poured a handful of the powder into it.
“Two mugs and a bit,” said David, proudly.
“Not enough,” Ryder snapped. “Not nearly enough.”
“She won’t take any more.”
“She will,” said Ryder. “If she can’t drink it, I will give it to her with an enema tube.” He carried the mug to the bath. “Amber, did you hear what I said?” She nodded. “You don’t like enemas, do you?” She shook her head vehemently, and her sodden curls dangled in her eyes. “Then drink!” He placed one hand behind her head and held the cup to her lips. She gulped it down painfully, then lay back gasping. Already wasted by prolonged starvation, her body was now dehydrated and skeletal. The change that had taken place in the hour he had been away was dramatic. Her legs were as thin as those of a bird, her ribs as distinct as the fingers of a hand. The skin on her sunken moon-pale belly seemed translucent so that he could see the network of blue veins under it.
Ryder poured another handful of powder into the mug, and filled it with warm tea from the kettle that stood close at hand. “Drink!” he ordered, and she choked it down.
She was panting weakly, and her eyes had sunk into plum-coloured sockets. “I have no clothes on. Please don’t look at me, Ryder.”
He stripped off his moleskin jacket and covered her. “I promise not to look at you if you promise to drink.” He refilled the mug and poured the powder into it. As she drank it, her belly bulged out like a balloon. The gases in it rumbled, but she did not void again. Ryder refilled the mug.
“I can’t drink any more. Please don’t make me,” she begged.
“Yes, you can. You made me a promise.”
She forced down that mug and another. Then there was a strong ammoniac odour and a yellow trickle of urine ran down the bottom of the bath to the plug-hole. “You’ve made me wet myself like a baby.” She was weeping softly with shame.
“Good girl,” he said. “That means you are making more water than you are losing. I am so proud of you.” He understood the trespasses he had already made on her modesty, so he stood up. “But I am going to let Rebecca and Saffy look after you now. Don’t forget your promise. You must keep drinking. I will wait outside.”
Before he left the bathroom he whispered to Rebecca, “I think we may have beaten it. She is out of immediate danger. But the cramps will begin soon. Call me at the first sign. We will have to massage her limbs or the pain will become unbearable.” From his sack he handed her the bottle of coconut oil he had brought from the this. “Tell Nazeera to take this down to the kitchen and warm it to blood heat, no more than that. I will stay close.”
The other dinner guests had left hours ago, and everything was quiet. Ryder and David settled down to wait on the top step at the head of the staircase. They chatted in a desultory fashion. They discussed the news of the relief column, and argued about when the steamers would arrive. David agreed with Chinese Gordon’s estimate, but Ryder did not: “Gordon is always conservative with the truth. He says whatever suits his purpose best. I will believe in the steamers when they tie up in the harbour. In the meantime I will keep up steam in the this.”
Out in the night an owl hooted mournfully, then again, and a third time. Restlessly David stood up and went to the window. He leant on the sill and looked down on the river
“When the midnight owl hoot thrice. To-wit-too-woo, with one breath, Then in a trice It heralds death.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense,” said Ryder, ‘and, what’s more, it does not scan.”
“You are probably right,” David admitted. “My nursemaid repeated it to me when I was five, but she was the wicked witch in person and loved to frighten us children.” Then he straightened up and peered down towards the riverbank. “There’s a boat out there, close in to the beach.”
Ryder went across to join him at the window. “Where?”
“There! No, it’s gone now. I swear it was a boat, a small felucca.”
“Probably a fisherman laying his nets.”
From the bathroom they heard Amber cry out in anguish. They rushed back to her. She was curled into a ball. The wasted muscles in her limbs were like whipcords as the spasms tightened them almost to snapping point. They lifted her out of the bath and laid her on the clean towels that Rebecca and Nazeera spread on the tiled floor.
Ryder rolled up his sleeves and knelt over her. Nazeera poured warm coconut oil into the cup of his hands and he began to massage Amber’s twisted legs. He could feel the ropes and knots under the skin. “Rebecca, take the other leg. Nazeera and Saffy, her arms,” he ordered. “Do it this way.” While they worked, David dribbled more of the tea mixture into their patient’s mouth. Rebecca watched Ryder’s hands as he worked. They were broad and powerful, but gentle. Under them Amber’s muscles gradually relaxed.
“It’s not over yet,” Ryder warned them. “There will be more. We must be ready to start again as the next spasms seize her.”
What depths there are tcthis man, Rebecca thought. What fascinating contradictions. Sometimes he is ruthlessly resourceful, at others he is filled with compassion and generosity of spirit. Would I not be foolish to let him go?
Before the hour was up the next cramps had locked Amber’s limbs so they fell to work on her again, and were forced to keep it up through the rest of the night. Just before daybreak, when all were reaching their own limits of exhaustion, Amber’s limbs gradually straightened and the knots softened and relaxed. Her head rolled to one side and she fell asleep.
“She has turned the corner,” Ryder whispered, ‘but we must still take care of her. You must make her drink the powder mixture again as soon as she wakes. She must eat also. Perhaps you might feed her a porridge of dhurra and green-cake. I wish we had something more substantial, like chicken broth, but that is the best we can do. She will be weak as a newborn infant for days, perhaps weeks. But she has not scoured since midnight, so I hope and believe that the germs, as Joseph Lister is pleased to call the wee beasties that cause the trouble, have been purged from her.” He picked up his damp, soiled jacket from the floor. “You know where to find me, Rebecca. If you send a message I will come at once.”
“I will see you to the door.” Rebecca stood up. As they went out into the passage, she took his arm. “You are a warlock, Ryder. You’ve worked magic for us. I don’t know how the Benbrook family can ever thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, just say a prayer for old Abbot Michael who robbed me of fifty Maria Theresa dollars for a bag of chalk.”
At the door she reached up and kissed him, but when she felt his loins stir, she pulled away. “You are a satyr as well as a warlock.” She managed a faint smile. “But not now. We shall attend to that business at the first opportunity. Perhaps tomorrow after the relief force arrives, when we are all safe from the evil Dervish.”
“I will hold myself on a short rein,” he promised, ‘but tell me, dearest Rebecca, have you given any further thought to my proposal?”
“I am sure you will agree, Ryder, that at this dire time in our lives, my first thoughts must be for Amber and the rest of my family, but each day my affection for you increases. When this dreadful business is over, I feel sure that we will have something of value to share, perhaps for the remainder of our days.”
“Then I shall live in hope.”
Osman Atalan picked out two thousand of his most trusted warriors for the final assault on Khartoum. He marched them out of Omdurman, making no effort to conceal his movements. From his roost on the parapets of Fort Mukran, Gordon Pasha would observe this exodus, and take it as another indication that the Mahdi was abandoning the city and fleeing with all his forces to El Obeid. Once his men were behind the Kerreri Hills, where they were concealed from the prying telescopes on the towers and minarets in Khartoum, Osman divided them into five battalions of roughly four hundred men. A large assembly of boats on the Omdurman bank would warn Gordon Pasha that something was afoot. If he attempted to take such a large force across the river in a single wave, it would overcrowd the tiny landing beach below the maid an and in the darkness create chaos and confusion. He decided to use only twenty boats for the crossing of the river, each vessel could carry twenty men safely. Once they had landed the first wave of four hundred men, the boats would return to the
Omdurman bank to take on board the following battalions. The first wave of attackers would get off the beaches as soon as they could, and leave the way clear for the next. Osman estimated that he would be able to transport his entire force across the Nile in little more than an hour.
He knew his men so well that he gave simple orders to the sheikhs he placed in charge of each battalion, orders that they would not forget in the passion of battle and the heady excitement of looting the city.
Dervish spies within the city had drawn detailed maps of the exact layout of Gordon Pasha’s de fences The
