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Before them all, Murad had laid out his strategy: to split their cavalry forces in two, with Ibrahim Bey and his men camped on the east bank of the Nile and Murad and Elfi on the west. This plan had immediately seemed disastrous to Elfi. In vain he had argued that they should mass all their forces on the far bank of the river, where they would have the advantage of forcing the French to cross over to meet them. Murad had dismissed this on the grounds that the French might advance along either bank or both at once. Elfi countered that any doubts regarding the direction from which the French were advancing could be settled by sending out Bedouin scouts. But Murad had remained immovable and maddeningly dismissive of the enemy’s forces. Elfi had even ridden back with Murad to his house at dawn to try to change his mind, but Murad had refused to see reason.
And this morning, as Elfi gave the order to his Mamlukes to prepare for battle and to gather at the Citadel, he was thinking that his oath of fealty to his former master might never cost him, or the city, dearer.
Sitt Nafisa heard Murad’s heavy tread on the stone steps leading to her rooms and dismissed her maids with a quick flicker of her fingers. Murad was in full battle regalia, splendidly attired in vivid tunic and pantaloons, his chest festooned with gold chains, his fingers encrusted with precious stones, bejewelled sword hanging at his side and burnished pistols tucked into his scarlet sash. Nafisa guessed that his shaved head must be perspiring under the turban, and that the sable-lined cloak over his shoulders must weigh on him unbearably in the July heat. The French consul Magallon – in the days when he and his wife used to call on Nafisa regularly – had once asked her why Mamlukes made themselves such a rich prize in battle, giving the enemy incentive to kill them expressly to pillage the corpses. ‘Truly, à la guerre comme à l’amour, hmm?’ Magallon had smiled quizzically. It was just the Mamluke custom, she had explained; they were a military caste. Perhaps it was their way of defying fate.
To a casual observer, Murad might not appear to be a man preoccupied by thoughts of an imminent meeting with destiny, but Nafisa could read him under his bluster. The scar from a sword slash across his face had turned livid, as it did whenever he was in the heat of argument or battle.
‘We set off from the Citadel at noon, and we will cross the river and wait for the French at Imbaba. Ibrahim Bey has already made camp on the eastern bank.’
Nafisa nodded. All morning she had heard the kettledrums booming and the shrill pipes playing as the cavalcade of horsemen pranced through the winding streets on their way uphill to the Citadel.
‘The French won’t reach Cairo.’ Murad’s red beard bristled like a burning bush. ‘They may have taken Alexandria, but they won’t reach Cairo, nevertheless you may leave if you wish. Ibrahim Bey is evacuating his women; you can join his train. I can spare a small Mamluke escort for you, and of course you can take your maids and eunuchs.’
‘I won’t leave Cairo, whatever happens. Who will be left if I do?’ She had been brought to Cairo as a two-year-old and sold into a great house; she remembered nothing else. ‘I know Ibrahim Bey’s daughter Adila will stay also, and many of the other women. Don’t worry, about us – this is not the Mongols sacking Baghdad. But I’ll move some of the coffers of coins and jewels to our other houses in Cairo for safe-keeping, just in case there is any lawlessness – or if we need to pay a ransom.’
He nodded. ‘Send some valuables to the Giza estate,’ he said, turning to go.
‘Wait. What about the European merchants? A mob might attack them; people are restless in the streets, and fear makes them dangerous. We should take the Europeans into our houses for protection.’
‘You and your precious Franj! It’s your friend Magallon who has been agitating for this war against us.’ He turned on his heel. ‘Take the Europeans into our houses if you want – you won’t have room for all of them.’
‘I’ll ask Sitt Adila to open her doors to them also; between us we can try to accommodate anyone who seeks refuge.’
‘Do as you please.’ Murad was already at the door, his mind on other matters. ‘May I next see your face in good health.’ He raised his hand in farewell.
As she heard the familiar formula of leave-taking, Nafisa shuddered with a premonition that she would not see his face again. She dismissed it instantly; she was not the type to heed such intuitions and she had much to do.
‘Bilsalama. Go with God, and return safely.’
Outside the window the murmur of the city was turning to a dull roar of alarm.
TWO (#u16c9575d-80d4-597e-9aaa-72357a3365ed)
The Battle of the Pyramids (#u16c9575d-80d4-597e-9aaa-72357a3365ed)
‘This was the first year of the fierce fights and important incidents, of the multiplication of malice and the acceleration of affairs; of successive sufferings and turning times.’
Abdel Rahman El-Jabarti’s Chronicles of Egypt,
15 June, 1798
‘Are you writing, child?’
Zeinab raised her head from the page and looked up at Shaykh Jabarti. How old was the venerable historian, she wondered. At least as old as her father, Shaykh Bakri, and he was two score years; she herself, at twelve, was her parents’ second youngest child and only unmarried daughter. As she was serving her father pomegranate juice one evening last month, he had suddenly looked at her and turned to her mother. ‘Is she a woman yet?’ he had asked. And her mother had blushed and murmured that she was indeed, had been for four cycles of the moon now.
‘Then we should get her married,’ her father had pronounced, pinching Zeinab’s cheek where it dimpled. ‘Let me think on it.’
Zeinab had wondered whom he might have in mind, and hoped it would not be someone as old as the man her sister had married. But of course her father had not had time to think on it, with the news of the English ships off Alexandria, and now the French advancing to the outskirts of Cairo.
Shaykh Jabarti’s dictation trailed off; he was staring out of the window and stroking his beard, a world away. Zeinab waited quietly, chewing on the end of the ribbon tied around her thick, long black plait. She bent over the silver bowl of rose-water set on the table in front of her and studied her wavering reflection. Like the princesses of fairy tales, her face was as round and white as the full moon, but her eyes were large and dark and her fine black brows arched over them like birds winging over a still pool in moonlight. She blew at the rose petals in the water and the image dissipated.
‘Are you writing, child?’ Shaykh Jabarti said again, absent-mindedly, and she picked up her quill and waited. She had a fine hand, and for that reason, and because he had tired eyes and preferred to dictate his chronicle, Shaykh Jabarti tolerated her presence as his pupil and scribe. It was very unusual for a girl to be so honoured, and in fact it had been her younger brother, originally, who had been sent to learn at Shaykh Jabarti’s feet, but her brother was only interested in spinning a wheel around a stick, as he was doing right now outside the window. It was Zeinab, sent with him as an afterthought, who had proved an apt pupil. She wondered how much longer her father would allow her to receive instruction from Shaykh Jabarti. Once she was married, of course, it would be out of the question.
She had heard that the French had brought a new invention that could make calligraphy and scribes obsolete, a machine that could make many, many copies. As they advanced south towards Cairo, they had distributed countless thousands of copies, in Arabic, of their chief general’s proclamation. Shaykh Jabarti was holding a copy at that very moment and snorting as he parsed the words for hidden meanings and for lapses in Arabic grammar and syntax.
‘Egyptians, they will tell you that I come to destroy your religion; it is a lie, do not believe it. Answer that I have come to restitute your rights, punish the usurpers; that I respect, more than the Mamlukes, God, his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Koran … Tell the people that we are true Muslims.’
‘Who translated this?’ Jabarti grumbled as he peered at the sheet in his hand, and continued reading.
Zeinab ventured a question. ‘My esteemed teacher, do you think these French are Muslim as they say?’
‘They say they agree with every religion in part, and with no religion in the whole, so they are opposed to both Christians and Muslims, and do not hold fast to any religion. In truth some hold their Christian faith hidden in their hearts, and there are some true Jews among them also. But for the most part they are materialists. They say the creed they follow is to make human reason supreme; each of them follows a religion which he contrives by the improvement of his own mind.’
Zeinab was distracted by a sudden swell of noise and ran to the window: a procession of dervishes and men in the robes of the Sufi orders were piping and drumming their way down the street. ‘Look, my teacher, they have brought down the Prophet’s banner from the Citadel!’
‘It is all done to calm the fears of the common people. Many were so alarmed they were prepared to flee, had the amirs not stopped them and rebuked them. The rabble would have attacked the homes of all the foreigners and Christians if the amirs had not prevented them; Sitt Nafisa and Sitt Adila took them into their houses.’
‘Surely the French will not reach Cairo?’ Zeinab was alarmed.
‘God alone knows. Murad Bey has had a heavy iron chain forged; it is stretched across the Nile at the narrowest point, to prevent the French ships from passing, while his own flotilla is moored below the chain. Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey have assembled their troops and now sit in their respective camps across the river from each other, waiting for the French to arrive. Immovable as the Sphinx! Blinded in their arrogance!’ Suddenly aware of her alarm, the old man attempted to reassure her with a verse from the Koran: ‘Yet thy Lord would never destroy the cities unjustly, while as yet their people were putting things right. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Zeinab repeated under her breath.
* * *
Nicolas Conté squinted in the sun as the Army of the Orient came to a halt along the western bank of the Nile and prepared to engage in the battle for Cairo. Ten thousand Mamlukes faced them on horseback, in full battle regalia, turbaned or helmeted, blazing in the sun with their muskets and lances, their splendid Arabians as richly caparisoned as the riders. The commanders flew back and forth along the lines, turning and wheeling their mounts on a hair, and brandishing their glittering sabres at the heavens.
‘There can be no finer animal than a Mamluke-trained horse,’ Dr Desgenettes observed, reining in his mount abreast with Nicolas.
‘A brave sight indeed,’ Conté concurred. ‘Let us take a moment to admire them before we cut them to pieces.’ He spoke with more bravado than he felt; the siege of Alexandria had been harder than anyone had anticipated, but it was the terrible, four-day forced march south across the desert with its sun of lead and its intolerable heat that had sapped every man’s strength and spirit. And the Bedouin! Even the most romantic among the French, thought Nicolas, even Geoffroy St-Hilaire, had lost all illusion about Rousseau’s Noble Savage. Like vultures, the Bedouin hovered on the horizon, ready to swoop down on stragglers who succumbed to heat, thirst, sunstroke or despair. There were many among the troops who took their own lives.
But now the ordeal of the desert march was behind them, and the great Army of the Orient was camped before the Nile at Imbaba in preparation for the Battle of the Pyramids, as Bonaparte referred to it.
‘Can one even see the pyramids from here?’ Dr Desgenettes remarked wryly to Nicolas. ‘But I admit it sounds a good deal more memorable than the Battle of Imbaba; our general ever has his eye on the history books.’
Ah yes, thought Conté, but what the history books would record about the French expedition to Egypt was yet to be written. Would this battle go down as the great triumph of the Army of the Orient? And what of his own epitaph, Nicolas-Jacques Conté, Chief Engineer and Commander of the Balloonist Brigade? Would it say that he had survived to see his native shore again one day, to be reunited with his sweet Lise, and his three children? He was a true son of the Revolution and the Republic, and as such he was not a praying man, but at times like these he almost wished he had faith.
‘Soldiers!’ Bonaparte raised his arm and every ear strained to hear him. ‘Go, and think that from the height of these monuments forty centuries observe us.’
At these words a great shout rang from the ranks and Nicolas’ heart leapt in his chest. As if at the signal, the Mamluke cavalry charged at a full gallop against the stationary and unshakeable square formation of the French infantry. The fantassins held their ground with supernatural discipline till at twenty paces Bonaparte gave the order to fire cannon and musket, and the first wave of the fine cavaliers fell. Amazingly, the next wave charged right behind them, but the carré held again, and the cannon fired again from the corners, and the Mamlukes were cut down again, and this went on until those that survived threw themselves in the river and tried to swim back to the opposite shore, where their confreres were massed, helpless to come to their succour. The French then turned their fire on the eastern bank.
Elfi felt the horse buckle under him as it was hit, and leapt free of the saddle before the beast hit the ground. It was the third horse that had been shot out from under him in this battle. As he landed, the bodies of men and horses beneath him broke his fall, and he lay motionless, concussion blanking out his mind.
When his senses returned, he knew time had passed, but he did not know how long. Hours? Minutes? It was dark. The din of the cannon had abated somewhat and seemed further off, as if directed at the eastern shore; or perhaps the blood in his ears and eyes was dulling his perception. He was bleeding profusely from his head, but head wounds tended to bleed disproportionately; he worried more about the wounds to his right hand and his thigh. He was in no immediate agony, so he did not think he had broken any bones. His sense of smell was undiminished, and the stench of the slaughterhouse made him retch; in all his years, he had not experienced carnage on such a massive scale.
Then he heard them – the buzzards who circled after any battle, come to pick the corpses clean of booty. If they found him alive, they would kill him. If he played dead, they would cut off his fingers for the rings, slash off his ears, then kill him anyway. He began to crawl on knees and elbows over the corpses, towards the river that was now a blazing lake of fire. Either the French had set light to Murad’s river flotilla, or Murad himself had given Papas Oglu the order to burn his ships as they retreated. As Elfi watched, the fire reached the gunpowder magazines and before his eyes the ships exploded like a thousand fireworks, sailors throwing themselves into the river in a bid to escape. Still, he slithered on his belly over the foul, blood-slick matting of human and animal dead and dying, towards the flaming water.
He did not look at the bodies he crawled over. Some of the fallen may have been his khushdash, men he had grown up with, like Tambourji and Bardissi … or they may have been his own Mamlukes and kashifs, boys he had raised to manhood, trained, manumitted, married to his slave girls and set up in fine houses. Elfi did not spare them a downward look or a moment’s prayer; there would be time for mourning, later – if he survived.
He reached the bank and unbuckled his belt and removed his scabbard and the pistols tucked into his sash; the firearms would be useless once wet. He took off his tunic and his soft leather boots, all his clothing but his shirt and pantaloons. He unwound his turban and ripped off strips of it to bandage the wounds on his head and hand and thigh. He removed his rings, the other jewels on his person, and his dagger, wrapping them carefully in the folds of the remaining length of his turban and tying the ends around his middle. Then, taking a deep breath, he slid into the water as smoothly as a crocodile.
His only chance would be to swim downriver and resurface as far from the scavengers as possible; assuming he could avoid being shot out of the water by snipers on the banks, or being caught in the floating flames. He was less concerned about crocodiles this far downriver. Elfi took another deep breath and filled his lungs. Perhaps, he thought, some alignment of his stars had kept him practising the art of holding his breath underwater for as long as a hawk took to circle seven times. The time had come when he would be tested. He plunged further into the black water.
From the city beyond the flames a terrible wailing rose in the smoky air and rolled across the water like thunder.
Zeinab’s fingers trembled so much she couldn’t manage to hook the loops around the gold-braid buttons of her tunic. Her wet-nurse was having almost as much trouble trying to dress Zeinab’s younger brother, who was whining and snivelling into his nightshirt; he had been asleep when the nurse had come into their room in the middle of the night. Zeinab herself had been wide-eyed, kept wakeful by the sound of the cannons in the distance, and then, even more terrifying, the wailing as the people of Bulaq and the bank of the Nile surged towards the city.
‘God preserve us, God preserve us!’ the nurse repeated. ‘Sitt Zeinab, hurry! They say the French have set fire to Bulaq and that the vanguard has reached the Iron Gate! They say they are burning and killing and raping women! God only knows. Your father says we must leave, we must leave right away. He is trying to find donkeys for us, but every donkey and horse in the city has already been commandeered. What will become of us?’
By dawn donkeys had been bought, at an exorbitant price, to carry Zeinab and her mother and youngest brother; the men and the servant girls would have to walk. Shaykh Bakri had stayed behind, heading for the Azhar where the ulema had congregated.
Zeinab looked around her as they tried to thread their way through the thronged streets; it seemed as if all the citizens of Cairo were on the move, most on foot, carrying what they could. As their slow procession approached the outer gates of the city they were met by a terrible sight: people returning, wailing, bloody, half-naked, the women tearing their hair and screaming: ‘The Bedouin! The Bedouin! They fell upon us as soon as we left the city walls. Turn back! Turn back!’
‘Bring me my jewellery coffer.’
‘Sitt Nafisa?’ Fatoum looked up from brushing Nafisa’s hair. The maid’s consternation was apparent. ‘Shouldn’t we be hiding the jewellery?’
‘No, fetch it as soon as you finish dressing me.’ If she was to meet the emissary of the French, she wanted to inspire respect for who she was: Murad’s wife and Ali’s widow. Human nature being universal, she knew that an appeal to esteem and cupidity would be a more reliable card than appealing to pity. But what cards were left for her to play in the face of this overwhelming defeat? Her mind buzzed like a trapped bee. What would the French exact of her? How did they mean to deal with her and with the wives and children of the amirs? The worst fears of the city had been laid to rest the morning after the battle when it transpired that the French had not burned and pillaged the eastern shore; it was the fire on the ships that had given rise to that rumour.
But where was Murad? She made an effort to concentrate on her dressing. She stepped into the rose pantaloons Fatoum held out for her, then slipped the embroidered violet tunic over her sheer white chemise and let the girl tie a rose-and-gold sash round her waist, cinching it in. Nafisa smoothed her thick braid over one shoulder and fixed a small toque on her head, then let a filmy veil float down over it.
‘Sitt Nafisa, the jewellery.’
‘Let me see.’
She rifled through the tooled leather casket the maid held before her, selecting two thick ropes of pearls and winding them around her neck. She picked two ruby drop-earrings and threaded the fine gold hoops through her earlobes, then slipped the matching bracelet and ring on one hand, and an emerald-and-diamond bracelet on the other wrist. She hesitated, then carefully took a large yellow diamond ring out of a velvet pouch and slipped it on her middle finger; it was as big as a pigeon’s egg and sparkled like the sun reflecting off ice.
She wondered if the looters who had raided Murad’s house in Qawsun had found the coffer her eunuch had hidden under the planks of the second-floor loggia. Ibrahim Bey’s house in Qawsun had been raided too, and several houses belonging to the other amirs, abandoned in their rout.
She had had no word from Murad, but he was alive, that much she knew. The servants on their estate in Giza had reported that their master had appeared and disappeared like a whirlwind, dismounting barely long enough to snatch up the coffers of treasure hidden for that eventuality – and then he was gone.
For the last time, but not the first, she allowed herself a moment of regret. Regret that Murad had not turned out to be the worthy heir of Ali Bey the Great that she had hoped he would become, with her help, when she married him. Seeing in Murad an energetic, domineering temperament that brooked no rival, she had chosen him for a mate. But his instinct to dominate others was not matched by the ability or the judgment to govern them. In their years together, she had learned to handle him with the finesse of a spider weaving a web, but he was ever conscious of the long shadow of Ali Bey. Sensing that he did not measure up to her first husband, he became bitter and intractable, resentful of her interference.
Shaking off that final moment of regret, Nafisa got to her feet. The emissary of the French was at her door. General Bonaparte had sent his own stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, as a gesture of goodwill.
With as convincing a show of calm as she could muster, Nafisa waited for him to come up to the second floor reception hall. She had ordered the finest Bukhara carpets laid on the stone floor and the most sumptuous, gold-embroidered silk pillows spread over the wooden banquettes. Within a few moments she heard a springy step on the staircase; her first impression was of a smooth-cheeked boy in skin-tight breeches and a short, close-fitting blue coat. He hesitated for no more than a moment before advancing towards her.
‘Madame.’ He gave a crisp bow. ‘Eugène de Beauharnais, delighted to make your acquaintance.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement, momentarily disconcerted by the sight of the man who had followed Beauharnais up the stairs: Bartholomew – or Fart Rumman, ‘pomegranate seed’, as people called him derisively in the street. She was astonished at his appearance: he wore a fur stole, a preposterous plumed red silk hat, and a new air of presumption. A Greek mercenary known for his dishonesty and brutality, he had been a simple artillery man of Elfi’s who made money on the side selling glass bottles in the souk. That the French had been ill-advised enough to choose a man of such low standing and unsavoury reputation for translator or agent did not bode well. Behind Bartholomew, her chief eunuch Barquq had taken up his post by the door, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
Nafisa gestured to the French emissary in the direction of the banquette against the wall. ‘You are welcome in my house, sir. Please, take a seat.’ She noted that he waited for her to be seated before flipping his coat-tails to sit down, his sword clanging at his side.
She clapped her hands for the eunuchs to bring refreshments, and they appeared promptly, carrying big brass trays that they set up on folding wooden tripods. They offered the Frenchman silver goblets with a choice of syrups: almond milk, pomegranate, carob, tamarind. The emissary picked the pomegranate, lifted the goblet in her direction and sipped; an odd expression went over his face and he set it down hastily.
‘Madame, allow me to convey the compliments of Consul Magallon and most particularly of Madame Magallon, who desire to be remembered to you warmly. They speak of you as a lady of great heart and superior intellect, a person of the utmost influence in this city. In the absence of your husband and the other Mamlukes, we count on you to be our first interlocutor and intermediary.’
Though Nafisa understood enough French to follow the gist, she allowed Bartholomew to translate. She gestured to the eunuch to offer the young ambassador plates of sweetmeats: nuts, Turkish delight flavoured with rose-water, dates stuffed with almonds and preserved in syrup. He politely picked a square of the Turkish delight and tasted it, then put it down, discreetly trying to brush the powdered sugar off his fingers, swallowing and licking his dry-looking lips. Barquq immediately went to him with a pitcher of water, a basin and a napkin.
‘Ah,’ Beauharnais exclaimed in palpable relief, raising his goblet in the direction of the pitcher. The eunuch concealed his surprise at this gesture and impassively kept the basin under the guest’s hands till he understood and held his hands out to have the eunuch pour water from the pitcher over his fingers and dry them with the folded napkin.
Beauharnais’ attention was drawn to the rose faience clock in the corner and he smiled. ‘Madame, I congratulate you on your good taste.’
‘A present from Monsieur Magallon.’
‘Indeed. But does it not tell the time?’
‘Not for a long while now. The dust from the sandstorms here during the khamaseen season must have spoiled the mechanism.’
‘I am sure we can find someone in our entourage of savants who would know how to repair it; they are geniuses at everything! I must remember to send you someone.’
At last the emissary came to the purpose of his visit. ‘General Bonaparte would like to assure you, madame, that you yourself, and the wives and children of the other Beys, are in no danger for your lives or honour.’
Nafisa inclined her head. ‘Forbearance in victory is the mark of the noble. Please assure your general of our eternal gratitude.’ She embroidered on these compliments, waiting for the other shoe to drop, which it soon did.
‘Naturally, the property of the amirs, whether in houses, gardens, farms, land or goods, must be considered the property of the French State, just as we confiscated the property of our own French émigrés. All of this property will be duly inventoried and evaluated, in due course, and you may redeem part of it for your own use – one of your residences, for instance. In return for a certain sum, of course. We will consider you our privileged interlocutor, madame, in our regrettable but necessary efforts to raise a levy on the citizens of Cairo in general, each according to his station and his means. Beginning, naturally, with yourself and the wives of the Mamlukes.’
At this point Bartholomew, whom she had not invited to sit down, began unrolling what looked like a long list, but Beauharnais raised a hand. ‘Not now, my good Bartholomew, not now, surely. There will be time enough for that later. My visit today is only to reassure you, madame, of our good intentions.’
‘Thank you, sir. May I ask how I am to proceed in collecting this ransom?’
‘We leave that to your discretion, madame. But official tax collectors will be appointed and assisted by worthy gentlemen like Monsieur Bartholomew here, the new chief of police –’
Nafisa caught her breath; Fart Rumman – chief of police! Might as well set the hyena to guarding the henhouse.
Bartholomew cleared his throat. ‘Malti the Copt will be at the head of the tax collectors,’ he offered.
‘In the meantime, madame, we know we can count on you to set an example to calm the spirits of those who do not yet know the forbearance and the generosity of the French Republic. I thank you for your hospitality, madame.’ Beauharnais had risen from his seat.
‘One moment, sir. If my husband is alive – and I have had no word from him – on what terms may he hope to sue for peace?’
‘That, madame, is not within my competence to discuss. But the appropriate emissary will be sent you at the right time, I am sure. I bid you good-day.’ He bowed again.
Nafisa rose in her turn, and then on impulse twisted the yellow diamond ring off her finger and handed it to Beauharnais. ‘For your general, with my compliments, as a gauge of good faith.’
Beauharnais bowed and took his leave. Nafisa remained standing as he descended the spiral staircase, Bartholomew on his heels. She stared at the lovely rose faience clock in the corner, making a mental note that it would be the first item she would render as part of the levy the French were imposing. Then she looked at her finger where the pigeon’s egg diamond was no more. What was it that Amr, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, had said? ‘If there were no more than a thread linking me to a people, it should not break; if they tightened their grip, I would slacken, and if they slackened, I would tighten.’ Nafisa would try to keep the thread of civility between her and the French from snapping; but for how long?
And where was Murad? At least he was alive. But Elfi? Of him there had been no word.
Dusk fell for the third night since Elfi had emerged from the river, and he welcomed the respite from the relentless sun over the desert. He was riding in a north-easterly direction, away from the delta, skirting the villages and the cultivated land and sticking to the sand dunes as he headed towards the Red Sea and the Sinai.
Ibrahim Bey and his retinue were heading for Istanbul. Elfi had learned this when he traded his diamond turban pin for a horse at a village in Sharkia, the seat of the eastern provinces that had been his fief only a few days earlier. He had not been recognized in his altered state, but the diamond pin had given him away as a Mamluke, and he had not tarried beyond buying the horse and a pistol and a leather skin of water. He still felt dizzy every now and then, but the wound to his head had stopped bleeding and the cut on his thigh was healing. His right hand continued to worry him, oozing yellow pus and throbbing constantly, yet he could not risk seeking attention at one of the estates he owned, for he could not trust even his own servants.
His plan was to keep moving towards Gaza and on to Syria, and eventually regroup with those of his Mamlukes who had survived. He spurred the horse, and it picked up pace for a desultory mile. Water, he thought, licking his cracked lips; he would have to find water, and soon, for the horse was thirsty, and he had already let it lick the last drops from his water skin. He debated the risk of approaching a village or a Bedouin encampment.
In the desert dusk before him, something was shimmering like a slender column of dust in a sandstorm. Elfi blinked. If he was starting to hallucinate with thirst, it was a bad sign. He shook his head and his vision came into focus: a Bedouin woman, standing upright, quivering like a reed, her sequined veil and her silver necklaces and bangles glittering in the fading light. He spurred his horse but the animal whinnied and held back, teeth bared, as if it had seen a Jinn. The woman, if that was indeed what she was, gave no sign of having heard his approach. There was something eerie about her, as if she were in a sort of trance, her large brown eyes dilated and staring at the empty air.
Then Elfi saw what transfixed her gaze: on a mound not two feet in front of her was a large snake, half-erect, hissing, flicking its tongue, preparing to strike; in its malignant concentration it seemed as mesmerized by the woman as she was by it. If he moved fast enough, Elfi calculated, he might be able to save her; if he did nothing, the snake would strike within seconds.
