Joan Wolf (6 page)

“He told me that the pasha had ordered a massacre of the Mamelukes. That is all.”

He laughed harshly. “That is quite enough. There were over four hundred and fifty of them at the citadel today and they’re all dead now. The soldiers are breaking into houses all over Cairo searching for the Mamelukes who were not at the ceremony. The city looks as if it’s been sacked.”

She stared at him with horrified eyes. “How did it happen?”

“It was during the ceremonial procession,” he said in a more normal voice. He ran his hand through his already disordered hair. “In order to leave the citadel the procession had to move down a narrow passage which is cut into the rock. There are high walls and buildings on either side of the passage. The pasha’s troops went first, in an orderly succession, but when the Janissaries had passed through the wall and into the square outside, the gate was suddenly shut. Only the Albanians and the Mamelukes were left inside. The Albanians turned and opened fire at the same time that a fusillade was poured at the Mamelukes from the walls above.        They were trapped in that narrow passage. The horses went wild. When it was over the passage looked like a butcher’s shambles.”

Julianne pressed shaking hands to her mouth. “He planned it,” she breathed.

“Yes, he did, the murderous bastard. I knew something was in the wind. 1 could sense it. But this!” He paced to the window and looked out. “It’s one thing to kill a man in battle, Julianne, but to butcher him in cold blood.” He sounded savage.

“Did you see the pasha?”

He laughed harshly. “No. He wouldn’t see me.”

“He will wait until you are less angry,” she said. At that he turned and looked at her. “Why did he do it, John? Do you know?”

“Oh, his reason is clear enough. He did not want to go to Arabia and leave them an open field. The Mamelukes have never been reconciled to Mohammed Ali. So he decided to get rid of them.”

“Who knew about the scheme? Just the Albanians?”

“Yes. Obviously he did not want me to know and they’re the only part of the army he could trust to hold their tongues.”

“Of course he didn’t want you to know,” she said calmly. “He knew you wouldn’t approve. It needs an Eastern mind to appreciate a scheme like that.”

“Precisely. That is why it was so stupid! The pasha needs more than anything at this moment to be on good terms with England. If England thinks he has plans to dominate the entire area, she will take alarm. She will be worried about India. Mohammed Ah cannot rule in Egypt without the goodwill of England. And the English do not have Eastern minds.”

“I see why you are so upset,” she said dryly. “It wasn’t politically expedient for the pasha to massacre hundreds of Mamelukes.”

His face hardened. “No, it was not. As I would have told him had he confided his plans to me.”

“I expect that is why he did not. He didn’t want to hear it.”

The line of his mouth was uncompromising and grim. “No, he did not. But he is going to hear it now. Whether he likes it or not.” He seemed to notice for the first time that she was still wearing day clothes. “Go to bed, Julianne. The worst is over.”

“Yes,” she said in reply. “I will.”

After he had gone she was conscious of a great feeling of relief that she had not gone into Cairo today!

Chapter Seven

For I protest before God, there is none, on the face of the yearth, that I would be fastened unto.

—Sir Walter Ralegh

For two days after the massacre the hunt continued.  In Cairo alone about 4,000 Mamelukes were slain and the pasha gave orders to all provincial governors to search out and annihilate any who remained. Mohammed Ali was now the undisputed master of all Egypt.

Julianne saw nothing of John for almost a week after the massacre. She understood that for him her problem had receded to the background and philosophically she decided that he would get to her when he had the time. She went back to her books.

She was reading in the courtyard when he finally sought her out one afternoon. She looked up and was surprised to find him watching her. “How long have you been there?” she asked, laying her book aside.

“Not very long. What are you reading?”

“The Tempest.”
She folded her hands in her lap and looked serenely up at him.

He smiled faintly and came to sit beside her. “Did you think I had forgotten you?”

“No. I thought you were probably very busy.”

He sighed, leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes. “You are a remarkable girl, Julianne. You don’t panic and you don’t make unreasonable demands. Remarkable.”

Julianne studied his face in silence for a moment. He looked very tired. There was a long silence which she did not disturb and then he opened his eyes again. “You will be leaving for England tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t imagine you have a tremendous amount of packing to do.”

“It shouldn’t take me very long at all,” she agreed with infinite calmness. “Have you located Mme. Rioux?”

“You are not going to travel with Mme. Rioux. You are traveling with me.”

There was a pause of utter astonishment, then Julianne said, “You?”

“Me. The pasha wants me to undertake a mission to England. It seems that only I am capable of persuading the British government that his massacre of the Mamelukes and his triumphs in Arabia do not mean that he has designs on India.”

“Good heavens. Then you convinced him that he was in danger of alienating England?”

“Yes,” he said with weary irony, “I did.” He closed his eyes again.

This time she did break the silence. “What kind of a man is Mohammed Ali, John?”

He stretched his long legs in front of him and answered in a roundabout fashion. “Two years ago the pasha was riding through a small provincial town, when a baker approached him and complained of the ill-usage he had suffered at the hands of the local governor. Mohammed Ali sent for the governor and had him pitched into the baker’s oven, where he was slowly roasted to death.” He turned his head and looked at her. “That is the kind of man he is.”

“Was the local governor corrupt?” she asked slowly.

“Absolutely. They all were, I’m afraid.”

“I see.
In England we call actions like the pasha’s ‘Jedburgh justice.’ “

He grinned. “I believe you are right. The number of bad characters the pasha has hanged without trial is enormous, but it is far surpassed by the host of poor men whose wrongs he has righted. And he is the first ruler in Egypt for centuries who is trying to improve the agricultural base of the country. He has set in motion irrigation projects that should double the amount of crops the fellahin can raise.”

“That is certainly a good thing. But he is ruthless, is he not?”

“Yes. He has no regard whatsoever for human life.”

“Yet you have worked for him for years.”

“He’s a cunning bastard, but I like him.” A sardonic note crept into his voice. “We probably have a lot in common.”

“Probably,” she agreed, and he laughed and rose to his feet

“We leave for Alexandria tomorrow at seven.”

“I shall be ready,” she said. He stretched the muscles of his back as if they felt cramped from lack of exercise, nodded to her absently, and went into the house. After a minute, Julianne picked up her book again.

They went by boat to Alexandria, where they boarded one of the pasha’s prized new naval vessels. The Egyptian winter weather was beautifully cool and the temperature remained that way as they proceeded through the Mediterranean. Julianne enjoyed sitting on deck wrapped in the wide, loose cloak of very fine white wool that John had presented her with. It was of Arabian rather than Egyptian style, and all its borders were worked in a beautiful elaborate pattern of colored silks. She had braided her hair securely in a thick plait so it would not blow, and wore no headdress. The area where she sat was off limits to the seamen, who, as good Moslems, never dreamed of intruding into her isolation.

And, for the most part, she was isolated. She saw very little of John. It was a small ship and he could not have that much to occupy him, Julianne found herself thinking rather frequently. She suspected that he was avoiding her.

About halfway through the journey he asked to borrow her journal. Since Julianne had been reading his books for several months at this point, she hardly felt she could refuse. She was sitting on deck the following day when he appeared with the worn-looking notebooks in his hands. He sat down in a chair, propped his feet on the rail, and regarded her speculatively. His long fingers moved lightly up and down the discolored red cover of her book. “This is a remarkable document,” he said seriously.

Julianne felt herself flushing. “I thought you might find it silly.”

He looked astonished. “I never read anything less silly in my life. Africa comes alive in these pages. You make it live and breathe in a way no one else has ever done. No one else who has your literary talent has ever
been
to Africa. Certainly no European has seen what you have recorded here. I think you should publish it.”

“Do you really think it is that good?” Julianne could hear the breathless excitement in her own voice.

 “Yes, I do. You loved Africa, didn’t you?”

She nodded.  “It’s wonderful.”

“You make it come alive,” he repeated. “When you get to England you should see about getting this published.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I am serious, Julianne.”

She felt absolutely radiant. She would never have dared to tell anyone what writing had come to mean to her. His recognition of that something in herself that she had secretly believed in and nurtured was one of the most wonderful things that had ever happened to her. “My father thought I was wasting my time,” she confessed.

“You weren’t.” He stayed where he was, lounging in his chair, his feet on the rail, his black hair blowing in the breeze. “I read your father’s notes as well.” His voice was noncommittal. “No doubt the missionary society will find them of interest. I didn’t.”

Julianne stared at the water. “Papa walked through Africa like a blind man. He never saw how beautiful it was.”

“No,” he agreed. “From his journal one gathers that he was preoccupied with two things: himself and Jesus.”

Julianne looked for a minute at John’s relaxed body, his calm, splendid profile. “I think I hated him,” she said in a low voice.

He didn’t move. “I should imagine you must have. You had utterly opposing temperaments.”

She heaved an enormous sigh of relief. “Doesn’t anything ever shock you, John?”

At that he turned to look at her. “What should I be shocked about?”

“It’s a terrible thing to hate your father. It’s a sin.”

“Well, if it’s a sin, it’s certainly a common one.” He grinned at her astonished expression. “I hated mine, too,” he offered. “Only in my case it was my uncle rather than my father. My parents died when I was very young and I was placed in the care of my father’s elder brother. He was the Earl of Denham and I hated him passionately.”

“Why?”

“Oh, he didn’t beat me or anything as vulgar as that. He was just so dull, so dreary, so pedantic— and so hypocritical. Everything he touched he blighted. And my cousins were just as bad. I was wild to get away. They were just as anxious to get rid of me, I may add. When a friend of my uncle’s was persuaded to find me a position with our embassy in Constantinople, we parted ways with mutual enthusiasm. I had wanted an army commission, but he wouldn’t buy me one. As it turned out, the job in Constantinople was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Her eyes were still on his profile. “Tell me about it.”

He rose to his feet, put the notebooks on his chair, and went to lean on the rail. “There isn’t a whole lot to tell. I wasn’t in Constantinople that long—just long enough to pick up some Turkish and some Arabic. I’ve always been a quick study at languages. That was why Sir Sidney Smith took me to Egypt with him. I remained with Sir Sidney for a few years and when the British finally pulled out, I stayed.”

She came and joined him at the rail. “Is this the first time you’ve been back to England since you left?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you miss it at all?”

“No.” His dark lashes were lowered, staring down at the water, concealing his eyes. “In England everyone is expected to conform to the same dull mold. In Egypt one has room to breathe. I like the freedom of being able to do what I want to do, be what I want to be, with no one pushing the god of respectability down my throat.”

“But don’t you miss having a real home?”

He shrugged a little. “Home is wherever night finds me, and that suits me just fine.”

She stared down at her hands, which were gripping the rail tightly. “You sound just like my father. He could not—he would not—renounce his missionary dream for the safety of Crewe Rectory. He was incapable of any of the domestic ties that ordinary people feel, incapable of the love that binds families together.”

“Then why did he marry?” His voice sounded harsh and she raised her eyes to his face. He had turned and was looking at her, his eyes hooded and unreadable.

“I imagine he thought my mother would be useful to him,” she answered with a trace of bitterness. “He couldn’t have loved her. If he had, he would never have brought her to Africa. She wasn’t strong. She went because she loved him and she desired, above all else, to please him.” The bitterness was more pronounced now, in her voice and in the curve of her mouth. “I will never,” said Julianne with deadly certainty, “marry a man like my father.”

“A man like your father, a man like myself, ought never to marry.” There was an edge in his voice that told her she had hit a nerve. “Women have no concept of personal freedom.” His blue gaze flicked angrily across her face. “Even you,” he said. “You have traveled where no European has been before, you have seen places and things that most of us have only dreamed of, you have the talent to produce something like this”—he gestured to her journal—”and yet all you can talk about is safety, security, and domestic ties. God Almighty!” He turned back to the water, his profile like granite,