Mayne had recovered his poise. ‘Colonel Wilson at this moment is with the steamers that are heading upriver from Metemma towards Khartoum. My mission is to persuade you to leave so that they may take you off to safety when they arrive.’
Gordon leaned his head back, exhaled a deep lungful of smoke towards the ceiling and then looked back at Mayne, a smile on his face. ‘Correction. Your mission is to provide me with agreeable companionship on this night. I have my Sudanese soldiers, whom I love dearly, but there is little conversation to be had. Ever since Colonel Stewart left, I have been starved of friendship. I still weep at the thought of his vile murder when the steamer Abbas was wrecked, for which I hold myself responsible. I have missed his counsel dreadfully.’
‘Kitchener has seen you since then.’
‘Only once, when he came in disguise like you. But he had little time, and our conversation had a very particular course, as I shall tell you shortly.’
‘You know he holds you in the highest regard.’
‘Too high, in my opinion. His desire for revenge may lead him to murderous courses of action that will muddy the waters even further.’
‘Or lead him to glory. There is talk of him as a future sirdar of the Egyptian army, as the one who may lead a force big enough to crush the Mahdi.’
Gordon exhaled again. ‘Glory is nine tenths twaddle, wouldn’t you say?’
Mayne remembered Burnaby’s final moments. ‘For those who seek it, sir, yes. For those upon whom it falls, perhaps it constitutes that remaining one tenth and is a worthy thing.’
‘I believe, then, that Gordon of Khartoum is nine tenths twaddle and one tenth glory.’
Gordon grinned, then took a deep draw on his cigarette, holding the smoke in and exhaling it out of the window. He looked at his cigarette. ‘I do apologise. I’ve spent too much time alone, and have forgotten how to be civil. I should have offered you one of these. I smoke them to overcome the terrible smell of decay from outside.’ He offered Mayne the box from the table. ‘And they help further to suppress my appetite; that is, what taste is left after ingesting the stench outside. Would you care for one?’
Mayne declined, and Gordon put the box back on the table. ‘Perhaps you don’t enjoy the peculiar smell. It’s cherry tobacco, from Morocco. They were given to me as a birthday present by Burnaby, and I’ve become addicted.’
‘I fear I have some bad news for you, sir. The worst. A week ago, near the wells of Abu Klea, there was a fight between the dervishes and the desert column.’
‘I know of it. My Sudanese spies were there. A hell of a fight, by all accounts.’ Gordon paused, suddenly looking crestfallen. ‘They talk of a great bear of a man, fighting with the strength of twenty, finally being brought down by a dervish spear.’ He sat down dejectedly, letting his cigarette burn between his fingers. ‘Fred Burnaby?’
‘Your account tallies, sir. I saw him myself. He died as a soldier.’
‘You mean he died in great pain, with fearful wounds. I’ve been around glorious deaths in battle all my life. I know what it’s like.’
‘Before we left Korti, he passed on his best wishes to you. As did General Buller. They all did.’
‘Burnaby’s I accept, with sad pleasure. The others’ are hollow words. How many more men must die in this futile campaign? It is a campaign for the satisfaction of those who are running it, not for the purpose of relieving Khartoum. That is the sad lesson of war, one that we learn through bitter experience. The game of war has become as self-perpetuating for us as it has become for the army of the jihad, fuelled by the bloodlust of the warrior, where the fight and the holy crusade becomes an end in itself.’
‘Have you felt it, sir? That attraction?’
‘I am not a crusader, Mayne. I am not here to fight Islam. The Mahdi may not convert me to his cause, but I find little in Islam that would dissuade me from it, were I of a doctrinaire bent, and much to commend it. Yet I am regarded as a Christian warrior, and the evangelists hang on my every word.’ He picked up a thin volume from the table. ‘Reflections in Palestine, by Major General Charles Gordon,’ he said, and tossed it contemptuously back. ‘I went to Jerusalem three years ago with the perfectly sound intention of following up Wilson’s work there to identify the site of the crucifixion. My aim was to debunk all of those who have let their faith carry them forward into making spurious claims, and cloud their reason. And then my erstwhile friends go and publish a book without my sanction made up from the musings about religion I happened to have written in my notebooks while I was there. It reads like the worst sort of mysticism.’
‘I do not believe it tarnishes your reputation, sir.’
‘Speaking of my reputation, there is something I would like you to do.’ Gordon went over and sat down at his desk, then opened a folder and took out a sheet of paper. He quickly read it through, and then glanced up at Mayne. With his pale face and watery eyes he looked feverish, but he spoke clearly, with controlled passion. ‘There were many who believed that my cause in the Sudan was the abolition of slavery, and many who were dismayed when I allowed it to continue under my jurisdiction. Some thought that was the beginning of my decline; that I had become seduced by the trappings of despotism, removing myself from the decencies of British behaviour. Some even clamoured for my rescue in order to pluck me from the moral vacuum that I supposedly inhabited. My decline, Major Mayne, I can assure you, has been brought on by constant anxiety over the arrival of relief, and I am worn to a shadow by the food question.’
He put one hand to his brow, shutting his eyes for a moment, and then lifted the lid on a small brass inkpot and dipped a quill pen into it, raising it and touching it lightly to the side of the inkpot to let the excess ink drain out. ‘Anyone who knows this country should be perfectly aware that such a law could not be enacted definitively without so radically altering the way of life here that it would require us to occupy the Sudan as a province, to control every aspect of it and to create a new society and new economy. It is only now, on the eve of an extinction brought about by lack of British resolve, when all institutions in the Sudan have ceased to exist, that I can sign a law mandating the destruction of slavery. It is too late for the people of Khartoum, but I can only hope that those slaves who have been put in the front ranks of the Mahdi’s army will come to know of it, and will hereafter cease to obey their masters, who they will have seen slinking in the background, cowards both as fighters and as arbiters of human justice.’
He took the pen and held it poised to write. ‘The eighteenth of December was the anniversary of one of the most momentous events of our time, the proclaiming in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln of the abolition of slavery in the United States. I drafted this document on that day, and it has been languishing since then as I have waited for a witness whom those who judge me will find credible. Will you be such a witness?’
Mayne stared at the document, then at Gordon. He remembered his mission, and Charrière waiting on the opposite shore. What Gordon was asking him to do now seemed unreal, impossible to digest. He swallowed hard, and nodded. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘I will tell you this. If Abraham Lincoln had been in my position today, or Lord Palmerston, who abolished slavery in the British Empire, they would not have left Khartoum or this life without proclaiming the emancipation of the slaves of the Sudan. As God is my witness, and Major Edward Mayne, a commissioned officer of Her Majesty’s Army in the Corps of Royal Engineers, I hereby bring this statute into law.’ He scratched his name on the paper and passed the pen to Mayne, who turned the paper to face him, leaned over and signed. Gordon blotted the signatures with his handkerchief, blew on the paper and held it to dry for a few moments, then folded it into a small square and passed it to Mayne. ‘Everything left in this room will be destroyed when the dervishes arrive. Have this, so that some may know of my final act.’