The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (6 page)

He had been appalled at the violence of his feelings. For twelve years he had driven Ainsley from his mind. It had been an act of will. A duty. And all it took was a single word to break down the wall.

A butterfly touch on his arm dragged him back to the bazaar, and he glanced down to see an Abyssinian girl shyly offering food, and probably more. She was holding out some infernal mess of stewed goat on dhurra bread, and murmuring in Arabic about the pasha enjoying a ‘meal’ in her brother’s house.

She had large, liquid dark eyes and polished copper skin, and most of his fellow officers would have judged her quite handsome enough for an hour or so. Cameron gave her a look that made her flinch, and pushed on. The thought of bedding a native girl turned his stomach.

At last the bazaar was left behind, and he walked out into the heat and glare of the Keff, the medieval jumble of flat-roofed coral houses where the army was encamped. Skeletal goats trod piles of refuse with delicate hooves. Swarms of flies – the tiny, maddening flies of the Sudan – wavered and settled and rose again.

Beyond the Keff he saw straggling patches of yam and watermelon, and then, with brutal suddenness, the desert: a vast heat-warped plain the colour of dried blood, broken only by sharp-toothed outcrops of stark black rock.

It was a profoundly alien wilderness, and yet he felt a perverse attraction to it. At least out there he wouldn’t be fighting homesickness as well as Dervishes.

Down an alley stinking of turmeric and goats, he found the Muhafaza: a run-down old building of battered white coral pitted with bullet holes. Ducking beneath the lintel, he entered the shadowy interior, and came face to face with Ainsley Monroe.

He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest.

Ainsley had been writing at a rickety little desk by the window, his bright gold head bowed over his papers, and lit by a shaft of sunlight from a half-open shutter. A subaltern stood at his elbow, handing him order slips and clutching a ledger to his chest.

Of course, thought Cameron dizzily. The child in the park had said that her father was a major in the 65th. Why didn’t you think of that before?

Ainsley raised his head and saw him, and blinked once. He dismissed the subaltern and rose to his feet. When they were alone he came round to the other side of the desk and put out his hand. Cameron ignored it. Ainsley gave him an uncertain smile. ‘My God, Cameron, but this is a fine thing!’ His voice shook with emotion. ‘You’ve grown so tall! I quite have to look up to you now.’

Cameron couldn’t speak. At one stroke he was a boy again, shocked and bewildered when this man whom he’d loved as a brother had shattered his world. ‘Major Falkirk, sir,’ he said with a stiff salute. ‘Captain Lawe reporting for duty.’

Ainsley gave a startled laugh. Then with an ironic flourish he returned the salute.

It had been twelve years, but he hadn’t changed at all. Those warm blue eyes. That wide mouth always ready for laughter. Although perhaps the resemblance to his father had become less marked over time, for he seemed to have lost some of Jocelyn Monroe’s straight-backed authority. Or perhaps, thought Cameron, he never had it at all.

He watched Ainsley take a sheet of orders from the desk and hold them out. ‘Here you are,’ he said, still absurdly smiling. ‘These are for you.’

Cameron took the papers in silence.
61377 Cameron Lawe, Captain, ‘B’ Company, 25th King’s Own Scottish Borderers: special attachment to the 65th York and Lancasters under Major Alasdair Falkirk, until such time as the relief of Tokar has been accomplished.

Ainsley was still smiling. He seemed unable to stop. It made Cameron’s skin crawl. What, he thought in disbelief, does he expect? Does he imagine that after what he did he has only to smile, and I’ll fall on his neck?

He folded the paper and put it in his tunic pocket. ‘Sir, on whose initiative was this arranged?’

Ainsley looked surprised. ‘On mine, of course.’ He paused. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw your name in the transport lists. It was like a gift from God.’

‘I want a transfer back to my own corps.’

Ainsley’s smile faltered. ‘I’d forgotten how blunt you can be.’

‘I prefer to call it straightforward.’

‘Indeed. Then I shall be straightforward too. Your request is denied.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘I need you here.’

‘Why?’

‘I understand you speak Arabic.’

‘A little, but—’

‘That’s more than most. I need an interpreter.’

‘I’d be of no use to you, sir,’ Cameron said crisply. ‘In this region they speak a corrupt version of the tongue. A sort of – bastard version. If you will.’

Their eyes locked.

Ainsley said, ‘You can make this easy for yourself or you can make it hard. It’s your choice.’

‘What if I simply refuse to serve under you?’

‘Then I shall have you court-martialled for insubordination.’

Cameron wondered if he meant it, and decided that he did. Beneath the gentleness Ainsley had always had a ruthless streak. Perhaps he wasn’t so unlike his father after all. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he said.

Ainsley gave him a hooded look. ‘I have my reasons.’

The Arabs say that when Allah made the Sudan, He laughed.

They’re right. Savage laughter is the desert’s natural music. The cackle of hyenas. The bark of jackals. The leathery
thwap
of vultures squabbling over their prey.

But on the eve of a battle, the desert holds its breath.

They had set out from Suakin in the chill of the night, to avoid the blistering heat of the sun, and had joined the main column at an oasis where they struck camp. It was a dreary little place, no more than a well of brackish water beneath a barren bluff – and as the sun rose, the heat quickly became unbearable. They flung up a line of zeribas with walls of thorn-scrub and camel-saddles and camped inside, the officers in tents, the men in what shade they could create from sacking and store boxes. They would rest until nightfall, march by moonlight, and engage the enemy some time after dawn.

It was nearly six in the evening, and stillness reigned: the peculiar taut stillness before a battle. Cameron couldn’t sleep. He told himself it was just the pain in his hand, for he’d taken a sabre-cut across the palm in a skirmish during the night, but he knew it was more than that. Something ugly was churning away inside his chest.

Eventually he gave up and went for a walk. He left the zeriba and climbed a goat-track up the bluff, and found a patch of shade beneath a boulder near the top, and sat down. The shadows were lengthening but the heat was still intense. He could feel it beating down on his helmet, pressing on his skin like a blanket.

He sat for an hour or so, and below him the column began to wake up. Blue smoke rose from cooking-fires. Men yawned and stretched in the eerie copper light.

Snatches of talk drifted up to him. After the scrap at El Teb, the Dervishes would have rifles and carbines and Gatling guns. And they sent boys into battle, boys of no more than twelve, armed only with sticks and the love of Allah. But they had to be killed just the same, or they’d snap a horse’s legs and be all over the rider like a swarm of flies.

Cameron watched the red men moving about below him in the red light, and wondered how many would be dead by this time tomorrow.

Wherever he looked, the desert stretched to the horizon. The wind whirled tirelessly over the hot, crisp ground. Black sand drifted like infernal snow. This, he thought, is what hell must be like. The world has been blasted to cinders, and this is what remains.

And still that sordid churning in his chest. What, honestly, did Ainsley expect? Forgiveness? An open-armed welcome for the prodigal son?

At the foot of the bluff a group of Hussars crouched in a ring, urging a scorpion into battle against a yellow tarantula. A trio of Egyptian camel-drivers wandered over to watch. As Cameron followed the spider’s delicate circling, he was suddenly back in Jamaica, nineteen years before. It was his first week at Fever Hill, and he was six years old, crying beneath the guango tree, for he couldn’t understand why his parents had gone away. Where had they gone? When would they stop being dead? He had reached the hiccuping stage when Ainsley had wandered up: a gangly fifteen-year-old, but a god to a small boy. Ainsley had pretended not to notice the tears, and had said simply, Would you care to see my pet tarantula?

Angrily, Cameron got to his feet and threw a stone as hard as he could across the bluff.
God
, why must you think about that now?

He needed to be doing something – anything, so long as it didn’t involve Ainsley.

Back at the zeriba he spoke to the officer with the next watch, and negotiated an exchange. Then he retrieved his kit, found a store box to sit on, and buckled on his spurs.

Or rather, he tried to buckle them on, but his injured palm made him clumsy, and he couldn’t get them fastened. He cursed savagely, and some of the men turned and stared. None of them laughed. If Captain Lawe lost his formidable temper, you were a fool to get in the way.

‘Trouble?’ said a voice which made the back of his neck prickle.

‘No,’ he said without looking up.

Ainsley sat on the store box next to his. ‘Those spurs were my father’s, weren’t they?’ he said quietly.

And now they’re mine, thought Cameron. For Jocelyn no longer has a son. He flexed his injured hand to make the pain flare. It was a good, clean pain. Nothing like the sick churning in his chest.

‘We missed you at dinner,’ Ainsley said. ‘The colonel asked where you were. He’s a bit of a stickler for the conventions.’

Cameron made no reply.

‘We pooled our resources,’ said Ainsley, sounding amused. ‘Sort of a send-off before tomorrow’s scrap. Potted meat and tinned sardines, courtesy of Messrs Crosse & Blackwell. Oh, and I believe Forrest has saved you a slice of his aunt’s preserved pineapple.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Indeed.’

There was an awkward silence. Cameron wrestled with the buckle, and wished Ainsley to blazes.

Ainsley said, ‘I handled it badly yesterday. You must have thought I was making light of things. I wasn’t. I was just so damned glad to see you.’

At last Cameron succeeded with the spurs. He stood up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I have the patrol.’

‘I’ll ride with you.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

Ainsley gave a lop-sided smile. ‘I’m aware of that.’

They rode at the head of the detail, taking the track which Cameron had climbed an hour before. When they were clear of the camp he said, ‘I think you ought to tell me what the fellows know about you in the mess.’

Ainsley glanced at him, then turned in the saddle and ordered the men to fall back. When they were out of earshot he said, ‘As far as they’re concerned I’m Alasdair Falkirk. Have been for the past twelve years. They don’t even know I’m from Jamaica.’ He paused. ‘I thought that best. For the family as well as myself.’

‘Indeed,’ said Cameron drily. ‘Family honour has always been close to your heart.’

Ainsley’s cheeks darkened. ‘Would you prefer that I made my story known?’

‘How could you? They’d throw you out of the regiment.’

Ainsley was silent. Then he said, ‘Shall you tell them?’

‘Of course not. The old man went through hell to prevent a scandal. I’m not going to ruin that now.’ Frowning, he disentangled his mare’s mane from the reins. ‘He’s been ill. I don’t suppose you’ve heard.’

‘How could I? You’ve never answered my letters.’

‘I’ve never read them.’ It gave him a sick satisfaction to see Ainsley flinch. It also made him feel ashamed. Once again he tormented his injured hand. ‘How could you do it?’ he said. ‘To break the heart of a fine old man. To desert your wife and child.’

Ainsley let out a long breath. ‘When I left Jamaica I didn’t know that Clemency was with child.’

‘Would it have made a difference if you had?’

Ainsley did not reply.

Behind them the men were casting them curious glances. Cameron quelled them with a look. He put his mare forward, and heard the rattle of pebbles as Ainsley brought his horse level.

‘Cameron. Try to understand. I was young. Younger than you are now.’

‘You were weak. You’ve always been weak.’

He gave a twisted smile. ‘I can see that you’ve never been in love.’

Cameron snorted.

‘Well, it may surprise you to learn that Clemency at least has forgiven me. Oh, yes, it’s true. She wrote to me. Years ago.’ He patted his tunic pocket. ‘I keep her letter with me always.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I suppose – to remind myself that there is such a thing as forgiveness.’

Cameron wondered if that were the whole truth. Why should a man go about with the evidence of his own iniquity in his breast pocket unless he secretly wanted to be found out?

‘I suppose I ought to pity you,’ he said. ‘You never could face up to your responsibilities. You ran off and left your wife and child, and now you’ve run off and left your mistress.’

‘I have not left Rose,’ Ainsley said between his teeth.

‘You’re in the army. It amounts to the same thing.’

Ainsley drew a deep breath. ‘You’ve changed. You used to be able to listen to both sides of an argument, then make your own choice. I always liked that about you.’

‘In some things there is no choice. In matters of honour. And duty.’

‘You sound just like my father.’

‘Well, God damn it,’ snarled Cameron, ‘he’s my guardian, he brought me up!’

He hadn’t bothered to lower his voice, and behind them all heads turned.

‘I didn’t accompany you’, Ainsley said quietly, ‘to have an argument. I came because I need to tell you something.’

‘Then tell me and have done with it.’

Ainsley looked out across the burning plain. ‘I have a daughter,’ he said. ‘A little girl of ten. And God willing, another child on the way.’

Cameron thought about the little girl in the park. ‘And what is that to me?’ he said.

Ainsley gave him a hard look. ‘You just don’t give a damn, do you? We used to be like brothers. But as far as you’re concerned, none of that ever happened. Did it, Cameron?’