“It’s all these children of yours that weigh us down,” Tom said accusingly.
Sarah had not been able to resist taking into her care four of the most appealing orphans from the released slave caravans. She lavished her maternal instincts upon them, and now they clustered around her, dressed in the clothes she had sewn for them, sucking their thumbs and clinging to her skirts.
“Thomas Courtney, I do declare you are jealous of a few little babies.”
“When we reach Good Hope I will buy you a pretty bonnet to win back your love,” he promised.
She opened her mouth to tell him she would prefer a baby son, but that was a painful subject for both of them.
Instead she smiled.
“And a pretty dress to go with it. I have lived in rags these past months.” She hugged his arm.
“Oh, Tom, it will be so good to reach civilization again. Even for so short a time.” The Caliph of Oman, Abd Muhammad atMalik, was dying in his Muscat palace, and not even the wisest of his physicians could fathom the cause of the mysterious disease that had assailed him. They had purged him until blood dribbled out of his anus. They had lanced the veins in his arms and bled him until his gaunt face was sallow, with plum-coloured eye-sockets. They had blistered his chest and back with hot irons to
BURN
out the sickness, all to no avail.
The disease had begun to manifest itself shortly after Prince Zayn al-Din had returned from the long pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy places of Islam that his father had ordered him to undertake as a penance for his treachery.
On his return to Muscat, Zayn al-Din had once again made the most abject petitions to his father. He tore his fine raiment and slashed his cheeks and chest with a sharp knife. He poured ash and dust on his head and crawled on his hands and knees into his father’s presence, wailing for forgiveness.
AlMalik had stepped down from the ivory throne, lifted him to his feet and, with the hem of his own robe, had wiped away the blood and dirt from his son’s fat face.
Then he kissed him on the lips.
“You are my son, and although once I had lost you, now you are restored to me.” he said.
“Go and bathe yourself, change your apparel. Put on the blue robes of a royal Omani and take your seat on the cushion at my right hand.” Soon after this the terrible headaches began, which left the Caliph confused and drowsy. Then he was attacked by fits of convulsions and vomiting. His stomach ached and his stools were black and tarry, his urine dark red with blood.
While the physicians treated him and looked for improvement, the disease worsened. His fingernails turned blue. His hair and his beard fell out in tufts. He drifted in and out of coma and his flesh melted away, so that his bald and hairless head resembled that of a cadaver.
Knowing that the end was near, thirty of his sons gathered around his bed in the dark, shuttered, airless bedchamber. The eldest, Zayn al-Din, sat closest to his bed and led the chanted prayers for the intervention of Allah in their father’s suffering.
Once, in the pause between prayers, Zayn al-Din lifted his tear-filled eyes and looked sorrowfully across the chamber at his half-brother. Ibn alMalik Abubaker was the son of one of the lesser concubines. He had always been Zayn al-Din’s trusted companion from their childhood days in the zenana on Lamu island. Because of his lowly status in the royal household Abubaker might have dropped into obscurity. However, there is a saying in the desert that every man needs a camel to carry him over the sands. Zayn al-Din was Abubaker’s camel. On the back of his elder half brother Abubaker was determined to ride one day to power. He knew also that Zayn al-Din needed him, for Abubaker was the faithful servant, shrewd and resourceful, committed to his brother. He had been at Zayn al-Din’s side at the battle of Muscat, and had tried to protect him when the Ottoman Turks had been routed, but in the he had been lanced in the chest and thrown from his horse.
After the battle he had recovered from his wound, and received a pardon from the new Caliph; alMalik was always benevolent and generous to his sons. Instead of being grateful for this mercy, though, Abubaker was fiercely resentful. Like Zayn al-Din, he was ambitious and devious, a born conspirator, and greedy for power. He knew that, despite his father’s expression of forgiveness, his treachery would be remembered for the rest of the Caliph’s life. May that be short, he thought, as he looked across the crowded bedchamber fogged with incense smoke, and caught the eye of Zayn al-Din, His brother gave him a barely perceptible nod, and Abubaker lowered his eyes then smoothed his moustache as a sign that he had understood.
It was Abubaker who had provided the bitter white powder that was doing the business for them. One of the physicians tending the sinking Caliph was Abubaker’s man.
Administered in tiny doses, the poison accumulated in the body of the victim-so that the symptoms became gradually more acute. Silently Abubaker agreed with his brother that it was time to give the Caliph the lethal dose that would end it.
Abubaker covered his face with the black head cloth as if to hide his sorrow, and smiled. By this time tomorrow his elder brother Zayn al-Din would be seated on the Elephant Throne. He, ibn alMalik Abubaker, would be commander of the armies and fleets of Oman. Zayn al-Din had promised him that, and the rank of imam and two lakhs of rupees from the royal treasury. Abubaker had always seen himself as a mighty warrior, and he knew that at last his star was rising and beginning to
BURN
brightly.
“All thanks to my sainted brother, Zayn al-Din. May Allah shower ten thousand blessings upon his head,” he whispered.
At dusk the physicians gave the Caliph a potion to help him sleep and to strengthen him against the assaults of the night demons.
Although alMalik coughed, dribbled the medicine down his chin and rolled his head away, the doctors held him gently and spooned every last drop down his throat.
He lay so still and pale on the cushions that twice during the long, hot night the doctors opened his eyelids, held a lamp in front of his face and watched for the shrinking of the pupils.
“In the love and kindness of Allah, the Caliph yet lives,” they intoned each time.
Then, as the first coppery rays of dawn light pricked through the fretwork of the shutters of the east window, the Caliph started up suddenly and gave a strong, clear cry.
“God is great!” Then he fell back on the sweat-soaked cushions of his bed, and a slow trickle of blood ran from his nostrils and down his cheeks into the bed-linen.
The doctors rushed forward, forming a circle around the body, and though all his sons craned for a glimpse of their father, he was hidden from them. The chief surgeon whispered to the vizier of the court in lugubrious tones.
Then the vizier faced the rows of seated princes and intoned, in a voice of heavy portent, “Abd Muhammad alMalik, Caliph of Oman, is dead.
Allah receive his spirit!”
“In God’s Name,” they replied in solemn chorus, many faces raddled with grief “In accordance with his father’s wishes, Zayn al Ding is the successor to the Elephant Throne of Oman.
May Allah bless him and grant him a long, glorious reign.”
“In God’s Name!” they repeated, but none showed any joy at the announcement.
They knew that dark days were ahead.
Outside the city walls, jutting out into the sea, was a rocky headland. The cliffs on the point fell sheer into deep water, so clear that every detail of the coral below was etched like a marble mosaic.
The new Caliph had ordered a pavilion of polished pink granite blocks built upon the lip of the precipice. He named it the Palace of Retribution. From his seat in the shaded colonnade he could look down to the surface of the sea and watch the long, dark shadows of the sharks gliding over the reef far below. There had been no sharks when first the palace was built, but now there were many, and they were well fed.
Zayn al Ding was eating a ripe pomegranate when they brought another of his father’s officers barefoot before him.
They had shaved his head and beard, and placed a chain around his neck as -a symbol of condemnation.
“You were unkind to me, bin-Nabula,” the Caliph said, “when I was in disgrace and out of my father’s favour, may Allah bless his sainted soul!” He spat one of the pomegranate pips, which hit the proud old man in the face. He did not even blink but stared back coldly at his tormentor. Bin-Nabula had commanded the former Caliph’s army and fleet: he was a soldier proud.
“You called me the fat puppy.” Zayn al-Din wagged his head sorrowfully.
“That was very cruel of you.”
“It was a name that fitted you well,” the condemned man re plied.
“And since then you have grown wider in girth and more repulsive in when. I give thanks to Allah that your noble father cannot know what a plague he has visited upon his people.”
“Old man, you were always garrulous, but I have a certain cure for that vice.” Zayn al-Din nodded to the new general of his army.
“My little friends down there are hungry. Do not keep them waiting.”
Abubaker bowed. He was dressed in burnished half, armour with a spiked helmet and embroidered silk neck flap. When he straightened he was smiling. The smile on that narrow face, with the snaggle teeth of a barracuda, was dreadful to look upon but bin-Nabula did not flinch.
“Many good men have gone along this road ahead of me,” bin-Nabula said.
“I prefer their company to yours.” The executions had been conducted daily over the last months since the accession of the new Caliph. Hundreds of once powerful and important men had gone over the cliff to the waiting shark pack. Zayn al-Din had a long memory for a slight or an insult and neither he nor General Abubaker tired of the sport.
“Remove the chain,” Abubaker ordered his men. He did not want bin-Nabula to sink too swiftly. They lifted the heavy links from his neck, and led him to the block.
“Both feet,” Abubaker commanded, and they placed his legs across the block. Abubaker had refined the punishment: with his feet gone, the condemned man could splash on the surface but not swim to the shore, and the blood in the water would rouse the shark pack and drive it into a feeding frenzy.
He drew his sword and slashed the blade through the air above bin-Nabula’s legs, smiling at him with those uneven teeth. The old general looked back at him steadily, without any sign of fear.
Abubaker could have delegated this duty to any of his men, but he took pleasure in doing his brother’s work himself. He laid the edge of the curved blade against the old man’s ankle, judging his stroke with narrowed eyes.
“A single clean stroke,” Zayn al-Din encouraged him, or I shall claim a penalty from you, my brother.” Abubaker lifted the blade, paused at the top, then swung down. The steel hissed in the air, then sliced through flesh and bone and thudded into the wooden block. The white foot with its blue veins dropped on to the polished granite floor, and Zayn al-Din clapped his hands.
“A fair stroke indeed. But can you do the same again.
Abubaker wiped the blade on a square of silk that a slave handed him, then lined up on the other ankle. Hiss and clunk, the steel sank deep into the wood of the block.
Zayn al’ Ding hooted with laughter.
The soldiers carried bin-Nabula to the edge of the cliff, leaving a wet red trail across the pink polished granite flags. Zayn al-Din jumped up from his cushions and limped to the low parapet that protected him from the drop. He leaned over the wall and looked down.
“My little fishes are waiting for you, bin-Nabula. Go with God.”
The soldiers threw him over the edge and his robes ballooned around him as he fell, but he made no sound.
Some of them screamed all the way down, and Zayn al Ding enjoyed that. Bin-Nabula struck the surface and was driven deep by the impetus of his fall. Then the disturbed water cleared and they saw him float up to the surface. He floundered there, trying to keep his head above the water but the water clouded red around him.
The reP Zayn al-Din pointed down with a trembling finger and shrieked with excitement.
“Look at my lovely fish.”
The dark shapes moved with agitation, speeding up as they rose towards the surface, circling the struggling old man.
“Yes, my little ones, come! Come!” Then the first shot in and bin-Nabula was plucked below the surface. But the water was so clear that Zayn al Ding could follow every detail of the banquet he had set.
When the sport was ended and there was nothing further to watch, he returned to the pile of cushions under the silk canopy and called for cold sherbet to drink. Then he beckoned his brother to come to him.
“That was well done, Abubaker, but it is more satisfying when they scream.
I believe the old shaitan remained silent merely to diminish my enjoyment.”
“Bin-Nabuta was always an obstinate old goat,” Abu@ baker agreed.
“There were six hundred and twelve names on the list you gave me. It is sad, Majesty, but bin-Nabula was number six hundred. We are almost at the end of the list “No. No, my dearest brother, we are not nearly at an end One of the chiefs of all our enemies has not been dealt with yet.”
“Give me the rascal’s name.” Abubaker showed his uneven teeth in a grimace that was too savage to be a smile.
“Tell me where to find him, and I will seek him out for you.”
“But, MY brother, you know him well. You also have a reckoning with him.” Zayn al-Din leaned forward, his belly sagging into his lap, and drew up the hem of his robe.
Tenderly he massaged the deformed joint of his ankle.
“Even after all the years my foot still aches when there is thunder in the air.” Understanding dawned in Abubaker’s dark eyes, and Zayn al-Din went on softly, “I did not enjoy being dragged on a rope’s end to the gates of Muscat.”
“Al-Salil.” Abubaker nodded.
“The redheaded green eyed devil. I know where to find him. Our sainted father, Allah bless his memory, sent him to Africa to reopen the trade routes for our caravans.”
“Take as many ships and men as you need, Abubaker.
Go to Africa. Find him and bring him back to me, broken, if you wish, but not dead. Do you understand me?”