Next instant his sword was bonded, the blade caught and locked by his enemy’s just below the hilt. A straining instant more and it would go spinning. He was wrenched round and inward, his face only a few inches from that of Aziz Bey.
He had known well enough that Aziz hated and was jealous of him, that was what this was all about. But never before, even in the Viceroy’s majlis yesterday, had he seen such a focused hatred as he saw now in the snarling face so near his own. It seemed to beat upon him, biting into his very soul. If he had known it in his mind before, he knew now suddenly to his heart’s core that whatever the normal outcome of duelling in the modern world, Aziz meant to kill him. And trapped and struggling as he was, in the next few seconds he would probably do it.
Well, the thought flashed clear into his mind, if that was to be the way of it, he would soon know if he had done ill to change his faith.
The breath was strangling in his breast, blood pounding in heart and head as he fought to break the lock on his sword. ‘Dear God help me! Receive me by whichever road …’
It was at that instant that Aziz Bey made a fatal mistake. Sensing the nearness of the Scotsman’s breaking point and his own approaching moment of victory, he used his own superior strength to force him back and down, giving room for the final stroke, and in the triumphant contempt of the moment, spat full in his face.
The warm loathsome trickle on his cheek did for Thomas what nothing else could have done, rousing in him a red rage that ran through his body, carrying with it new strength that he had not known he possessed. With a supreme effort he broke the lock on his sword, and sprang back with it still in his hand, then leapt in again to the attack.
The smell of blood had come into the back of his nose and a faint scarlet mist seemed to hang before his eyes. But behind it, his brain was working cold and quick. His grandfather’s training was in his very blood, and whereas, a little before, he had tried to use the saltire defence, he swung over now to the saltire attack, shedding French and Turkish swordplay and wielding the broadsword as his forebears had done at Killiecrankie and Preston Pans.
Aziz, who had thought himself already the victor, gave ground before the flashing fury that he had aroused and the alien form of attack, and then gave ground again. Thomas drove him back to the palace wall, the onlookers scattering to give them wide passage, without giving him the chance for a single riposte. Under the wall he drove a slashing cut to the forehead, locked the blade of the Mameluke’s sabre under his own hilt — his turn now — and disarmed him with a grinding twist. Aziz’s sword flew up in a half circle and came to ground ten or twelve feet away.
A sound that was almost a moan broke from the onlookers. The Mamelukes who a short while before had seen their man as already the winner, seeing him now as already dead; the Arabs and Albanians who had given up hope of their man, seeing him suddenly as the victor.
Thomas raised his sword to strike down his enemy. But the red mist was clearing, and he could not do it; not with the man standing there before him, unarmed, breast and flanks heaving like his own. He lowered the blade and stepped back, gesturing to the other to pick up his fallen sabre. Again he heard the gasp of the crowd. What a fool they must think him; some of them, not quite all. But watching the Mameluke stoop for his blade and turn back with it, feeling the first renewed kiss of blade on blade, he knew better than they did, better maybe than the man into whose eyes he was looking, that the fight was already over.
Aziz fought fiercely as ever, but his strategy and his rhythm were both beginning to desert him. At first he managed to thrust forward away from the wall, but with the next attack Thomas had him giving ground again, and yet again. He was almost back to the wall once more when Thomas, his own heart pounding and the sweat running into his eyes, found the clear opening that he needed, and took it. He feinted to the left cheek and drew the Mameluke’s guard up, then lunged in under it, with all his strength for the throat, catching the desperate parry on his basket hilt.
He felt the blade strike home, saw the man’s eyes widen in a sudden horrified stare above the red fountain that had opened in his throat. He dropped his sabre to claw at the place where his life was pumping out of him, and with a wet choking sound crumpled backwards to the ground.
Thomas stood where he was for a few moments, his flanks heaving, his heart drumming against his rib cage, the open space of the maidan and the roaring crowd pulsing on his sight. It was over, and he was alive and had the victory, and there was no sense of triumph in him, only a curious spent peace. He stopped and cleaned the stains from his sword in the soft dust, then drawing himself wearily to his full height saluted first the Viceroy’s sons, and then, the sense of ritual strong within him, the sprawling body of the dead man at his feet, and turned to re-join Zeid and his Arab friends who swung forward to greet and embrace him as though, he thought, with a twist of inner laughter, he had scored a goal at Shinty.
“Allah be praised!” Zeid was saying, “Allah be praised!” It seemed that his God had not rejected him.
That evening, having washed off the dust and sweat of battle, had his shoulder dressed and put on a clean thobe Thomas supped with the Viceroy’s sons in the private apartments of the elder.
Tussun’s quarters were a wild and flamboyant mixture of luxury and squalor, fine weapons and cheap-jack Western artefacts, a hawk on its stand in the corner that had splashed black and white mutes down the wall and across the cushions of the divan, a highly inefficient mechanical coffee grinder standing on an exquisite inlaid cedar-wood chest, a general state of chaos that survived all the attempts of his servants to maintain some sort of order. Ibrahim Pasha’s apartments, in complete contrast, were sparsely furnished and full of cool empty space, in which the eyes could rest. No more furniture than was strictly necessary, scarcely anything for ornament, but what there was, beautiful. It was typical of the pasha in that it seemed the room of a man much older than his not quite twenty years.
After the stresses of the day, Thomas was glad of the space and quiet about him, and the company of Ibrahim Pasha, whom he liked and respected, as well as that of Tussun, which could light up the very air about him, but was never restful. He had not really wanted to eat, he had not before killed a man ritually and in personal anger, and the sick taste of it was with him yet, and he was glad when the meal was over. Now the communal pipe on its brass tray had been brought in, and they lounged at ease, in quiet fellowship, passing the beautiful amber mouthpiece from one to another.
“My friend,” the pasha was saying, “whether or not you will be allowed to volunteer for the Sudan campaign, none but Allah and my father know. But you have proved today to all who were watching on the maidan, and I make no doubt from behind the palace window frets, that you are a fighting man of the kind that men make songs about.”
“Did I not tell you?” said Tussun. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes shining. “Also, did I not give him his sword, for the love that I bear him?”
Ibrahim passed over the mouthpiece of the hookah to Thomas, who took it, looking with pleasure at the enamelled silverwork that zoned it round.
“Assuredly, you told. And I am thinking that tonight, if it is given to Major Mackenzie to know of this evening’s work, he will be well enough satisfied with the hands into which his sword has fallen.”
Thomas said quietly, “I should like to believe that that was so.”
He drew in a long breath, his eyes half closed, feeling the calming benison of the tobacco smoke filling his whole being.
Outside in the fountain court there sounded suddenly the ragged tramp of marching feet and a quick exchange of voices, and as the three men turned towards it, a knock came at the door.
Ibrahim Pasha called out the command to enter; a sentry opened the door and an officer of the Viceroy’s guard appeared on the threshold, and checked there a moment as though not quite sure of his next move.
“You bring me some message from my father?” said Ibrahim Pasha. “Well come in and deli
ver it, man.”
The officer advanced to the edge of the lamplight; and behind him, Thomas saw a group of soldiers drawn up, and felt a twisting uneasiness in his belly.
“My Lords,” the man said, “the Viceroy your father commands your attendance upon him instantly.”
“Why?” demanded Tussun bluntly.
The officer swallowed slowly staring straight in front of him. “One of the Sultan’s ministers arrived this evening from Istanbul.”
“And it is because of that, this so urgent command?” Tussun’s gaze went past him through the open doorway, and he ignored his elder brother’s warning hand on his wrist. “Do you normally bring half the Palace Guard to escort us to our father when he summons?”
“The escort is not for you, Tussun Bey, it is for Ibrahim Effendi — to the guardhouse. He is under arrest for killing an officer of the Ottoman army.”
10
“If you must continually choose yourself unworthy friends, you must not be surprised if your friendships are short-lived and come to a sorry ending.”
“Ibrahim is not an unworthy friend, he is the best friend any man ever had! — you are cruel — Oh my father, I beg you —”
“You have begged enough. Get up,” said the Viceroy icily. “Stop behaving like a hysterical woman and go to your quarters.”
Tussun had lost his temper more completely than he had ever dared to do with his father before, until, several minutes of storming having made no dent in the Viceroy’s decision, he had panicked, and flung himself at his father’s feet to beg for Thomas’s life.
Muhammed Ali withdrew his feet slightly. He disliked lack of control. “Take him away,” he said to his elder son, rather as though he were speaking of an ill-behaved puppy.
Ibrahim Pasha stooped and hauled his weeping brother to his feet, and with a not unkindly arm round the sobbing and still pleading boy, got him out of the private chamber and pushed him into the arms of Captain Zeid ibn Hussein waiting in the audience hail beyond.
“Take him back to my quarters and keep him there,” he said. “I’ll come …”
Then he turned back into the private chamber and stood in silence before his father.
The Viceroy seemed to feel his silence as accusation. He signalled to the two confidential members of his bodyguard who had been standing unobtrusively in a window recess; and when they were gone, said wearily, “Do not talk to me of justice and injustice.”
“I have said no word,” Ibrahim Pasha retorted.
“And sit down! Why should I speak with a son who stands before me like a cypress tree, giving me a pain in the back of the neck.”
Ibrahim Pasha sat down on the cushion at his father’s feet, but continued to look like a cypress tree none the less.
“Justice is a luxury, a matter for private life. It must give way to such considerations as the safety of the State. I cannot afford to offend the Sultan or his Sublime Porte at this time. Maybe in three or four years I shall be strong enough, but not yet.”
“Three or four years will be somewhat late for Ibrahim Bey, my Father.”
“One man! Have I not this instant bidden you not to speak to me of justice? You must know, even if Tussun does not, that I have not signed the death warrant simply because an influential minister such as this Abbas Pasha has demanded it — on legally correct grounds, mark you. By the very fact of the demand being made there can be no doubt that Aziz was, as we always suspected, one of the Sultan’s agents at this court; and for that very reason, I cannot afford to pardon his killer, however glad I may be that he is dead.” He spread his big blunt hands. “It is unfortunate for Ibrahim Bey that Abbas Pasha arrived immediately after the duel — another week or two and we might have sent him back to Aswan for a while until the whole thing blew over.”
Then, as Ibrahim remained silent, “You of all men should understand the pressures on a ruler set beneath a stronger ruler. It is not yet two years since you, my elder son, were still held hostage for my good behaviour, in Istanbul. Do you think that was a happy thing for me? I had no choice then; I have no choice now, though by the compassion of Allah there shall come a time when the Sultan shall beg favours of me!”
Ibrahim Pasha moved a little on his cushions, drawing a quick breath. “My father, I will not speak of justice, but there are two further aspects of this sorry business that, with respect, I would beg leave to submit to you.”
“If you must.” The Viceroy stirred fretfully. “Very well, but do not waste my time.”
“In the first place, then, to make good your hold on an eventually free Egypt, you must, as you have explained to me before now, destroy the Mamelukes, and without further aid from the Sultan, but also without openly breaking with him until after the thing is done and Egypt brought back to some kind of economic prosperity. And you cannot accomplish this without the help of the Egyptians themselves. Forgive me, Sir: you became Viceroy with the support of the Ulama of Cairo; and you will need this support, and the support of the people, and especially the new Bedouin cavalry regiments, when it comes to freeing us of the Mamelukes and then, Insh’ Allah, of the Sultan and his Sublime Porte. Over the past few months Ibrahim Bey has made himself a liked and honoured place among Bedouin and Egyptian troops and officers alike. Last evening’s fight will have added to his popularity; and to sacrifice him — as it will appear to them — merely to please a Turkish minister, will raise some feeling against you, and what is worse, it will be interpreted as weakness. That could be dangerous.”
“There are times,” said Muhammed Ali, looking with exasperation at the thick-set young man before him, whom he could not love as he loved his beautiful and infuriating younger son, “when I wish that Tussun possessed a quarter of your understanding of political issues … But as for the part which the Egyptians and Arabs will play in possible future events, yes, we shall need their support, but I think that you overestimate their ability and our need of them. We shall rule Egypt when the time comes, through senior officers and administrators drawn from among the most suitable of our own Albanians and from the many Turks who will undoubtedly side with us against the Ottoman rule, which even they can hear beginning to creak like an irrigation wheel. The Egyptians will provide useful junior officers and civil servants. The Bedouin cavalry will be useful for a while, I grant you. What is your second point?”
Ibrahim bowed his head in acknowledgment that there was no more to be said on the first point; he had enough sense to know, as Tussun never knew it, when to abandon an argument or at least shift his ground. “My Father, despite what has passed between you and my brother a while since, Ibrahim Bey is the best friend Tussun has ever had. He has become a very good influence — the boy has steadied quite noticeably in the past few months. If you intend, as I think you do, to make Tussun an army commander in a few years’ time, Ibrahim Bey could develop into the ideal chief of staff for him.”
“A Scottish armourer’s apprentice, a deserter from the British army, who has a knack with weapons and horses?”
“He is more than a swordsman and a horseman, he is highly intelligent and developing an interest beyond the day-to-day in military affairs — I have talked with him from time to time — enough to know that. Also he is a man whom other men will follow; I have watched him at practice and wished that I had his élan. Above all, Tussun listens to him as he will listen to no one else.”
Muhammed Ali tugged at his splendid moustache in silence a few moments. But in the end, regretfully, he shook his head. “I believe that you are right. If it were possible to spare the Scotsman’s life, I would do so. As it is, the mistiming of events leaves me no choice. I have given my word to Abbas that the execution shall take place tomorrow morning. I have signed the warrant and I cannot go back on it, lest I give the Sultan the chance I know he would be glad of to call my stewardship to account.” He shifted abruptly:
“It is finished. Go after your brother, and keep him from any act of folly.”
Ibrahim recognised defeat.
/> He got up, bowed to his father, and left the room.
He headed back for his own quarters, entered by a postern door, and rooting out ibn Salik who had been his personal body servant since he was a child, gave him certain orders concerning wine for his brother and the captain who would be waiting in his majlis — Praise be to Allah the All Merciful, the Viceroy’s household were not over strict in obeying the dictates of the Koran with regard to alcohol. Wine was better than coffee at cloaking the taste of what was put into it, and Tussun would probably drink it where he would have refused coffee.
Then he went to the old harem, to his mother’s apartments, and when she had sent her women away, gave her a detailed account of what had happened, and all that had passed between him and his father.
She already knew about the death sentence. Ibrahim Pasha had never ceased to marvel at the speed with which everything that happened throughout the court, throughout the whole of Cairo, was known in his mother’s apartments. But she listened to him with quiet attention, only the slim line between the brows betraying that she felt any anxiety. When he had done, she asked, “What of Tussun?”
“In my quarters with Zeid ibn Hussein, by now deeply and safely asleep. Zeid too, I fear. I could not spare the time for elaborate plans to make sure that one got drugged wine and the other not.”
She bent her head in agreement. “That was well done; we can do without a rescue attempt. I think, though, I am glad it is you and not I who will have to make your peace with both of them later.” There was even a trace of amusement in her voice. “And so now, having failed with my Lord your father, you are come to me.”
“I have heard — who has not? — that you are the only person who has any influence on him, my Mother.”
“I doubt if my influence is strong enough for this,” said the Vicereine. “But I think it is just possible that I may have certain powers of persuasion over our guest from Istanbul.”