struck him like the broadside of heavy cannon.
“Ammi Nazeera says that al-Zahra has seen her first moon and become a woman. She can hide this from the exalted Osman Atalan, but in one month’s time her moon will rise again. She will not be able to conceal it longer from him. The mighty Atalan has already ordered Nazeera to watch for and report to him the first show of her woman’s blood. He has announced that, as soon as she is marriageable,
he will offer al-Zahra as a gift to the Khalifat Abdullahi, who hungers for her.”
Even if he had to risk all of them, Penrod could not possibly allow Amber to go to Abdullahi. It would be worse than feeding her alive to some obscene carnivorous monster. The entire plan had to be brought forward. They had a month’s grace in which to change the arrangements. It would be a near-run thing. He sent the willing Lalla almost daily to carry messages to Yakub.
Two weeks before the new date of the escape attempt, the Khalif Osman Atalan announced a feast and entertainment for all his relatives and his most loyal followers. The main compound was decorated with palm fronds and two dozen prime sheep were roasted on spits. The low tables at which the company sat on soft cushions were piled with dishes of fruit and sweetmeats. Penrod found himself placed in a position of preference, close to the Khalif, with al-Noor at one hand and Mooman Digna on the other.
When all had eaten their fill and the mood was as warm as the sunshine, with laughter rippling like the waters of the Nile, Osman rose, made a short speech of welcome and commended them on their loyalty and duty. “Now let the entertainment begin!” he ordered, and clapped his hands.
A finger drum began to tap a staccato rhythm and then a murmur of surprise went up. Every head craned towards the side gate of the courtyard. Two men led in a creature on a leash. It was impossible at first to guess the nature of the animal. It moved slowly and painfully on all fours, forced by its handlers to make a torturous circuit of the yard. It was only gradually that they realized it was a human female. Her hands and feet had been crudely amputated at wrists and ankles. The stumps had been dipped in hot pitch to staunch the bleeding. She crawled on elbows and knees. The rest of her naked body had been whipped with thorn branches. The thorns had lacerated her skin. The mutilations were so horrible that even the hardened aggagiers were silenced. Slowly she crawled to where Penrod sat. The handlers tightened the leash and forced her to lift her head.
Cold with horror Penrod stared into Lalla’s little monkey face. Blood was trickling from her torn scalp into her empty eye-sockets. They had burned out her eyeballs with hot irons. “Lalla!” he said softly. “What have they done to you?”
She recognized his voice, and turned towards him. Blood was still oozing down her cheeks. “My lord,” she whispered, “I told them nothing.” Then she collapsed with her face in the dust, and though they yanked on the leash they could not rouse her.
“Abadan Riji!” Osman Atalan called. “My trusted aggagier of the famous sword arm, put this sorry creature out of her agony.” A terrible silence hung over the gathering. Every man looked at Penrod, not understanding but enthralled by the drama of the moment.
“Kill her for me, Abadan Riji,” Osman repeated.
“Lalla!” Penrod’s voice trembled with pity.
She heard him and rolled her head towards him, blindly seeking his face. “My lord,” she whispered, ‘for the love I bear you, do this thing. Give me release, for I can go on no longer.”
Penrod hesitated only a moment. Then he rose and drew his sword from its sheath. As he stood over her she spoke again: “I will always love you.” And with a single blow he struck her head off the maimed body. Then he placed his foot on the blade and, with a sharp tug at the hilt, snapped it in two.
“Tell me, Abadan Riji,” said Osman Atalan, ‘are those tears I see in your eyes? Why do you weep like a woman?”
“They are tears indeed, mighty Atalan, and I weep for the manner of your death, which will be terrible.”
“With the help of this creature, Abadan Riji was planning to escape from Omdurman,” Osman explained to his aggagiers. “Bring in the shebba, and place it round his neck.”
The shebba was a device designed to restrain and punish recalcitrant slaves, and to prevent them escaping. It was a heavy Y-shaped yoke cut from the fork of an acacia tree. The prisoner was stripped naked, to add to his humiliation, then the crotch of the shebba was fitted against his throat. The thick trunk extended in front of him. They lifted it to shoulder height, and bound the fork in place behind his neck with twisted rawhide ropes. Finally Penrod’s bare arms were lashed to the long pole in front of him. With both arms pinioned, he was unable to feed himself or lift a bowl of water to his lips. He could not clean himself of his bodily waste. If he allowed the pole to sink from horizontal the fork would crush his windpipe and choke him. To move he had first to raise the whole massive contraption and keep it balanced. He could not lie on his side or back, nor was he able to sit. If he wished to rest or sleep he must do so on his knees, with the end of the pole resting on the earth in front of him. At best he could only totter a few paces before the weight of the unbalanced pole forced him to his knees again.
The feast continued while Penrod knelt in the centre of the court yard. Afterwards he was driven back to the courtyard of the aggagiers. Mooman Digna whipped him along like a beast of burden. He was unable to eat or drink, and nobody would help him. He could not sleep for the pain of the shebba goaded him awake. It was too large and cumbersome to allow him to enter his cell so he knelt in the open courtyard, with an aggagier assigned to guard him day and night. By the third day he had lost all feeling in his arms, and his hands were blue and swollen. Although he staggered around the wall of the courtyard to keep in the shadow, the sun’s rays reflected from the lime washed walls and his naked body reddened and blistered. His tongue was like a dry sponge in his parched mouth for the heat in the noonday was intense.
By the morning of the fourth day he was becoming weak and disoriented, hovering on the verge of unconsciousness. Even his eyeballs were drying out, and still no one would help him. As he knelt in a corner of the courtyard he heard the voices of the aggagiers arguing nearby. They were discussing how much longer he would be able to hold out. Then there was silence and he forced open his swollen eyelids. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating.
Amber was coming towards him across the yard. She carried a large pitcher balanced on her head in the manner of an Arab woman. The aggagiers were watching her, but none tried to intervene. She took the pitcher off her head and placed it on the ground. Then she dipped a sponge into it and held it to his lips. He was unable to speak, but he sucked it gratefully. When she had given him as much as he could drink, she replaced the empty pitcher on her head and said softly, “I will come again tomorrow.”
At the same time the following day Osman Atalan entered the yard and stood in the shade of the cloister with al-Noor and Mooman Digna. Amber came in shortly after his arrival. She saw him at once and stopped, balancing the pitcher with one hand, slim and graceful as a gazelle on the point of flight. She stared at Osman, then she lifted her chin defiantly and came to where Penrod knelt. She dipped the sponge and gave him drink. Osman did not stop her. When she had finished and was ready to leave, she whispered, without moving her lips, “Yakub will come for you. Be ready.” She walked past Osman on her way to the gate. He watched her go impassively.
Amber came again the next day. Osman was not there and most of the aggagiers seemed to have lost interest. She gave Penrod water, then fed him as ida and dhurra porridge, spooning it into his mouth as though he were an infant, wiping the spillage off his chin. Then she used another sponge to wash his filth from the back of his legs and his buttocks. “I wish you did not have to do that,” he said.
She gave him a particular look and replied, “You still do not understand, do you?” He was too bemused and weak to try to fathom her meaning. She went on, with barely a pause, “Yakub will come for you tonight.”
Darkness fell and Penrod knelt in his corner of the courtyard. The aggagier Kabel al-Din was his guard that night. He sat nearby, with his back against the wall and his sheathed sword across his lap.
The muscles in Penrod’s arms were cramping so violently that he had to bite his lip to stop himself screaming. The blood in his mouth tasted bitter and metallic. Eventually he slipped into a dark, numb sleep. When he woke he heard a woman’s soft laughter nearby. It was a vaguely familiar sound. Then the woman whispered salaciously, “The enormity of your manhood terrifies me, but I am brave enough to endure it.” Incredibly Penrod realized that it was Nazeera. What was she doing here, he wondered. He opened his eyes. She was lying on her back in the moonlight with her skirts drawn up to her armpits. Kabel al-Din was kneeling between her parted thighs, about to mount her, oblivious to everything about him.
Yakub came over the wall as silently as a moth. As Kabel al-Din humped his back over Nazeera, Yakub sank the point of his dagger into the nape of the man’s neck. With the expertise of long practice he found the juncture of the third and fourth vertebrae and severed the spinal column. Al-Din stiffened, then collapsed soundlessly on
