The Sultan's Daughter (47 page)

Roger broke in to say that he had been told about the massacre of the prisoners and had been greatly shocked by it, but Elbée sprang instantly to his General-in-Chief's defence.

‘What other course was open to him?' he demanded. ‘I am told that he nearly took the heads off the two officers who accepted the surrender of the troops who had broken their parole, because it forced this awful decision on him. For two whole days he wrestled with this problem and twice called a conference of all his Generals to debate it with them. There was not enough food to fill the bellies of our own men, let alone these two thousand prisoners. They could not be sent back by ship to Egypt because of the British, and escorts to march them back overland could not possibly be spared. If they had been released they would have made their way up here to St. Jean d'Acre, and many of them would for the third time have taken French lives. The opinion of the conference of Generals was unanimous. The poor wretches had to be taken out and shot.'

With subtle intent Roger said, ‘But, surely, the Army is not so reduced in numbers that a few hundred men could not have been spared to march the captives back to Egypt?'

Elbée shrugged and supplied the desired information. ‘I can give you only rough figures, but I cannot be far out if I say that General Desaix has been left with at least ten thousand men to hold Egypt. With the casualties we have suffered in the past eight months that cannot leave many more than twelve thousand of the original expeditionary force, and we have not received a single reinforcement. In any case, only four Divisions entered Syria: those of Kléber, Reynier, Bon and Lannes, plus the cavalry under Murat. All of them are far below strength; and now, to the terror of us all, they are being further reduced by plague.'

‘That,' said Roger, ‘is by far the worst news you have given me. Has the infection become serious?'

The Captain sighed. ‘I am told that a few cases occurred while General Kléber's troops were still in Alexandria, but there was no serious outbreak until his Division reached Jaffa. He then lost some two hundred men in the course of a few days, and it is said to be spreading in an alarming fashion. My own men, thank God, have remained free from infection. But, to be honest, we all now refrain from shaking hands with any man from another unit, from fear that we may contract the pestilence.'

It was now about ten o'clock. Except for the sentries, the troops had wrapped themselves in their cloaks and gone to sleep. Roger and his host decided to do likewise. Having dug holes for their hips in the soft sand, they settled down. As Roger spread his handkerchief on a mound of sand that he had scooped up to make a pillow, he was aglow with satisfaction. Without even going to Bonaparte's headquarters he had learned the basic facts of the situation. The French were approximately twelve thousand strong; he knew the names of the Generals who were commanding the Divisions, and had also learned that the Army was existing on a minimum of rations and that it was now being scourged by the plague.

That information was all Sir Sidney had asked him to supply. With a clear conscience he could give it and require in return that he should be given a passage home. All he had now to do was to set out next day, ostensibly for Bonaparte's headquarters, rid himself somehow of the guide he would be given and, the following night, bribe an Arab fisherman to take him off to a British warship. With this happy prospect in mind, he fell asleep.

Soon after one o'clock in the morning the sound of a single warning shot pierced his dormant brain. He started up, wide awake. Next minute he heard the thunder of horses' hooves. Elbée sprang up beside him and they drew their swords. There was no moon so it was almost dark but, above the ridge, against the night sky, they glimpsed a formidable mass of cavalry charging down the slope.

They had hardly time to draw breath before Djezzar's yelling horsemen were upon them. Roger never knew what
happened to Elbée. He was assailed simultaneously by two mounted men, clad in flowing robes and wearing large turbans. He thrust upward with his sword at the one on his right. The point of the sword pierced the man's side and he gave a hideous howl. But at the same instant he had struck at Roger with his scimitar, and the side of the blade caught Roger on the head, knocking him half unconscious. As he staggered back, the man on his left grabbed him by the hair, dragged him off his feet and, exerting terrific strength, hauled him up across his saddle-bow.

His senses whirling, amidst a babel of shots, screams and curses, Roger was carried off into the darkness. After galloping for a mile or more his captor reined in. By then Roger had recovered sufficiently to struggle. Holding him down, the man who had taken him prisoner thrust a cord with a slip knot over his left wrist, then pulled it tight and thrust him off, so that he fell to the ground.

For a few moments he lay there, bruised and panting. A pull on the stout cord jerked him to his knees. The light was just sufficient for him to see that he was among a body of horsemen. To his right he glimpsed another prisoner in a similar situation to his own. A command rang out in Turkish. The body of cavalry began to move forward at a trot. The pull on his wrist yanked him to his feet. Still half dazed, he found himself running, jumping, staggering breathlessly over rough ground, in a desperate endeavour to keep himself from falling and being dragged face downward across it.

Bemused by pain and terror as he was, he was still capable of realising the awful thing that had happened to him. He could now no longer hope for a swift completion of his mission and a passage home. Instead, he was a captive and being taken to Acre, There the odds were that Djezzar Pasha, with his notorious lust for cruelty, would put him to death in some hideous fashion. At the very best he would become a slave. Only that evening he had amused himself by describing to Captain Elbée the imaginary miseries he had suffered as a slave in Tripoli. He had little thought then that they might actually be inflicted on him before another day had passed.

Gasping for breath, his feet hardly touching the ground, Roger blundered on. His left wrist was already galled to bleeding point by the cord looped round it, he was blinded by the sand kicked up by the hooves of the horses and, from the pull his captor had exerted on his hair, his head burned as though vitriol had been poured upon it. Unaided he could never have run so far at such a pace. The cord drew him on, relieving him of any effort to force his body forward, but the strain of keeping upright was appalling. How long his ordeal lasted he had no idea, but it seemed to him that he had been running with bursting lungs for hours on end before the cord at last slackened. Streaming with sweat, coated with sand and with agony in every limb, he fell to the ground and fainted.

When he came to he was again lying face down across his captor's saddle-bow. After a few minutes the clatter of the horses' hooves on cobbles told him that they had entered the city. Ten minutes later they halted, he was thrust from the saddle and came down in a heap on stone paving. His body was so racked by pain that he hardly felt the thump on his backside and squirmed up into a sitting position. His view was partially obscured by a forest of horses' legs and those of their riders, who were now dismounting; but he could see enough to know that he was in a large courtyard lit by men holding smoking torches.

His captor bent over him, roughly untied the loop of cord round his wrist, spat in his face and kicked him. The man then took the bridle of his horse and joined his companions, who were leading away their horses. Other dark-faced, turbaned men came forward. Two of them dragged Roger to his feet and hustled him across the courtyard to a low doorway.
As they did so he saw that he had three companions in misfortune. The four of them were pushed through the door, along a short passage and down a spiral stairway. At the bottom a negro opened a massive wooden door with thick, iron bolts. The light from the torches showed that it gave on to a low, barrel-vaulted dungeon. The prisoners were thrown head first into it, the door clanged to and total darkness descended on them.

The four captives were too utterly exhausted and bemused by pain even to speak to one another. They simply lay where they had been thrown, sobbing and groaning. After what seemed an interminable time, nature took charge and Roger fell into an uneasy dose.

He was aroused by a hoarse voice croaking for water. He had none to give the sufferer and realised that he was terribly parched himself. As he sat up he gave an ‘ouch' of pain, for he had used his left hand in raising his body. Gingerly he felt his wrist and feared it had been dislocated. He was a mass of aching bruises and his scalp still pained him; but he decided that, apart from his wrist, he had sustained no serious injury.

Out of the darkness came another voice that asked, ‘Who are you fellows?'

‘I am Colonel Breuc,' Roger replied, and the prisoner who had been moaning for water answered:

‘I'm Trooper Auby.'

‘And I'm Corporal Gensonné.' There was a short silence, then the Corporal spoke again. ‘There was four of us. Come on; speak up, number four.'

Silence fell again, then came the sound of scraping. Sparks appeared, a small flame flared and by its light Roger saw two gnarled hands with a grimy, grey-moustached face above them. It was the Corporal; with a tinder-box he had lit a scrap of paper. Carefully guarding the flame, he moved it till the light fell on the others. The glimpse Roger got of Auby showed the trooper to be little more than a boy. His cheek had been laid open by a slash from a scimitar and the blood had congealed on it. The fourth prisoner lay on his back, quite still. After one look at him, the Corporal said:

‘ 'E's got nothing to worry about. ‘E's a gonner.'

‘Worry,' thought Roger, was the appropriate word. As Bonaparte would not even be starting his siege operations until that day or the next, there was no possible hope of rescue. On considering matters he found it surprising that he was still alive, for the Turks normally took no prisoners. He could only suppose that Djezzar had ordered one of his Captains to bring in a few so that they could be questioned about the French dispositions. As the word ‘questioned' ran through Roger's mind, it gave him another shudder. Being ‘put to the question' was synonymous with being tortured, and he had no doubt whatever that whether they remained silent, lied to please their enemies or told the truth the Turks would use torture on them. They would then be made slaves or, quite probably, as the Pasha was reported to be a monster of cruelty, put to death in some hideous manner.

The Corporal's spill had soon flickered out and he asked if either of the others had any paper on him. Auby had none, neither had Roger, except for Bonaparte's letters which were still sewn into the hem of his travelling coat; and he had no intention of giving those up, unless he saw a chance of buying his life with them.

In hoarse whispers they continued occasionally to exchange remarks. Young Auby was a conscript and the son of a farmer in the Beuce. He had been about to marry his sweetheart when he was compelled to leave her for the Army. In addition to the wound on his face, he had been shot in the side and was evidently in a very bad way. The Corporal was a Lyonnais who for many years had been a professional soldier. He did not seem to be afraid of death, and only grumbled that it looked as if it had caught up with him just after he had had the ill luck to miss the sack of Jaffa, at which he could have had a last, glorious fling slitting the throats of Turks and raping their women.

They had no idea of the time and were too miserable to feel hungry, but thirst plagued them more and more as the hours crawled by. Now and then they heard a faint scampering that told them that rats had been attracted to the dungeon by their subtle knowledge that there was a corpse in it. The thought that the brutes had begun to eat their dead companion filled Roger with horror.

None of them had been searched; so Roger still had his money-belt round his waist and he wondered if, with its contents, he might possibly bribe one of his jailers to help him escape, but he thought it highly unlikely. Why should any of them risk death? If he showed his gold to one of them it was all Lombard Street to a China orange that the man would simply knock him down and take it from him.

At last a streak of light showed under the heavy door, the bolts were shot back and it was pulled open. In the glare of the torches Roger glimpsed the rats scampering away from the dead trooper's body. A Turk, who was evidently the senior jailer, shouted, ‘Up dogs of Christians! Up, I say, that you may be sent to your maker, Iblis.'

Roger drew a sharp breath. He had picked up enough Turkish to know that Iblis was the Devil, and to be sent to him signified that they were about to die. He got to his feet and his companions followed his example. Surrounded by armed guards they were taken up the stone stairway and out into the courtyard.

It was late afternoon and a sunny day. From the immensely strong square tower that reared up on the landward side of the court Roger could tell now that they were in the great citadel of the fortress, as he had several times studied it through a telescope from the deck of
Tigre
.

His glance next fell on a group of half a hundred men grouped beneath the tall
casbah
. A low dias had been erected there and a solitary figure was seated cross-legged on it on a pile of cushions. From the richness of his robes, the rings that sparkled on his fingers, his jewel-hilted scimitar and the great pigeon's-blood ruby that held an aigrette erect in his enormous, flat turban, Roger had no doubt that he was Djezzar Pasha. To either side and behind him were ranged his entourage. Their costume had changed little since the days of the Saracens and in their circular, pointed helmets, from which depended chainmail ear-pieces, burnished corselets, jewelled girdles and colourful tunics, they presented a splendid spectacle. Near the dais was a small, wizened man, evidently a Councillor, wearing a green turban, showing that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, Beside him towered
an enormous negro, naked to the waist and carrying a drawn scimitar. He was obviously the official executioner.