wavy curls and the tears slid down her cheeks as she hacked them away.
“They will soon grow again, my dove.” Penrod tried to console her as he ran his hand over the stubble.
“It is like murdering my own child,” she whispered. “You were so beautiful.”
“And I will be beautiful again,” he assured her.
She gathered up his uniform from where it lay in the corner of the room. “I will not let even Liala touch it. I will wash it with my own hands,” she promised him. “It will await your return, but never as eagerly as I.”
Then she brought the cloth bag in which she had kept his stained and ragged clothing from his last journey to the south. She wound the filthy turban round his cropped head. He strapped the leather purse round his waist and tucked the service revolver into the light canvas holster, then slipped the curved blade of the dagger into its sheath beside the Webley. They would not show under his dirty galabiyya. Then he strapped on a pair of rough camel-hide sandals and was ready to leave.
“Stay with God, honoured lady.” He bowed obsequiously and she was amazed at how easily he had made the transformation from swaggering Hussar to humble peasant, from effendi to fellah.
“Return to me soon,” she murmured, ‘for if you perish, I shall perish with you.”
“I shall not perish,” he promised.
The harbour master took only a glance at the military travel pass before he assigned Penrod to the gang of stevedores on the next ammunition ship to leave for the south. Penrod wondered again if the elaborate precautions he was taking to avoid recognition were truly necessary. Then he reminded himself that the owner of almost every black or brown face in the swarming docks was a sympathizer of the Dervish. He knew also that he was a marked man. His heroics at El Obeid had been widely discussed, for they were the one blemish on a perfect victory for the Mahdi and his khalifa. Bakhita had warned him that when his name was uttered in the souks along the riverfront it was with a frown and a curse.
The steamer’s cargo was made up entirely of military stores for the army, which was assembling at Wadi Haifa in preparation for the drive upriver. The loading continued all that night and most of the next day. It had been a long time since Penrod had indulged in such hard and debilitating labour. A pause to straighten an aching back or even the slightest hesitation invited the flick and snap of the kurbash whip from one of the overseers. It required all his self-restraint to grovel to the blows and not retaliate with a clenched fist. The ship settled lower into the water as the heavy ammunition cases were heaped on her decks. At sunrise as she left the wharf, pulled into the channel of the river and thrust her ugly round bows into the current she had less than two feet of free board.
Penrod found a space between the tall piles of crates and stretched out in it. He clasped his skinned knuckles and raw fingers under his armpits. He ached in every joint and muscle. It was almost twenty hours’ steaming against the stream to the port of Wadi Haifa. He slept for most of the voyage, and was fully recovered by the time they arrived early the next morning. Fourteen larger steamers were anchored in the main stream of the river. On the south bank was a vast encampment, lines of white canvas tents and mountainous piles of military stores. Boatloads of helmeted troops were being ferried out to the steamers by nuggars and small dhows.
Sir Evelyn Baring had explained the rescue-expedition plan in detail. This was the River Division of the double-pronged advance southwards. The flotilla was preparing to set out on the detour around the great western bend of the river. They would be forced to negotiate three dangerous cataracts along the way. The men going on board would have to tow the steamers on long lines from the bank through those boiling rock-strewn narrows.
Ahead of them, the Desert Column would travel swiftly across the bend of the Nile to Metemma, where Chinese Gordon’s four little steamers were waiting to carry a small detachment of hand-picked men to Khartoum, to reinforce the city until the arrival of the main relief column.
The ammunition ship moored against the riverbank and the porters were immediately roused to begin offloading. Penrod was one of the first ashore and again his travel pass, when displayed to the subaltern in charge of the detail, worked its small miracle. He was allowed through. He picked his way through the encampment and was challenged often before he reached the guard post at the entrance to the zareba that contained the Desert Column.
Its four regiments, commanded by General Sir Herbert Stewart, were drilling and exercising on the parade ground in preparation for the long trek across the loop. But it might be weeks or even months before they received the final marching orders from London.
The sergeant of the guard must have been forewarned of Penrod’s arrival for he did not quibble when the dirty Arab labourer addressed him in the idiom of the officers’ mess, and demanded to be taken to the adjutant’s tent.
“Ah, Ballantyne! I received the telegraph from Colonel Adams in Cairo, but I didn’t expect you for three or four days yet. You have made good time.” Major Kenwick shook hands, but refrained from mentioning Penrod’s unusual garb. Like most of the senior officers he was rather fond of this young scamp, but a little envious of his escapades. He seemed to have a knack of popping up whenever the bullets were flying and promotion was in the air.
“Thank you, Major. Do you know, by any chance, if my men are here?”
“Yes, damn it! And that sergeant of yours has helped himself to five of my best camels. If I had not been firm he would have made off with a whole troop.”
“I’ll be on my way, then, if you’ll excuse me, sir.”
“So soon? I rather hoped that we might have the pleasure of your company in the mess for dinner this evening.”
Penrod saw that he was eaten up with curiosity about this mysterious visitation. “I’m in rather a hurry, sir.”
“Perhaps we might see you in Khartoum, then?” The adjutant kept fishing resolutely.
“Oh, I doubt it, sir. Shall we agree to meet at the Long Bar of the Gheziera Club when this little business has been settled?”
Sergeant al-Saada was waiting for him at the camel lines. Many eyes were watching so his greeting was cold and dismissive, a measure of the wide social chasm between a sergeant in a regiment of the Queen, and a common fellah. They rode into the dunes, Penrod trailing behind him on the grey she-camel. His spirits surged as she moved under him: he knew at once that al-Saada had chosen a wind-eater for him. As soon as they were out of sight of the camp al-Saada reined in. As Penrod came up alongside him his forbidding expression split in a flashing grin, and he snapped his clenched fist across his chest in the riding salute. “I saw you on the deck of the steamer when she came round Ras Indera. You have travelled fast, Abadan Riji.” The name meant the One Who Never Turns Back. “I told Yakub you would be here in less than five days.”
“Fast I came,” Penrod agreed, ‘but even faster must we go.”
Yakub was waiting for them a mile further on. He had the other camels couched behind an outcrop of black rock. Their shapes were rendered grotesque by the waterskins they carried, like huge black cancerous growths on their backs. Each camel was capable of carrying five hundred pounds, but in the Mother of Stones desert each man needed two gallons of water every day to stay alive. As they dismounted Yakub hurried to greet Penrod. He went down on one knee and touched his lips and his heart. “Faithful Yakub has waited for you since Kurban Bairam.”
“I see you, Beloved of Allah.” Penrod smiled back at him. “But did you forget my pack?”
Yakub looked pained. He ran back, untied it from one of the camels and brought it to him. Penrod unrolled it on the baked earth. He saw that his galabiyya had been freshly laundered. Swiftly he changed his rags for the fine wool robe that would protect him from the sun. He covered his face with the black cotton headdress in the fashion of the Bedouin, and tied the black sash round his waist. He tucked the curved dagger and the Webley revolver into the sash over his right hip, and his cavalry sabre on the opposite hip to balance them. Then he drew the sabre from its plain leather scabbard and tested the edge. It stung like a cut-throat razor and he nodded approval at Yakub. Then he made a few practice strokes with the steel, cutting to both sides, lunging high and low, recovering instantly. The sabre felt good in his hand and seemed to take on a life of its own. In this age of breechloading rifles and heavy ordnance Penrod still revelled in the arme blanche.
Almost every Arab carried the long broadsword, and Penrod had observed their use of the blade in contrast to his own. The heavy weapon did not suit the Arab physique. Unlike the mailed crusaders from whom the heavy blade had been copied they were not big, powerful men: they were terriers rather than mastiffs. They were devils to cut and lunge, and the broadsword could inflict a terrible wound. But they were slow to recover their blade. They did not understand the parry, and they used their round leather shield almost exclusively to defend themselves. Against a skilled swordsman they were vulnerable to a feint high in the natural line. Their instinctive response was to lift the
