How do you rebut a charge like that? Morris looked desperately round, caught Hadiq’s eye and saw him say something to bin Zair, who rose unsteadily to his feet again and with a quavering old hand plucked the gun away from the young man. It was a remarkably deft, accurate movement, in fact. Bin Zair pointed, and the young man went back to his place. Silence fell as the coffee-man began his tedious ministrations.
“Let Lord Morris be served first,” said Hadiq loudly.
“This young marshman and the Frankish woman,” said Umburak, “have they been questioned?”
There was a stir of interest, perhaps because the verb was one which included the possibility of torture.
“Gaur is gone,” said Hadiq, after a pause. “He came to me the day my father died. He had not learnt to speak more than a little Arabic. He said ‘Your father. My father.’ He put his hands to the collar of his robe and tore it from top to bottom. He wept. I have not seen him since. I think he has gone back to the marshes.”
“Let him be sent for,” said someone. Several people with better local knowledge explained the folly of this remark.
“There is still the woman, then,” said Umburak.
“I am told,” squeaked bin Zair, “that in the full heat of that afternoon a naked marshman came to the boathouses, leading a veiled woman. He came from the palace. He took the boat-guard’s gun from him and stunned him with his fist. When the guard woke a canoe had been taken.”
There was a brief murmur of discussion, not very interested, and then Fuad was on his feet again, shouting “What does it matter? The old savage killed the Sultan. The young savage killed the Sultan. Morris helped or he did not. However it be, the killing was done by one of these devils from the marshes. Let them be punished. Let them be driven out. We do not want them in our land!”
“I have heard that when men drained the marshes above Basra much good land was exposed,” said the supposedly lecherous elder.
These two speeches brought the meeting to its full fervour. The notion of war, combined with the idea of fertile land (which then would be eroded to desert in a generation by bad husbandry) seemed to stir almost every Arab soul. Even the impassive Umburak was on his feet, shouting, and it took Morris some time to realise that he was dissenting from the motion.
“Fools! Fools! Fools!” he was shouting.
Nobody paid any attention. He looked round, ignored Morris, strode out of the circle, picked up a heavy alabaster spittoon, lifted it, carried it into the middle of the circle and slammed it down upon the mosaic floor. The effect was remarkable; there must have been some flaw or stress in the bowl, for the pedestal shot clean through it and it crashed to the floor and broke, spilling out date stones and tangerine peel and chewing-gum, all mixed with the gub of ancient hawkings. The silence after the crash was beautiful.
“You are fools,” said Umburak. “How will you fight against the marshmen? This is no camel-raid. How will you go among the reeds, where your enemies know every winding and hide in every patch of cover with their poisoned spears? One scratch and a man dies. Lo, the Sultan and the slave died with the prick of a poisoned needle. You have guns, but you have only six hundred fighting men. They have eight thousand, and I, with my own eyes, have seen a marshman spear a small pig at thirty paces. I tell you, it is not a camel-raid.”
This was not a popular speech.
“We will not fight them in the marshes, then,” said the young man with the cleft chin. “The Sultan has two aeroplanes. Let him buy bombs and napalm and thus drive these demons out of the reeds on to the sands, where we can deal with them.”
“I will not do it,” shouted Hadiq. “By God, I tell you I will not do it. I tell you the treaty is not broken. We do not know it to be broken. It may be that Gaur killed for love. It may also be that some other man came to the zoo and tricked him—he did not know our ways. Shall I now hunt like animals the people my father loved and protected? By God I tell you I will not.”
“Had the Sultan no braver sons?” shouted Fuad. A ripple of shock ran round the circle, but Morris sensed that the question was merely premature. In a few days it could be asked openly, and the suggestion made that Hadiq was reluctant to attack the marshmen because by their help he had come to his inheritance. He rose, very pale, but suddenly looking remarkably like his father.
“Hear me,” squeaked bin Zair. “Umburak speaks well. Fuad speaks impertinent folly. You cannot fight the marshmen at once. Thought must be taken. Preparations must be made. Therefore there is time to make further enquiries. Let a man go into the marshes to seek out Gaur and this woman, and bring them here.”
“He will be speared before he has paddled a mile,” said Umburak. “It is their custom.”
“Let him go under the hand of Na’ar,” said bin Zair (who like all Arabs was quite unable to pronounce the !) “They will not harm him then.”
“Who will go?” said someone.
“Let Lord Morris go,” said bin Zair.
“No! For God’s sake!” said Morris.
“He speaks their language and knows some of their customs,” said bin Zair, as though Morris had not spoken.
“But . . . but. . .” said Morris.
Bin Zair rose and with a tiny jerk of his head indicated that he wanted to talk to Morris in private. They moved off together until they could whisper in the corner below the frilly gallery where the women sat for the feasts.
“It is well that you are reluctant,” said bin Zair. “Thus they cannot say that you are running away to your friends.”
“Running away?”
“I know Arabs, Lord Morris. They have come here to fight, and now they must wait. In two days, three days, they will look for other sport. They will remember the words of Kadhil, that it was you who planned the murders . . .”
“Why on earth should I?”
“The oil, Lord, the oil. The smell of it makes Arabs mad, and so they believe it must make other men.”
“I see.”
“You will be safe in the marshes.”
“But what about the zoo? Those two damned slaves have disappeared. What about . . .”
“Oh, that happens always. Slaves hide at the death of their lord. He was killed in the zoo, so the zoo slaves hide, lest they be tortured. I will find you fresh slaves, and by my beard I will see that they do their work. You will go?”
“Oh, hell!”
“Lord, if you do not go, I cannot answer for your life.”
“Oh, I suppose so.”
“Good. I will suggest to His Majesty that you are appointed Minister for Native Affairs. Thus you will have authority.”
That’s great, thought Morris, turning sweaty with fear back towards the sinisterly silent ring of Arabs. Absolutely great. If only Mum could know. My son, the Minister for Native Affairs. Great.
2
A conscript into the noble army of martyrs has trouble deciding what to pack. Morris was not exactly a hypochondriac, in that he was seldom ill and when he was took as little medicine as possible; this was not heartiness, but a perpetual vague fear that some really ugly ailment was waiting to get him, and that if he was lavish with drugs for minor ills they would have lost their potency when the big bug pounced. So even in England he kept a well-stocked medicine-cupboard, and had come to Q’Kut with half a chemist’s shop; and that had been supplemented by such things as antibiotics for sick bears and eye-lotions for panthers. He had plenty to choose from against the swarming horrors of the marsh.
Dinah flounced round, thrilled with sensed excitement. He had given himself various excuses for deciding to take her along—there was no one to look after her in the palace; he couldn’t leave her unguarded in the chimpanzee grove without risking traumatic troubles that might undo weeks of work; she might amuse or impress the marshmen—but he really knew he was taking her for company. He was afraid to go alone. She was his teddy-bear, to share with him the witch-riddled dark. The malaria season was not yet at its height, but he had been giving them both Paludrine since the floods began to recede. He packed her sedatives, so that if she became a real nuisance he could take the bounce out of her, but he thought the heat of the marshes would do that anyway.