King of Kings Read online

  It had been a wonderful feast, then to cap it all, one of the minstrels who wandered along the trails of Tigray had joined them and sung for his supper. He was the first minstrel who had made the journey to the camp and they all, westerners and Abyssinians alike, took it as a good omen.

  Rusty chuckled. Amber Benbrook had been fascinated by the minstrel’s explanation of “wax and gold” poems, those little verses with clever double meanings so popular among the people here. The musician told her firmly it took years of study to master their forms and rhythms, but no way was that going to stop her. She was trying to invent her own within an hour and she chose him, Rusty, and his quest to fetch quicksilver as her subject. However beautiful she’d looked in the firelight, calling out her clever rhymes, Rusty never lusted after her. He had never felt that passion for a woman, or a man. He knew this was a lack, somehow, but it did not distress him much. His pale cheeks only flushed with blood at the idea of the work ahead. They would soon begin to use their precious store of quicksilver to draw the silver out of the ore. Ryder Courtney would be building his silver houses in a matter of months. Rusty chortled again, thinking of Ryder sitting in the square of the camp on a silver throne, with a silver crown on his head. He imagined Saffron fitting all the goats with silver bells, all thanks to him, and laughed out loud.

  He knew he should be asleep now like the rest, full of kudu stew, injera bread and the glowing honey burn of tej. His feet were sore from dancing and he had no pressing need to visit the tank where the quicksilver was stored, only he wanted to. He wanted a moment to stand over that glittering liquid with his torch held high and see it. It was like a church to him, that storehouse. Dan had shown the men how to make and fit the square timber frames that would support the workings, Patch had shown them how to blow open the rocks with a minimum of risk and designed the wheelbarrows they used to haul the ore to the surface. Bringing the mercury here was Rusty’s great contribution, and he could not help indulging in a moment of private pride. He would offer it his prayers for success in the weeks to come, then go back to bed and sleep. He almost fell again. Hell, he would just sleep in the mouth of the main dig on a bed of ore and be ready in the morning.

  He turned the corner and watched his feet carefully as he climbed the bank to the quicksilver store. It was a steep climb. No flash flood of the river would reach his precious mercury here. Then he heard something. Not the calls of the owls or jays, or crackle and chirp of insects, but a human sound. He looked up from his feet, puzzled. Someone was in the storehouse. He could just see the light of a hurricane lamp in the window. Perhaps Ryder had decided to come and stare at the mercury too, though given the way he had been looking at his wife over the fire it seemed unlikely.

  Rusty sniffed, a little sorry he wouldn’t be able to be alone with his beautiful quicksilver, but still too flush with drink and imminent success to be anything but happy. He pushed open the wooden door. A man was bending over at the base of the quicksilver tank. At first Rusty couldn’t quite understand what he was looking at. The man was fiddling with the tap at the bottom of the stone tank.

  “Hey! Don’t do that! It’ll run off.” The man looked up and Rusty grinned at the familiar face. He relaxed. “You had me worried for a moment.” He hiccuped. “Why ain’t you in bed?”

  The man moved fast. Before Rusty could react, he had sprung to his feet and charged at him. Rusty was knocked backward and the air went out of his lungs. He dropped his torch and the darkness pressed in hard. All he could see was the glimmer of the quicksilver, illuminated by the swinging hurricane lamp. Rusty started laughing. The whole thing was ridiculous.

  “What you playing at?”

  Strong arms lifted him by the collar and he realized he was being dragged toward the tank.

  “What you doing?” he panted. Then he felt himself being lifted up. The knowledge of what was happening suddenly crashed through his befuddled consciousness.

  “No! For the love of God, man! No!”

  He was thrown backward over the high edge and the metal swam up around him. He floundered his way up, every nerve screaming with white terror now.

  “No! Please! Get me out! Get me out!” He grabbed at the side of the tank with his right hand, then screamed in agony and let go as something heavy and iron smashed into his fingers. He fell back and felt the metal slip into his mouth. He spat and cried out again. The metal did not want him, it punched him upward. He slipped and flailed and fell backward. He managed to scream. A hand closed around his ankles and dragged them upward. Rusty thrashed left and right but his head was forced down into the mercury. He could feel it, cold and knowing, finding its way under his clothes, into the shell of his ears, clutching the skin of his chest, forcing its way past his eyelids and freezing the soft wet matter of his eyes. He could get no grip, no hold on the sides of the tank. He had a memory of watching the walls being made, of instructing the workers to grind them smooth so none of the precious mercury would be trapped. He remembered the heat of the Abyssinian sun, the scrape of stone tools, the stir of the breeze in the grasses by the river, the sound of the picks coming from higher up the slope and his name being called. He felt himself turn and smile as Ryder walked toward him along the riverbank, bringing water for him and his workers. He put the beaker into his hand and smiled at him. Rusty took it and drank. His mouth opened and the mercury poured into him and through him. In those final moments of indescribable pain, another Rusty existed, it seemed, observing, a little sadly, with the fresh water in his hand, and Ryder Courtney’s arm resting across his shoulders, how this other mortal man was being unmade by the metal, split apart like the ore he had worked on for so many years into its base and precious elements.

  Rusty heard, like a dream, his killer, weeping and saying again and again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  His body stopped thrashing. In his fading vision he looked up into the African sky and his last thought was of its implacable beauty.

  Amber had gone to sleep dreaming of her wax and gold lesson with the singer. To have earned that wandering man’s soft applause gave her a burst of pride that warmed her as the night grew cold.

  When she woke with a start in the darkness, her first thought was: why am I afraid? She swung her legs down off the sleeping platform and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and went to the door of the hut. She saw Ryder in the center of the camp by the warm remains of the fire. He held a torch above his head. The flames wavered and shrunk as if they did not want to face the cold night breezes.

  “Did you hear that?” he said.

  “Something woke me.” She pointed toward the bend in the river. “From the mine.”

  Ryder nodded. “Stay here, al-Zahra.”

  “Should I not wake some of the men?”

  “It might be nothing. Stay here and listen for me. I’ll shout if I need help.” He left at once, walking with long, confident strides. Amber watched him go. Only a couple of hours before he had been singing and storytelling, laughing with his men until Saffron had wagged her finger at him. He had picked her up and carried her to their bed, still laughing and pretending he might drop her, as Saffron started shrieking and giggling too. Now he moved like a man who had never touched strong drink in his life. He disappeared into the darkness around the bend of the river, and Amber walked slowly to the place where the path dropped steeply toward the water. A half dozen tree stumps and logs were set here, dug up when they were making and remaking the gardens, or pilfered from the mine workings. It had become an unofficial meeting place for the women of the camp, a corner to rest and gossip between chores. She found her way to one of the logs by memory and pulled her knees close to her body, wrapping her shawl around them too. The days were hot here, but the nights were cold. She could sense morning coming, though the night was still pitch black. Soon the sudden African dawn would spill into the valley and the cooking fires would be lit.

  The river sang softly over the stones and a sudden dread squeezed her heart. She knew that something
had gone terribly wrong.

  She heard the splashing of Ryder’s boots in the shallows.

  “Tadesse!” he shouted as he appeared around the corner. She could see Ryder was carrying someone over his shoulders. Amber jumped to her feet and ran toward him. Behind her she heard the sound of people coming from their houses, cries and sudden prayers. Ryder strode by her, and she moaned and put her hand out as she recognized Rusty’s red hair and narrow frame.

  Ryder set him down by the ashes of the fire. Dawn was brightening by the second and Amber saw the first light of the sun catch the shimmering mercury beading across Rusty’s clothes, in his hair, around his nose. As Ryder set him down, tiny pools of it slithered down his cheeks like silver tears. Tadesse came at a run, his feet and chest bare, and skidded to a halt beside Rusty, falling into a crouch. Ryder said something quick and low to him in Amharic, too fast for Amber to catch. Tadesse felt for a pulse and shook his head. He bent down and breathed into Rusty’s mouth. Ryder had his hands in his hair, gripping the side of his head as if he would crush his own skull. Tadesse leaned all his weight on Rusty’s chest and Amber watched in horror as a slick of mercury and black blood welled up and out of Rusty’s mouth. Tadesse turned Rusty’s head to one side and the mixture drained away onto the soil, but his eyes remained fixed and staring.

  Tadesse pounded at his chest and breathed into his mouth again, once, twice, then came away spitting. Someone handed him a beaker of tej and Tadesse swilled it around his mouth and spat it onto the soil. Again he reached for Rusty’s pulse, then he turned away and sat down, wrapping his arms around his knees.

  Ryder let out a roar, a cry of such anger and pain Amber covered her ears. Everyone in the camp was awake now and the ground was washed with honey-colored light. Murmurs and exclamations of dismay ran through the crowd. Some of the women began to cry, and seeing them, the children started to wail. Saffron came out of her hut, Leon struggling in her arms, and looking between her husband and the body, she gave a sudden sob and covered her mouth. Dan and Patch pushed their way through the workers, then stared in horror. Dan dropped to his knees and Patch punched the wall of the church with a cracking force that echoed like a rifle shot. The risen sun looked down on the crowd gathered around the corpse, making the silver of the mercury shine, the black blood a shadow on its glimmering skin.

  •••

  They buried him the same day. The young priest led the way. Ryder, Patch, Dan and Rusty’s two best apprentices carried the body, wrapped in white and supported on a wicker hurdle, up the hill on the far side of the valley. For some reason they felt they wanted to bury Rusty high up and opposite the Mother, where he could watch both the camp and the mine. Behind them followed half a dozen of the mineworkers with shovels over their shoulders, then everyone else. Amber and Saffron walked together in the middle of the crowd, saying nothing. The climb was steep, and halfway up Tadesse took Leon from his mother and sat him on his own shoulders. Everyone wore white, and they looked like a flock of goats moving up the hill. On a small plateau near the summit, shaded and green with the recent rains, the men dug Rusty’s grave and he was lowered into it, accompanied by the prayers of the priest and the responses of the crowd. The red earth stained the cotton of the gravediggers’ robes so they looked as if they were edged with dried blood. The children threw flowers over the body, deep blues and purples on the white shroud, and the earth was put tenderly back over him.

  When it was done, the people turned and began to make their way back down the hillside, Amber and Saffron among them. But Ryder made no move to leave. Instead he sat down on the grass, took a cheroot from his pocket and lit it. Once he had blown the first lungful of smoke into the breeze, he said, “OK, kid, you can come speak to me.”

  Tadesse’s head peered back over the sharp decline of the hill. “I can see now why the kudu cannot hide from you, Mr. Ryder.”

  Ryder didn’t reply, just blew out another cloud of smoke and watched it drift away.

  “I wanted to speak to you alone, Mr. Ryder, but not next to Mr. Rusty’s grave.”

  Ryder leaned back on his elbows and tipped his head back so the sun hit his face. “If you’ve come to talk to me about his death, I think this is as good a place as any, Tadesse.”

  The slim boy took a seat by his side, cross-legged, and began to plait together the grasses in front of him.

  “They say it was an accident. That he was drunk and fell in the tank and could not get out.”

  “And what do you say?” Ryder asked.

  The boy ran his fingers through the grasses again, releasing them. “I helped prepare his body for burial. I looked at it. The fingers on his right hand were broken, as if . . .” He mimed a chopping motion in the air.

  Ryder felt his throat tighten. “As if they were struck with something when he tried to get out of the tank?”

  “Something like a . . . crowbar,” Tadesse said.

  Ryder said nothing. When he had returned to inspect the mercury reservoir, he found the tap half turned and the majority of the precious liquid metal slithering away into the ground. He and a couple of the other men had gone back and retrieved what they could when they realized Rusty was dead, and he had thought the tap knocked open when Rusty tumbled into the tank. Now he considered another, darker scenario. An act of sabotage disturbed by Rusty and then by his own arrival. He pushed his hands through his thick, dark hair. He had made and discarded a number of plans since he carried Rusty’s body into the camp, but all had foundered on one thing. Without Rusty’s knowledge and experience, it would be all but impossible to make use of even the quicksilver they had left. He had lingered at the graveside because he needed to think how he would explain to his family and workers that the death of their friend would set them back months, perhaps even years.

  “Mr. Ryder, I think the hills do not want to give up their silver to you.”

  Tadesse stood up, and whenever Ryder thought of Tigray after that day, this was the first image that came to mind: Tadesse, with his walking stick in one hand, his white shawl falling over his shoulders, looking across the impossible rising and falling peaks in the thin mountain air. A poor boy with the dignified bearing of a king.

  Ryder clenched his fists. “I will have it, Tadesse. For Rusty, for my family, for myself. I will not be threatened and bullied away from this place. It is mine and I shall master it.”

  Tadesse looked back at him over his shoulder for a moment, his gaze cool and assessing, then set off back toward the village.

  By the time Ryder followed him back to the river and his own home, his mind was clear. He believed the workers he had recruited for the mine were loyal, but if one had carried the superstitions regarding the working of metal into the camp and those superstitions had led to sabotage and Rusty’s death, he would be discovered. He would question each of the men, and their wives, and if he had any suspicions he would dismiss the worker and his family at once. He demanded the complete loyalty of those who worked for him and would have it. He also needed to replenish their stocks of quicksilver and find a way to make use of it. Ryder knew that a man of Rusty’s brilliance could not be replaced, but his friend had often spoken about the process in detail as they refined their plans. The only problem was time. He would not leave the camp until he had questioned the workers and assured himself of their loyalty, but he needed that quicksilver now.

  “I’ll go to Massowah,” Patch said, setting down his horn mug of tej on the rough wooden table in Ryder’s hut when Ryder had finished telling him, Dan, Saffron and Amber his decision. “Only problem is the lingo. And the cash.”

  Amber was curled up on the earthen bench furthest from the fire. When Patch finished speaking she stood up and joined the others at the table.

  “I’ll go with you. I have the lingo, and the cash.”

  Ryder frowned. “I won’t take money from my sister-in-law. You know I won’t.”

  She leaned on the table, and the firelight cast soft shadows on her face. “It’s not charity
. It’s an investment in the mine. You and Saffron can draw up the papers while we’re gone. Don’t worry, Ryder. It’s only a minority stake. I won’t be able to tell you how to run things here, I wouldn’t try, but I believe in you and what we’re doing. The gardens can cope without me for a few weeks.”

  Ryder glanced at his wife. Leon was curled in her lap sleeping peacefully.

  “She can do it, Ryder,” Saffron said. “And we need you here.”

  “Then that’s the plan,” he replied and drained his cup.

  “Dear Lord,” Evelyn Baring, the Consul-General of Egypt, said as he looked through the thick folder Sam Adams had laid on his desk. “I thought little in the world could shock me these days, Colonel. I see I was wrong.”

  He squinted at a photograph, one from a packet of several dozen contained in the folder. It showed a corpulent woman, naked apart from her extravagant, plumed hat, high-heeled shoes and stockings, being serviced by a middle-aged man. His face and figure were familiar to every subject of Queen Victoria. They were not alone in the photograph. The man was being cheered on, it seemed, by a half dozen men and women in various states of undress. One figure, dressed in a wide skirt and close-fitting blouse, also had a beard and a face familiar to all students of politics.

  “No wonder the Duke of Kendal always obtained such favorable terms from the government,” Baring said, and returned the photograph to the packet.

  Sam was standing, his hands behind his back, and staring fixedly at the portrait of the queen above Sir Evelyn’s head.

  “Yes, sir. Going through the . . . material provided, it seems the duke was the silent owner of a number of brothels in Paris, the most exclusive of their type. The camera equipment was no doubt hidden between the walls. He needed only a false mirror or two, a spyhole and he could arrange for these images to be collected whenever a choice victim decided to frequent his establishments.”