“Oh, Nazeera, we love you.” Rebecca was immediately contrite.
“Listen to me, Jamal.” Nazeera took Rebecca’s arm and forced her to look into her eyes. “The branch breaks that will not bend with the wind. You are a limber young branch. You must learn to bend.”
Rebecca felt as though she were being crushed beneath a great weight. Wherever her mind turned it encountered only sorrow, regret and fear. She thought of her father, and touched the black stains of his blood on her bodice. She knew that the terrible moments of his beheading were engraved on her memory for the rest of her life. The sorrow was almost unsupportable. She thought of Saffron and knew she would never see her again. She held Amber close to her heart, but wondered if she would survive the disease that had already damaged her fragile body. She thought of the future that awaited them all, and gaped before her, like the black, insatiable maw of a monster.
There is no escape for any of us. As she thought it, there was an urgent shout from one of the crew. She looked about her as though she had been rudely awakened from a nightmare. The dhow had reached the middle of the river, and was sailing along on the light breeze. Now the entire crew was agitated. They crowded the weather rail, and gabbled at each other, pointing downstream.
A cannon boomed out across the water, then another. Soon every one of the Dervish guns were blazing away from both banks. Rebecca handed Amber to Nazeera and jumped to her feet. She gazed in the direction in which everybody was staring and her spirits lifted. All her dark fears and uncertainties fell away. Close at hand she saw the Union Flag of Great Britain flying bravely in the bright sunlight.
Quickly Rebecca pulled Amber to her feet, held her close and pointed downriver. Less than half a mile away a squadron of ships was steaming towards them down the middle of the channel. Their decks were crowded with British soldiers.
“They are coming to rescue us, Amber. Oh, look.” She turned Amber’s head. “Is it not the finest sight you have ever seen? The relief column has arrived.” Now, for the first time, she allowed herself to succumb to her tears. “We are safe, darling Amber. We are going to be safe.”
Penrod Ballantyne kept at a safe distance from the river as they rode the last few miles along the eastern bank of the Nile towards the smoke-hazed city of Khartoum on the horizon. Every mile they covered confirmed what was already a certainty in his mind. The flags on the tower of Mukran Fort were gone. Chinese Gordon had been overwhelmed. The city had fallen. The relief column was too late to save them.
He tried to arrive at some decision as to what he should do now. Every one of his calculations up to this point had depended on the survival of the city. Nowt there seemed to be no reason or logic in going on. He had seen a city captured and sacked by the Dervish. By the time he arrived the only living things inside the walls of Khartoum would be the crows and vultures.
But something drew him onwards. He tried to convince himself that this course of action was dictated by the fact that the doors behind him were shut. He had compounded the charge of insubordination that hung over him by disobeying Sir Charles Wilson’s direct orders to stay in the camp at Metemma. There seemed little merit in turning back now to face the court-martial with which Sir Charles Wilson would welcome his return.
“On the other hand, what merit is there in going forward?” he asked himself. There were others who might still be alive and in need of his assistance: General Gordon and David Benbrook, the twins and Rebecca. At last he was honest with himself. Rebecca Benbrook had loomed large in his consciousness ever since he had ridden away from Khartoum. She was probably the true reason he was there. He knew he must find out what had become of her, or for the rest of his life her memory would haunt him.
Suddenly he reined in his camel and cocked his head towards the river. The sound of gunfire was close and clear. It mounted swiftly from a few random shots to a full artillery barrage. “What is it?” he called to Yakub, who rode close behind him. “What are they shooting at now?”
There was a scattered grove of thorn acacia and palms growing along the bank, obscuring their view of the river. Penrod turned his camel and urged it into a gallop. They rode through the intervening belt of trees and came out abruptly on the bank of the Nile. A forlorn and desperate sight lay before him. The steamers of Wilson’s division were struggling upstream towards the city of Khartoum, whose skyline was clearly visible before them. From their mastheads they flew the red, white and blue Union Flag. Their decks were crammed with troops, but Penrod knew that between them they could not carry more than two or three hundred men. Most of the faces he could see through the lens of his telescope were those of Nubian infantrymen. There was a cluster of white officers on the bridge of the leading steamer. They all had their telescopes raised and were peering upstream. Even at this distance Penrod could pick out the tall, awkward figure of Wilson, his craggy features hidden by his large pith helmet.
“Too late, Charles the Timid,” Penrod whispered bitterly. “If you had done the right thing, as General Stewart and your officers urged, you might have been in time to tip the scales of Fate and save the lives of those unfortunates who waited ten months for you to come.”
The Dervish shot began falling more heavily around the little vessels,
and hordes of Arab cavalry came galloping down the banks from the direction of Omdurman and Khartoum to intercept the flotilla. The Dervish riders fired from the saddle as they kept pace with Wilson’s steamers.
“We must join them!” Penrod shouted to Yakub, and they raced forward to mingle with the Dervish. It was the perfect cover for them. They were soon lost in the dust and confusion of the Arab squadrons. Penrod and Yakub fired as enthusiastically as all the riders around them, but they aimed low so that their bullets whacked harmlessly into the river.
The surface of the water all around the two steamers was lashed by musketry, and the leaping fountains of spray kicked up by the Krupps guns. The white hulls were quickly pockmarked by the bullets that hammered against the steel plate. The thinner steel of the funnels was riddled with holes. Suddenly there was a louder explosion and a cloud of silver steam flew high into the sky above the second vessel. The Dervish riding around Penrod howled triumphantly, and brandished their weapons.
“One of the Krupps has hit her cleanly in the boiler,” Penrod lamented. “By all the gods of war, this day belongs to the Mahdi.”
With steam still erupting from her, the stricken vessel swung helplessly across the stream and began to drop back downriver. Almost immediately Wilson’s leading vessel slowed and turned back to render assistance, and the rest of the squadron followed him round.
The Arab riders with Penrod shouted threats and derision at the two vessels: “You cannot prevail against the forces of Allah!”
“Allah is One! The Mahdi is his chosen prophet. He is omnipotent against the infidel.”
“Return to Satan who is your father! Return to hell, which is your home!”
Penrod shouted with them, and exhibited the same jubilation, firing his rifle into the air, but inwardly his anger and contempt for Wilson seethed. What a fine excuse to break off your determined attack and betake your craven buttocks back to a comfortable chair on the veranda of the Gheziera Club in Cairo. I doubt, Sir Charles, that we shall be seeing much more of you in these latitudes.
In the hope that the crippled vessel would be carried on to the bank, hundreds of Dervish riders followed the squadron downstream, keeping up a rattling fusillade. The crews struggled to pass a towline between them. As the steamers drifted in towards the opposite bank, and out of rifle range, many riders gave up the chase and turned back towards Omdurman. Penrod moved along with them and his presence was unremarked in the effusive mood of victory and triumph. It took almost an hour to reach Omdurman. This gave him plenty of opportunity to listen in on many shouted conversations, all of which were discussions of the devastatingly successful night attack on Khartoum, led by the Emir Osman Atalan, and the subsequent sack and looting. At one point he overheard some discussing the captured white women whom they had taken to the Customs House in Khartoum.
They must be talking about Rebecca and the twins. His hopes were resuscitated. Apart from them there were hardly any white women remaining in Khartoum, except the nuns and the Austrian doctor from the leper colony. Please, God, let it be Rebecca they are speaking about. Even if that means she is a prisoner at least she has survived.”
Among the long, haphazard ranks of riders Penrod and Yakub rode into Omdurman. Yakub knew of a small caravanserai on the edge of the desert, which was run by an old man of the Jaalin tribe, a distant relative to whom he referred as Uncle. This man had often given him shelter and shielded him from the blood feud with the other powerful members of their tribe. Although he looked curiously at Penrod he asked no questions and placed at their disposal a filthy cell with one tiny high window. The only furniture was a rickety angareb covered with coarse
