded again and jumped with a spurt of black powder smoke from the right-hand muzzle.

“Miss!” cried Saffron.

The bird was so high that there was a perceptible delay after the sound of the shots before the pellets reached it. Then the pigeon lurched and tottered in the air. Its legs dropped and dangled down.

“Hit!” howled Amber.

Then the pattern of the second shot caught the wounded bird and they heard the pellets rattle on its plumage. One pellet struck it under the chin and it threw back its head as the lead cut through to its brain.

“Dead!” Amber shrieked. “Stone dead in the air! Even Papa couldn’t have done better.” The pigeon’s wings folded and it plummeted to earth, but it still had the momentum of its flight and curled out towards the water.

“It’s going to fall into the river,” Penrod shouted with alarm, and tossed the shotgun back to Amber. It took her by surprise but she caught it before it hit the earth. Penrod bounded away down the lawn towards the riverbank, and she ran after him, hampered by the heavy gun.

For a while it looked as though the dead bird might fall on firm ground, but then the breeze caught it. Penrod came up short on the muddy strip of ground above the water’s edge and watched in dismay as the pigeon splashed in thirty yards offshore. The carcass floated in the centre of a spreading circle of ripples and loose blue breast feathers.

“Crocodile!” Amber screamed behind him. A hundred yards beyond the fallen pigeon Penrod saw the monstrous head push through the surface. The skin was gnarled and lumpy as the bark of an ancient olive tree. “Big one!” Amber shouted.

“It’s after the pigeon,” Saffron cried.

Penrod did not hesitate. He pulled off his boots and flung them aside, then ran to the water’s edge ripping off his shirt so that the buttons flew away like sown wheat. His breeches went next and he was left with only his underpants, in a dashing crimson silk. He ran into the green water until it reached his waist, then linked his hands over his head and dived forward. The moment his head broke water again, he struck out in a powerful overarm stroke. The crocodile was drawn on by the commotion, and its great tail thrashed from side to side, driving it to meet Penrod.

“Come back!” wailed Amber. “Leave the silly old bird!”

Penrod swam furiously, kicking hard with both legs, cleaving through the water. The crocodile moved much faster. This was its element, but it had three times further than Penrod to travel. He reached the carcass and thrust the pigeon’s head into his mouth, then turned and started back towards the shore. “Faster!” Amber shouted wildly. “It’s gaining on you! Faster, please! Please!”

The great saurian had fixed all its attention on the man. Instead of diving, it swam on the surface and the long tail drove from side to side, sending out a boiling wake behind it. It was so close that its eyes glittered like opaque yellow marbles. Long fangs protruded over its scaly lips, the rows interlocking with each other. It bore in on Penrod’s naked legs.

“It’s going to catch you!” Amber was wild with fear. She had not reloaded the shotgun, but now she pushed the slide across and broke open the breech. She fumbled a pair of cartridges out of the leather bag on her hip, thrust one into the breech, and dropped the other into the mud. There was no time to retrieve it or find another so she snapped the breech closed. As she ran into the water it rose to her knees, her hips, then her lower ribs.

Penrod was directly in front of her, crashing through the water like a maniac, kicking up a froth behind him. With cold horror Amber watched the monster close the gap between them. Suddenly it reared high out of the water, and its jaws gaped open. The lining of its mouth and throat was a lovely buttercup yellow. It was so close that she could clearly see the flap of skin at the back of its throat sealing off the opening of its gullet to keep the water from flooding into its lungs. The fangs were sharp and ragged. She could smell the obscene reek of its open maw. It lunged towards Penrod’s legs.

Amber threw up the gun and thumbed back the ornate hammer. At any other time she would have needed both hands to work against the heavy spring of the side lock but she was possessed. The butt was too long to fit into her shoulder so she held it under her right armpit. She aimed, and kept her eyes open, as her father had taught her, as she pulled the back trigger. If she had pulled the front one the hammer would have fallen on an empty chamber. David had taught her well.

The gun bucked and bellowed and a blast of shot swept inches over Penrod’s head. The muzzle blast deafened him. Amber and the gun were sent flying backwards by the recoil and she disappeared under the swirling river waters.

The full charge of shot flew down the crocodile’s gullet. The great jaws shut with a clash like the slamming of steel gates, and its body arched into a drawn bow of agony. The glistening black snout almost touched its tail. Half out of the water it performed a backwards somersault, then dived below the surface and was gone in a mighty swirl of green waters.

Penrod found the bottom and staggered to where Amber had gone under. His ears were ringing painfully with the concussion of the shot, and as he shook his head to try to clear them the sodden pigeon carcass he was still holding in his teeth flopped against his cheeks. Golden tendrils of Amber’s hair floated on the surface like some lovely water plant. Penrod seized a handful and dragged her head to the surface. She spluttered and choked, but she still had a firm grasp on her father’s Purdey. Penrod changed his grip, swung her under his arm and he waded with her, an undignified tangle of sodden skirts, hair and kicking limbs, to the bank.

“Put me down!” she gasped. “Please put me down.”

He set her on her feet. “Cough it all up,” he ordered, “Don’t swallow any.” He pounded her between the shoulder-blades. The city sewers spilled into the river upstream. He did not want to lose this little one to the blast of the cholera horn.

David and most of the palace staff had been watching from the terrace and were running down to the riverbank. Before they arrived Penrod knelt in front of her. “Are you all right now?”

“Yes, I am,” she gasped, ‘but Papa’s gun is wet.”

“What a brave and wonderful girl you are.” Penrod hugged her hard. “I’d choose you in a scrap every time.” As her father came running up, Penrod rose to his feet but he kept one arm round Amber’s shoulders. “Forgive the impropriety, sir, but I owe this young lady my life.”

“Quite right and proper, Captain. I’m going to give her a kiss myself.”

Before that could happen Nazeera and Rebecca arrived.

“That filthy river!” Rebecca avoided Penrod’s eyes, and pulled Amber away from him. “Nazeera, we’re going to get her into a Lysol bath.” The two swept Amber away.

In the bathroom, as Rebecca and Nazeera stripped off Amber’s bedraggled, mud-plastered clothing and Saffron poured another bucket of heated water into the porcelain hip-bath, Amber was in raptures, “Did you hear what he said, Becky? He said he’d choose me in a scrap every time.”

Rebecca studiously avoided a reply, but went to the bath and poured a liberal measure of Lysol into the steaming water.

Saffron was not so reticent. “So now I suppose you think that makes him your beau,” she mocked.

“He jolly well will be one day. You wait and see.” Amber placed her hands on her bare hips and glared at her twin.

“Don’t be so silly, Midget,” Rebecca rebuked her. “Captain Ballantyne is old enough to be your father. Now, come and get into this bath at once.”

Nazeera felt a pang as she watched Amber clamber into the bath. Changes seemed to have taken place in the child’s body. Soon there would be womanly hollows and swells where before all had been flat and featureless.

I am losing all my babies, she lamented inwardly.

Once he had buckled on his breeches, Penrod could examine the pigeon. It was a large bird with body plumage of bronze and wing tips of white, probably a female for they made the best homers. The message it carried had been folded and rolled tightly into a spill no larger than the first joint of his little finger and secured to the bird’s leg with a fine silk thread. With his pocket-knife he cut the thread, and kept the carcass to take to the kitchens. He wrapped the roll of paper in his handkerchief to mop up as much moisture as possible, then pulled on his boots and, leaving David to mourn his waterlogged shotgun, set out for General Gordon’s headquarters in the west wing of the palace.

I understand that you have had some success with your shooting. There was a great deal of excitement on the riverbank,” Gordon greeted him.

“I managed to bring down a pigeon, sir, and it was a carrier.”

“You retrieved the message?” demanded Gordon eagerly.

“I have it, but it took a soaking in the river. I have not dared to unfold it, because the rice paper might disintegrate.”

“Let’s take a look at it. Put it here.” Obediently Penrod placed his bundled handkerchief on the general’s desk, and carefully unfolded it. They studied the tiny roll of paper.

“Seems it’s still in one piece,” Gordon murmured. “It’s your prize. You unfold it.”

Careful Penrod nipped the silk thread with the point of his penknife blade. The rice paper was so fine that it tore along the folds as he tried to open it, but the inner part of the message had been kept almost dry by the tightness of the roll. The ink had run, and in spots the words were indecipherable.

“We need a book,” Penrod said, ‘to press it while it dries completely.”

Gordon handed him his leather bound copy of the Bible.

“Are you certain, sir?”

“The good book for good works,” Gordon told him.

Penrod opened the Bible and gingerly spread the damp sheet between the pages. He closed it and pressed the heel of his hand on the outer cover. Gordon was visibly impatient. He paced up and down the room puffing at one of his Turkish cigarettes until he could contain himself no longer. “Damned thing must be dry enough by now.”

Penrod open the Bible carefully. The sheet of rice paper was still intact, flattened by the pressure, and it seemed that the ink had not run further. Gordon handed him a large magnifying glass. “Your eyes, and your understanding of Arabic, are probably better than mine.”

Penrod carried the Bible across to the table below the window where the light was better. He pored over it, and after a moment began to read aloud the tiny flowing script: ‘“I, Abdullah Sayid, son of Fahl,

Emir of the Baggara, greet the Victorious Mahdi who is the light of my eyes, and call down upon him the blessing of Allah and his other Prophet, who is also named Muhammad.”

“Standard salutation,” Gordon grunted.

Penrod went on: ‘“True to the orders of the Victorious Mahdi, I stand guard upon the Nile at Abu Hamed, and my scouts watch all the roads from the north. The infidel Frank and the despicable Turk approach on two separate routes. The Frankish steamers have this day passed through the cataract at Korti.”

Gordon slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. “Praise God! This is the first hard intelligence I have had in six weeks. If Wolseley’s steamers have arrived at Korti they should reach Abu Hamed before the end of Ramadan.”

“Sir!” Penrod agreed, though he was not so sure.

“Go on, man. Go on!”

“A trifle difficult here. The ink has run badly. I think it says, “The camel regiments of the Franks are still encamped at the Wells of Gakdul, where they have been now for twenty-eight days.”

“Twenty-eight days? What on earth does Stewart think he is playing at?” Gordon demanded. “If only he had some gumption, he would make a bold dash for it. He could reach us within ten days.”

That is Chinese Gordon’s own style the bold dash and the grand gesture, Penrod thought, but he kept his expression neutral. “Stewart is also a death-or-glory lad, but he has to bring up his supplies before he can make the final charge to the city.”

Gordon jumped up again, and flicked the butt of his cigarette through the open window. “With two thousand of Stewart’s first-line British troops I could hold the city until the desert freezes over, but still he shilly-shallies at Gakdul.” He spun on his heel and faced Penrod again. “Go on, Ballantyne, what else is there?”

“Not much, sir.” He stooped over the tattered scrap of paper. “In the name of the Victorious Mahdi, and with the blessing of Allah, we will meet the infidel at Abu Hamed and destroy him.” Penrod looked up. “That’s all. It seems that Sayid ran out of space.”

“Very little for our comfort,” Gordon observed, ‘and the Nile is falling.”

“With a brace of Ryder Courtney’s fast camels Yakub and I could be at the Wells of Gakdul in three days,” Penrod said. “I could take Stewart your message.”

“You do not escape me so easily, Ballantyne.” Gordon laughed ironically, a short bark of sound. “Not yet awhile. We will continue to follow the progress of the relief columns by intercepting the pigeons.”

“The Dervish might accept one or two missing birds as prey of the falcons,” Penrod demurred, ‘but we must not frighten them off by killing every one as it arrives.”

“Of course, you have a point. But I must have news. I want you to shoot every fourth pigeon that comes in.”

Muhammad Ahmed, the Victorious Mahdi, walked in the cool of the evening along the bank of the great river. He was attended by his khalifa and his five most trusted emirs. As he walked he recited the nine-and-ninety beautiful names of Allah and his entourage murmured the response after each was enunciated.

“Al-Ghafur, the concealer of faults.”

“God is great!”

“Al-Wall, the friend of the righteous.”

“Praise be to God!”

“Al-Qawi, the strong.”

“May his word triumph.”

They reached the tomb of the saint al-Rabb, and the Mahdi took his seat in the shade of the tree that spread its branches over it. When his warlords were assembled, he called upon each to report his order of battle, and give an account of the troops that he commanded. One after another they knelt before him and described their array. Then the Mahdi knew he had seventy thousand men gathered before the walls of Khartoum; another twenty-five thousand had gone two hundred miles north to Abu Hamed on the bend of the river to await the approach of the two British forces. These Ansar were of the finest, their religious ardour and their devotion to the jihad against the infidel at its fiercest. The Mahdi knew that no infidel army could prevail against them.

The Mahdi smiled at Osman Atalan. “Tell me what we know of the enemy,” he ordered.

“O Mighty and Victorious Lord, beloved of God and the other Prophet, know you that each day Abdullah Sayid, Emir of the Baggara, sends a pigeon from his camp at Abu Klea on the bend of the Nile. Some of the birds do not reach my lofts, for there are birds of prey and other hazards along their flight path, but most come to my hand.”

The Mahdi nodded. “Speak to me, Osman Atalan. Tell us what news of the enemy movements these birds bring us.”

“Sayid reports that the infidel steamers, seven in number, have passed through the last cataract below Korti, and now that the worst of their voyage is behind them, they come on apace. They are travelling almost five times faster than they did below the cataract. They carry many men and great guns.”

“God shall deliver them to my hand, and they shall be destroyed,” said the Mahdi.

“God is great!” Osman Atalan agreed. “The second infidel column has reached the Wells at Gakdul. There they have stopped. We do not know why this is. I believe that there is not sufficient good fodder to feed the camels for the heavy work they must do. They wait at Gakdul for more supplies to be brought up from Wadi Haifa.”

“How many infidel troops are at Gakdul?”

“Divine One, Sayid has counted more than one thousand Franks, and about the same number of camel drivers, guides and servants.”

“Are these Franks mad?” the Mahdi demanded. “How can they dream to prevail against my one hundred thousand Ansar?”

“It may be that they are waiting at Gakdul for reinforcements to join them,” Osman suggested delicately.

“These infidels shall be destroyed also. No mortal man can prevail against the will of God. All these things God has told me.”

“Allah is all seeing and all knowing.”

“Know you that on many nights Allah has come to me as an eagle of flame. He has told me many grave secrets that are too powerful for the common man to hear,” he said, in his soft mellifluous voice, and they bowed before him.

“Blessed is the Mahdi, for he alone hears and understands the word of Allah,” chanted Khalifa Abdullahi.

“Allah has told me that before the infidel and the Frank and the Turk can be driven for ever from the Sudan and the earthly kingdom of Allah and Islam, my enemy Gordon Pasha must be destroyed. Allah has told me that Gordon Pasha is the black angel, Satan, in the guise of a man.”

“May he be ever accursed, and never look upon the face of God,” they cried.

“Allah, the All Wise, has told me that the noble warrior of Islam who cuts the head of Gordon Pasha from his trunk, like some bitter and evil fruit, and brings it to me, and lays it at my feet, shall ever be blessed and that there shall be prepared for him a place in Paradise at God’s right hand. He will also be given power and riches in this world of the flesh.”

“God is merciful! God is great!” they chanted.

“Allah has spoken to me, and he has told me the name of my servant who shall bring the head of the infidel to me,” quoth the Mahdi solemnly, and they prostrated themselves before him.

“Let the man be me!”

“If it be me, I shall want no other honour in this life or hereafter.” The Mahdi held up his hands and they fell silent. “Osman Atalan of the Beja, draw closer to me,” he said. On his hands and knees Osman crawled to his feet. “Allah has told me that you are that man.”

Tears of joy streamed down the emir’s cheeks. He bowed his head over the Mahdi’s feet and washed the dust from them with his tears.

Then he unwrapped his turban and, with the locks of his long dark hair, he dried the feet of the Chosen Prophet of God.

The Nile is falling,” said Osman Atalan, ‘and God and the Mahdi have prepared a task for us.” His aggagiers drew closer to the campfire and watched his face by the light of the flames. “They have chosen us above all the warriors of Allah. We are blessed beyond all other men, for we have been given the wondrous chance to die for the glory of Allah and his Mahdi.”

“Let us seize Allah’s bounteous gift. Command us, Great Lord,” his aggagiers pleaded.

He studied their fierce expressions with pride. These were not men, but man-eating lions. “Our sacred task is to bring to the Divine Mahdi the head of Gordon Pasha, for omnipotent and mighty Allah has decreed that when we achieve this the infidel will be driven from this land for ever, and that Islam will prevail throughout all the world.”

Al-Noor asked: “Shall we wait for the time of Low Nile, so that we may find a firm foothold on the city shore and a passage through the walls?”

“Every day we delay, the forces of Satan march down upon us from the north. Already their steamers laden with men and guns sweep up the river. Yes, the river is still high, but God has made clear a road for us.” Osman clapped his hands. An old man limped into the firelight and knelt before him. “Have no fear, Beloved of God. No harm shall come to you. Tell these men what you know.”

“I was born and I have lived all my life in the City of the Elephant’s Trunk, Khartoum. But since the Victorious Mahdi has invested the city and laid siege, the curse of Allah has been laid upon the city. Those infidels and Turks who have thought to resist his wisdom and his truth have been made to suffer as no men before them. Their empty bellies cling to their backbones, their children are eaten up by the cholera, the vultures gorge on their rotting corpses, the fathers club the birds and eat them half cooked while their crops bulge with the flesh of their own children.” The aggagiers moved restlessly as they listened to this recital.

What an abomination to eat the flesh of the bird that had devoured your children. “Those who are not too weak of starvation flee the doomed city, and the de fences are every day denuded and weakened. I am one of those who has flown. But, like you, I wish to see the infidel banished for ever from the Sudan, and the son of all evil, Gordon Pasha, destroyed. Only then may I return in the peace of the Mahdi to my home.”

“Let Allah accomplish this,” they murmured. The man was old and frail but they admired his spirit.

“The Turks who fight for Gordon Pasha are so reduced in number by disease, starvation and desertion that the infidel can no longer guard the city walls. In their place Gordon Pasha has placed men of straw, mere scarecrows, to frighten off the timid among you.”

“What is this talk of straw men?” Hassan Ben Nader demanded. “Is it true?”

“It is true,” Osman confirmed. “I have sailed close to the harbour mouth in this brave old man’s dhow. There is a place in the de fences where a creek runs into the river through a stone gateway. This is the main outflow from the city sewers. Gordon Pasha has manned the gateway and the walls on either side with dummy soldiers to replace those who have died or run away. Only their heads show above the parapets. At intervals a few old women move them so that from this bank they seemed to live. There is none to resist our onslaught. With one rush we can be through the gap. Then the city and all those within will be ours.”

“There will be great stores of gold and jewels,” al-Noor mused.

“There are women in the city, hundreds of women. As his wives, concubines and slaves, the Turkjias chosen the most beautiful women of the Sudan and all the surrounding lands. For each of us there will be a dozen women at least.” Hassan Ben Nader’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “The women of the Franks have hair like yellow silk and their skin is like rich cream.”

“Speak not of gold and slaves. We fight for the glory of Allah and the Mahdi.” Osman reprimanded them for their greed. “After that we fight for our own honour and a place in Paradise.”

“When will we attack these straw men?” Al-Noor laughed with excitement. “I have sat too long with my harem, and I am growing fat. It is time to fight again.”

“Three nights from now it will be the dark of the moon, and in the night we will cross the river. At first we will land two hundred men on the beach there is no space for more. When we have forced the breach a thousand more will follow us, and after them a thousand more. By dawn I will stand on the parapets of Mukran Fort with the head of

Gordon Pasha in my hands, and the prophecy will be fulfilled.” Osman stood up and made a sign of blessing over them. “Make certain that your swords are sharp and all your wives are with child before we cross the river.”

The old fisherman, the uncle of Yakub, has given the signal. A handful of sulphur in the flames of his cooking fire, and the puff of yellow smoke that Yakub was watching for,” Penrod reported to the Chinese Gordon.

“Can we trust this fellow, Yakub? To me he seems an evil rogue.”

“I have trusted him often in the most dire circumstances and I am still alive, General.” Penrod kept his anger under control, but with difficulty.

“Has he been able to warn us when the Dervish will attack if they do?”

“No, sir, we don’t know that,” Penrod admitted, ‘but I expect they will use the new moon.”

While Gordon consulted his almanac for the moon phases, David Benbrook, the third man in the room, gave his appraisal of the chances of success. “He is a brave man, this uncle of Yakub. I know him well. He has been in my service ever since I arrived in Khartoum. His information has always been reliable.” David was sitting in a chair by the window. These days, he and the general spent much time together. They were unlikely companions, but as Gordon’s tribulations increased he seemed to find solace with his own kind.

Without seeming to do so Penrod studied Gordon’s face while he spoke to David. Even in repose, a nerve fluttered in his right eyelid. This was only a visible sign of how finely stretched Gordon was. One of the other deeper and more significant indications was in his behaviour: the brutal excesses of inhumanity. It seemed to Penrod that these were becoming more savage each day, as though by the kurbash, the firing squad and the noose he could delay the fall of the city. Even he must now see that our struggle is drawing towards the end, and the populace is beyond hope or caring. Does he believe that he can compel them to their duty by convincing them that the consequences of their disobedience will be far worse than anything that the Mahdi can do to them? Penrod studied Gordon’s face as the general spoke to David Benbrook. At least Benbrook is a man of humanity, he thought. His influence on Gordon can only be for the good.

He put aside such considerations when Gordon stood up and addressed him abruptly. “Let us go down to the harbour and inspect your preparations to meet this imminent attack, Ballantyne.”

Penrod knew it was unwise for Gordon Pasha to show himself on the walls where the attack was expected: too many spies were watching his every move, and the Dervish were too shrewd not to suspect that he was preparing something for their discomfort. However, he knew it was even more unwise to gainsay the little man.

But Penrod need not have concerned himself: Gordon was too sly an old fox to lead the hounds to the entrance of his earth. Before they left the palace, Gordon removed his distinctive fez and replaced it with a grubby turban, the tail of which concealed half of his face, then covered his uniform with a stained, nondescript galabiyya. From a distance he looked like any humble citizen of Khartoum.

Even when they reached the harbour Gordon did not show himself on the parapets. However, he was meticulous and painstaking in his inspection of Penrod’s preparations. He peered through every embrasure that pierced the walls of the derelict buildings that overlooked the noisome sewerage-clogged creek. He stood behind a Gatling and traversed the gleaming multiple barrels from side to side. He was dissatisfied with the dead area directly under the muzzles. He climbed out of the Gatling’s nest into the ooze of the creek and placed himself in the line of fire, then moved closer to the redoubt.

“Keep the gun trained on me,” he ordered.

The gunner kept depressing his aim until he shook his head with exasperation. “You are too close, General. It can no longer bear.”

“Captain Ballantyne, if they reach this point the Dervish will be under the gun.” Gordon looked pleased that he had caught Penrod out.

Penrod realized it was no excuse that Gordon overloaded him with responsibilities: he had been negligent, and he rebuked himself silently. Such an elementary oversight is almost as bad as starving the gun for ammunition, he thought bitterly. He ordered the engineers to tear down the wall of sandbags and rebuild it with a lower sill.

“Where have you placed the second Gatling?” Gordon demanded. He had Penrod on the defensive now, and was pushing his advantage.

“It is still in the redoubt in front of the hospital. That is the other -obvious weak point in our perimeter. I dare not leave that gap undefended, and place all our bets on the attack striking us here. The Dervish may even mount two simultaneous strikes at both positions.”

“They will strike here,” Gordon said, with finality.

“I agree that is the highest probability. So I have built another machine-gun nest over there, where it can cover the beach and enfilade both banks of the creek. As soon as the attack develops and the enemy is committed, I can rush the second gun across from the hospital to this side. Equally, if we are mistaken and they strike at the hospital I can move this gun over to cover that position.”

“How long will it take to move the guns.” Gordon demanded.

“I estimate about ten minutes.”

“No estimates, Ballantyne. Run an exercise and time it.”

On the first attempt the gun-crew encountered a pile of fallen masonry in the alley behind the harbour. They had to clear it before they could bring the heavy carriage through. The second attempt was more successful: it took twelve minutes to run it through the streets and re site it in the prepared nest to cover the beach and the banks of the creek.

“It will be in darkness,” Gordon pointed out. “The crew must be able to do it with their eyes closed.”

Penrod kept them practising the manoeuvre late into the night. They cleared all obstacles and shell damage from the streets and alleys, and filled in the potholes and gutters. Penrod designed new gun tackles so that twenty men at a time could pull it.

By the morning of the second day they had cut the transit time down to seven and a half minutes. All this had to be done in darkness after curfew. If the Dervish learnt that they were practising moving the Gatlings from one point to another on the perimeter they would suspect a trap. Penrod was not sure that they knew of the existence of the two guns: while in the arsenal they had been stored away from prying eyes, and had probably been forgotten. In any event the Dervish had a deep scorn for firearms. It was unlikely they had ever seen the Gatlings in action so they could not guess at their destructive potential. Until now he had been careful to exercise the gun-crew where they were not under observation from the enemy bank of the Nile. They only fired the weapons into the empty desert on the southern perimeter of the city. When they were not in use he kept them covered with tarpaulins.

“With your permission, General, I intend to take up permanent quarters here at the harbour. I want to be on the spot when the enemy launch their attack. As things stand at present, it might all be over during the time it would take me to get here from the palace.”

“Good,” Gordon agreed. “But if the Dervish spies discover that you have set up permanent headquarters here at the harbour our plan will be compromised.”

“I have thought about that, General, and I believe I will be able to conceal my whereabouts without causing suspicion.”

They enlisted the co-operation of David Benbrook in concealing from everybody, including the Benbrook sisters and consular staff, that he had moved only as far as the harbour. The story was put about that Penrod had secretly left the city, sent on a mission by General Gordon to carry a message to the British relief column at the Wells of Gakdul.

Penrod found his new quarters a far call from the luxury of his suite in the palace. He set up his angareb in a tiny dugout in the back wall of the Gatling emplacement. He had no mosquito net, and spent most of the night swatting the insects: at dusk they rose in clouds from the creek. Previously the palace’s paltry food supplies had been augmented by the ingenuity of the Benbrook sisters, Nazeera, the kitchen staff and, of course, by David Benbrook’s marksmanship. In his new headquarters Penrod shared the same rations as his men. Gordon had been forced to reduce the issue of dhurra to below starvation level, and hunger was now a constant spectral companion. Yakub was able to scrounge a few dried fish heads and skeletons from his uncle’s house and these went into the stew pot that Penrod shared with his gunners. Some of the Egyptians were eating the pith of the palm trees and boiling the leather thongs of their angarebs. Much as he had once disparaged the taste of it, Penrod now sorely missed the rations of green-cake that the Benbrook sisters had regularly brought home from the compound of Ryder Courtney.

Penrod could not afford to be seen in the city, so he had to confine himself strictly to the harbour. This self-imposed incarceration was even more irksome than his cramped quarters and the disgusting food. It was a relief to direct all his energy and imagination into preparations for the coming conflict.

His plan was in two parts. First he had to lure the Dervish through the drainage ditch in the outer-wall, and into the narrow creek. Then he had to ensure there was no way for them to get out, at least not alive. Gordon restricted his inspection tours to the hours of curfew. Penrod never expected praise from Chinese Gordon, but made certain that he gave the general no further cause for criticism.

Once all the preparations were completed, Yakub was more forthcoming in his praise than Gordon had been. “With the help of clever Yakub you have built an abattoir.” He chuckled. “A slaughter house for the pigs of Ansar.” Instinctively he fiddled with the hilt of his dagger as he looked around the stockade they had built. The men were stacking dry timber from the derelict buildings of the city on the bonfires that Penrod had ordered to be constructed on both banks of the creek. He had taken great care that once they were lit the flames would illuminate the enemy, but would not dazzle his gunners and riflemen. Each evening at nightfall his men soaked the bonfires with lamp oil so that their combustion would be almost instantaneous.

Penrod’s sudden mysterious disappearance caused varying levels of consternation and concern among the Benbrook sisters. The one who suffered least was Saffron. She merely found herself deprived of a whip to torment her twin. It was no longer satisfactory to tease Amber about her beau, when he had absconded. Besides, Amber’s distress whenever she raised the subject detracted from Saffron’s enjoyment. Teasing was fun; inflicting pain was not.

On the other hand Rebecca was adept at concealing her true feelings so Saffron had no inkling as to how profoundly Penrod’s disappearance had affected her. Had she guessed, she would have had richer fields to plough.

When Amber had almost convinced herself that she would never again set eyes upon Captain Ballantyne, and that suicide was the only solution to her tragic existence, Yakub saved her life. This was not a deliberate act of charity: it was in gratification of Yakub’s baser instincts.

His strict confinement, by his master, to the harbour de fences above the mosquito-ridden creek suited Yakub not at all. In the last months he had become accustomed to finer living. Each evening Nazeera had provided him with a bowl of the same food as the consul general and his family enjoyed. This was not a great feast, but it far surpassed the watery communal stew, which smelt and tasted of rotten fish and dried animal hides.

However, by far the most troubling element in this new existence was that each night he lay awake at the foot of his master’s angareb, waiting for the Dervish attack and wondering if Nazeera was being faithful to him. If her previous behaviour was anything to go upon, this seemed highly unlikely. He brooded on the fact that the perfidious Bacheet, that illegitimate son of a Beja father and a Galla pleasure dancer, was under no restrictions as to his nocturnal movements. The thought of Bacheet creeping into his beloved’s angareb each night kept Yakub from sleep more effectively than all the mosquitoes from the creek. He rose quietly, as if he was going to use the latrine bucket. One of the sentries challenged him at the harbour gate, but Yakub knew the password.

Amber was sitting sleepless at her bedroom window. It was three days since Captain Ballantyne had disappeared. She tortured herself with the thought that he might have been caught by the Dervish before he reached the British lines. She imagined him as a prisoner of the Mahdi. She had heard of the fate of those who fell into that monster’s bloodstained hands, and knew she would not sleep that night.

Below her window someone moved in the shadows of the courtyard. She drew back quickly. It might be an assassin sent by the evil Mahdi, but at that moment the man glanced up towards her window and she recognized his squint. “Yakub!” she breathed. “But he should be with Penrod on the way to the Wells of Gakdul.” Yakub was Penrod’s shadow: wherever he went Yakub followed.

The breathtaking truth dawned upon her. If Yakub is here, then Penrod is somewhere close by. He did not go to Gakdul after all. It was only recently that she had allowed herself to think of him as Penrod, and not as Captain Ballantyne.

Amber’s melancholy and foreboding dropped away. She knew exactly where Yakub was going. She sprang up from the window-seat, ran lightly to her wardrobe and threw a dark cloak over her nightdress. She paused only long enough to make certain that Saffron was still asleep, then slipped out of the bedroom and crept downstairs, making certain to avoid the twelfth step, which always creaked and woke her father. She let herself out of the kitchen side door and crossed the stableyard to the servants’ compound.

Nazeera’s window was lamp-lit. She found a lookout position in one of the empty stables and settled in to wait. She passed the next few hours by trying to imagine what Yakub and Nazeera found to keep themselves busy for such a long time. Rebecca had said that the two of them made love. Amber was not sure what this procedure entailed: her most diligent enquiries had not greatly increased her understanding of the subject. She suspected that Rebecca herself, despite her knowing airs, was just as ignorant as she was.

“It’s when people kiss each other,” Rebecca had explained loftily, ‘but it’s not polite to talk about it.” Amber found this unsatisfactory. Most of the kisses she had observed were fleeting and usually planted on the cheek or the back of a hand, which could only be considered fairly dull entertainment. The one glaring exception was the exchange she and Saffron had witnessed between Ryder and Rebecca, which had caused such a brouhaha. That had been much more interesting. Both participants had obviously enjoyed the process, but even that had lasted less than a minute. In comparison, Yakub and Nazeera had been at it half the night.

I will ask Nazeera, she decided, then had a better idea. “As soon as I find out where he is, I will ask Penrod. He’s a man, so he must know how they do it.”

Shortly before dawn the lamplight in Nazeera’s room was extinguished, and moments later Yakub crept out of the door and set off through the dark, silent streets in guilty haste. Amber kept him in sight until he reached the harbour, and she heard one of the sentries challenge him. Then she had to get back to the palace before they found out she was missing.

Cat been at the cream?” Saffron demanded. Amber’s ebullient mood was such a marked change from the days of gloom that had preceded it that she had to tackle her sister later that day as they worked side by side over the green-cake cauldrons in Ryder Courtney’s compound.

Amber gave her a sweet but enigmatic smile, and would not be drawn.

That evening, an hour after curfew, Penrod Ballantyne was amazed to recognize Amber’s voice arguing with the sentries at the entrance to his headquarters in the Gatling emplacement. He rushed out immediately, buckling on his sword belt. “You silly child,” he scolded her severely. “You know very well there is a curfew. You might have been shot.”

Amber had hoped for a warmer reception. “I brought you some green-cake. I knew you must be starving.” She unwrapped the small bundle she was carrying. “And one of Papa’s clean shirts. I can smell your old one from here.”

Penrod was about to demand how she had learnt of his whereabouts when, in the light of the bulls eye lantern, he saw tears of humiliation in her eyes. But she blinked them back and faced him with her chin up. “Furthermore, Captain Ballantyne, I will have you know that I am not a silly child.”

“Of course you are not, Miss Amber.” He relented instantly. “You took me by surprise. I just did not expect you. I apologize.”

She perked up. “If you give me your old shirt I will take it back to wash it for you.”

Penrod found himself in a dilemma. With the threat of an imminent Dervish attack on the harbour, he should not allow her to stay here another minute. For the same reason he dared not leave the emplacement to escort her back to the palace, and he could not let her wander through the city alone after curfew. He could send Yakub with her, but he needed him at his side. There was no one else he could trust. He chose the lesser of all evils.

“I expect that you will have to spend the night here. I cannot allow you to break curfew and go home alone,” he muttered.

Her face lit up with pleasure. This stroke of fortune far exceeded her remotest expectations. “I can cook your dinner,” she said.

“There isn’t much to cook, so why don’t you and I share your very generous gift of green-cake?”

They sat on his angareb in the dugout. There were no curtains to this alcove so the gunners were involuntary chaperones as they nibbled the green-cake and talked in low tones. It was the first time he had spent any time with her, and Penrod soon discovered that Amber was entertaining company. She had an impish sense of humour that appealed to him, and a quaint manner of expressing herself. She described her various travels with her father, which ranged from Cape Town to Cairo, and finally Khartoum. Then, abruptly, she fell silent, placed her chin in her hand and considered him thoughtfully. “Captain Ballantyne, now that we have become friends, would you be civil enough to answer a question that has been troubling me lately? Nobody seems to know the answer.”

“I am honoured that you consider us friends.” Penrod was touched. She was such a funny little thing. “I would be delighted to render you any assistance I can.”

“How do people make love?” she asked.

Penrod found himself deprived of words and the breath to speak them. “Ah!” he said, and smoothed his moustache to win time. “I think that it is done in various ways. There do not seem to be any fixed rules of engagement.”

Amber was disappointed. She had expected more of him. Obviously he knew as little as Rebecca. “I suppose they kiss each other like you and I saw my sister kissing Ryder. Is that how they do it?”

“Indubitably.” He grabbed thankfully at the opening. “I think that is exactly how they do it.”

“I should think that would become rather boring after a while.”

“It seems to grow on some people,” Penrod said. “There is no accounting for taste.”

Amber changed the subject again, with disconcerting suddenness. “Did you know that Lucy, Ryder’s monkey, has had babies?”

“I had no idea. Boys or girls? What are they like.” He followed her thankfully on to firm ground.

Minutes later Amber’s eyes closed, she subsided against his shoulder and, like a puppy, dropped into instant sleep. She did not stir even when he laid her on the angareb and covered her with the threadbare blanket. He was in a good mood, smiling to himself as he left her and went on his midnight inspection of the harbour de fences For once every one of the Egyptian sentries was wide awake. Either they were stimulated by the proximity of the enemy and their own exposure in this forward position, or their hunger drove away sleep.

He found a comfortable place to sit on the forward firing platform and listened to the drums across the river. Their monotonous tempo became soporific and he found himself nodding. He stirred guiltily: If Chinese Gordon finds me I’ll be up before the firing squad myself. He took a turn along the parapet, and came back to his seat. He let himself relax and drift to the edge of sleep, but every few minutes he opened his eyes. He had trained himself to tread this tightrope without falling off it. Across the river the drums fell silent.

He opened his eyes again and looked up. Red Mars, the god of war, was hunting across the southern quadrant of the moonless sky with Sirius, the Dog, in leash. It was the darkest and loneliest hour of the night. He was close to the edge of sleep, but he kept his eyes open.

Tenrod.”

Cool fingers brushed his cheek. “Are you asleep?” He turned his head to her. He was touched that she had used his baptismal name. She must truly think of him as her friend. “No, I am not, but you should be.”

“I heard voices,” Amber whispered.

“A dream, perhaps,” he replied. “There are no voices.”

“Listen!” said Amber.

Faintly he heard a dog bark on the west bank and another answered it from Tutti Island, further downriver. No dogs remained in the city. The last had been killed and eaten months before. “Nothing.” He shook his head doubtfully, but she seized his arm and her sharp little fingernails dug in painfully.

“Listen, Pen. Listen!”

He felt his nerve ends jump tight, like the strike of a heavy fish on the deep-run fly. It was a whisper so faint, so insubstantial on the night breeze that only sharp young ears could have picked it up. It came from far out on the river. Sound carries over water, he thought, and stood up swiftly and silently. Faint as the breeze in the palm fronds, he had heard the traditional word of command to lower and furl the lateen sail of a dhow as it came in to its moorings. Now that he was straining his hearing to its limit, he heard the soft slap of bare feet on a wooden deck, and the slat ting of canvas. Seconds later came the creak of a muffled rudder in its yoke as the dhow put up its helm. “They have come,” he whispered, and moved swiftly along the firing platform to alert each of his men. “Stand to! Stand to your guns. The Dervish are here. Hold your fire until my command.”

The sergeant gunner stripped the tarpaulin off the Gatling. The stiff material crackled softly and Penrod hissed him to silence. He looked into the ammunition hopper that sat on top of the glistening weapon. It was filled to the brim: six hundred rounds. He lifted the lids of the spare ammunition cases. They were all unlocked. At the Hill of Isandlwana when the Zulu imp is had broken the British square the spare ammunition cases had been locked and the officer who had the Allen key had ridden out on patrol. Every white soldier in the camp had died that day under the Zulu blades. Ryder Courtney had told him that his elder brother had been among them. Tonight the ammunition cases were unlocked and the four Egyptian loaders were standing by to keep the hopper filled.

He ran to the rear of the firing platform. The corporal of signallers with a detail of four men had their crates of rockets open, and a line of ten flares ready for firing in their launching brackets, nose cones pointed skywards. “Send up a flare at the first shot. Keep one burning in the sky until the last shot is fired. I want the whole area lit up like daylight,” Penrod ordered.

There was no time for anything else. Penrod started back towards the forward firing platform to take command there. He could not trust the jittery Egyptians to resist blazing away at their first glimpse of the enemy boats before the Dervish were disembarked upon the beach and well inside the trap.

He tripped over Amber, who was at his heels. “Sweet Mary! I had forgotten about you.” He caught her by the arm and dragged her to the rear entrance of the redoubt. “Run!” he ordered. “You have to get out of here right away. This is no place for you now. Even the streets are safer. Run, Amber, and don’t stop until you get home.” He gave her a firm shove through the doorway to send her on her way, and did not wait to see if she had obeyed before he turned back towards the forward firing platform.

Amber ran a few paces down the alley, then turned and crept back to the entrance of the redoubt. She watched Penrod disappear into the darkness. “I am sick and tired of being treated like a baby,” she whispered. She hesitated only a moment before she followed him.

She moved quietly and self-effacingly along the back of the parapet so as not to attract the attention of the troopers who were manning the firing embrasures. They are all too busy to worry about me, she thought. Her confidence swelled, and she hurried forward to look for Penrod. What if he needs me? I will be no use sitting in my bedroom at the palace. She saw his tall figure just ahead.

Penrod was already standing at the parapet that overlooked the beach. The straw-filled decoys had been dragged away and now live riflemen leant on the firing sills, peering down upon the dark beach. He had his drawn sword in his right hand. Amber felt a prickle of pride. He is so brave and noble, she thought. She found a place to hide in a corner of the rear wall and sank down behind it. From here she could watch over him. A tight, brittle silence held all the men at the firing wall.

Suddenly Amber realized how few of them were spread out thinly along the wall, twenty paces between them. These men did not seem enough to stop the hordes of the Dervish.

Then a man close to where Amber knelt whispered so softly that she could barely catch the words. “Here they come.” His voice quavered with fear. The breech-block of his Martini-Henry snicked as he chambered a round. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, but before he could press the trigger an open hand slapped across his face.

As he reeled sideways Penrod seized him by his collar and spoke close to his ear: “Fire before my command, and I will have you blown from the cannon’s mouth,” he promised. Al-Faroque’s execution had left a deep impression on all the Egyptians who had witnessed it. Penrod pushed the man back to his position and they waited.

Then Penrod drew breath sharply. The first Dervish boat glided in towards the beach below. As it touched the sand a dark horde of Ansar clambered out into the waist-deep water and waded on to the narrow strip of mud below the walls. They carried their swords at shoulder height and moved with barely a sound. From the dark waters behind them appeared a flotilla of small dhows and feluccas, each packed with a mass of men.

“Hold your fire!” Penrod strode back and forth along the parapet, keeping his puny force under control with his savage whisper. The feluccas and dhows kept coming in until the beach was packed with hundreds of Ansar. There was not room for all of them on firm ground and the ones in the rear were still waist deep in the river. Those in front began to rip down the barricade that blocked the entrance to the drainage creek.

“Steady now! Steady!” Penrod exhorted them.

Part of the barricade crashed down and the Dervish swarmed through. Their war cry went up: “There is no God but God!”

“Volley fire!” Penrod shouted and the rifles crashed out. The Dervish rushed on through the hail of bullets. Then the first rockets soared into the night sky, and the masses of Dervish swarmed like columns of ants in the weird greenish light. The riflemen fired down into them but there were so many that the bullets had little effect. When the front ranks reached the harbour wall they clambered up it, the rear ranks shoving from below. As they came over the top the defenders thrust with the bayonets.

Penrod strode along the wall, firing his new Webley pistol point blank into their bearded faces. In his right hand he carried his sabre and when the revolver was empty he slashed and hacked with the blade. The dead and wounded Ansar toppled back on to their comrades, who were climbing up behind them. The Egyptian line was too flimsy to hold them in check much longer: all along the top of the wall knots of Dervish were gaining footholds. Their two-handed crusader blades hissed through the air with the sound of bats’ wings. One of the Egyptians reeled back from the parapet with his right arm sliced off cleanly above the elbow. His blood was inky black in the light of the rockets.

“Back!” shouted Penrod. “Fall back to the second line!” Even in her own terror, Amber was startled by how clearly his voice carried above the uproar. His men formed quickly into a skirmishing line, bayonets facing outwards, and they retreated backwards along the top of the wall. For a terrible moment Amber thought she would be left behind, but she sprang up and ran like a startled hare. Instinctively she knew that the Gatling emplacement was the strongest point of the defence, and headed for it.

She reached it well ahead of Penrod and his men, and scrambled to the top of the wall of sandbags. As she hung there, someone grabbed her arm from the far side and dragged her over. She fell on top of her rescuer. He smelt of rotten fish heads, and glared at her with a horrific squint, his face green in the light of the flares. “Nazeera will kill you with her bare hands if she finds out you are here.” He pushed her roughly into the dugout in the back wall, just as Penrod led his men back in a rush.

“Gatling gunner! Open fire!” P,enrod had selected the man on the crank handle of the gun for his strength and stamina. Sergeant Khaled was a colossal black man from one of the Nubian tribes of upper Egypt. Men like him made the finest soldiers in all the army of the Khedive. He bobbed up and down like a marionette as he worked. The brightly burnished barrels spun, like the revolving spokes of a chariot wheel. The flickering glare of muzzle flashes lit the parapet as brightly as a stage.

With a sound like a giant ripping up a roll of heavy canvas, a continuous stream of bullets tore into the ranks of Ansar as they swarmed forward. The heavy lead bullets slogged into living flesh, and the ricochets screamed off the stone parapets, almost drowning the clamour of the Dervish force. Traversing back and forth the Gatling scythed them down, piling heaps of corpses along the front of the wall. Those who followed scrambled over them and grabbed at the barrels of the rifles that aimed at them through the embrasures, trying to tear the smoking weapons from the hands of the defenders on the far side of the wall. The soldiers thrust at them with their bayonets, screaming with battle rage, and the Dervish screamed back at the agony of the steel slicing deeply into their bodies. Then the barrels of the Gatling swung back and blew them away, like the khamsin wind. The last of the Dervish tumbled off the revetment, and lay in huddles or dragged themselves through the black slick of the creek bed.

Sergeant Khaled straightened up and the gun fell silent. His black face was split with a white and ferocious grin, and his barrel chest ran with rivers of sweat that gleamed in the green light of the flares.

“Reload!” Penrod shouted, as he filled the chambers of his own revolver from the loops on his belt. “Get ready for the next wave.”

The loaders came running up with the ammunition buckets, and the shiny copper-cased cartridges cascaded into the Gatling hopper. Other ammunition boys ran along the parapet, doling out paper packets of Boxer-Henry ammunition to the riflemen. The water-carriers followed them, squirting water from the nozzles of the skins directly into the parched mouths of the soldiers.

“Be ready for them. They are not beaten. They will come back through the creek again.” Penrod moved down the parapet, talking to the men. The trooper whose arm had been hacked off had died from loss of blood. They laid his body against the rear wall and covered him with a blanket. Penrod started back towards the Gatling to bolster the courage of Sergeant Khaled and his gunners, but as he passed the doorway to his dugout he saw a small white face staring out at him. “Amber! I thought you had gone.”

Now that she was discovered she decided to brazen it out. “I knew you didn’t mean to send me away. Anyway, it’s too late now. I have to stay.”

He was about to debate this point with her, but from the depths of the creek bed rose the dread chorus of Dervish war cries. The hordes poured back in a flood that filled the creek from side to side.

Penrod drew the Webley from the holster on his belt and broke it open to check that it was fully reloaded. He snapped the breech closed. “I know you can use this. I have seen you practising with your father.” He thrust the weapon, butt first, into her hands. “Get back into the dugout. Climb under the bed. Stay there until this is over. Shoot anybody who touches you. This time do as you’re told. Go!” He ran back to the parapet.

Two hundred Egyptian riflemen did not wait for his command to reopen fire. The volleys crashed down into the creek bed, and the Gatling ripped and rattled, a stream of spent cartridge cases spilling into a glistening mound on the floor of the redoubt beneath its carriage. A succession of coloured flares burst high above the arena, illuminating with garish light the Dervish struggling upwards through the reeking, mud. Their ranks were so closely packed that every bullet must strike. Surely mortal men must break under such punishment, yet they came on, clambering over the torn and twitching corpses of their comrades, their multi-coloured jib has plastered with reeking black mud, never wavering, each man trying to fight his way to the front rank of the attack, scornful of death, eager to seek it out in the smoking muzzles of the guns.

But there was a line at the foot of the wall across which even their courage could not carry them. The Gatling stopped them there, as though they had reached a wall of glass, building up taller piles of dead men. Wave after wave of warriors came on to add their own corpses to the growing heaps. Swiftly the creek was transformed into a ghastly charnel house. Then, as the attack wavered, the Gatling fire ceased.

“Captain! Stoppage!” Sergeant Khaled yelled. “The gun is jammed.” As the import of those words struck the Egyptian troopers, horror dawned on their faces in the light of the flares. As the full extent of this disaster struck them their fire dwindled, stammered, and fell silent. Even the Ansar in the creek were caught up in the spell. A weird and unnatural quiet fell over the battlefield, broken only by the groans and cries of the wounded. It lasted but a few seconds.

Then a single voice spoke. “La il aha ill allah There is but one God!” It was a voice Penrod recognized. He looked down into the grisly creek bed and saw Osman Atalan in die first rank of the Dervish horde. Their eyes locked. Then the battle cry went up from hundreds of throats and the attack swept forward again. As though the wall of glass that had contained them was shattered, they clawed their way up the steep, treacherous bank of the creek towards the redoubt.

The heads of the Egyptian riflemen turned as they looked back to find a line of retreat. Penrod knew that gesture well. He had seen it before, on the terrible day when the square broke at El Obeid. It was the prelude to flight and rout. “I will kill the first man who breaks,” he shouted, but one ignored him.

As he turned to run, Penrod stepped forward and thrust for his belly. The long blade of his sabre slipped in as though it had been greased, and the point sliced out through the back of the man’s khaki tunic. He dropped to his knees, and clasped the blade of the sabre with his bare hands. Penrod pulled out the razor-sharp steel between his victim’s fingers, severing skin and flesh and sinew. The man screamed and toppled backwards.

“Stand your ground, and keep firing.” Penrod held high his blood-wet blade. “Or sing the same song as this cowardly creature.” They turned back to the firing embrasures and poured their volleys down into the mass of Dervish clambering up towards them.

Sergeant Khaled was hammering on the breech mechanism of the silent Gatling with his bare fists, leaving the skin of his knuckles on the sharp metal edges. Penrod grabbed his shoulder and pulled him aside. By the light of the flares he saw the crushed cartridge case jammed in the jaws of one of the six cam-operated bolts. It was a number-three stoppage, the most difficult to clear. There was a trick to it that Penrod had learnt from hard experience. He snatched the bayonet from the sheath on Sergeant Khaled’s belt and, with the point of the blade, worked to prise open the jaws of the bolt.

The Dervish came up the walls, climbing like squirrels up the trunk of an oak. The Martini-Henry rifles fell silent as the attackers wriggled through the embrasures and grappled hand to hand with those Egyptians who had stood their ground. The Gatling’s bolt was still jammed solidly. Penrod glanced up: at that moment the fate of the city and all its inhabitants hung on him.

One of the many myths that had built up around the image of General Chinese Gordon was that his voice could carry above the din of any battlefield. Penrod heard it now in the uproar of this inevitable disaster. “Number-two gun, open fire.” Penrod had never expected to welcome those harsh and hectoring tones. They carried clearly across from the secondary emplacement that Penrod had built in anticipation of just such a moment as this. His knees went weak with relief. Then he braced himself, and turned his mind back to the jammed gun.

Waiting, sleepless, on the glacis of the hospital fortifications, Gordon had heard the opening volleys of the battle, and seen the rocket flares sailing up from the harbour into the night sky. He had roused his gunners. They limbered up the second Gatling and ran it through the alleyways and byways of the city. It took them eight and a half minutes to reach the harbour and unlimber the Gatling in the empty emplacement that had been prepared for it. True to his nature, Gordon had timed them. He nodded approval and thrust the hunter back into his pocket.

“Number-two gun, open fire,” he grated, and the monstrous thunder of the six rotating barrels smothered the frenzied war cries of the Dervish. A moving sheet of fire swept relentlessly across the revetment, of the creek. From this angle he caught them in left flank and rear. His fire tumbled them off the walls like ripe apples from a wind-shaken tree. Most lost their weapons in the fall. Those who rose to their feet again were hurled forward by the press of bodies still surging up the creek, and were trapped against the footwall of the fortifications.

“Back! Go back! It is over,” shouted those in the forefront.

“Forward!” screamed those coming up from the beach, “For God and His Ever Victorious Mahdi!” The creek became a massive log-jam of bodies packed so tightly that even the dead were held upright by their comrades.

Penrod could not witness all this taking place while he struggled with the jammed bolt. At last he forced the point of the bayonet behind the lug of the cam and hammered on the hilt with his palm. He ignored the pain, and shouted at Sergeant Khaled, “Back up the crank!” Khaled heaved anti-clockwise on the handle, taking the pressure off the cam and suddenly the lug flew back, with a clanging force that would have taken off Penrod’s thumb, had he not jerked it away. The crushed and deformed cartridge case flew clear. As Khaled released the handle, the next round dropped from the hopper and was fed smoothly into the breech. The bolt cocked with a sweet, almost musical clank.

“Number-one gun cocked and ready, Sergeant.” Penrod slapped Khaled on the shoulder. “Commence firing!” Khaled stooped to the crank, and Penrod himself took hold of the twin traverse handles and depressed the barrels so they were aimed down into the struggling confusion of mud-smeared Ansar. The gun jumped, hammered and shook in Penrod’s hands.

Not even the bravest could withstand the combined fire of the two Gatlings. It rolled them back until they jammed in the portal of the drain tunnel, then decimated their ranks, piling their bodies like faggots of firewood on that narrow strip of beach. As the survivors staggered through the shallows towards the boats, the bullets kicked foam from the surface around them. When at last they clambered aboard, the heavy bullets splintered the deck timbers and struck down the crew cowering within the hulls. Their blood dribbled out of the bullet-holes and trickled down the outside of the hulls, like claret spilt from the goblet of a drunkard.

With their cargoes of broken bodies on the decks, the dhows steered back across the river in the first flush of day. As the last pulled out of the bight of the harbour the Gatlings ceased their dreadful clangour.

The timid silence of the dawn was marred only by the lamentations of the new widows across the river on the Omdurman bank.

Penrod stepped back from the Gatling, whose barrels glowed as though they had been heated in a blacksmith’s forge. He looked around him like someone awakening from nightmare. He was not surprised to find Yakub at his side. “I saw Osman Atalan in the front rank of the enemy host,” he told him.

“I saw him also, lord.”

“If he is still on this bank of the river, we must find him,” Penrod ordered. “If he is alive, I want him. If he is dead, his head shall be sent to the Ever Victorious Mahdi. It may discourage him and his Ansar from another attack on the city.”

Before he left the redoubt Penrod called to Sergeant Khaled, “See to our wounded. Get them to the hospital.” He knew how futile that would be. Both the Egyptian doctors had deserted from Gordon’s regiment months ago, but not before they had stolen and sold all the medical supplies. At the hospital building a few old Arab midwives still treated the wounded with herbs and traditional potions. He had heard that Rebecca Benbrook had tried to teach some of the Sudanese women how to take care of the wounded in a more orthodox fashion, but he knew that she had no medical training. She could do little more than attempt to staunch bleeding, and make sure the wounded had clean boiled water to drink, and extra rations of dhurra and green-cake.

Before the words were out of his mouth he heard a scream. He glanced in the direction it had come from and saw a woman dressed in black robes bending over a wounded Dervish. The Arab and Nubian women of the city had an instinct for death and loot. The first were arriving even before the crows and the vultures.

The wounded Dervish wriggled and writhed as the woman prodded him into position with the point of her little dagger. Then, with an expert stroke that started in his throat under the ear and raked forward, she opened both his carotid and jugular arteries and hopped back so the blood would not soak her skirts. Long ago Penrod had learnt not to interfere in this type of business. Arab women were worse than the men, and this one had made no attempt to conceal what she was about. He turned away. “Sergeant, I need prisoners for questioning. Save as many as you can.” Then he jerked his head to Yakub. “Come, All-seeing Yakub. Let us seek the Emir Osman Atalan. The last I saw of him, he was on the beach trying to rally his men as they ran for the boats.”

“Wait for me, Pen. I am coming with you.” Amber had crept out of the dugout.

Once again he had forgotten her presence. Her hair was in tangled disarray, her blue eyes were underscored with plum-coloured bruises, and her yellow frock was filthy with smoke and dust. The revolver was too big for the hand that held it. “Will I never get rid of you? You must go home, Amber,” he said. “This is no place for you, and it never was.”

“The streets are not safe,” Amber argued. “Not all the Dervish got away in the boats. I saw hundreds of them escaping that way.” She waved the Webley in an indeterminate gesture over her shoulder. “They will be waiting to ravish me or cut my throat.” “Ravish’ was one of her new words, although she was uncertain of its meaning.

“Amber, there are corpses and dying men down there. It’s no place for a young lady.”

“I have seen dead men before,” she said sweetly, ‘and I am not a lady yet, just a little girl. I only feel safe with you.”

Penrod laughed a little too harshly. He always felt lightheaded and detached from reality when fighting was over.

“Little girl? In stature, perhaps. But you have all the wiles of a fully fledged member of your sex. I am no match for you. Come along, then.”

They slipped and slid down the bank into the creek. The first rays of the sun were gilding the minarets of the city, and the light improved every minute. Penrod and Yakub moved cautiously among the bullet-torn bodies of the fallen Ansar. Some were still alive, and Yakub leant over one with his dagger poised.

“No!” Penrod said sharply.

Yakub looked aggrieved. “It would be merciful to help his poor soul through the gates of Paradise.” But Penrod indicated Amber, and shook his head again even more definitely. Yakub shrugged and moved on.

Penrod was looking for Osman Atalan’s green turban. As he ducked out under the stone arch of the tunnel on to the muddy beach, he picked it out: it was on the head of a corpse floating face down in the lap and wash of the wavelets at the edge of the bank. Through the clinging folds of the jibba he saw that the corpse was lean and athletic. There were two bullet-holes in its back. The Gatling had inflicted massive damage he could have thrust his fist into the holes. A few fingerling Nile perch worried the ragged tatters of raw meat that hung from the wounds. The end of the turban floated free, waving like a tendril of seaweed in the wash of the current. Osman Atalan’s long dark hair was entwined with the cloth.

Penrod felt his spirits plunge when only moments before he had been intoxicated. He felt cheated and angry. There should have been more to it than this. He had sensed that he and Atalan were caught up together in the ring of destiny. This was no way for it to end. There was no satisfaction in finding his enemy floating like the carcass of a pariah dog in a drainage creek with fish nibbling his flesh.

Penrod sheathed his sabre and went down on one knee beside the floating body. With a strangely respectful gesture he took the dead man’s arm and rolled the body face up in the shallows. He stared at it in astonishment. This was an older, less noble face, with brutish brows, thick lips and broken teeth stained by the smoke of the hashish pipe.

“Ostnan Atalan has escaped.” He spoke aloud in his relief. He was overtaken by a sense of prescience. It was not over yet. Fate had linked him and Atalan, as a serpentine liana binds two great forest trees to each other. There was more to follow, much more. He knew it in his heart.

There was a soft sound behind him, but it did not alarm him. He thought it was either Yakub or Amber. He went on studying the features of the dead emir, until Amber screamed, “Pen! Behind you! Look out!” She was some way to his right. Even as he turned he knew it was not her he had heard so close behind him. And he knew he was too late. Perhaps, after all, this was where it ended, on this strip of mud beside the great river.

He completed the turn with his right hand on the hilt of his sabre, rising from his knees, but he knew he could not regain his feet and draw his sword in time. He had only a fleeting glimpse of his assassin. The Dervish had been feigning death: it was one of their tricks. Coiled like a poisonous adder he had waited his moment. Penrod had fallen into the trap: he had turned his back and sheathed his sabre. The Dervish had come to his feet with his broadsword drawn back like a forester about to make the first cut on the trunk of a tree. Now he swung all his wiry frame behind the stroke. He was aiming a few inches above the point of Penrod’s left hip bone.

Penrod watched the massive silver blade looping towards him, but it seemed that time had slowed. He was like an insect trapped in a bowl of honey, and his movements were sluggish. He realized that the blade would slice through the soft tissue of his midriff, until it struck his spinal column just above the pelvic girdle. That would not stop it. The entire circumference of his body would offer as little resistance as if it were the spongy stem of a banana tree. This single stroke of the blade would bisect him neatly.

The shot came from his right, a flat blurt of sound, the characteristic report of the Webley .44. Although he was not looking directly at her, Penrod was aware of Amber’s small shape at the periphery of his vision. She was holding the weapon double-handed at the full reach of both her arms, but the heavy recoil threw it high above her head.

The assassin was a young man with a thin, unkempt beard, his pockmarked skin the colour of toffee. Penrod was staring at his face as the heavy Webley bullet struck him in the left temple and blasted through his skull just behind the eyes. It distorted his features as though they were an india-rubber mask. His lips twisted and elongated, and his eyelids fluttered like the wings of butterflies. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and the bullet erupted from his right temple in a cloud of bone chips and wet tissue.

Half-way through the sword stroke his fingers opened nervelessly and the weapon flew from his grip. It spun past Penrod’s hip, missing it by a hand-span, and cartwheeled away to peg point first into the muddy bank. The assassin took a step back before his legs folded and he collapsed.

With his right hand on the hilt of his half-drawn sabre Penrod turned to stare in amazement at Amber. She dropped the revolver and burst into sobs. He went to her and picked up the Webley, thrust it into the holster on his belt and buckled the flap. Amber was sobbing as though her heart was breaking. She was shivering and her lips were quivering wildly as she tried to tell him something. He placed one arm round her shoulders and the other behind her knees and lifted her as though she were an infant. She clung to him with both thin arms round his neck.

“That is absolutely enough for one day,” he said gently. “This time I shall take you home myself.”

Gordon was waiting for him in the Gatling redoubt as he came up the bank. “A fair night’s work, Ballantyne. The Mahdi will think once or twice before he comes again, and the populace will be much heartened.” He lit a cigarette and his hand was steady. “We will throw the Dervish dead into the river, a floating warning to their comrades. Perhaps some may even be carried down through the gorge to our troops coming upriver. They will know that we are holding out. It may encourage them to a little more haste.” Now he glanced at Amber, who was still weeping silently. Her whole body shook with sobs, but the only sounds were small gulps of breath. “I will take command here. You may escort the young lady back to her family.”

Penrod carried Amber into the street. She was still weeping. “Cry if it makes you feel better,” he whispered to her, ‘but, by God, you are as brave a little thing as any man I have known.” She stopped weeping but her grip tightened round his neck.

By the time he handed her over to Rebecca and Nazeera Amber had cried herself to sleep. They had to prise her arms from round Penrod’s neck.

General Gordon used their little victory to counter the numbing despair of the civilian inhabitants of the city. He gathered up the corpses of the enemy, two hundred and sixteen, laid them out in rows on the harbour quay and invited the populace to view them. The women spat upon them, and the men kicked them and shouted abuse, calling down the curse of Allah and condemning them to the fires and torments of hell. They shouted with glee as the corpses were thrown into the river, where the crocodiles snapped at them and dragged them below the surface.

Gordon posted official bulletins in every square and souk of the city, announcing that the British relief columns were now in full march for the city and would almost certainly arrive within days. He also gave them the joyous tidings that the Dervish were so disheartened by their devastating defeat and the approach of the British columns that vast numbers were deserting the black flag of the Mahdi and marching into the desert to return to their tribal homelands. It was true that there was a large movement of Dervish troops on the enemy bank, but Gordon knew that they were being sent northwards in battle array to oppose the British relief columns.

More welcome bulletins announced that General Gordon had declared a double ration of dhurra from the stock he was holding in the arsenal. The same bulletin informed the people that the remaining stocks of grain were more than sufficient to feed the city until the arrival of the relief column. It assured them that when the steamers docked in the harbour they would off load thousands of sacks of grain.

That night Gordon lit bonfires on the maid an The band played until midnight, and the night sky was lit up again by rockets and coloured flares.

Early the following morning he called a more sombre meeting in his headquarters. There were only two other participants: David Benbrook and Penrod Ballantyne.

Gordon looked at Penrod first. “You have drawn up the latest inventory of the grain stocks?”

“It did not take long, sir. At ten o’clock last night there were four thousand nine hundred and sixty sacks remaining. Yesterday’s issue of double rations expended five hundred and sixty-two. At the present rate of consumption, we have sufficient dhurra for another fifteen days.”

“In three days I will be forced to halve the ration again,” Gordon said, ‘but this is not the time to tell the people.”

David looked shocked. “But, General, surely the relief column will be here in two weeks. Your own bulletins gave that assurance.”

“I have to protect the people from the truth,” Gordon replied.

“What, then, is the truth?” David demanded.

Gordon contemplated the ash on his cigarette before he replied. “The truth, sir? The truth is not a monolith cast in iron. It is like a cloud in the sky, constantly changing shape. From every direction that one views it, it offers a different aspect.”

“That description has great literary value, I have no doubt, but in this situation it is of little help.” David smiled bleakly. “When can we expect the relief column to reach us?”

“The information I am about to disclose to you must not go beyond the four walls of this room.”

“I understand.”

“Six Dervish were taken prisoner at the harbour.”

“I thought there would have been more.” David frowned.

“There were.” Gordon shrugged. David knew better than to pursue the subject. This was the Orient where different standards prevailed. Interrogation under torture fell within those standards. “The six prisoners were questioned by my Sergeant Khaled. We obtained much useful intelligence, none of it reassuring. The steamers of the River Division seem to have been delayed at Korti.”

“Good Lord! They should have been at Abu Hamed by now,” David exclaimed. “What on earth is holding them back?”

“We do not know, and speculation is vain.”

“What of the Desert Division under Stewart?”

“Here it is the same sad story. Stewart is still encamped at the Wells of Gakdul,” Gordon told him.

“It does not seem possible that either of those divisions can reach us before the end of the month,” David mused, then looked at the others hopefully for a denial. Neither man responded.

Gordon broke the silence. “What is the state of the river, Ballantyne?”

“Yesterday it fell five inches,” Penrod replied. “Each day the pace of the ebb is accelerating.”

“Can one apply the word “ebb” to falling river waters?” David asked, as if to make light of the serious implications.

Gordon ignored the frivolous question. “The prisoners had other information to give us. The Mahdi has ordered another twenty-five thousand of his elite fighting men northwards to reinforce his army. There are now fifty thousand Dervish gathered at Abu Hamed.” He paused, as though reluctant to continue. “Stewart has two thousand. That means he is outnumbered twenty-five to one. The Dervish know exactly what route he must follow to reach the river. They will choose their ground with care before they attack.”

“Stewart is a fine officer.” David tried to sound confident.

“One of the best,” Gordon agreed. “But twenty-five to one is long odds.”

“In God’s Name we must warn Stewart of the danger.”

“Yes, that is what I intend.” Gordon looked across at Penrod. “I am sending Captain Ballantyne to the Wells of Gakdul to warn him and guide him through.”

“How do you intend that he make the journey, General? As far as I am aware, there are no camels in the city. They have all been eaten. There is only one steamer, Ryder Courtney’s Intrepid this, but the engine is still out of commission. It is highly unlikely that a dhow will get through the Dervish lines.”

Gordon gave a chilly smile. “I have discovered that Mr. Courtney is the owner of a fine herd of at least twenty racing camels. He has been prudent enough not to keep them in the city where I might have found them, but has sent them out into the desert, to a tiny oasis two days’ travel to the south. They are grazing there under the care of some of his people.”

David chuckled. “Ryder Courtney has more arrows to his bow than a monkey has fleas.”

“For somebody who recently queried my use of the language, that is as magnificently garbled an image as you are like to come across in a year of searching.” Penrod smiled with him.

“When taxed with the question of the camels, he at first denied ownership.” Gordon was not smiling. “Then he denied that he had any intention of concealing them from me, and said that it was simply a matter of the availability of grazing for the beasts. I immediately commandeered them. If he had been honest with me from the beginning I might have considered compensation.”

“He may not comply with your orders,” David said. “Ryder Courtney is a man of independent spirit.”

“And of avaricious instinct,” Gordon agreed. “But in this case he would be unwise in the extreme to gainsay me. Even under martial law one would hesitate to shoot a subject of the Queen, but he has several warehouses full of ivory and a large menagerie of exotic but edible animals.” Gordon looked smug. “My persuasive logic has prevailed. Courtney has sent word to his herdsmen at the oasis to bring the camels in, and I expect them to be at our disposal by the day after tomorrow.”

“I had no idea of the gravity of the situation,” David murmured. “Had

I done so I would have prevented my daughter arranging a celebration of your victory at the harbour. She has planned a soiree for tomorrow evening. Unfortunately our kitchens can no longer provide elaborate dinners. However, there will be piano recitals and singing. If you think this inappropriate, General, I shall ask Rebecca to cancel the evening.” “Not at all.” Gordon shook his head. “Although I shall not attend, Miss Benbrook’s festivities will keep up pretences and spirits. She must go ahead, by all means.”

Amber and Saffron opened the musical programme with a piano duet of “Greensleeves’. It mattered little that the consular palace’s grand piano was in sorry need of tuning: the twins made up in enthusiasm for what they lacked in other areas.

This evening Rebecca was a gay and vivacious hostess, and her father could not help remarking her change of mood. Last week she had been sad and moping but now she sang “Spanish Ladies’ with Ryder Courtney, then prevailed on him to render a solo of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” This was well received by the company. Saffron, in particular, applauded him rapturously.

Then Amber dragged Penrod on to the floor. “You have to sing also. Everybody has to sing or do something.”

Penrod gave in graciously. “Can you play “Heart of Oak”?” he asked, and Amber ran to the piano. Penrod’s voice startled and thrilled them all: it was easy, lyrical and true.

“Come, crfeer up, my lads! “Tis to glory we steer, To add something more To this wonderful year…”

When the song ended Rebecca tried to blink tears from her eyes, as she called gaily, “Refreshments will be served before the next act.”

She served strong Abyssinian coffee in delicate Limoges porcelain demitasses. There was no milk or sugar. While she was serving Captain Ballantyne, she fumbled and spilt hot coffee on to his gleaming boots.

Her father watched her from across the room as she blushed bright scarlet, and thought her confusion was almost as uncharacteristic as her clumsiness. Suddenly he realized what it meant. The pretty soldier has her deeply entangled in his web. She is all fluster and flutter whenever he is within fifty paces. When he disappeared she almost pined away, and now he is back she is dizzy with delight. He frowned, and thrust his hands into his pockets. She does not realize that in two days he will disappear again. I would hate to see her badly hurt. It is my paternal duty to warn her. He thought about that for a moment. And perhaps I shall. After all, the identity of the father of my grandchildren is very much my business.

Rebecca recovered herself, and clapped her hands for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a special treat for you this evening. All the way from Madrid, where she has danced before the King and Queen of Spain and other crowned heads of Europe, Senora Esmeralda Lopez Conchita Montes de Tete de Singe, the celebrated flamenco dancer.” There was a brief but mystified spattering of applause as from behind the curtains a plump Spanish lady in lace mantilla, clattering bangles and earrings swept into the room on the arm of Ryder Courtney. In the centre of the floor she sank into a deep curtsy, then rose to her feet with unusual grace for such a portly female. She clicked castanets above her head, and as Rebecca struck up the opening bars of the “March of the Toreadors’ Senora Tete de Singe launched a drumfire salvo of heel stamps.

David let out a snort of laughter. He had been the first to recognize Consul Le Blanc beneath the tall wig and hectic makeup. Then a howl of laughter went up from the entire room, and did not subside until Le Blanc sank to the floor in another theatrical curtsy, his makeup running.

In the ensuing pandemonium David crossed to Rebecca and took her arm. “What an inspired entertainment, my darling. Le Blanc was superb. I do so love a good impersonation.”

Rebecca was in such high spirits that when he led her towards the french windows she went without protest. “Ah!” he said. “My kingdom for a breath of fresh air.” He led her along the terrace. “Of course, Ryder Courtney has a fine voice. A man of many talents. He will make some lucky lady a wonderful husband.”

“Papa, you are always so subtle.” She tapped his shoulder with her fan.

“I have no idea what you are talking about. But I must say I was surprised by Captain Ballantyne. He also has an extraordinary singing voice.” She went still, and looked away.

“What a pity he is leaving, this time for good, and we shall probably never have the pleasure of listening to him again.”

“What are you saying, Daddy?” Her voice was small.

“Dear me, I should not have let that slip. Gordon is sending him north with despatches to Cairo. You know these military men. Ships in the night, all of them, I’m afraid. One can not rely on them.”

“Daddy, I think we should go in to entertain our guests.”

Rebecca looked at herself in the mirror of her dressing-table. Her face was so thin that the cheekbones cast shadows beneath them. There are no fat people in Khartoum, these days. Even Consul Le Blanc is skin and bones. She smiled at the exaggeration, and noted with pleasure the improvement the smile made. I must try not to frown. She dipped her powder puff in the crystal bowl and lightly dusted the hollows under her eyes. “Better and better,” she whispered. She was thin but she still had the bloom of youth upon her skin. “At least Daddy thinks I am beautiful. I wonder if he would agree.” Thinking of him brought a glow to her cheeks. “I wonder if he is out there again.” She glanced towards the balcony doors. “I am not going to look. If he is there, he will think I am encouraging him. He will think that I am a fast woman, which I am definitely not.”

She let her dress fall round her ankles, and reached for the crepe’ de-Chine gown. Before she slipped it on she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Then, on an impulse, she crossed the bedroom and locked the door. She had sent Nazeera away, but she did not want her to return unexpectedly. As she went back to the mirror she pushed the straps of her shift off her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor beside her dress. She looked at her naked body in the mirror. Her ribs showed beneath her white skin, and her pelvic bones stood proud. Her belly was concave as that of a greyhound. She touched her breasts. Nazeera said that men did not like small breasts. “Are they too small?”

Then she remembered the feel of his lips upon them, the brush of his moustache and the sharpness of his teeth. As she stared, the tips swelled and darkened with heat. Suddenly she was aware of that wetness again, hot as blood, spreading slowly down the inside of her thighs. From her breasts her fingertips traced downwards, but as they brushed the gossamer cloud of golden hair at the base of her hollow belly, she jerked her hand away. “I shall never do that again,” she told herself.

She reached for the gown, and belted it round her waist. She looked at the balcony door. “I should not go out there. I should blow out the lamp and go to bed.” She moved slowly across the floor and hesitated at the door. “This is silly and dangerous. Heaven knows where it will lead. I only pray that he is not there.”

She placed her hand on the door handle and drew a deep breath as though she was about to plunge into an icy pool. She turned the handle and stepped out on to the balcony. Her eyes turned instantly to the base of the tamarind.

He was there, leaning against the trunk. He straightened and looked up at her. His face was in shadow and she stepped to the edge of the balcony to see him more clearly. They stood very quietly, staring at each other. Rebecca felt as though she might suffocate. Every breath was an effort. Her skin was hot and sensitive. Her whole body was on the rack, every nerve stretched to breaking point. The long sinews down the inside of her thighs were drawn tight as whipcord. She turned her head and gazed at a branch of the tamarind. It curled out from the trunk like a python, thick as her waist, and hung over the edge of the balcony beside where she stood. The twins used it as a ladder and a swing. The bark was lightly polished where they had slid along it. Now she laid one hand on it and looked down again at Penrod.

“I am not enticing him,” she told herself firmly. “This is not an invitation. He must not think that it is.”

He went to the base of the tree, and began to climb upwards. No! she thought. He must not do that! I did not mean that!

She was alarmed by the rapidity with which he came up towards her. He reached the bough, and instead of sliding along it in an ungainly manner, with his legs dangling on either side, he stood up and ran lightly along it as though it were a gangplank. He was twenty feet above the ground, and she was terrified that he might slip. She was even more frightened that he would reach the balcony safely and what then?

She ran back into her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. She reached for the latch to lock it but her fingers disobeyed her. She backed away from the door into the centre of the floor. She heard his footstep on the balcony and her breathing came faster. The door handle turned and her fists clenched at her sides. She wanted to call to him to go away and leave her alone. But no sound passed her lips.

He pushed open the door very slowly, and she wanted to scream. But her father was in the room across the landing and the twins’ room was even closer. She did not want to wake them.

Penrod stepped into the room and shut the door quietly behind him. She stared at him, huge startled eyes in a thin pale face. He came to her slowly, with one hand outstretched as though to calm an unbroken filly. She began to tremble.

He touched her cheek. “You are very lovely,” he whispered, and she thought she might burst into tears. He placed both hands on her shoulders, and she stood rigid. He leant gently towards her. She could not tear her eyes from his: they were green in the lamplight, with golden flecks and stars round the iris. Lightly his mouth touched hers. His lips were hot and smooth. His hands slid down from her shoulders and settled on her waist. Her arms hung at her sides like those of a rag doll. He drew her towards him, and she was unresisting. His lips opened on hers, and the taste and smell of him overwhelmed her. His tongue forced her lips apart, and she lifted her arms from her sides and wound them round his neck. He pulled her harder, almost roughly, against his body. She felt that massive hardness growing up again between their lower bodies. Her own wetness welled up like a spring from deep inside her, and she clenched her thighs and buttocks to stop it overflowing, but it flooded creamily down her thighs.

He swayed back, and she felt deprived as the contact between them was broken. She tried to follow his body with her own. He untied her belt and opened her gown. She tried half-heartedly to cover herself but he held her wrists, and studied her pale body with a rapt expression. “You are lovely beyond the telling of it,” he murmured, and his tone was husky.

Her shyness evaporated in the warmth of his praise, and instinctively she pulled back her shoulders. Her breasts were pert and pointed. She saw by his eyes that he did not consider them too small. Her nipples felt pebble hard. She wanted desperately to feel his mouth on them again. She was possessed by utter wantonness. She reached up and took a double handful of the dense springing hair at the back of his head, twisted her fingers in his curls and drew his face down.

She gasped as his mouth closed on hers. She would never have believed the plethora of sensations that followed from such a simple act. His breath on her skin was alternately cool and warm as he inhaled and exhaled, his lips at first firm and dry, then soft and moist. His tongue squirmed like an eel, then lapped like a cat at a saucer of cream. He suckled on her, tugging and biting, and she felt the sensation repeated like an echo deep inside her.

When she reached the threshold of pain, he broke off suddenly, lifted her and carried her to her bed. He laid her on it as though she were something fragile and precious, then stepped back. He unbuttoned the front of his shirt, turned to the lamp on her dressing-table, cupped his hand behind the glass chimney and drew a breath to blow out the flame.

She sat up quickly. “No!” she said sharply. “Don’t blow it out. You have seen me, and now I must see you.” She could not believe that she had spoken so brazenly. He came back and stood over her. Without haste he stripped off his shirt. His skin was ivory smooth and unblemished where it had been protected from the sun. The muscles of his chest were hard and flat, forged by swordplay and hard riding. He stood on one leg to pull off his boot, and his balance was rock steady. He laid the boot aside, careful not to drop it, and she was grateful for his consideration. He did the same with the second boot. Then he unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his breeches. She had seen him naked once before, and she had believed that the image would remain with her for ever. But she had not seen him like this. She bit her lip to prevent herself crying out with shock. He came on to her bed and knelt over her. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged.

“I would die first,” he said. She whimpered as she felt him at the threshold of her being. She thought that something must tear or give way and she braced herself for the agony. She felt a wall of resistance within her.

This cannot be happening, she thought, but she was suddenly reckless of any consequences. She pushed up hard with her hips to meet him, and she felt him break through. The pain was sharp but transitory. He glided on and on into her, until he had filled her to her very depths. The pain fell away, and she was carried out over the void, terrified at first, then soaring upwards as though she scaled a mighty mountain range. When she reached the peak, the need to scream out her triumph was so powerful that she pressed her open mouth into the hollow of his neck to gag herself.

“Stay with me,” she pleaded, as, later, he rose to dress. “Don’t leave me so soon.”

“You know I cannot stay. It is late. Dawn is close, and the household will begin to stir.”

“When are you going away?”

He paused in the act of buttoning his shirt. “Who told you that I am going away?” he demanded sharply. She shook her head. “That is dangerous knowledge, Becky. If the enemy find out it could cost my life, and worse besides.”

“I will not tell another soul,” she said miserably. “But I shall miss you.” She wanted his reassurance that he would return. Papa had said, “Ships in the night, all of them, I’m afraid. One can not rely on them.” She did not want it to be like that.

He did not reply, but shrugged on his khaki tunic.

“Promise me you will come back,” she pleaded. He stooped over her bed and kissed her lips. “Promise me,” she insisted.

“I never make promises I may not be able to keep,” he said, and then he was gone.

She felt tears close to the surface, but she forced them back. “I will never be a whiner or a weeper,” she promised herself. Despite her bursting heart, sleep came down on her like a dark avalanche.

She woke to the sound of guns, but the shells were bursting near the harbour, where the attack had been beaten off. The Dervish were venting their spite. Her bedroom curtains were wide open, and sunlight streamed in.

Nazeera was fussing ostentatiously around the room. “It is after eight, Jamal. The twins have been gone two hours,” she said, as Rebecca raised her head sleepily from the pillow. “I have filled two buckets of hot water, and laid out your blue skirt.”

Rebecca was still half asleep as she slipped out from under the sheet. Nazeera stared at her in astonishment, and she tried to brazen it out: “Oh, Nazeera, you look as though you were frightened by a jinnee. How many times have you seen me naked?” She ran to the bathroom and poured one of the steaming buckets of water into the galvanized hip bath.

Nazeera gazed after her, then pursed her lips. She pulled back the bedclothes and started with alarm. There was a patch of dried blood on the under sheet Nazeera knew at once that this was not menstrual issue: al-Jamal had seen her moon only twelve days before and it was too soon for it to rise again. This blood was bright and pure and virginal.

Oh, my baby, my little girl, you have made the crossing, and now you stand on a strange and dangerous new shore. She bent closer to the bed to scry the omen. The stain was no larger than her spread hand, but it was shaped like a bird in flight.

A vulture? That was an evil omen, the bird of death and suffering. No. She thrust away the thought. A gentle dove? A falcon, cruel and beautiful? A wise old owl? Only the future will tell us, she decided, and gathered up the sheet. She would wash it with her own hands, in secret. No other must be allowed to see this marking. Then she stopped, for she sensed that al-Jamal was watching her through the open bathroom door.

She dropped the bundled sheet on the floor and went through to her. She knelt beside the bath and picked up the loofah. There was no soap they had finished the last bar a week ago. Rebecca held her hair on top of her neck, and leant forward. Nazeera began the familiar ritual of scrubbing her back.

After a while she whispered her question: “Which one was it, Jamal?”

“I don’t understand what you are asking.” Rebecca would not look at her face.

“Who climbed the tamarind tree last night?” But Rebecca pretended she had water in her eyes, and covered them with both hands.

“It could not have been Abadan Riji, the pretty soldier. He has another woman,” Nazeera said.

Rebecca lowered her hands and stared at her. “You are a liar,” she said softly, but with deadly ferocity. “That is a cruel and hurtful lie.”

“So it was the soldier. I wish it had been the other, who might bring you happiness. The soldier never will.”

“I love him, Nazeera. Please understand that.”

“So does she. Her name is Bakhita.”

“No!” Rebecca covered her ears. “I don’t want to hear this.”

Nazeera was silent. She took Rebecca’s arm and ran the loofah over it. When she came to her fingers she separated them and washed them one at a time.

“Bakhita is an Arabic name,” Rebecca blurted at last, but Nazeera remained silent. “Answer me!” Rebecca insisted.

“You did not want to hear.”

“You are torturing me. Is she an Arab? Is she very beautiful? Does he love her?”

“She is of my people and my God,” Nazeera answered. “I have never seen her, but men say she is very beautiful, and rich and clever. As to whether he loves her or not, that I do not know. Can a man like Abadan Riji ever love a woman in the same way that she loves him?”

“He is an Englishman and she is Arab.” Rebecca whispered. “How can she love him?”

“He is a man and she is a woman before all else. That is how she can love him.”

“Nazeera, an hour ago I was happy. Now happiness has flown away.”

“Perhaps it is best that you are unhappy for today rather than unhappy for the rest of your life,” Nazeera said sadly. “That is why I have told you these things.”

Two hours after the beginning of curfew the four men left the city. Penrod and Yakub wore turbans and Ansar jib has for they would be riding north through the Dervish lines. Ryder and Bacheet wore simple galabiyyas, like common tribesmen, for they would return to the city.

Despite their outfits they were unchallenged as they crossed the canal behind Ryder Courtney’s compound. The guard had been warned to let them pass. They were all heavily laden with weapons and woven sisal bags as they struck out into the desert. None spoke and they moved warily, keeping well separated but in sight of each other.

Bacheet led the way. He never slackened his pace even when the sand was ankle deep. They walked for two hours before they climbed a bank of shale that was frosty pale in the glimmer of the moon. One of the wadis that was carved out of the far side was filled with a dark amorphous mass of thorny scrub. There Bacheet paused and lowered his burden to the ground. He spoke a few quiet words to Ryder Courtney. Ryder handed him a leather bag of Maria Theresa dollars, and Bacheet -went forward alone. The other three squatted to wait. In the distance they heard Bacheet utter the lonely haunted cry of a courser, the nocturnal plover of the desert. The call was answered from the wadi.

“So al-Mahtoum is here. He is a good man. I can rely on him,” Ryder said, with satisfaction.

“Let us go to join them.” Penrod Ballantyne stood up impatiently.

“Sit down,” Ryder ordered. “Bacheet will come to fetch us. Al-Mahtoum will not allow a stranger to see his face. He lives a dangerous existence. When he has handed over the camels to Bacheet he will disappear back into the desert like a fox.”

An hour later the courser cried again, and Ryder stood up. “Now,” he said, and led Penrod and Yakub forward. There were four camels couched among the scrub. Bacheet squatted beside them but al-Mahtoum was gone. Penrod and Yakub went to each of them to check their tack and their loads. There were dhurra loaves and dried dates in the food bags and one of the animals was loaded with camel fodder. The waterskins were less than a quarter filled.

Penrod remarked on this.

“Al-Mahtoum expects you to fill them at the river crossing. No sense in carrying more than you need. You should reach the Nile at Gutrahn before midnight tomorrow. Don’t try to cross sooner. The Dervish are thick as tsetse flies this side of Gutrahn.”

Penrod replied tartly: “Yakub and I have travelled this road before, but thank you for your excellent advice.” He went from one beast to the next, slapping their humps. They were plumped up with fat. Next he checked their limbs, running his hands down shoulder and haunch to the fetlock. “Sound,” he said. “They are in good condition.”

“They don’t come any sounder,” Ryder said bitterly. “These are gimal, the finest racing camels. They are worth fifty pounds each stolen from me by your warlord Chinese Gordon.”

“I will treat them like my own children,” Penrod promised.

“I am sure you will,” Ryder said, ‘although those who call you the Camel Killer, and they are legion, might have difficulty believing you.”

Penrod and Yakub mounted up, and Penrod gave Ryder an ironic salute with the goad. “I shall give your respects to the ladies at the Long Bar in the Gheziera Club.” He knew that Ryder was not a member. It was another little burr in the rough texture of their relationship.

Yet Ryder was not particularly pleased to see him go. Penrod

Ballantyne was never dull. He and Bacheet watched the little caravan meld with the night.

Bacheet grunted and spat. It was apparent that he did not share his master’s feelings. “The two of them ride together because they are both rogues and lechers, almost as quick with knife and gun as they are with their meat prods.”

Ryder laughed. “You should rejoice that Yakub has gone. Perhaps you will now be able to enjoy a little more of Nazeera’s company.” He swung the sling of his rifle over his shoulder.

“You should be equally grateful to see their backs,” Bacheet’s tone was astringent, ‘although the leopard has already been in the goat kraal, or so I have heard.”

Ryder stopped in his tracks and tried to fathom Bacheet’s expression in the starlight. “What leopard, and whose goats?”

“Yesterday morning Nazeera changed the linen in the palace bedrooms. She had to wash one set in cold water.” It was an oblique reference, but Ryder understood it. Hot water removes most stains, but not blood. For that, one used cold water.

They did not speak again until they had crossed the canal into the city. Ryder was still filled with disbelief and betrayal as he entered his compound and went to his private quarters. Of course he knew of Penrod Ballantyne’s reputation as a lady-killer, but Rebecca Benbrook? Surely not. She was a young girl of excellent family and strict upbringing. His respect and affection for her had led him to expect certain standards of her, those a man might look for in his future wife.

Bacheet and Nazeera are notorious gossips I do not believe it. Then, suddenly, he remembered an observation his elder brother, Waite, had once made: “The colonel’s lady and Katie O’Grady are both women under the skin. In certain circumstances both think with their organs of generation, instead of their brains.” Ryder had laughed at the time, but now it sickened him.

He did not feel better until he had shaved and drunk two large mugs of black coffee, almost the last of his hoarded supply. Even then when he sat down at his desk, he found it difficult to concentrate on his ledgers. The most lurid and disquieting images kept forming in his mind. It was with relief that he made the final entry in his journal, closed the heavy leather bound book and went out to begin his morning rounds of the compound.

As he stepped into the animal enclosure, Saffron ran to meet him. She had Lucy the monkey on her shoulder. Unperturbed the remaining infant was clinging to Lucy’s belly fluff with all four paws and suckling busily. Lucy had lost the other to a disease that not even AH had been able to cure. Saffron skipped along beside him, blissfully relating every shred of information and gem of wisdom that Ali had shared with her that morning.

“Victoria is scouring,” she informed him.

“Are we discussing the female bongo, or the Queen of England and Empress of India?” Ryder asked.

“Oh, don’t be silly! You know exactly who I mean.” Saffron laughed. “Ali says that the acacia leaves do not agree with her. He and I are going to dose her as soon as he has brewed his medicine. It’s what he uses for the horses.”

Ryder felt his dark mood lift a little. Saffron’s company was always healing and distracting. “Why aren’t you helping Amber in the green-cake kitchens?” he asked, as they came to the last cages.

“My sister is a bore, so bossy and overbearing. She hasn’t been here for weeks and today she appears and gives orders as though she was a duchess.”

They walked between the ranks of Sudanese women who were crushing the bundles of fresh greenery in the wooden stamp pots. Ryder greeted most by name and asked a question, which demonstrated his interest and concern for them. They giggled in gratification. Some of the younger girls were openly saucy and flirtatious for Ryder was a great favourite among them. He knew that the way to get the best out of his people was to make certain they liked him. Saffron took part in the banter with the women, for she shared their sense of fun and they enjoyed her sparkle. High spirits were rare in the city, where terror and starvation had turned the populace into wild animals. We have the green-cake to thank for that. It keeps all of us healthy and human, thought Ryder.

He tried not to show it but he was eager to get to the inner enclosure where the smoke was rising from the line of three-legged cauldrons. When they reached it they found Rebecca, Amber and five Arab girls weighing and packing the loaves of green-cake into woven baskets for distribution to those who needed it most. This was not easy to decide, for there was not nearly enough to go round. Rebecca was reading the scale and Amber was writing down the results as her elder sister called them out.

“This is our best day ever, Ryder. One hundred and thirty-eight pounds,” Amber announced with pride, as he came up.

“Excellent. You ladies have done wonderfully well.” Ryder turned to Rebecca. She wore long skirts and a wide-brimmed straw hat, for the sun was already high and hot.

“Miss Benbrook, I hope I find you well?” He could see that she had lost more weight. He was sure he would be able to encircle her waist with his hands. But the thought of touching her made him uneasy, and he shifted from one foot to the other.

She gave him the first direct smile since their indiscreet behaviour had been discovered, but it lacked her usual sparkle and verve. She seemed depressed and subdued. “Thank you, Mr. Courtney. For a while I was unwell but I am now fully recovered.” They exchanged a few more stilted pleasantries, while Saffron pouted because she had lost Ryder’s attention.

“If you will excuse us we should get back to work.” Rebecca ended the conversation. “Amber, we have finished with the scale and you may take it back to the shed. Saffron, you are killing Lucy and her baby with love. Go and put them back into their cage. We need your help here.”

Saffron pulled a face but went to do as she was told leaving Ryder and Rebecca alone.

“You are wearing Arab dress,” Rebecca remarked. “That is unusual, is it not?”

“Not at all,” Ryder replied. “I always wear it when I travel in the desert. It is cooler and more practical for riding and walking. Also, my people prefer me to do so. It makes me seem one of them, and less a stranger.”

“Oh? I thought it was because you and Bacheet went out to find camels for Captain Ballantyne and Yakub.”

“Who told you that?”

“For me to know and you to find out.”

“Nazeera’s a chatterbox. You should not pay attention to everything she tells you.”

“You are jumping to conclusions, Mr. Courtney. However, I have always found Nazeera’s information highly reliable,” she replied.

If only you knew Nazeera’s latest bulletin, he thought, but she went on, “Tell me, sir, did Captain Ballantyne get away safely?”

It was a direct question to which she obviously knew the answer. Ryder considered it carefully. It occurred to him that Penrod’s departure had left the field clear for him, On the other hand did he really want the pretty soldier-boy’s discarded toy?

“Well, did he?” Rebecca insisted on a reply. “It is of no interest to me, but Nazeera will want to know about Yakub. He is her particular friend.”

Ryder grimaced at her delicate description of their relationship. Did Rebecca think of the soldier-boy as her particular friend, he wondered. “I don’t think that we should discuss military matters that relate to the safety of the city,” he said at last.

“Oh, la, Mr. Courtney! I am not a spy for the Mahdi. If you don’t tell me I shall simply ask my father. However, I thought you might save me the trouble.”

“Very well. I cannot see any pressing reason why you should not know. Captain Ballantyne left a little after midnight. He and Yakub are heading north, and in all probability will cross the Blue Nile tonight. They plan to join up with the Mahdist army that is moving north along the river towards Abu Hamed.”

Rebecca paled. “They plan to travel in company with the Dervish? That is madness.”

“It is known as hiding in full view. They will conceal themselves among the host,” he assured her. “You need not worry, Captain Ballantyne is adept at disguise. He can change like a veritable chameleon.” And he thought, She can take that as a warning, if she wishes.

“Oh, I am not worried, I assure you, Captain.” The lie was transparent: she looked as though she might burst into tears.

There is no doubt now that Nazeera was telling the truth, and that Ballantyne has made her his doxy, but what of it? Ryder reflected. She was never mine, and I don’t love her at least, not now that she is spoilt fruit. Even in his own ears that did not ring true. He tried to be more honest with himself. Do I love her? But he did not want to face that question four square.

“I will leave you to your labours, Miss Benbrook,” he murmured, and turned towards the door of the shed. “Amber!” he exclaimed. He and Rebecca had been so caught up in their own conversation that neither had noticed she had returned.

“How long have you been listening?” Rebecca demanded.

Instead of answering Amber asked, “Are the Dervish going to catch Penrod?”

“Of course not. Don’t be silly!” Rebecca turned on her. Both sisters were close to tears, “Anyway you should not eavesdrop on other people, and you should not refer to Captain Ballantyne as Penrod. Now, come and help me to get the cauldrons filled again.”

Amber pushed past her and fled through the gates of the compound and back through the streets towards the consular palace.

Poor little thing, thought Ryder, but there are difficult days ahead for all of us.

Early each morning, the minute the bells of the old Catholic mission had tolled the end of curfew, the women of the city streamed from the ruins, huts and hovels and scurried to the arsenal for the daily distribution of grain. By the time the gates opened several thousand were waiting in a line that stretched almost as far as the harbour. It was an agglomeration of misery. Starvation and disease, those dread horsemen, rode so rampantly through every quarter of the city that all cowered beneath their lash. Each of these poor ruined creatures, gaunt and ragged, some barely able to totter along, infants strapped to their backs or sucking vainly on their empty, withered dugs, clutched a battered dish and the tattered ration booklets issued by General Gordon’s secretariat.

At the arsenal gates an Egyptian captain was in charge, with twenty men under his command. The dhurra sacks were dragged out one at a time from the granary. None of the citizens were allowed to enter the gates. Gordon did not want the populace to see for themselves how perilously low the stocks had fallen.

As each woman reached the head of the line, a sergeant examined her booklet to make sure it had not been forged. When he was satisfied he scribbled the date and his signature. The day’s ration for her family was doled out into her dish with a wooden scoop. Two masters-at-arms, with clubs, stood ready on each side of the gates to discourage any argument or disturbance. This morning an additional twenty armed troopers were drawn up in a double rank on each side of the gates. Their bayonets were fixed, their expressions grim and businesslike. The women knew from bitter experience what this show of force presaged. They became restless and rowdy, bickering spitefully, jostling each other. The children sensed the tension and were fretful.

When General Gordon came striding down the street from the fort towards the gates, the women held up their children to show him their bruised, distorted features, the skeletal semi-paralysed limbs, and how their hair had turned to a sparse reddish fuzz, all sure signs of starvation, scurvy and beri-beri.

Gordon ignored these marks of affliction, the curses and supplications of the mothers, and took his place at the head of the squad. He nodded to the captain to proceed. The young officer unrolled the proclamation, which had been run off on the consulate printing press, and began to read it: “I, General Charles George Gordon, by the authority vested in me by the Khedive of Egypt as Governor of the province of Kordofan and the city of Khartoum, do hereby proclaim that, with immediate effect, the daily ration of grain issued to each citizen of the city of Khartoum shall be reduced to the volume of thirty decilitres per diem—’ The officer could get no further: his voice was drowned by jeers and screams of protest. The crowd pulsed and seethed like a black jellyfish, the women shaking their fists and waving their arms over their heads.

Gordon gave a sharp order. The troopers lowered their bayonets to present a bristling steel hedge to the advancing mob. The women spat, shrieked and hammered on the metal dishes they carried as though they were drums. The captain drew his sword: “Back! Get back, all of you!”

This infuriated them further.

“You want us to starve! We will open the city gates! If the Khedive and Gordon Pasha cannot feed our children, we will throw ourselves on the mercy of the Mahdi.”

The women in the front rank seized the blades of the bayonets, and held them in bloody hands, forcing the troopers back.

Gordon gave a quiet command to the young captain. There was a clash of breech-blocks as the troopers loaded their rifles. “Company . present arms, aim!” The troopers looked over the iron sights into the contorted faces of the mob. “Fire!”

The rifles crashed out, aimed carefully over the women’s heads. Black powder smoke enveloped them in a dense cloud and, stunned, they reeled back a few paces.

“Reload.” The crowd wavered before the menace of the levelled rifles, but then a new sound erupted. The women had begun the high-pitched ululation that goaded and inflamed the passions of the mob.

“Throw open the granary! Give us full ration!”

“Feed us!” they screamed, but the soldiers stood firm.

One woman picked up half a brick from a shell-damaged wall and hurled it at the front rank of riflemen. It did no damage, but provoked the rest to rush to the wall and grab bricks, stones and shards of pottery. The mob was transformed. It was no longer a gathering of human beings but a single monstrous organism, mindless amoeba of violence and destruction.

The stones and bricks flew into the thin ranks of troops. The young captain was struck full in the face. The red fez flew from his head, he dropped his sword and sank to his knees. He spat out a tooth and his mouth ran with blood. The women rushed forward, trying to reach the open grain sack, trampling the captain.

Gordon stepped into his place. The women saw his blazing blue eyes. “Devil eyes!” shrieked those in front. “Shaitan! Kill him!”

“Give us bread for the children! Give us food!”

The bricks clattered among the soldiers. Another man fell.

“Aim!” Gordon’s voice carried, clear as a trumpet call. “One round. Fire!”

The volley smashed into the mob at point-blank range, they went down before it and lay squealing like pigs in the abattoir. Those still on their feet wavered, and the ringleaders tried to rally them.

“Bayonets!” Gordon called. “Forward!” They stepped out briskly, the bright blades levelled and the mob shrank back, then turned on itself and broke. They dropped their stones and bricks, threw aside their dishes and ran back into the alleys.

Gordon halted his men and marched them back into the arsenal. As the gates closed behind them, the survivors crept out from their hiding-places in the warren of slums. They came to find their dead, their wounded and their lost children. At first they were timid and terrified, but then one woman picked up a fist-sized stone and flung it against the barred gates of the arsenal. “The soldiers are fat, their bellies stuffed full. When we beg for food they shoot us down like dogs.” She was a tall bony harridan, dressed all in black. She stood before the gates and raised both skinny arms towards the sky. “I call on Allah to smite them with the pestilence and the cholera. Let them eat the flesh of toads and vultures, as we are forced to do!” Her voice was a high-pitched shriek.

The other women thronged to her. They began to ululate again, rolling their tongues so that their spittle flew as they emitted that terrible keening sound.

“The Franks also have food,” screeched the woman in black. “They gorge like pashas in their palaces.”

“The compound of al-Sakhawi, the infidel, is filled with fat beasts. His storerooms are piled high with sacks of grain.”

“Give us food for our babies!”

“Shaitan is the ally of al-Sakhawi. He has taught him witchcraft. From grass and thorn he has taught him to make the Devil’s manna. His people feast upon it.”

“Destroy the nest of Shaitan!”

“We are the children of Allah. Why should the infidel feast while our babies starve and die?”

The crowd wavered uncertainly, and the black-clad woman took charge. She ran to the head of the street that led to the hospital and beyond it to the compound of Ryder Courtney. “Follow me! I will show you where to find food.” She broke into a shuffling dance, bobbing and ululating, and the crowd streamed after her, filling the narrow street from side to side with a dancing, keening flood of humanity.

The men heard the uproar and came out of their hiding-places among the ruins. The ululating of the women maddened them. Those who carried weapons brandished them. They joined the turbulent dancing procession, and burst into the war songs of the fighting tribes. Ryder and Jock McCrump were in the main workshop. They had suffered many setbacks. This was the third time in as many months that they had been forced to remove the this’s engine from the hull and painstakingly reweld the steam lines. Then they had discovered that the main drive-shaft bearings had also been damaged, and were knocking noisily at even moderate revolutions. Jock had made replacements: from a solid block of metal he had forged and filed the half-shells by hand. It was a monumental exhibition of skill and patience. At long last, after all these months of meticulous labour, the repairs were complete. Now they were putting it all together for a final check before they transported it to the harbour for installation in the steamer’s engine room.

“Well, now, skipper, I think this time we’ve got it right.” Jock stood back with black grease to the elbows and his few remaining hairs plastered to his scalp with sweat. “This time I think the old this will be able to carry us out of this God-forsaken hell-hole. There is a shebeen in Aswan run by a lass from Glasgow, a lady of my acquaintance. She sells genuine malt from the Isle of Islay. I would fain have the taste of it on my tongue again. It is the true nectar of the Almighty, and that’s no blasphemy, mind.”

“I will buy the first round,” Ryder promised.

“And the rest,” Jock told him. “You havenae paid me this year past.”

Ryder was about to protest the injustice of this accusation but he heard racing footsteps coming across the compound and Saffron’s breathless squeaks: “Ryder! Come quickly.”

Ryder stepped to the doorway. “What is it, Saffron?”

She was holding her skirts high and her hat was hanging down her back on its ribbon. Her face was flushed scarlet. “Something terrible is happening. Rebecca has sent me to call you. Hurry!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her. They ran towards the cauldron yard.

“Can you hear it?” Saffron stopped and held up her hand. “Now, can you hear?” It was faint babble and murmur, like wind in trees or a distant waterfall.

“Yes, but what is it?”

“Our women say it’s a huge crowd of the people. They are coming from the arsenal. Our women say that the grain rations have been cut again, and there is going to be terrible trouble. They are terrified, and they are running away.”

“Saffron, go and fetch Rebecca and Amber.”

“Amber is not here. She is sulking in the palace. She has not come back since she heard that Captain Ballantyne had gone away.”

“Good. She will be safe there. Let the women go if they want to. Bring Rebecca, Nazeera and any others who want to stay to the blockhouse. You know how to shutter the windows and bar the doors. You also know where the rifles are kept. You and Rebecca arm yourselves. Wait for me there.”

“Where are you going?”

“To call the men. That’s enough questions. Now, run!”

It was for just this sort of trouble that Ryder had fortified the compound. The walls were high and solid and the tops were lined with shards of broken glass. He had designed the interior of the compound as a series of courtyards, each of which could be defended, but when one was overrun they could fall back into the next. In the centre, the blockhouse comprised his private quarters, treasury and arsenal. All the windows and doors could be covered with heavy shuttering. The walls were pierced with loopholes for rifle fire and the reed roof was heavily plastered with river clay to render it fireproof.

The first line of defence was the outer wall with its heavy gates at front and rear. He sent Jock with three men to barricade the rear gates, and stand guard there. Then Ryder took Bacheet and five of his most reliable men to the front gates, which opened on to the narrow street. They were all armed with long wooden staves. Ryder made certain the gates were bolted and the heavy timber bars were in their slots. It would take a battering-ram to break them down. There was a low wicket gate in the wall to one side, wide enough to admit one man at a time. Ryder stepped through it. The city street was empty, except for a few of the women from the green-cake kitchens. They were scurrying away like frightened chickens, and within seconds the last had disappeared.

Ryder waited. He was deliberately carrying nothing more provocative than the wooden staff. A rifle was worse than useless against a mob. A single shot might drop one person, but would merely infuriate the rest, and they would be on him before he could reload. A certain way to get yourself torn to pieces, he thought, and leant casually on the staff, assuming a calm, relaxed pose. The noise of the crowd was nearer now, becoming louder as he listened. He knew what that keening chorus of women’s voices meant. They were whipping themselves and their menfolk into a frenzy.

He stood alone in front of the gates, and the sound built up into a muted roar, coming down on him like the wild waters of a river in flash flood. Suddenly the front rank of the mob burst into view two hundred paces down the narrow street from where he stood. They saw him and faltered. The hubbub subsided gradually, and a strange hush fell over them. They knew him well and his reputation was formidable.

Damn me, if I don’t do a Gordon on them. Ryder smiled inwardly. Chinese Gordon was famous for the hypnotic power he could wield over a tribe of hostile savages. It was said he could calm and control them by the sheer power of his personality and the gaze of his steely blue eyes.

Ryder straightened until he stood tall, and glowered at them with all the ferocity he could command. He knew that they looked upon green or blue eyes as those of the Devil. The hush became silence. For the moment it was a standoff. It needed but a small push to topple it one way or the other.

He started to walk towards them. Now he held the stave threateningly, and paced with calculated menace. They backed off slowly before his approach. One looked back over his shoulder. They were on the point of breaking.

Suddenly a tall, gangling female figure bounded into the alley. Her features were withered with starvation. Her lips had shrunk back to expose bone-white teeth, too large for her pale pink gums, which were studded with open ulcers. She was the harpy of mythology, swathed in black cloth. As she danced towards him, her shanks beneath the black skirts were thin as the legs of a heron, and her enormous feet flapped like the carcasses of stranded black catfish. She threw back her head and emitted the cry of a banshee. The mob behind her roared and poured after her, filling the alley.

Ryder held up his right hand in a placatory gesture. “I will give you whatever you want,” he shouted. “Stop.”

His voice was drowned by the wild shrieks of the harpy: “We have come to take what we want, and we will kill all who stand in our way!”

Slowly Ryder lifted his left hand and made the sign of the evil eye. He pointed at the woman’s face, and saw her eyelids flutter as she recognized the sign. She stumbled and checked, but then she gathered herself and leapt forward again. He saw the madness in her gaze and knew she was too far gone to respond even to the most dire witchcraft.

Still he stood his ground until she was almost upon him. Then he stepped forward to meet her and drove the point of his staff into her midriff just below the ribcage. The spleens of most river-dwellers were swollen with malaria. A blow like that could burst the organ and kill or maim. The harpy dropped like a bundle of black rags, but the leading ranks of the mob leapt over her body. The man in the forefront swung a broadsword at Ryder’s head. He ducked and darted back through the wicket gate. Bacheet slammed and bolted it behind him. They heard and felt the impact as the mob crashed into it on the far side.

“We will let them through the gate one at a time, and we can crack their skulls as they come through,” Bacheet suggested.

“Too many.” Ryder shook his head. “I will climb to the top of the gate and try to reason with them.”

“You cannot reason with a pack of rabid dogs.”

Somebody was tugging insistently at his coattails and Ryder tried to pull away. Then he looked back. “I thought I told you to stay in the blockhouse,” he exclaimed angrily.

“I brought you this.” Saffron held up his gunbelt with the holstered revolver dangling from it and the rows of brass cartridges in their loops.

“Good girl!” He strapped it on. “But now get back to the blockhouse and stay there.” He did not watch her to make sure she had gone but turned back to Bacheet. “Fetch the long ladder from the workshop.”

They placed it against the wall. Hand over hand Ryder shot to the top and looked down into the street. The length and breadth of it was filled with humanity. He picked out the harpy he had felled: she was on her feet again, doubled over and hobbling with pain, but her voice was as shrill and strident as before. She was directing the crowd to gather anything that would burn from the buildings that lined the street. They were dragging out baulks of timber, dried palm fronds, old furniture, rubbish, and piling it against the outside of the compound gates.

“Hear me, citizens of Khartoum,” Ryder shouted in Arabic. “Let the peace and wisdom of God guide you. There is nothing within these walls that I will not give you gladly.”

They looked up him uncertainly as he balanced at the top of the ladder.

“There is the disciple of Shaitan!” the harpy screamed. “The infidel! Look at him, the pork-eater! The brewer of the green manna from hell!” She shuffled into a painful dance, and behind her the crowd growled. They threw stones and sticks at him, but the wall was high and the range was long. The missiles hit the wall and bounced back, clattering in the dusty street.

“What you call the Devil’s manna, is cooked grass and reeds. If you will feed them with it, your children will thrive and regain their health.”

“He lies! These are the falsehoods that the Devil has placed in his mouth. We know you are eating bread and meat, not grass. Within these walls you have dhurra and meat. Give it to us. Give us your animals. Give us the dhurra you have in your warehouse.”

“I have no dhurra.”

“He lies!” screeched the harpy. “Bring fire! We will burn him out of this nest of evil and sacrilege.”

“Wait!” Ryder shouted. “Hear me!”

But the roar of the crowd drowned his voice. One of the women ran up the crowded street. She was carrying a lighted torch, a bundle of rags soaked in pitch tied to a broomstick. A thick black tarry smoke billowed from the flames. She handed the torch to one of the men, , who ran with it to the gate. Ryder glanced down in alarm as he realized how high the rubbish had been piled against the main gates. The man threw the smoking torch on top of the bonfire. It rolled half-way down, then stuck. In the dry desert air the flames caught at once and licked upwards. The gates had stood in the sun for many years. Even though Ryder had his people paint them regularly, the wood dried out and cracked faster than they could repair it, and now the dried paint flared, and the flames shot high. They were almost colourless in the bright sunlight. Ryder considered ordering Bacheet and his men to form a bucket chain to douse the flames before they could burn through the gates, then realized that there were neither enough men nor buckets, that the river and the well were too far, and the flames were already leaping higher than the top of the wall. The heat was intense and drove him off the ladder.