Almost immediately, from close by in the reeds, a jinnee replied in a broad Scots burr: “Och, aye, laddie! I hear you.” Jock McCrump had camouflaged his steamer with cut reeds so that it was almost invisible from the bank of the lagoon. As soon as they had turned the camels loose and were safely aboard he reversed the old this, now the Wisdom of the Skies, out into the open water and turned her bows eastwards for Roseires, almost two hundred miles upstream. Then he came down to the cabin where Penrod was stretched out on the bunk with Amber anointing his blisters and bruises with the lotion that Nazeera had provided. “And now you’ll be expecting me to make you a cup pa tea, I hae nae door,” said Jock, morosely. It was Darjeeling Orange Pekoe, with condensed milk, and Penrod had never tasted anything so heavenly. He fell asleep immediately after he had downed a third mug, and did not wake again until they were a hundred miles upriver from Khartoum, and beyond the pursuit of even the swiftest camels of Osman Atalan’s aggagiers.
When he opened his eyes Amber was still sitting at the end of his bunk, but she was so engrossed in reading her father’s bulky journal that for some time she did not realize he was awake. Penrod studied her countenance as the emotions that her father’s writing evoked flitted across it. He saw now that she had become far and away the beauty of the trio of Benbrook girls.
Suddenly she looked at him, smiled and closed the journal. “How are you feeling now? You have slept for ten hours without moving.”
“I’m a great deal better, thanks to you and Yakub.” He paused. “Rebecca?”
Amber’s smile faded, and she looked bereft. “She will stay in Omdurman. It was her choice.”
“Why?” he asked, and she told him. They were both silent for a while and then Penrod said, “If I had had my wits about me, I would have gone back to fetch her.”
“She did the right thing,” Amber said softly. “Rebecca always does the right thing. She made that sacrifice for love of me. I will never forget it.”
Over the rest of the river voyage, as they talked, Penrod discovered that she was no longer a child in either body or mind, but that she had become a courageous, mature young woman, her character tempered in the forge of suffering.
The horses were waiting at Roseires, and they picked up relays of mules as they journeyed through the foothills of the Abyssinian highlands. They reached Entoto after eleven days of hard going, and as they rode into the courtyard of Ryder Courtney’s compound Saffron rushed out to greet her twin. Amber tumbled off her mule and they fell into each other’s arms, too overcome to speak. Ryder watched them from the veranda with a benign smile.
Once they had recovered their tongues, the twins could barely pause to draw breath. They sat up all night in Saffron’s studio, talking. They wandered hand in hand through the souks and lanes of Entoto, talking. They rode out into the mountains and came back with armfuls of flowers, still talking. Then they read their father’s journal aloud to each other, and Rebecca’s additions to it, and they hugged each other as they wept for their father and elder sister, both of whom they had lost for ever.
Amber studied Saffron’s portfolio of Khartoum sketches. She pronounced them wonderfully accurate and evocative, then suggested a few small changes and improvements, which Saffron, anxious to please her, adopted immediately. Saffron designed and made a complete wardrobe of new clothes for Amber, and took her to have tea with Lady Alice Packer and Empress Miriam. The queen thought Amber’s new outfit stylish and fetching, and asked Saffron to design her a dress for the next state dinner.
Amber continued David Benbrook’s journal from the point where Rebecca had left off. In it she described her escape from Omdurman and the flight up the Blue Nile to the Abyssinian border. In the process she discovered she had a natural talent with the written word.
Only Ryder was not completely enchanted by Amber’s arrival in Entoto. He had become accustomed to having Saffron’s undivided attention. Now that it had been diverted to her twin, he realized, with something of a shock, how much he missed it.
Penrod recovered swiftly from the injuries he had suffered in Osman Atalan’s shebba. He exercised his sword arm in practice with Yakub, and his legs in long, solitary walks in the mountains. His first urgent duty was to report his actions and whereabouts to his superiors in Cairo, but the telegraph line ran only as far as Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden. He wrote letters to Sir Evelyn Baring and Viscount Wolseley, and to his elder brother in England. The British ambassador sent these out in the diplomatic pouch, but they all knew how long it would be before he could expect a reply.
Ryder Courtney had a sealed blank envelope for Penrod. When Penrod weighed it in his hand he realized that it contained more than paper. “Who is it from?” he asked. “Regrettably I have been sworn to silence,” Ryder replied, ‘but I am sure the answer is contained in it. You must ask nothing more from me concerning the matter, for I am unable to discuss it.”
Penrod took it to the bedroom that Ryder had set aside for him and bolted the door. As he slit open the envelope, a weighty object fell out, but he caught it before it struck the tiles. It lay in his palm, shimmering gold and magnificent, its beauty undiminished by the ages. On the obverse side was the crowned portrait of Cleopatra Thea Philopator and on the reverse the head of Marcus Antonius. In the envelope with the coin was a single line of Arabic written on parchment. “When my lord needs me, he knows where I shall be.” The coin was her signature.
“Bakhita!” He rubbed the portrait of the woman with his thumb. How did she fit into the scheme of things now? Then he remembered Yakub trying to tell him something important while he was drugged with laudanum on the first night of the escape from Omdurman.
The next day he and Yakub rode up into the mountains where they could be alone. Yakub related in detail how, after Penrod had been captured by Osman Atalan, he had set out for Aswan to enlist the aid of the only person who could and would help them. He explained how he had been arrested on the Egyptian border while travelling with a dealer in slaves, and how he had been imprisoned for over a year before he could go on to Aswan.
“As soon as I found Bakhita al-Masur she travelled with me here to Entoto, and arranged your escape with al-Sakhawi.”
Penrod considered ignoring Ryder Courtney’s warning and taxing him with Bakhita’s role in their rescue, but in the end he shied away from doing so. He and Bakhita had always maintained the greatest secrecy and discretion in their relationship. It even surprised him that Yakub had known of it. By this time I should have learnt not to be surprised by anything that the intrepid Yakub comes up with. He smiled to himself. Then he considered writing to Bakhita, but this would be equally unwise. Even if the letter went through diplomatic channels, there was no telling which of the embassy staff was in the pay of the ubiquitous Evelyn Baring. There was another reason not to contact Bakhita. This was less clear-cut in his mind but it had to do with Amber Benbrook. He did not want to do anything that might later hurt the child.
Child? He questioned his choice of word as he watched her cross the yard in deep conversation with her twin sister. You deceive yourself, Penrod Ballantyne.
It was five months before Penrod received a reply to the letter he had written to his elder brother Sir Peter Ballantyne, at the family estate on the Scottish Borders. In his reply Sir Peter agreed that the Benbrook sisters might make their home at Clercastle until such time as their future had been decided. Penrod would sail back to England with Amber and Saffron and take care of them until they reached Clercastle. Once they arrived Sir Peter’s wife, Jane, would take over the responsibility from him.
As soon as Penrod received his brother’s letter he went up to the British Embassy and telegraphed to the office of the Peninsular and Orient Steamship line in Djibouti. He booked passage for himself and the twins on board the SS Singapore, sailing via Suez and Alexandria for Southampton in six weeks’ time. When Amber learnt that she would be sailing home in company with Penrod Ballantyne, then staying at Clercastle with the Ballantyne family she made no objection. On the contrary she seemed well pleased with the arrangement.
It did not go so easily with the other twin. There followed long and difficult discussions with Saffron, who announced with passion that she could see no reason why she should return to England ‘where it rains all the time, and I shall probably expire with double pneumonia on the same day I arrive’. It was necessary to appeal to Alice Packer for a ruling.
“My dear Saffron, you are only fourteen.”
“Fifteen in a month’s time,” Saffron corrected her grimly.
“Your education has been somewhat neglected,” Alice went on imperturbably. “I am sure Sir Peter will provide a governess for you and
Amber. After all, he has daughters of very much the same age as you two darling girls.”
