22
Minutes later, Mayne was ushered by a Sudanese guard along the upper-floor corridor of the palace and into the room he had seen lit up from outside. It extended to the back wall of the palace, but the open door and corridor beyond led to a balcony overlooking the river, visible from where he stood now. Beside the door was a Remington rifle on an elaborate wooden shooting stand, aimed in the direction of Tutti island; the action was open and Mayne could see that it had been carefully cleaned and oiled. He took a few more steps inside. The room was large, the size of an English country-house drawing room, and was lit at each corner by glass-topped oil lamps on stands, the walls and ceiling above them smudged with smoke. The centrepiece was a large Ottoman-style desk set close to the back wall, its surface covered with papers and notebooks and maps, a brimming ashtray on one side giving off wisps of smoke. The room smelled strongly of cherry tobacco, and he realised that this was the source of the smell that had wafted over the riverbank earlier. But the most striking feature was the mass of artefacts laid out carefully on the floor, enough to fill a small museum: elaborate tribal clothing, including a patched jibba of the Mahdists; an extensive collection of weaponry, from leaf-bladed dervish spears and curved swords to kurbash whips and ornate flintlock long guns; beautiful hand-made pottery, wood carving and beadwork; and an array of ancient Egyptian artefacts, including small statues in blue-green faience and fragments of masonry with carvings on them.
A voice came from the door. ‘The Mahdi keeps sending me gifts.’ Mayne turned and saw Gordon. He remembered him vividly from the lectures he had attended in London several years before, but close to he was shorter, more compact. He was wearing the evening uniform of an officer of the Royal Engineers, as if he were going to dinner in the mess, complete with the insignia of the Order of the Bath and his campaign medals for China and the Crimean War almost thirty years before. He looked pale, gaunt, his curly grey hair thinning on top, but his eyes were a brilliant porcelain blue, staring intensely. He reached over and picked up an Egyptian shafti statuette with hieroglyphics on the front. ‘Do you know that for the followers of Muhammad, it is not the meaning of the word but the shape of the symbols that has significance, as well as magical powers?’
Mayne nodded. ‘I had a Dongolese guide who gave me a hejab with the prayer wrapped around an ancient Egyptian scarab. I do not believe he ever knew the name in the hieroglyphics on the scarab, though I recognised the cartouche of Akhenaten.’
‘Akhenaten,’ Gordon repeated, pausing. ‘Are you a student of the ancient Egyptians?’
‘I have a passing acquaintance with hieroglyphics.’
‘What do you think of my collection?’
‘Fascinating, sir. I’ve seen your material from China in the Museum of the Royal United Services Institute.’ Mayne pointed to a fragment of wall carving showing the distinctive crown and snake symbol of a pharaoh. ‘I’m particularly interested in ancient Egyptian antiquities in the Sudan, as they are something of a rarity, I find. I’ve been tracing them from the Egyptian border along the Nile. I believe that the pharaoh Akhenaten mounted some kind of expedition into the desert. At Semna we found a temple with a depiction of him in front of the Aten symbol of the sun.’
Gordon looked at him piercingly. ‘At Semna, you say? Below the third cataract?’
‘A temple to the crocodile god, Sobek.’
Gordon glanced at his desk. ‘I must check my notes,’ he murmured. ‘My recollection is that Kitchener mentioned nothing unusual at Semna, other than the remains of pharaonic fortifications on either side of the river.’
‘Kitchener was intrigued when I told him, and intended to visit for himself.’
‘You’ve seen Kitchener? How is he?’
‘Champing at the bit. He wished it had been he who had been sent to make contact with you, but his face is too well known among the tribesmen, and he would have been at risk. He was with the desert column, but was sent back from the wells at Jakdul.’
‘Kitchener is a first-rate surveyor and archaeologist, and a most loyal supporter of mine,’ Gordon said. ‘Though I own he would be a handful for any general to manage, and I feel some sympathy for Wolseley on that front.’
Mayne paused, waiting, then offered his hand. ‘Major Edward Mayne, sir. You know from my badge that I’m a fellow sapper. Attached to the river column of the relief expedition.’
‘A relief expedition that has given me no relief at all,’ Gordon said with a tired smile. He shook Mayne’s hand strongly, and peered at his mud-spattered clothes. ‘You look as if you’ve been through the wars.’
‘A fair description, sir.’
Gordon put a hand on his own immaculate red tunic. ‘I apologise if you feel discomfited, but I dress to keep up appearances. I am sensible to the fact that I am still governor general of the Sudan, even though the territory over which I exert jurisdiction has shrunk from an area the size of France to these city walls, like Constantinople at the end of the Byzantine empire. At any rate, I still dress for dinner, though I dine alone, and apart from lime juice to fend off the scurvy and some carefully rationed bully beef, I eat the same as those poor people for whom I am responsible, that is to say biscuit and unleavened bread and water from the one remaining well in the city that has not become tainted.’ He paused, then picked up a decanter from a side table. ‘But I do have my small indulgences. They keep my mind from the hunger. Can I offer you a drink? I have brandy, Greek I’m afraid, so like firewater, though perfectly palatable after one’s throat has become numbed to it.’
‘No thanks.’
Gordon poured himself half a glass, then put it on the table. He peered at Mayne closely. ‘I know the name, but we haven’t met, have we?’
‘No, sir. My speciality is survey, and I’m in the field much of the time. But I took a refresher course at the School of Military Engineering while you were posted at Chatham, and I attended your lectures on the Sudan.’
‘Have you been out here long?’
‘Since July. With General Earle’s staff.’
‘Dragging whaleboats up the Nile? A scheme that would make Sisyphus in Hades glad of his own torment. And before that?’
‘I first came to Egypt in 1882, after our invasion.’
‘Correction,’ said Gordon, picking up a cigarette from a box on his desk and lighting it, sucking in deep and blowing out smoke. ‘Not invasion, but intervention. An intervention to prop up the Ottoman regime in Cairo, against the wishes of the Egyptian army and the Egyptian people, in order to secure our controlling interest in the Suez Canal and keep the investors happy.’ He tapped his cigarette. ‘Have you much desert experience?’
‘I carried out forward reconnaissance for the river column.’
‘Ah. You mean you are an intelligence officer. To whom do you answer?’
‘Lord Wolseley, sir.’
‘Not Baring, in Cairo? Or Colonel Sir Charles Wilson?’
Mayne was taken aback momentarily, too tired to keep up his guard. ‘They both have an interest, inasmuch as they have read my reports.’
‘Wilson is an old friend, though I have found him distant in recent years, but Burnaby works for him and keeps me abreast of affairs.’ He looked at Mayne shrewdly. ‘Apparently there’s a secret complex of rooms under Whitehall. There are operations afoot that even Burnaby is not privy to, and that Wilson only reports to the highest authority. But doubtless you know that.’