“They are your vassals,” Abdullahi acknowledged. “And you are mine?”
“There is one other small matter.” Osman procrastinated a moment longer, but Abdullahi was ahead of him.
“The woman with yellow hair?”
So he had seen the exchange of glances between Osman and al-Jamal. Osman nodded. Like the rest of them, Abdullahi lusted after this exotic creature with her pale golden hair, blue eyes and ivory skin, but to him she was not worth the price of an empire.
“She is yours,” Abdullahi promised.
“Then I am the vassal of Abdullahi, the successor of the Mahdi, and I will be as the targe on his shoulder and the blade in his right hand.”
Suddenly the Mahdi opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He uttered a cry: “Oh! Allah!” Then the air rushed from his lungs. They covered his face with a white sheet, and the opposing factions faced each other across the cooling body.
The Ashraf stated their case, which was based on their holy blood. Against this the Khalifa Abdullahi’s case was manifest: he did not have the blood but he had the word and blessing of the Mahdi. Still it hung in the balance. The newborn empire teetered on the verge of civil war.
“Who declares for me?” asked the Khalifa Abdullahi.
Osman Atalan rose to his feet and looked steadily into the faces of the emirs of the tribes that traditionally owed him allegiance. One after the other they nodded. “I declare for the word and wish of the holy Mahdi, may Allah love him for ever!” said Osman. “I declare for the Khalifat Abdullahi.”
Every man in the room shouted in homage to the new ruler, the
Khalifat, of the Sudan, although the voices of the Ashraf were muted and lacked enthusiasm.
When Rebecca returned to the hut in the zenana, Amber greeted her ecstatically. They had been parted for all the long weeks of the Mahdi’s last illness. They had never been separated for so long before. They lay together on one angareb, hugging each other and talking. There was so much to tell.
Rebecca described the death of the Mahdi and the ascendancy of Abdullahi. “This is very dangerous for us, my darling. The Mahdi was hard and cruel, but we managed to inveigle ourselves into his favour.” Rebecca did not elaborate on how this had been achieved, but went on, “Now he is gone, we are at the mercy of this wicked man.”
“He will want you,” Amber said. She had grown up far ahead of her years while they had been in the clutches of the Dervish. She understood so much Rebecca was amazed by it. “You are so beautiful. He will want you just as the Mahdi did,” Amber repeated firmly. “We can be sure he will send for you within the next few days.”
“Hush, my sweet sister. Let us not go ahead to search for trouble. If trouble is coming it will find us soon enough.”
“Perhaps Captain Ballantyne will rescue us,” Amber said.
“Captain Ballantyne is far away by now.” Rebecca laughed. “He is probably at home in England, and has been these many months past.”
“No, he is not. He is here in Omdurman. Nazeera and I have seen him. All the town is talking about him. He was captured by that wicked man Osman Atalan. They keep him on a rope and make him run beside the emir’s horse like a dog.”
In the lamplight Amber’s eyes glistened with tears. “Oh, it is so cruel. He is such a fine gentleman.”
Rebecca was astonished and dismayed. Her brief interlude with Penrod seemed like a dream. So much had happened since he had deserted her that her memory of him had faded and her feelings towards him had been soured by resentment. Now it all came flooding back.
“Oh, I wish he had not come to Omdurman,” she blurted. “I wish he had stayed away, and that I never had to lay eyes on him again. If he is a prisoner of the Dervish, as we are, there is nothing he can do to help us. I don’t even want to think about him.”
Rebecca spent most of the following day bringing up to date the journal she had inherited from her father, describing in small, closely written script all that she had witnessed at the death bed of the Mahdi, then her own feelings at the news that Penrod Ballantyne had come back into her life.
From time to time her writing was disturbed by the shouts from the vast crowds in the mosque, which carried over the zenana wall. It seemed that the entire population of the country had gathered. Rebecca sent out Nazeera to investigate. Amber wanted to accompany her, but Rebecca forbade it. She would not let Amber out of her sight in these dangerous, uncertain times.
Nazeera returned in the middle of the afternoon. “All is well. The Mahdi has been buried, and the Khalifat has declared that he has become a saint and that his tomb is a sacred site. A great new mosque will be built over it.”
“But what is all the noise in the mosque? It has been going on all day.” Rebecca demanded.
“The new Khalifat has demanded that the entire population take the Beia, the oath of allegiance to him. The emirs, sheikhs and important men were first to do so. Even the Ashraf have made the oath. There are so many of the common people clamouring to swear that the mosque is overflowing. They are administering the oath to five hundred men at a time. They say that the Khalifat weeps like a widow in mourning for his Mahdi, but still the populace crowds around him. Everywhere I walked in the streets I heard the crowds shouting the praises of the Khalifat and declaring their promises to obey him as the Mahdi decreed. They say the oath-taking will go on for many more days and even weeks before all can be satisfied.”
And when it is done, the Khalifat will send for me, Rebecca thought, and her heart raced with panic and dread.
She was wrong. It did not take that long. Two days later AH Wad came to their hut. With him were six other men, all strangers to her. “You are to pack everything you own, and go with these men,” AH Wad told her. “This is ordered by the Khalifat Abdullahi, who is the light of the world, may he always please Allah.”
“Who are these men?” Rebecca eyed the strangers anxiously. “I do not know them.”
“They are aggagiers of the mighty Emir Osman Atalan. Nazeera and al-Zahra are to go with you.”
“But where are they taking us?”
“Into the harem. Now that the holy Mahdi is departed from us, he has become your new master.”
There was much work to be done. The Khalifat Abdullahi was a clever man. He understood that he had inherited a powerful, united empire, and that this had been built upon the religious and spiritual mysticism of the Mahdi and the political imperative of ridding the land of the Turk and the infidel. Now that the Mahdi was gone, the cement that held it together was dangerously weakened. The infidel would soon gather on his borders and the enemies within would emerge and gnaw away, like termites, the central pillars of his power. Not only was Abdullahi clever, he was also ruthless.
He called all the powerful men to him in a great conclave. Their numbers almost filled the new mosque. First he reminded them of the oath they had sworn only days before. Then he read to them the proclamation that the Mahdi had issued the previous year in which he had made abundantly clear the trust that he placed in Khalifa Abdullahi: “He is of me, and I am of him,” the Mahdi had written in his own hand. “Behave with all reverence to him, as you do to me. Submit to him as you submit to me. Believe in him as you believe in me. Rely on all he says, and never question his proceedings. All that he does is by the order or the permission of the Prophet Muhammad. If any man thinks evil or speaks evil of him, he will be destroyed. He has been given wisdom in all things. If he sentences a man to death, it is for the good of all of you.”
When they had listened earnestly to this proclamation he ordered the emirs and the Ashraf to write letters that were sent out with fast horsemen and camel-riders to the most remote corners of the empire to reassure and calm the population. He announced the creation of six new khalifs. In effect they would become his governors. His brothers were elevated to this rank, and so was Osman Atalan. The Khalif Osman was awarded a new green war- banner to go with the scarlet and black, and granted the honour of planting this at the gates of Abdallahi’s palace whenever he was in Omdurman. All the eastern tribes were placed under his banner. Thus Osman now commanded almost thirty thousand elite fighting men.
It took several months for all this to be accomplished, and when it was achieved Abdullahi invited Osman Atalan to hunt with him. They rode out into the desert. There are no eavesdroppers in those great empty spaces, and the two mighty men rode a mile ahead of their entourage. When they were alone Abdullahi disclosed his vision of the future.
