The Triumph of the Sun Page 15

  The camels jibbed at entering the water but Penrod and Yakub goaded them down the bank and out on to the spur. As they headed into the middle of the Nile the water rose until it reached the men’s chins, and they had to cling to the camel harness. The long legs and necks of the beasts allowed them to cross almost to the far side before they lost their footing and were forced to swim awkwardly. But the water-skins buoyed them up, and Penrod and Yakub swam beside them, urging them on and pointing their heads in the right direction, taking care to keep clear of their driving front legs below the surface. They swam them to the mudbank on the far side, and when they had regained their footing led them out on to dry ground. Quickly they refilled the waterskins and gave the camels their last drink for many days.

  The crossing had taken longer than Penrod had bargained on, and the eastern sky was already paling before they were ready to leave the Nile, the skins filled tight and the camels’ bellies swollen with water. Before they set out they tried to obliterate their tracks from the riverbank, but with that number of heavily laden animals and working in darkness it was impossible. They had to take a chance that the wind and the river waters would wipe away their tracks before they were discovered by Dervish scouts.

  However, a dark premonition of evil rode on Penrod’s shoulders as they headed out into the Monassir desert. After a few hours’ travel the feeling grew so pervasive that he knew he must sweep the back trail to reassure himself that their crossing had not been discovered. He picked out the fleetest, most willing animal from their string – by now they knew each beast well by temperament and capability. He sent Yakub ahead with the others while he returned along their back trail. When he was still some miles from the river, he left the trail and headed for a line of low hills he had noticed earlier that overlooked the river. He couched and tethered his mount below the skyline, then crept forward. As he neared the crest of the hill he dropped to his belly, slithered up behind an outcrop of rocks and peered down into the valley of the Nile. His heart jumped against his ribs, and his nerves whipped tight at what he saw below him.

  A small party of Dervish scouts was dismounted on the near bank of the Nile, and it was obvious that they had discovered the spoor as it emerged from the water. Through the field-glasses he studied the enemy intently. There were six of them. He thought that one might be the man he had chased from Marbad Tegga, but he could not be certain. They were all lean, hard desert Arabs, probably of the Beja tribe. They wore the gaily patched jibbas of the Mahdists, and carried the distinctive round targes and long-sheathed swords. They were leaning on the shafts of their spears and animatedly discussing the tracks on the bank. One turned and pointed south along the run of the spoor, and they all looked in the direction he had indicated. They seemed to be gazing directly towards the spot where Penrod lay.

  He ducked behind the rocks while he assessed his situation. It seemed obvious that the man he had chased from Marbad Tegga, even if that was not him down there, had reached the river ahead of them. He must have spread the warning to the forward elements of the main Dervish army coming down from the north. Perhaps one of the commanding emirs had sent this scouting party ahead to reconnoitre the river crossings and intercept them. Penrod could tell at a glance that these were aggagiers, the finest Dervish warriors. He and Yakub were outnumbered by three to one, and the Dervish were on the alert. He put out of his mind any notion of a fight. Their only salvation lay in flight.

  Now he switched his attention from the men to their mounts. Each rode a handsome horse. They had only one pack camel to carry the leather bags of small gear, food and ammunition, but there were no waterskins. Obviously they were a swift scouting party, but because they carried no water they were confined to the narrow strip of ground a few miles each side of the river. They were not equipped for a deep foray into the Monassir. To intercept Penrod’s caravan they would have to ride hard round the great loop of the river and try to get ahead of them on the riverbank opposite Khartoum. That journey was almost two hundred miles longer than the one that faced him and Yakub. He felt a great wave of relief as he realized that even the swiftest horses would not be able to cut them off before they reached their goal.

  ‘I leave you to the mercy of Allah,’ he murmured, in sardonic blessing, then wriggled back from the skyline to return to his mount and catch up with Yakub. Then an unexpected stir among the men below made him pause. Quickly he refocused the field-glasses. Two of the aggagiers had run back to the single pack camel and forced it to kneel. They unstrapped some equipment from the animal’s back. One of the Arabs squatted cross-legged with what appeared to be a writing tablet on his lap. He wrote with great concentration and care.

  The other man took down a small crate from the camel’s load and removed the cotton cover that protected it. He opened a trapdoor in the lid and reached inside with both hands. Penrod quailed as he saw a small birdlike head bobbing and weaving between the man’s fingers. The writer laid aside his pen, carefully folded his message and stood up. The other man proffered the creature he held, and they were busy for a moment longer.

  Then the scribe stood back and nodded. With both hands the other tossed the sleek grey pigeon high into the air. The bird exploded into flight, its wings clattering softly as it rose higher and higher above the river. All the Arabs watched it, heads thrown back. Their faint cries of encouragement reached Penrod even at that distance.

  ‘Fly, little one, on the wings of God’s angels!’

  ‘Swiftly to the bosom of the Holy Mahdi!’

  Up and up the pigeon climbed, and then it described a series of wide circles in the sky, a speck against the blue, until at last it found its bearings and shot away in a straight, swift line, headed into the south across the loop towards the Dervish city of Omdurman.

  Penrod watched it out of sight, longing to see the knife-winged silhouette of one of the desert Saker falcons towering above it, then beginning the deadly stoop, but no predator appeared and the pigeon vanished.

  Penrod ran down the back slope of the hill and sprang into his camel’s saddle. He turned its head in the same southerly direction as the pigeon had taken and urged it into the pacing gait that it could maintain for fifty miles without rest. But the pigeon would reach Omdurman before nightfall, while he and Yakub still had at least two hundred and fifty miles to ride. He knew now what a terrible gauntlet they had yet to run before he could reach Khartoum and deliver his despatch to Chinese Gordon.

  Osman Atalan marched in the horde of worshippers towards the great mosque of Omdurman. Over his head floated his personal banner, which had been awarded to him by the Mahdi. It was worked with texts from the Koran, and it was carried by two of his aggagiers. All around him throbbed the massive copper war drums. The ombeyas bleated and brayed, and the crowds shouted praises to God, to the Mahdi and his khalifa. The heat clamped down upon the moving mass of humanity and the dust rose in a cloud from the trampling feet and hung over their heads. As they approached the outer wall of the mosque the excitement built up steadily for they knew that today the Mahdi, the light of Islam, would preach the word of God and his Prophet. The Ansar began to dance. Once they had been called Dervish, but the Mahdi had forbidden the use of that name as demeaning.

  ‘The Holy Prophet has spoken to me several times and he has said that whosoever calls my followers Dervish should be beaten seven times with thorns and receive a plague of stripes. For did I not give a proud name and a promise of Paradise to my own true warriors who triumphed on the battlefield of El Obeid? Did I not decree that they be known as my Ansar, my helpers and partisans? Let them be known only as Ansar, and let them glory in that name.’

  The Ansar danced in the sunlight, whirling like dust devils, faster and faster, spinning so that their feet seemed barely to touch the earth, and the ranks of worshippers that pressed around them ululated and shouted the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah: ‘Al-Hakim, the Wise. Al-Majid, the Glorious. Al-Haqq, the Truth . . .’ One by one the dancers were overtaken by holy ecstasy
and fell to the ground, frothing at the mouth and twitching until their eyes rolled back in the sockets and only the whites showed.

  Osman entered the gates of the mosque. It was a vast enclosure open to the sky, and surrounded by a twenty-foot-high wall of mud bricks. It was eight hundred paces square and the whole expanse was packed with the kneeling ranks of jibba-uniformed faithful. At the far end of the mosque an opening was screened off by a rank of black-robed Ansar, the Mahdi’s executioners.

  Osman made his way slowly through the crowds towards this space. The ranks of kneeling figures gave way to him and called his praises as he passed, for he was the foremost of all the great emirs. In the first row of worshippers his aggagiers spread out his prayer mat of fine dyed wool. Beside it they piled the six great tusks that they had taken in the hunt in the Valley of the Atbara. Osman knelt on the mat and faced the narrow gate in the wall, which led to the private compound of the Mahdi.

  Gradually the wild hubbub of the worshippers descended to a hum, and then to a charged, expectant silence. This was shattered by a ringing blast on an ombeya and through the gateway appeared a small procession. At the head were the three khalifas. In appointing these men as his successors the Mahdi had simply followed the precedent set by the first Prophet Muhammad.

  There should have been a fourth khalifa, Al Senussi, the ruler of Cyrenaica. He had sent an emissary to the Sudan to report to him on this person who claimed to be the Mahdi. The man had arrived while the sack of the city of El Obeid was in full swing. He had watched in horror the massacre, the pillage, the torture, the children being chopped into pieces by the Ansar. He did not tarry to meet the Mahdi and fled from the carnage to report back to his master the inhumanities he had witnessed.

  ‘This monster cannot be the true Mahdi,’ Al Senussi decided. ‘I want no truck with him.’

  Thus there were only three khalifas, of whom Abdullahi was the first. Compared to him the other two were of no significance. Abdullahi led them to the prayer mats that had been laid out for them on the raised dais. When they had taken their places there was another expectant pause.

  The ombeya shrieked once more and the Mahdi’s sword-bearer entered through the gateway. He carried before him the symbol of the Mahdi’s temporal powers: a sword with an extraordinarily long, bright blade. Its gold hilt and guard were worked with jewelled stars and crescents, and the steel was inlaid in gold with the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, beneath which was the legend ‘Vivat Carolus’. It was not an Islamic relic but must once have belonged to a Christian crusader. It was an heirloom that had been passed down over the centuries until it had become the sword of the Mahdi. Behind his sword-bearer came the prophet of God himself.

  The Mahdi was dressed in a spotlessly clean and beautifully quilted jibba. On his head he wore a gold casque with chain mesh cheekpieces that might once have belonged to one of Saladin’s Saracens. He began a slow, dignified progress through the congregation of kneeling worshippers. Their ranks opened before him, and sheikhs, warriors, priests and emirs crawled forward to kiss his feet and proffer gifts.

  They held up handfuls of pearls and gold jewellery, of precious stones and beautifully wrought objects of silver. They laid bolts of silk and pure gold embroidery at his feet. The Mahdi smiled his angelic smile and touched their heads in acceptance of each gift. While his Ansar followed behind him and gathered up the offerings, the Mahdi preached to them.

  ‘Allah has spoken to me many times, and he has told me that you should be forbidden to wear fine clothes and jewellery, for this is conceit and pride. You should wear only the jibba, which marks you as a lover of the Prophet and the Mahdi. Therefore it is right and wise that you should deliver these trinkets and fripperies into my keeping.’

  Those close enough to hear the words shouted them aloud so that all might hear and know the wisdom of the Mahdi, and others further on repeated them so by the end they had been shouted to the furthest reaches of the vast enclosure. The worshippers praised God that they should be allowed to hear such wisdom.

  They lifted up leather bags of gold and silver coins and poured them at his feet, glittering piles of Maria Theresa dollars, gold mohurs and English sovereigns, the currency of the Orient and the Occident. Osman Atalan crawled forward under the weight of the largest of the six tusks and his aggagiers followed him with similar offerings. The Mahdi smiled down on Osman and stooped to embrace him.

  The watchers hummed with amazement at such favour bestowed.

  ‘You know that these riches cannot buy you a place in Paradise. If any man hold back treasures and does not bring them to me freely and of his own accord, Allah will burn him with fire and the earth will swallow him. Repent and obey my words. Return to me all that you have taken for yourselves. The Prophet, grace be upon him, has told me many times that any man who still keeps the spoils of looting in his possession shall be destroyed. Believe the revealed word of the Prophet.’

  They shouted again with joy to hear the word of God and his Prophet and the Divine Mahdi, and shoved their way to the front to deliver up their treasure.

  Once the Mahdi had completed his progress round the mosque he returned to the dais and took his seat on his silk prayer mat. One at a time, his three khalifas knelt before him and offered their gifts. One clapped his hands and his grooms led in a black stallion that shone like washed obsidian in the sunlight. Its saddle was carved from ebony, while its bridle and reins were of gold lace, tasselled with the feathers of marabou and eagles.

  The second khalifa offered him a royal angareb bed, whose frame was cunningly carved of ivory and inlaid with gold.

  Abdullahi was the khalifa who knew his master best. He offered the Divine Mahdi a woman, but no ordinary woman. He led her into the enclosure himself. She was cloaked from head to ankles, but her outline beneath the silk was as graceful as that of a gazelle, and her bare feet were elegantly shaped. The khalifa opened the front of her cloak, but held it so that she was screened from all eyes other than those of the Mahdi. She was naked under the cloth.

  The Mahdi leant forward on one elbow and stared at her. She was a lovely child of the Galla who, at fourteen years, had eyes as dark as pools of oil, and skin as smooth as butter. She moved like a newly woken fawn. Her breasts were small and girlish, but shaped like ripe figs. Every hair had been meticulously plucked from her sex, so that the pink tips of her inner lips peeked out at him shyly from the plump little cleft. This emphasized her tender age. The Mahdi smiled at her. She hung her head, covered her mouth with a tiny hand and giggled coyly. The Khalifa Abdullahi covered her again and the Mahdi nodded at him. ‘Take her to my quarters.’

  Then he rose, spread his arms and began to speak again.

  ‘The Prophet has told me many times that my Ansar are a chosen and blessed people. Thus He has forbidden you to smoke or chew tobacco. You shall not drink alcohol. You shall not play a musical instrument except the drum and the ombeya. You shall not dance, except in praise of God and his Prophet. You shall not fornicate, nor shall you commit adultery. You shall not steal. Behold the fate of those who disobey my laws.’

  He clapped his hands, and from the side gate his executioners led in an elderly man. He was barefoot and dressed only in a loincloth. His turban had been stripped off and his unwashed hair was a dirty white. He looked confused and hopeless. He had a rope round his neck. When he stood in front of the dais one of the executioners jerked it and threw him to the ground. Then four surrounded him with their whips poised.

  ‘This man has been seen smoking tobacco. He must suffer a hundred blows with the kurbash.’

  ‘In the Name of God and his victorious Mahdi!’ the congregation assented, with a single voice, and the executioners laid on together.

  The first stroke raised a red welt across the man’s back, and the second drew blood. The victim writhed and shrieked as others followed in quick succession. At the end he moved no more and they dragged him out of the gate through which he had entered. Behind him the dust was damp wi
th his blood.

  The next offender was brought in at the rope’s end, and the Mahdi gazed down on him with a mild and benign smile. ‘This man stole the oars from his neighbour’s dhow. The Prophet has decreed that he shall have one hand and one foot cut off.’

  The executioner standing behind him swung his broadsword low and hard, and lopped off the right foot at the ankle. The man collapsed in the dust and as he put out a hand to save himself, the executioner stood on it to pin it to the ground, then hacked down and cut through the wrist bone. Quickly and expertly they cauterized the stumps by dipping them into a small pot of boiling pitch from the brazier. Then they tied the severed hand and foot around the man’s neck and dragged him out through the side gate.

  ‘Praise the justice and mercy of the Mahdi,’ howled the worshippers. ‘God is Great and there is no other God but God.’

  Osman Atalan watched from his seat in the front rank of the mosque. He was amazed by the wisdom and perception of the Mahdi. He knew instinctively that new religious orders are not forged by granting luxurious indulgences but by enforcing moral austerity and devotion to the word of God. No man who witnessed the rule of this prophet could doubt that he wielded the authority of God.

  The Mahdi spoke again: ‘My heart is as heavy as a stone with sorrow, for there is a couple in our midst, a man and a woman, who have been taken in adultery.’

  The congregation roared with anger and waved their hands above their heads, crying, ‘They must die! They must die!’

  They brought in the woman first. She was little more than a child, a waiflike figure with stick-thin arms and legs. Her hair had come down in a tangle over her face and shoulders, and she wailed piteously as they tied her arms and legs to the stake below the dais.

  Then they led in the man. He also was young, but tall and proud, and he called to the woman, ‘Be brave, my love. We will be together in a better place than this.’