Trade Wind (44 page)

It was surprising that she had not noticed it at once, for it lay close in shore and immediately opposite her brother’s house: its guns trained on the barred door and shuttered windows, and a boat-load of armed seamen already rowing away from it She watched uncomprehendingly while the men disembarked, and saw a naval officer detach himself from among them and walk alone to the gate—the Sultan’s Baluchi guard parting to let him through—and heard him call out to the Seyyid Bargash to surrender. And it was only then that she realized what had happened. Majid had appealed to the British to arrest his brother, and all was indeed lost.

Salmé, entering, found her sister pacing frantically to and fro, wringing her hands and crying; her lovely face so ravaged with grief as to be barely recognizable and her voice harsh with tears: “It is over,” sobbed Cholé.

“It is over! We have lost! It is over! What are we going to do? What will become of us all?”

She began to rock herself backwards and forwards, and Salmé looked from the window and saw the end of everything they had planned. The end of hope and the end of all their dreams…“Méjé was right,” whispered Salmé. “She is the only one who has been right. She said Majid’s terms were generous and that Bargash would have been wise to accept them. We have all been mad and foolish, and now—”

Her voice was drowned in a crash of shots, and the morning that a moment before has seemed so quiet was suddenly a bedlam of noise, for the bluejackets were firing at the shuttered windows, and the crack and whine and smack of bullets were barely louder than the shouts of men and the terrified screams of women.

Cholé broke into hysterical weeping, and as the din of the firing increased she put her hands over her ears and ran from the room. But the whole house was awake and alive with sounds that could not be shut out, and everywhere she looked there were shrieking women who cowered in comers or tried to hide themselves behind curtains and hangings. In their screams and the remorseless crack of the rifles she heard at last the knell of all her fevered dreams and glittering ambition, and knew that there was no longer any hope for Bargash except in submission. The English had not yet used the guns that were trained on the house, but they would do so if he persisted in his refusal to surrender. They would use them as they had done at
Marseilles
, to batter down the solid stone walls and smash the men who hid behind them into into ugly, bloodstained fragments. It must not happen here! She must do something to stop it She must persuade Bargash that his only chance was to surrender…

She fled to a side window, and leaning from it, screamed across the narrow gap until at last she was answered and her brother’s contorted face glared back at her, mouthing wild words:

No! he would not give himself up. Death was preferable and he would sacrifice his whole household rather than surrender! Méjé, Aziz, servants, slaves and supporters—they should die with him! It was the least they could do after the way he had been betrayed…Yes, betrayed! None of this was his fault. Not one jot of it! He had been tricked by that scheming white man who had sold him worthless weapons. By the imbecility of the el Harth who had lacked the wit to know how to use such new-fangled firearms and supposed that he would be able to explain all when he came, or bring different ammunition; and had then blamed him for their own stupidity—the sons of apes and noseless mothers! But let everyone beware, for he was not yet defeated! He still had many sympathizers in the city and more in the villages, and they would certainly have heard the firing and already be hastening to his side to slay the foreign sailors and overthrow Majid. Cholé would see!

Listening to her brother’s extravagant ravings through the din of firing and the sound of bullets ploughing into furniture and splintering vases and mirrors, Cholé was seized with the terrifying conviction that Bargash had lost his grip on reality and was no longer sane, and she began to cry again and to beg and implore in a voice that was alternately choked with tears and shrill with panic.

Perhaps it was her frantic pleading that at last persuaded him. Or possibly it was the ominous smell of smoke and a belated realization that the beleaguered house could all too easily catch fire and bum down about them. Whatever the reason, she saw his face change. The frenzy drained slowly out of it, leaving it as slack and emotionless as a dead man’s, and she knew that she had won:

“Tell them to stop firing,” said Bargash dully. “I will surrender…but not to Majid. I will never surrender to Majid. It must be to the British Consul, or to no one.”

Cholé did not wait for further words. She turned from the window and ran out of the room and along the passages, tripping over boxes and scattered bundles of clothing, thrusting aside kneeling women and only pausing at the bottom of the last flight of stairs to snatch a cloak and a veil from a praying slave. A moment later she had crossed the courtyard and brushed past the cowering gate-keeper, and was running through the streets towards the British Consulate.

She knew that what she was doing was contrary to every tenet of Arab etiquette and violated every rule of feminine modesty. But to Cholé as well as to Bargash, the humiliation of begging assistance and mediation from a foreigner was preferable to humbling themselves before Majid. Behind her she could hear voices shouting above the crash and crackle of musketry: “
Aman! Aman!
(peace) and she knew that they came from Bargash’s house. His people must be calling to the sailors to stop firing, and she paused for a moment in the deserted street to listen, gasping and breathless, and heard the sounds thin and stop. And all at once the morning was strangely silent.

It is all over
, thought Cholé.
We have lost
…She began to run again, but more slowly now, because she was blinded by tears; and by the time she was ushered into the British Consul’s presence she was crying so uncontrollably that it took that embarrassed bachelor a full five minutes to discover what it was that she was trying to tell him.

Colonel George Edwards, small and spare in the hard sunlight, stepped briskly up to the carved and bullet-scarred door of the Heir-Apparent’s house and tapped peremptorily upon it with his walking stick; and when at last it creaked open, Bargash came out weeping, and handed his sword to the Consul.

Dan and a party of the
Daffodil
’s men escorted the defeated rebel to the Palace, and having given him into the custody of the Sultan’s guards, returned to their ship. And it was only as the
Daffodil
moved back to her moorings that Dan saw the
Virago
, and realized that Captain Frost had returned. But by then he was too tired to care.

He glanced at the schooner where she rode at anchor between a two-masted Arab dhow and a gaily painted
baghlah
from Cutch, and wondered fleetingly what shady business her owner had been engaged in on the coast north of Mombasa. He took it for granted that it had involved some questionable chicanery, and also that any cargo Rory Frost had landed or was about to land would be found, on inspection, to be blameless. All the same he would, on a normal occasion, have inspected it. But now he found that he could raise no interest in the
Virago
or the transactions, illegal or otherwise, of her Captain. Or, for that matter, in anything else. He was feeling ill and bad-tempered and inclined to think that life was a dreary and savourless business; and his arm was giving him a good deal of pain, for he had refused to keep it in a sling and gone ashore that morning with it thrust uncomfortably into a sleeve that had not been designed to accommodate bandages.

“I see Rory’s back,” observed the Assistant-Surgeon meditatively: “A pity we lost him. Young Ruete says that he’s brought back half-a-dozen horses from somewhere over on the mainland, and that they were landed an hour or so ago, just before we got back from the Palace. Sounds innocent enough. But then Rory’s transactions always do. It’s the smell of them that’s wrong. What do you suppose he’s been up to?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Dan indifferently; and went down to his cabin to try to snatch a little rest before going ashore once more to accompany Colonel Edwards and Commander Adams of the
Assaye
to the Palace.

Majid returned to his city that same afternoon in impressive state; attended by his ministers and escorted by his troops and the British naval contingent who had left to fight a battle and stayed to blow up
Marseilles
, The grateful citizens, thankful to see the end of hostilities, received them as though they had been a conquering army returning loaded with laurels, and they marched through cheering crowds and a rain of flowers and rice that showered down upon them from every balcony, window and rooftop. The foreign community too had turned out in force to watch the festivity and raise their hats as the Sultan rode by. Among them Monsieur Rene Dubail with his family and the members of his consulate; for whatever his private feelings on the matter. Monsieur Dubail, as the diplomatic representative of his country, had no intention of appearing to snub the winner of the recent contest, even though his Government had favoured the cause of the loser, and for reasons of their own would have greatly preferred see Bargash in the role of victor. Well, that could still happen one day, thought the Consul philosophically. Time was on his side and he might yet inherit his brother’s throne in the normal manner. In the meantime, however, policy dictated that Majid’s triumph should be accepted with a good grace, and Monsieur Dubail therefore lifted his hat, smiled indulgently and bowed as the Sultan passed.

Back once more in his Palace Majid had called a Durbar of princes, chiefs and nobles to decide what had best be done with his rebellious brother. He had refused to consider such penalties as death or imprisonment, and at its conclusion summoned the British Consul to hear the Durbar’s decision. “We are all agreed,” he informed Colonel Edwards—not entirely truthfully. “And it is our desire that my brother, Seyyid Bargash, be given into your charge, and that you should do with him what you think fit.”

If the Colonel was unprepared for this bland transference of responsibility he did not show it, but bowed and suggested that, in his opinion, the best method of dealing with the Heir-Apparent and restoring peace to His Highness’s dominions would be to desire the Seyyid Bargash to sign a formal undertaking never to plot or wage war against the Sultan again, to quit the Sultan’s territories and to proceed to any port that the British Consul might select.

The document had been signed in the presence of the packed Durbar, and having taken a solemn oath on the Koran to abide by it, Bargash listened in silence while Majid ordered him to embark for India on the
Assaye
. After which he walked out with an escort of the Sultan’s troops to say farewell to his sisters.

Cholé had wept so many tears during the last frantic hours that she had none left to weep. But her dry-eyed despair had been more heartrending than Méjé’s noisy lamentation or Salmé‘s broken sobs, and Bargash had torn himself away at last, racked with grief and emotion and raging against Fate and all those who had failed him. Little Abd-il-Aziz had not been one of these, for the boy had pleaded to be allowed to go with his older brother into exile, and Majid had given his consent.

They had embarked together, and from the windows of Beit-el-Tani their sisters had seen them go, and watched the
Assaye
weigh anchor and move slowly out of harbour on the evening tide, her sails rose-pink in the sunset and her wake a silver ribbon across the darkening sea.

“He is gone,” whispered Cholé. “It is all over. Everything is finished…it is the end.”

But though the great enterprise was over and Bargash had gone, the aftermath had still to be faced. And even Cholé could not have known how bitter it would prove to find themselves alone and ostracized.

Their riches had been dissipated, and many of their slaves whom they had armed and sent to support Bargash had been killed or wounded at
Marseilles
, Their friends fell away from them and their foes watched them jealously for fear that they might instigate new plots; even the merchants of the city would call no longer at Beit-el-Tani except under cover of darkness. Worst of all, their support of Bargash had lost them the loyalty and affection of all those half-brothers and sisters, relatives and connections, who had made up the gay and heterogeneous family of Sultan Saïd, and they were never again to be part of it. Only one person had stood by them, and that, by the irony of fate, the one who had most cause to hate them.

Majid could not be persuaded to punish his sisters, though his ministers and his family complained that he was weak and ineffectual, and the townspeople who only a few days before had pelted him with flowers and greeted him as a victorious General laughed at him in the bazaars, and despised him for his clemency.

“It is all over,” Cholé had said. “Everything is finished…It is the end.’ And for her this was true. But for Salmé it was a beginning: because now once again she had leisure to steal up to the rooftop after sundown. Not to mourn for Bargash and the ruin of their hopes, as Cholé was doing, but to watch a young man from Hamburg entertain his friends in a lamplit room on the far side of the street.

In the anxious days of the conspiracy she had been too busy to go, for there had been so many letters to write and so many plans to be made. But Beit-el-Tani, once a burning centre of excitement, activity and intrigue, was quiet now, for no one visited Salmé and her sister any more, and their days were long and empty and idle.

There was time now to think and to regret. And Cholé wept her beauty away while Méjé moaned and lamented, explaining over and over again to anyone who would listen that she had always known that this would happen—she had told them so, and she had been right! But for Salmé there was time to think of young Wilhelm Ruete, and to peep at him through the chinks of the shutter that guarded the passage window. Time now—too much time—to watch him and his friends from the darkness of a flat-topped roof. A roof so near her own that by leaning over the parapet and stretching out her hand she could almost have touched the hand of—of someone who had done the same from the opposite side of the street…