Treason's Harbour (19 page)

The wretched odabashi was obviously torn between his fear of angering a person so highly decorated as Captain Aubrey and his dread of Murad Bey: he was barely coherent in his anguish, but one thing showed clear through all his broken observations and excuses - he was not going to take the responsibility of sending to his commanding officer. The Bey had given stringent orders that he was not to be disturbed, said the odabashi, and the first duty of a soldier was obedience.

'Damn the fellow,' said Jack, walking even faster through the flies. 'Tell him to go and moralize elsewhere.'

They were climbing now, climbing the hill of hardened mud upon which the castle stood, and once they had left the lee of the dunes the flies grew less; the heat, on the other hand, was greater still. 'You are going a very disagreeable colour,' said Stephen. 'Should not you throw off that thick coat, and loosen your neckcloth? Heavy, corpulent subjects are liable to be carried off in a twinkling, if not by a frank, straightforward apoplexy, then at least by a cerebral congestion.'

'I shall be all right as soon as I am in the saddle, moving briskly,' said Jack, who was very unwilling to disturb the perfect set of his cravat. 'There he is, the worthy Effendi, God bless him.'

They were approaching the encampment on the hillside to the east of the fort, which was already throwing a fine blue shadow down the slope, and Abbas could be seen, with a number of horses and their grooms, on the hither side of the pack animals and the tents. He sent a boy running down to meet them, a beautiful boy as slim and graceful as a gazelle, who salaamed with a winning smile, said he was to be their guide to Katia, and led them through the lines of tents and huts made of tamarisk branches and camels lying neatly, as composed as cats, looking proud.

'Camels! Camels!' cried Martin. 'And these, no doubt, are the tabernacles of Scripture.' His one eye was shining, and in spite of the flies and the oppressive heat - far worse for those fresh from the sea- his face expressed pure happiness, a striking contrast to the fasting apathetic camel-drivers, who lay in the shade, looking little more than half alive. The horses, on the other hand, were full of spirit: three charming Arabs, two of them bays and quite small, the third a mare of nearly sixteen hands, and all three standing on their toes as it were in pleasurable expectation. The mare was a remarkable golden colour and she was one of the most beautiful creatures Jack had ever seen, with a small high-bred head and huge lustrous eyes. His heart went out to her at once and she for her part was very willing to make his acquaintance, bringing her fine-cut little ears to bear and taking a most intelligent interest when he asked her how she did.

'Mr Hairabedian,' he said, stroking her neck, 'pray tell the Effendi that I admire his taste extremely - most grateful - prodigious handsome mare - and then go on and tell him of the arrangements we have made for the landing of the men. They will wait here until I come back: I hope to return shortly after sunset and by that time therefore the tents should be struck, lanterns provided, beasts watered and all hands fed, so that we may get under way without the loss of a minute.'

Hairabedian conveyed all this: Abbas looked pleased, or at least less anxious, and said that the Captain's directions should be carried out to the letter.

'Capital,' said Jack. 'Dr Maturin, be so good as to throw out the signal to the ship, by waving your handkerchief.' He was just about to mount when the odabashi plunged forward and seized the stirrup to help him up; and as he did so he said something that sounded extraordinarily like 'Beg parm, me Lord.'

'Thankee, odabashi,' said Jack. 'You are an honest fellow, no doubt, though uncommon stupid. What now?' - this to Stephen, who had laid a hand upon his bridle.

'I take it there would be no objection to our going a little way towards the delta, perhaps on a camel, just to set our feet in Africa, and even to see a little of the African flora?'

'None in the world,' said Jack. 'Gather posies by the score, so long as you take care not to be devoured by lions or crocodiles, and, which is even more important, so long as you are back here in time. Should you like Hairabedian to arrange it with the Effendi?'

'Not at all, not at all. We can manage very well in Greek. Good day, now, and God bless you.'

Jack turned his horse's head, following the boy, and they rode cautiously down the slope, bearing left-handed round the castle; as they reached the level ground on the farther side a group of black tents came into sight, with camels and tethered horses, a Bedouin encampment, and the mare, raising her head high, uttered a fine ringing whinny. A gross figure in a dirty nightshirt and a long grey beard came out of one of his tents and waved: she whinnied again, looking steadfastly in his direction.

'The boy says that is Mahommed ibn Rashid, the great enormous fat man of the Beni Khoda, the heaviest man in the northern wilderness. The horse is his. It was thought most suitable for you,' said Hairabedian.

'Well,' said Jack, 'there is nothing like candour. Come, my dear,' he went on, addressing the mare, who showed a distinct inclination to join the tents, 'it is only an hour or so to Katia: just carry me there, and then you shall go back to your master.'

He had no sort of doubt that she understood him perfectly well: she twitched her little ears once or twice, then brought them to bear right forward, gave a curious little skip, changing foot, and set out at a swinging pace. They left the ruins of Pelusium and its mound on their right; and now there was nothing but flat hard sand, more reddish than dun and sprinkled with small flat stones, before them and on either hand; and now the mare really got into her stride, a very long, smooth, powerful trot, so light and even that she might have been carrying a child, and a meagre child at that, rather than a massive post-captain in something near full-dress uniform with a world of gold lace on it. But this was nothing to her gallop. The boy had pushed his horse ahead; she could not bear it, and Jack felt her grow tense. He gave her her head and she instantly changed pace, with an immensely powerful drive from behind. In a few moments she was far beyond the little bay, going fast and free out over the dead-flat plain, faster than Jack had ever known, yet still with this same effortless even perfection, high-sprung and aerial - a kind of flying, for indeed they only touched the ground at long intervals. Now the welcome wind streamed in his face, pierced his thick coat, and filled his heart with joy; never had he so delighted in being on a horse's back; never had he felt such a good rider; and never in fact had he ridden so well.

But it could not last: very gently he reined in, saying 'Come, my dear, this ain't sober, responsible conduct. We have a long way to go.' She whinnied again, and to his astonishment he found that she was scarcely breathing faster than before.

When the others came up (Hairabedian labouring heavily) he asked her name. 'Yamina,' said the boy.

'If we bring this caper off,' thought Jack, 'and if money can tempt the great enormous fat man of the wilderness, I shall take her home and keep her as a pet. She would teach all the children to ride, one after another; and she would even reconcile Sophie with horses.'

They rode on at a sober, responsible pace, and his thoughts moved forward to his meeting with Murad. He knew, from his experience in the Ionian, that there was often a wide difference between the interests of the Sublime Porte and those of local Turkish commanders, a wide difference between what the one ordered and the other performed. He turned over various lines of approach in his mind, but dismissed them all. 'If he is a straightforward candid Turk we shall agree directly: if he is a devious brute, I shall have to find out the nature of his deviousness. And if I cannot deal with it, I shall make the passage on my own, even though that would be a damned bad beginning.'

Now that this somewhat remote and hypothetical scheme had more nearly become a possibility, he longed for its success with his whole being. The treasure that the gallery was said to be bringing up to Mubara entered into the line of count of course: but it was not the whole reason for his eagerness, nor anything like it. For some time now he had been dissatisfied with himself and although as a result of his being sent into the Ionian the French had been turned out of Marga he knew very well how much had depended on luck and on the excellent conduct of his Turkish and Albanian allies. He had also sunk the Torgud. But that was more in the nature of a massacre than an evenly-fought battle, and mere slaughter could not cure that deep dissatisfaction. It seemed to him that his reputation in the service (and with himself as one who watched Jack Aubrey's doings from a certain distance and with an almost perfect knowledge of his motives) was based on two or three fortunate actions, sea-fights that he could look back upon with real pleasure, small though they were; but they belonged to the past; they had all happened long ago; and now there were several men who stood far higher in the esteem of those whose opinion he valued. Young Hoste, for example, had done wonders in the Adriatic, and Hoste was junior to him on the post-captain's list. It was as though he were running a race: a race in which he had done fairly well for a while, after a slow start, but one in which he could not hold his lead and was being overtaken, perhaps from lack of bottom, perhaps from lack of judgment, perhaps from lack of that particularly nameless quality that brought some men success when it just eluded others, though they might take equal pains. He could not put his finger on the fault with any certainty, and there were days when he could say with real conviction that the whole thing was mere fatality, the other side of the good luck that had attended him in his twenties and early thirties, the restoration of the average. But there were other days when he felt that his profound uneasiness was an undeniable proof of the fault's existence, and that although he himself might not be able to name"it, it was clear enough to others, particularly those in power: at all events they had given many of the good appointments to other men, not to him.

'Sir,' said Hairabedian. 'Here is Katia.'

Jack looked up. He had been riding so easy, with such a perfect rhythm under him, that he had sunk deep in his reflection, and he was surprised to see a small town quite close, with groves of date-palms to the left, apparently springing directly from the sand, and the turquoise-blue dome of a mosque to the right, and white-walled, flat-roofed houses in between. Their path had already joined the caravan route to Syria, a broad track running as straight as a stretched cord eastwards, and far ahead a string of laden camels striding away towards Palestine.

As they rode into the town they passed a great heap of rubbish just by the wells, and a mixed flock of vultures rose from it. 'What are those birds?' asked Jack.

'The boy says the black and white ones are Pharaoh's hens,' said Hairabedian, 'and the large dark kinds are all called the Sons of Filth.'

'I hope the Doctor sees them,' said Jack. 'He loves a singular bird, whatever its parentage. God help us, what an oven,' he added to himself, for now that they had slowed to a walk the air was still, and the heat reverberated from the shimmering walls of the town, while the declining sun, low in the west but still ferociously strong, beat full on his back.

Katia was small, but it possessed an unusually fine coffee-house: the boy led them through the narrow, empty, sleeping streets to its inner courtyard and called for grooms in a shrill authoritative voice. Jack was glad to see that the horses were well known here: indeed, Yamina was treated with what he would have thought an extravagant degree of respect if he had not ridden her.

They walked into a large dim high-ceilinged room with a fountain in the middle; a broad padded bench ran round three sides, under latticed, unglazed windows, shaded with green fronds outside; and on this bench, cross-legged, sat two or three small groups of men, silently smoking hookahs or conversing in low voices. The talk stopped dead at their coming in, but in scarcely a second it carried on, still in the same low tone. There was a delicious coolness in the air, and as the boy led them to a secluded corner Jack said to himself, 'If I sit here without moving, perhaps in time the sweat will stop running down my back.'

'The child is going to tell the Bey that you are here,' said Hairabedian. 'He says that he is the only person who could disturb him at such a time without danger: he also observes that as we are only Christians we may call for food and drink, if we choose.'

Jack checked the words that came naturally to his mind and coolly replied that he preferred to wait. It would not only be uncivil to these bearded gentlemen to eat and drink when they could not, but it might quite reasonably vex the Bey to come in and find him swallowing the pints of sherbet that he longed for. He sat there listening to the fountain, and the coolness flowed into him; as the daylight faded his mind dwelt with pleasure on that glorious horse, and it was not until he saw the boy come running back that he felt a stab of anxiety. The boy had evidently been eating: he swallowed hastily, brushed crumbs from round his mouth, and cried 'He comes!'

He came indeed, a small trim figure with a cropped white beard and moustache, a close-wrapped turban and a plain uniform, the only glory being his jade-hilted yataghan and his fine red boots. He came straight across to Jack and shook his hand in the European manner, and Jack saw with great pleasure that he might have been own brother to Sciahan, his former ally, a candid, straightforward Turk.

'The Bey welcomes you and asks, are you here already?' said Hairabedian.

A soldierly question of this kind made Jack feel quite at home: he said that he was; that he thanked the Bey for his welcome; and that he was very happy to see him.

'The Bey asks, will you take some refreshment?'

'Tell the Bey that I shall be happy to drink sherbet whenever he sees fit to do so himself.'

'The Bey says he was at Acre with Lord Smith when Buonaparte was defeated: he recognized your uniform directly. He desires you will walk into the kiosk and smoke tobacco with him.'