“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.
