The Lion at Sea (29 page)

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Kelly yelled. ‘This way!’

‘The buggers’ll shoot us,’ the Australian yelled.

‘The other way, the bloody Turks will.’

Jumping from the carriage, Kelly began to run for the rocks followed by the rest of the prisoners in a ragged cloud. The Turkish riflemen ignored them and, clearly regarding the Arabs as much more dangerous, were concentrating on them. Armed with rifles and swords, the horsemen swept past the running men and began to climb into the train. Above the rattle of the rifles and the yells and the roar of escaping steam, Kelly heard screaming and, turning back, saw the Turkish women being dragged from the train.

He flung himself down among the rocks, and the Australian fell on top of him.

‘You little beaut’,’ he crowed. ‘We did it!’

Looking round for Rumbelo, Kelly saw that out of the whole party, only he had failed to make it. He was lying out on the dusty slope, hit in the thigh, and as he saw him trying to struggle to his feet, without thinking, he shoved the pistol into his belt and began to run.

A few bullets kicked up dust and stones near him, but the Turks were more concerned with shooting at the maddened Arabs and he slithered untouched to a stop alongside Rumbelo. The Australian appeared behind him and, together, they lifted Rumbelo and struggled back up the hill.

‘You mad Pommy sod,’ the Australian stormed as they flung themselves down behind the rocks again. ‘Them Turks shoot fellers that do that!’

The Turkish soldiers were recovering quickly now that the first surprise was gone, but the Arabs seemed to have gone stark, raving mad and were rushing about at full speed, bareheaded and half-naked, screaming, shooting, slicing at anyone within reach with their great curved sabres. A Turkish soldier running along the side of the train was spotted by a horseman in a black cloak who went clattering after him, swinging his enormous sword. The Turk’s head leapt off as if it had been lifted by a spring inside his neck; and the body, still running, went on for a few more steps before it rolled over in the dust. The Arab lifted his bloody weapon, yelling, then a rifle cracked and he disappeared in a whirl of arms and legs over the tail of his horse.

The Arabs had clearly heard of the Turkish practice of placing prisoners in the first carriage and had waited for it to pass before setting off their charge in the middle of the train. The explosion had smashed one of the carriages to splinters and the bodies of its occupants lay among the shredded wood and tangled steel. All the wagons in front had been dragged from the track and stood lopsided, and all the ones that followed were derailed and smashed.

The raiders were flinging things from the train now – carpets, mattresses, quilts, blankets, clothes for men and women, clocks, cooking utensils, food, ornaments. A group of hysterical women, their veils snatched away, were tearing at their clothes and hair, shrieking wildly, and the Arabs were grabbing at the best-looking of them and systematically stripping them to the skin. One of them, no more than fifteen and stark naked, was being heaved up the hill by a huge Arab in filthy rags, his face twisted in a great grin.

The Turks were beginning to organise themselves now but the Arabs had got away with a great many rifles and several of the carriages had been set on fire. Riding and running for the rocky hillside, more Arabs fell but it was clearly never their intention to get too involved in a battle and they were retreating.

‘Come on,’ Kelly yelled. ‘Keep up with ’em! If we stay here we haven’t a chance!’

He started up the slope, with Rumbelo clinging on to him and the Australian. Just ahead of him several Turkish women were being pushed along by a group of Arabs, and the young girl, her naked body slender as a reed, was being dragged shrieking behind her huge captor.

Beginning to advance warily from the train, the Turks were firing as they approached. Struggling up the slope, Kelly’s party carried Rumbelo over the crest of the little hill to find the Arabs gathering on the other side, yelling and laughing, quite indifferent to the fact that several of their number had been shot. The big man had hoisted the naked girl on to the saddle of his horse and was already clattering off through the dust. The other Turkish women were shrieking wildly and one of the horsemen grabbed at one of them and, throwing her down, fell on top of her. Kelly gave him a kick that sent him sprawling, and as he scrambled to his feet, his lips drawn back over brown teeth in a snarl, a grey horse slithered to a stop alongside them.

Catching a whiff of scent, Kelly looked round to see a slight figure dressed in white, its face covered with its head-cloth against the dust. The Arab released the Turkish woman at once and turned away; the figure on the horse gestured and several riderless animals were brought up.

‘Get up!’ The words were in English and the voice was light like a boy’s.

They climbed on to the horses in ones and twos, Kelly holding Rumbelo in front of him. The figure in white was followed by a tall man in black robes and the two of them were rounding up their followers with urgent gestures. The Arabs were loading their horses with their loot and tying ropes to the wrists of the Turkish women. One of them resisted fiercely and the man who was struggling with her lost his temper, and began to beat her with his fist. The slight figure in white appeared again and a whip came down.

The Arab released the woman and she ran for the crest of the hill. As she reached the top, she was hit by the scattered firing from the other side and they saw her stop dead and turn slowly to face the sun, almost as if in obeisance, a red splodge across her chest, before falling backwards out of sight.

As the rider in white pointed and the Arabs began to move off, Kelly saw only a pair of fine dark eyes and straight heavy eyebrows. The rest of the face, pale in texture unlike the other Arabs, was still covered with the tail of the head-dress. The heat increased as the sun rose higher and they rode in silence except for the sobbing of the women clutched on the saddles in front of their captors, and the clatter of hooves against the grits and stones and the flat shaley surface of the rock. Behind them a train of ragged prisoners and dismounted Arabs followed. The Arabs had all drawn their head-cloths across their faces against the dust that the wind was whipping up, and pulled the browfolds forward like visors so that they only had a narrow, loose-flapping slit of vision.

Kelly squinted into the sun. Rumbelo was sweating profusely and the heat of his body made Kelly sweat, too. The glare was tremendous because the soil was a pale whitish-grey and the light struck up at them in a mad fashion. After a while, the big Arab left the side of the slim rider in white and moved through the other men collecting what appeared to be rags before eventually appearing alongside Kelly with his bundle. As they halted, he showed Kelly how to tie one of the rags round his head and pull it over his eyes. The other ex-prisoners did the same, then the little column went on again. The women had stopped sobbing now and seemed to have accepted their captivity.

‘Well, sir,’ Rumbelo panted as they jogged along, ‘I dunno who the ’ell’s got us now, but we don’t seem to be prisoners no more.’

They plodded on all day, stopping only twice to drink water from goatskins. The Arabs chattered to themselves and tormented the women, who actually seemed to be recovering their spirits now and were answering back, all except the wretched girl whom the big Arab kept well apart from the others, fondling her breasts and legs and pawing her salaciously.

Towards the end of the afternoon, they came to a hill which gave a little shade against the lowering sun and they saw a scattering of black tents, low and shapeless against the blueness of the shadows. As they drew near, women and children and old men approached. A few words were exchanged and several of the women, whose men, it seemed, had been killed, burst into a frenzied wailing. As they dismounted, the white-clad leader handed over the grey horse to a ragged youngster and strode towards a striped tent set apart from the others. The big man approached and indicated another tent which was hastily being evacuated.

Rumbelo was lifted down and an old woman appeared, followed by a boy carrying a basket. As they held him down, she extracted the bullet and bound the leg up with cool mosses.

‘Just the bloody stuff to give ’im gangrene,’ the Australian said.

There was a lot of activity about the camp and fires were lit so that they could smell the smoke of wood and burning dung. After a while, a dish of rice, mutton and bread was brought and they went at it like wolves. Dark, brackish water arrived for them to drink, and they had just finished when the tall man in black robes appeared in the tent door. He pointed at Kelly and indicated that he should follow him.

‘Off to meet His Nibs, sir,’ Rumbelo said. ‘The boss himself.’

The black-clad man led the way towards the striped tent. The interior was filled with carpets and there was a small folding table of filigree work with a brass tray on top of it bearing a coffee pot.

The Arab indicated one of the carpets and Kelly sat. As the Arab disappeared, the other end of the tent opened and the slim white-clad figure appeared under a draped fold. As Kelly rose to his feet, it straightened up and Kelly’s jaw dropped. The figure, which he’d assumed under the Arab robes to be some young sheikh or the son of a sheikh, was most obviously and enjoyably a girl. She wore no head-dress, but a long kaftan was partly open at the front to reveal firm full breasts and long legs in cotton trousers.

‘Good God!’ Kelly said.

The girl eyed him gravely. ‘You are surprised?’

‘Who wouldn’t be? Who the devil are you?’

‘I am Ayesha, daughter of Jellal el Arar, of Medina. Who are you?’

Circumstances had changed rapidly enough to make Kelly catch his breath. From being a ragged, half-starved prisoner cut off from civilisation and the company of women, it seemed he was now a privileged guest, and the guest of an extremely attractive girl at that.

‘My name’s Maguire,’ he said. ‘Kelly Maguire. Lieutenant, RN. I’m from the British submarine
E19
. We were sunk eight months ago near Nagara. All but nine of us were drowned.’

The girl nodded. ‘There were other submarines, too,’ she said, ‘I heard about them. I learned everything that went on at Gallipoli.’

‘But who
are
you?’

She shrugged. ‘I am an enemy of Turkey. That’s sufficient. It’s my intention to return you to your people. You will be sent to Egypt.’

Kelly’s heart leapt, and he grinned. It provoked the sober little face in front of him to give a small smile.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because only through a victory by the British and their allies can we hope to obtain the freedom that we need.’

‘Who?’

‘The Arab nation.’

‘The Arabs aren’t a nation.’

‘That’s a mistake the Turks have made. Arab civilisations are of an abstract nature, of course. Moral and intellectual rather than applied and their lack of public spirit made their excellent qualities futile.’

The words were delivered with gravity but in perfect English and Kelly was curious. ‘Where did you learn to speak English like that?’

The girl lifted her nose in the air. ‘That is an arrogant question. After all, you cannot speak my language.’

‘But you speak it so perfectly, and with such a high-class accent.’

‘Naturally I learned it at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I think you had better sit down before you fall down.’

Kelly sat down and the girl handed him a cup of coffee, pouring it herself.

‘I have no servants,’ she said. ‘Only one woman. I attend to most of my own needs.’

‘But what the blazes is a product of Cheltenham Ladies’ College doing here?’

The small nose lifted. ‘The products of Cheltenham Ladies’ College don’t all grace the soirées of London. Cheltenham Ladies’ College has always accepted girls from other parts of the world. In my year there were three from the Middle East, two from India, and one from West Africa. British public schools are full of the products of the British Empire.’

Kelly felt a little dazed. The girl sounded very much like Charley and even had the same stubborn, self-willed manner.

She tried to explain. ‘My father is the Sheikh of Arar. But he isn’t a wandering sheikh who lives in tents and breeds goats. He does business in Medina, before the war with the French and the British. He felt that the British Empire was the only hope for the Arabs and he sent his children to England to school. My two brothers went to Eton.’

Kelly was eyeing the girl with approval. Under the robes it was quite clear she was slim and shapely. Her neck was slender and carried a proud little head. Her nose was slightly curved and thin but her lips were well-formed. It was her eyes that attracted him most, however. Like so many Middle Eastern women she wore kohl on them, but they were large and expressive and surrounded by long dark lashes, and her hair was drawn back from her face over small ears and fastened with a jewelled slide behind her head.

She was still speaking. ‘When the war broke out,’ she said, ‘my brothers were recruited at once into the Turkish army. Many Arabs serve with them. They have to. They have always had to. Even my father holds an honorary military position. So far, they have been used only for garrison duties and it is their intention to disappear as soon as possible. I was the only one who was free, and my father permitted me to come here to do what I could. Jemil, who brought you here, is my body servant.’

Kelly gestured. ‘Do all those – all those men out there – do they know who you are?’

‘Of course. They are my father’s servants. They do as they are told. Jemil sees that they do, and so long as they are told to kill Turks, they don’t care who tells them.’

‘I always thought that in the Arab world a woman was only a chattel.’

‘My family are not wandering herdsmen. We are civilised people of education and wealth.’

‘But don’t you have to do what your menfolk tell you?’

She smiled proudly. ‘That is just what I am doing. I am carrying out my father’s orders. The Arab nation cannot afford to have men like him and my brothers put to death by the Turks for dissenting. But no one – least of all the Turks – questions what happens to a girl. I am here until the moment comes for the revolt and then my father and my brothers will join us.’