The Bride Box (26 page)

To Ali Maher's surprise, coffee was brought in.

‘This is unexpected, Mamur Zapt!'

‘Now that there is to be no shooting, we can allow some niceties. It does not, of course, affect the outcome. You will be sent for trial and you will be found guilty.'

‘But punished accordingly?'

‘It will be the Khedive who is punishing you, not the British.'

Ali Maher laughed. ‘Preserving, as you say, the niceties. And, as you say, the outcome will be the same.'

‘Yes. Actually, I wished to speak to you about something else.'

‘Oh?'

‘Karim.'

Ali Maher's face fell. ‘Do not speak to me of Karim. Please!'

‘I have to. We have to.'

‘My family will take care of him.'

‘Will they?'

‘I shall tell them to. I have enough authority left to command in this.'

‘And your wife – will she do as you tell her, with respect to Karim?'

Ali Maher frowned. ‘She will have to.'

Owen shook his head. ‘I don't see it,' he said.

‘She will have to do as my family ordains.'

‘But will she?'

Ali Maher did not reply for a moment. ‘She is difficult, I know. Headstrong.'

‘What if she doesn't do as they decree?'

Ali Maher made a little gesture of hopelessness. He was silent again for a moment, then declared: ‘It is her fault. All her fault. If she had not given birth to a monster—'

‘I don't think she has,' said Owen. ‘Although to you it seems so.'

‘The boy has his qualities,' Ali Maher conceded. ‘But …'

‘Would it not be best to leave him with her?'

‘No!' said Ali Maher vehemently. ‘She is not to be relied on. She is herself not right in the head. Look how she sent that girl to me!'

‘Girl?'

‘The one in the bride box.'

‘Why did she do that?'

‘To be revenged on me! For the failure of her own marriage. Oh, I know her tricks! At heart she is still savage. This is one of her Sudani pranks. The bride box, don't you see?
Bride
box. And the dead girl inside. It was a sign. Oh, I know her signs. It was to tell me that all I did ended in death.'

‘
She
sent the box to you? With Soraya inside?'

‘Of course!'

‘Not Suleiman?'

‘Suleiman only did her bidding.'

‘He was
that
faithful a servant to her?'

‘He is from her tribe. From her family. So he would do as she required. Now do you see why I cannot leave Karim with her? If I am in prison, what might she do to the boy? She loves him, yes, but it is a mad love. It is sometimes like that with these woman who bear monsters. Their love is all the fiercer because they have brought forth a monster. How can I hand him over to her?'

‘But you did hand him over to her!'

‘I was a fool. I thought that while I was there in the background I could watch over him from afar. I couldn't bring myself to be closer. I had wanted a boy so much. And then to find … this! So I had to put him away. And she seemed to love him – she
did
love him! So I thought it best … But now to have
this
… this crazed prank! Her mind has gone, it must have! How can I hand the boy over to someone like her?'

‘You are a faithful servant of the lady,' said Owen.

‘I hope so,' said Suleiman.

‘Even though she sometimes asks hard things of you?'

Suleiman looked startled. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘That is so.'

‘Take the boy, for instance. Karim. She expected your help with him.'

‘And rightly so. Was he not my mistress's son?'

‘Nevertheless, afflicted as he was, it cannot always have been easy.'

Suleiman shrugged. ‘In my country,' he said, ‘it is the custom to treat the afflicted as one of the family.'

‘The family, then, was yours, as well as hers. And his?'

‘That is so, yes. That is how we see it.'

‘When he was a child it was easy. Easy still, although growing more difficult, when he was a youth. But when he grew to manhood, and began to feel manly needs, then it became very difficult.'

‘That is so, yes.'

‘For her – and perhaps for you?'

Suleiman did not reply.

‘Especially when Soraya came into the household.'

‘That girl was a trouble maker!'

‘She answered to Karim's needs, though. And all might have been well, had she been content.'

‘She was treated well. Too well, in my opinion. It made her forget who she was.'

‘And she raised her eyes too far.'

‘Too far, yes,' agreed Suleiman.

‘So what was to be done?'

‘The lady sent her away – rightly so.'

‘But it did not work out.'

‘It should have worked out,' said Suleiman. ‘It was the right thing to do.'

‘And the wrong thing to bring her back?'

‘The wrong thing, yes. The boy pined, and the mother's heart was torn.'

‘And Soraya had brought her bride box.'

‘She should have been sent away immediately!'

‘But she was not. Until it became too late.'

Suleiman said nothing.

‘Something had to be done,' said Owen. ‘Did the idea come from her or from you?'

Suleiman just shook his head.

‘I don't think it would have come from you,' said Owen. ‘It was not your place. You merely did – faithfully – as you were told.'

There was a long pause, and then Suleiman said, ‘I do not know how it came about.'

‘Soraya was sent home again. Her bride box, too. You were charged with seeing to it.'

Suleiman did not speak but inclined his head.

‘But Soraya never got home.'

‘Men fell upon her.'

‘So you say. But no men have been found. The men who were carrying the bride box were sent away. Leaving you, Suleiman.'

Suleiman bowed his head again. ‘I must answer for it,' he said.

‘You must certainly answer for what you did. But is it right that you alone should be blamed?'

Suleiman looked at him.

‘When you were merely being faithful.'

Suleiman was silent for a long time. Then he said: ‘It is my place to be faithful.'

‘And there was much to be faithful to. The family, for instance: what was best for the family? And you could not leave out the master's family. Duties are owed there, too. And there, it seemed, the duty was clearer. The master's family was a great one. There might be a place for Karim in it. But not for Karim and
his
son, if son there should be. Lest the son should be like him. Was that how it was reasoned?'

‘It may have been.'

‘Or perhaps it did not even need to be reasoned. It just had to be understood. And someone like you, Suleiman, who had been in the family for a long time, understood that very well.'

‘It may have been so.'

‘The lady did not need to spell it out. Perhaps she did not even need to speak. You knew what was expected of you, and, as a faithful servant, you carried it out.'

‘It may have been so.'

‘
Did
she speak of it?'

Again there was a long pause.

‘Perhaps,' said Suleiman. ‘But I do not recall.'

Mahmoud received a letter from his friend Idris. It was postmarked Suakin, Sudan. The ‘Sudan' was heavily underlined by Idris and there was a big examination mark beside it.

F
ish teemed in the tepid water, fish of all sizes and colours. There were pink fish, crimson fish, yellow fish, green, fish white and fish black. There was one striped white and black in rings like a bull's eye. They nudged at the fallen stonework of the jetty, slid silently through the shadows, rose sometimes to sparkle in the sun.

At the end of the causeway, as tall as the minaret of the adjacent mosque, was the Wakkala, once the glory of the port, its largest warehouse, then a caravanserai into which camels brought loads of cotton, ivory, gum, senna leaves and melon seeds.

And slaves, of course, although these had walked behind the camels on their way to the Wakkala where they would await the boats that would take them across the Red Sea to the great slave markets of the Middle East.

It was to the Wakkala that Abdulla, the slaver, had brought the slaves he had collected. They had arrived the night before, in not too bad shape, his informants had told Macfarlane, of the Sudan Slave Bureau, who had had the caravan watched from the moment it had crossed the border from Egypt into the Sudan.

He had had time to cable Owen and ask him if he wanted to be in at the kill. Owen had said that he did. He had his own reasons for wanting to talk to Abdulla.

He had taken the train down to Luxor and then on to Atbara, the big railway junction in the Sudan, and then another train, the old troop carrying one, on to Port Sudan, a camel's ride from Suakin. He had reached the Dead City just before dawn and walked along the sea front, admiring the fishes, to the Muhafaza, about the only building still working in the deserted city. The Muhafaza was the old post office and the ottoman half-moon was still carved above its front door.

It was where Idris, Mahmoud's friend, now spent most of his time.

This was where Owen was to meet Macfarlane and the Camel Corps soldiers he had brought with him. They had arrived during the night and now stood beside their camels outside the Muhafaza.

‘All right,' said Macfarlane. ‘Shall we proceed?'

The soldiers began to slip silently through the empty streets. Everything was dark and quiet. A few doors hung half open in the street and the occasional mashrabiya window – still beautiful, though lined now with sand and dust – leaned out above. As the sun rose and began to reach the streets there was sometimes a flash of blue as it caught one of the old plates embedded in the mud brick of the walls. The old builders had used anything there was to hand and that included the plates brought over the sea from China by the seafaring Muslim sailors.

The soldiers stopped and then moved forward more cautiously. A whistle blew and the soldiers burst into the large courtyard of the Wakkala. The few men there looked up in shock.

Over in one corner a group of children, huddled together against the wall, turned towards the soldiers, amazed.

A tall Arab came out of one of the buildings. Macfarlane went up to him.

‘Greetings, Abdulla!' he said. ‘I see you're still at it.'

The children would go back to Atbara and then Khartoum by train, where arrangements would be made to reunite them with their parents. Abdulla would be going to Khartoum, too, only with the Camel Corps soldiers.

But first, Owen wanted to have a talk with him.

‘Slaving is one thing,' said Owen. ‘Murder is another.'

‘Murder?' said Abdulla.

‘Do you not remember Soraya?'

Abdulla shook his head. ‘I had nothing to do with that,' he said.