Death on the Ice (22 page)

He heard his fellow officers following suit, and soon a steady rain of dead birds was littering the desert floor. His gun empty, he handed it to his native loader and hesitated. ‘Can you smell burning? No, not the rifle.’

The loader indicated a plume of smoke hanging over the nearby village. Something was ablaze. They were on the edge of the small hamlet of Denishwai, not far from Tanta. The troop of mounted infantrymen was en route to Alexandria and had come here as a flag-waving exercise and to allow the officers a little innocent pigeon hunting.

Porter waved at Smithwick and Bostwick, who were some fifty paces either side of him. Further on his left side were Major Pine-Coffin, a man who had heard every variation on every joke about his name, and Captain Benjamin ‘Bonza’ Bull. Porter snatched the fresh rifle and began firing again. The pigeons were thinning, but he could see from the distant smudge in the sky they were turning. The feathered idiots would make a big loop and come over once more to be exposed to the guns.

It was when he lowered his weapon that he felt the first hard clump of mud hit him in the face. ‘Bloody hell.’

The loader pointed and exclaimed something Porter didn’t catch. He didn’t have to. A moving wall of local villagers seemed to be heading towards the British soldiers, sticks and farming tools held aloft. A stone arced over towards him and he stepped aside. He heard his loader cry out as it struck him. The man yelled something else unintelligible and took to his heels, dropping the spare rifle as he went.

The fellahin continued to stream forward, splitting into smaller groups, each moving to target one of the hunters.

Porter dropped his empty weapon and picked up the fully charged piece the loader had abandoned. He levelled it at the mob, but they carried on coming. He could see there were angry young men at the front, but behind them were women, children and the heavily creased faces of the village’s elderly.

He considered firing over their heads, but he thought it might be interpreted badly. Two stones and more mud hit him.

‘Steady on! Just calm down, will you?’ he yelled.

But the villagers continued to hurl abuse and rocks.

His fellow officers were already hidden from view but Porter could see the cab drivers that had delivered them over the heads of the crowd. He raised an arm and signalled one of the native drivers. Perhaps they could force their way through. Sure enough the carriage began to move. It was a second before he realised that the drivers were heading away from the crowd, not towards him.

‘Hey there!’ he shouted, but the grumblings of the fellahin drowned him out and the drivers disappeared from view.

He could smell the gathering now, the sharp tang of anger and hot blood. A woman hawked and spat at him, finding her target on his cheek. He felt sick as he wiped the slime away with his sleeve. One of the men pointed with his stick towards the thickening smoke coming from the village and let out a stream of invective.

‘Hold on, you can’t think we did that … Does anyone here speak English? English, anyone?’

The bodies pressed closer, forcing him back. He swung the rifle to face the stomach of the most insistent native, but the man arrogantly pressed his belly against it, as if daring him to pull the trigger. The damned Egyptians held their lives pretty cheaply, so he took another step of retreat. He felt the canvas of the hide against his back. Someone else spat, but missed. Porter knew he had to diffuse the situation.

‘All right. Look, I’ll tell you what.’

He took the rifle in both hands and presented it, almost ceremoniously, with a bow. ‘To show I mean no harm.’

It was wrenched from him and roughly passed back into the mêlée and seemed only to incense the villagers more.

‘Does anyone here speak—’

The sound of the discharge caused his heart to jump. A woman screamed. He was aware of people leaping back as at least one body fell. A hush fell over the gathering. Now they formed a circle. There was a woman and, in her arms, a small baby. Both were covered in blood.

‘Oh my, God. I put the safety on—’ he began. The roaring resumed as his tormentors all cried out at once, a great whoosh of anguish and fury.

That was when the first heavy stick smashed into his jaw and he went down to the mob.

There was no turf on any of the three fields at the Ghezira polo grounds, just hard-baked earth. That meant there was no requirement for the ritual of the spectators being allowed to press the divots back into the soil. However, the genuine polo aficionados, not wanting to break with tradition, still walked the field between the third and fourth chukkas, even though there was little to stamp down but dust.

It was during this invasion that Major Collins finally located Oates. The quarter final of the Lord Sutton Cup was a close-fought match. Oates’s team was three-two down; the Hussars were playing well, but he was confident the Inniskillings would even things up in the fourth.

Oates and the others moved into the shade of the stand and drank a pitcher of water each. It was scaldingly hot out there. Oates made sure each of the horses received plenty of liquid from the grooms.

‘Lieutenant Oates.’

Oates turned at his name. He tipped the remains of the water over his head, where it seemed to evaporate in a flash. ‘Major Collins, sir. Nice of you to come along. We need the support.’

The man’s toothbrush moustache twitched. ‘I’m not here for the polo.’

‘Oh.’ Oates knew this perfectly well. Collins was one of the new army ‘professionals’ who thought polo frivolous. ‘Pity. What can I do for you?’ He looked over his shoulder; the crowd were rapidly vacating the field. ‘Don’t have too long, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ll have as long as I need.’

‘Sir.’

One of the umpires rode over, indicating they were ready to resume, but Oates shouted. ‘A minute here, please.’

‘No longer,’ came the reply. ‘This is most irregular as it is.’

‘You were saying, sir?’

‘I need you to take fifty troopers to Denishwai. It’s on the Alexandria Road.’

‘When?’

‘I’d like you to start as soon as possible.’

‘I shall go straight back to barracks after the seventh, sir. Will you excuse me—’

Collins grabbed his arm. ‘British soldiers have been beaten by natives. Severely. Captain Bull has died of his injuries.’

‘Bonza Bull?’

‘You knew him?’

‘Of course. An eight-goal handicap. Fine polo player. What happened?’

‘Well, it seems the locals got upset by our lads shooting pigeons. Then someone blamed them for a local fire. One of the men handed over his rifle—’

‘He did what?’

‘I know, scandalous behaviour. It went off, killing a woman and her baby. All hell broke loose. The rest were lucky not to be murdered as well. Seventy-five have been arrested. There’ll be a tribunal. Things are pretty hot up there. You’ll be assigned to help the police maintain order.’

‘Sir.’ His eyes flicked out to the polo ground. His three fellow riders were already in play and the umpires had signalled for the throw-in. Whyman was frantically waving his mallet at him.

‘Go on, then, man, finish your damned game.’

Oates unfastened his helmet and took it off. He realised he’d been playing the fool for so long, enjoying getting up the noses of the stuffed shirts, that it had almost consumed him. The actor performing the clown and the clown itself had become indistinguishable. He signalled to young Lieutenant Moores to take his place. ‘No. I’ll pick the squadron this afternoon. We’ll be on our way first thing, sir.’

The executions took place an hour after sunrise, before the midsummer heat had time to hit its full, debilitating intensity. Oates supervised the cordon around the execution site. It was a patch of scrubland, not far from where Bull had been beaten to death and pretty much on the spot where Porter had been severely maimed by the mob after making the mistake of handing over his rifle.

The Royal Engineers had erected a gallows in the centre. The mosque aside, it was the sturdiest structure for miles around. Near it was an equally stout wooded triangle. There were four tents. One, open sided facing the gibbet, housed the press, both local, international and the Reuters agency. Also within were the sentencing tribunal, which had consisted of a judge advocate, who was a British officer; Sir Malcolm McIlwaraith, judicial adviser to the Khedive, the nominal ruler of Egypt; an English judge of the Native Appeal Court and the President of the Native Court of the First Instance, who happened to be Armenian. The second bell-tent held the prisoners and the third housed the commandant of the police, the supervising British officers and the Mudir of Menifiya, a local dignitary.

The fourth canvas structure was busy being erected by a brace of bony-looking men who had brought a cart piled with shrouds and water butts. These would handle the bodies of the executed.

Oates had arranged his men into a circle with a triple-layered circumference. He ordered the first row to kneel and fix bayonets, the second and third to be ready to fire. Since before sun-up, fellahin had been drifting to the area. Now they were mostly sitting or squatting, staring at the cordon. In the last half-hour, with prayers over, their number had swelled considerably.

‘How many of those buggers do you think there are, sir?’ his staff corporal asked. ‘Must be thousands.’

Oates checked his timepiece. They were running late. ‘There might be a thousand by the time the execution happens. Pass the word: I don’t want anyone handing his rifle over to a mob. If there is trouble they get one, I repeat, one, warning shot over their heads. The next volley is right at them. Understood?’

‘Sir.’

‘Four executions then the floggings. Shouldn’t take too long.’

Justice had been remarkably swift for Egypt. Of the seventy-five arrested, four had been sentenced to death, thirteen to be flogged and subsequently imprisoned, another nine flogged only.

Oates patrolled from behind his men, whispering to them. He had spaced out his troopers and corporals so that there was one man every few yards, with infantry and police between them. He expected the Inniskillings to lead by example.

After an hour, Oates’s thigh began to ache. The old wound was never a problem on a horse, but if he had to stand for long periods it began to throb. That was when the limp returned.

‘Here we go,’ said his staff corporal at last.

The prisoners’ tent opened and two Egyptian policemen, with rifles and fixed bayonets, led out the first of the condemned. Even Oates was shocked at how old he was. It was difficult to judge the age of the natives, given the drudgery and misery of their lives, but this man must have been seventy if he was a day.

His escort led him first to the wooden triangle, where his wrists were bound to the wood.

A burly army sergeant major stepped forward to administer the flogging. He carefully cut through the man’s jellabah and exposed a square of brown, sagging skin.

Oates had seen floggings before. He didn’t want to watch another. Instead, he kept his eyes on the crowd.

He heard the swish of the lash going back and then the snap as it cut into flesh. There was the smallest gasp from the observers. Another whip-crack, this time louder and a cry of anguish from the victim. The sergeant major had his eye in now, judging the distance perfectly with each stroke. The crowd shifted, but Oates was puzzled. He had expected something more demonstrative.

A fifth and a sixth strike of the whip followed. Oates risked a glance over his shoulder. Wet stripes glistened across the hide of the old man. He had slumped against his bindings already. Oates willed the whiphandler to stop; this was surely enough. But still the blows came, and the jellabah became soaked, as the entire top layer of skin disappeared. Now he was whipping muscle and fat and gristle, driving the tip deep, exposing the bone in places.

The signal was given to stop at twenty, and the man was cut down and taken to the gallows. He could hardly stand; he was dragged up the steps on jelly legs and needed support while the charge and sentence was read.

Asked if he had any final words before the black hood was drawn over him, he stood straighter and yelled a short sentence. The crowd responded, the volume deafening, and Oates saw some of the guards shift their rifles. ‘Easy,’ he said.

With the sack in place over his head, the noose around his neck, it was the Mudir who gave the signal to the British executioner. The trapdoor gave a creak, sprang open and the rope twanged taught.

Now, Oates thought, they’ll react now.

There was nothing but silence, during which he could clearly hear the flies buzzing around him. Not one of the natives moved. They stayed unnaturally still and equally quiet while the second, younger, prisoner was brought out and flogged with the old man’s body still swinging from the gibbet in full view. He suffered twenty-five strokes, before being hauled up to take his place at the end of the rope.

And all the time Oates watched the fellahin, realising there were subtle changes taking place. Their eyes were hardening, their faces growing more sullen and angry. By the time the final man was hanged, there was so much hatred directed at him and his men and the officials on the site, he felt the intensity of it outdid the sun beating down on them.

For the first time in his life he knew what it was like to be truly despised.

That night he wrote to his mother, describing what he had witnessed. He had no doubt that a punitive action had been required following Bull’s murder. Otherwise more British officers might the at the hands of fellahin mobs. But he had been unnerved by the passive yet aggressive spectators, who had not seemed at all cowed by the harsh retribution. In fact, they appeared to draw strength from it and grew more arrogant. When the mob had dispersed, several of his men had been ‘accidentally’ shouldered aside.

He glossed over his feelings of unease about the whole process, though, and reported the facts. Then he remembered he had other business to address.

Thank you for shipping Sorry Kate from Ireland to Mr Hallick. Tell Bryan that Hallick has entered the Angel Gabriel for Sandown. Might be worth a flutter, he’s a ripper horse. I am enclosing a letter from a boy called Frank Chester. He was a young lad who had an accident on the way over to the Cape and still cannot work. The army discharged him without a gratuity of any sort. Could you have him brought up to the village and boarded and see if perhaps we can find a position for him? He was a teetotaller and bore a very good character. The regiment won’t help him. But we have to do something or he will starve.