Secret of the Sands

‘I say,’ says Jones, now outside the tent where he can see the Dhofaris scattering like buckshot into the night. ‘Whatever is going on?’

Jessop makes to rise but a heavy weight bearing down on his shoulders renders it impossible. Suddenly it is as if darkness closes in on the tent, the polished scimitars, like lightning bolts, the only brightness. It is hard to tell exactly how many men are in the shadows drawing their traditional, curved knives.

‘Ibn al-kalb,’ the emir growls. ‘Nazarene ala aeeri. Ya binti. Ya binti.’

‘Your daughter?’ Jessop asks, picking out the word. ‘Why? What has happened?’

‘Ya binti. Ya binti,’ the emir repeats darkly in his distress as the eyes of his son flash in horror and the hideous sound of the keening women in the background grows ever louder and more frantic.

And after that, it all goes dark.

When Jessop and Jones wake again they are bound to each other with a rough cord. Shifting, they each notice that their muscles are stiff and sore and that they are thirsty. The atmosphere in the tent is stifling. Slowly Jessop comes to realise that they are being held on the far side of the settlement and that the tent has been pitched quite deliberately in the full glare of the sun. The Dhofaris have gone, their animals are forfeit and it will be hours before they are given water, never mind food.

‘I don’t understand,’ Jones sinks into self-pity with an ease that does not entirely surprise his fellow officer.

‘It’s the little girl,’ Jessop explains. ‘I think the little girl died.’

Chapter Fourteen

The Palinurus waits for more than a week in the blinding heat for the officers to arrive at Aden. While the crew repair the sun-bleached decks, Haines paces and waits with the single-minded bad temper that is now all too familiar to everyone on board.

‘They should have been here at least a week before us,’ he keeps repeating, as if a mistake has been made deliberately, only to bait him.

The Dhofaris at port evade questioning like petulant teenagers and it is clear that there is no measure in pushing any of that tribe for more information for neither violence, nor courtesy nor bribery has any measure of success.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ they say over and over again, denying all knowledge of the British expedition.

A man on the street, a trader, a beggar, an imam, the son of a caliph – it makes no difference who the captain asks or what he offers – they simply smile and wave him off. Frustratingly, there is no way of telling if any of the men at port were part of Jessop and Jones’ expedition as they hired their own hands.

‘I know they are lying, the bastards,’ Haines swears. ‘They know. They just won’t tell us.’

The general consensus is that he is right. But no one is sure what to do about it. After two days of fruitless enquiries, Wellsted steps up.

‘Please, sir,’ he petitions the captain on deck. ‘May I have permission to head inland?’

Haines blusters. The midshipmen look at each other. The hands simply stare at the captain, their shadows cast long in the midday sun. This is the kind of conversation that should be confined in officers’ quarters, but Wellsted is not welcome in the captain’s cabin. Haines is about to berate the lieutenant when he realises where that conversation will lead.

‘If I can get inland I’ll pick up the Bedu,’ Wellsted continues. ‘They’ll know what’s happened. We must try something else, surely.’

The Bedu are the gossips of the desert. Everyone knows that. Haines takes a draw on his pipe and blows the smoke close to Wellsted’s face in defiance. He is determined not to lose his temper in front of the entire ship nor, if it comes to that, his dignity.

‘Yes, and I’ll forfeit you next, Wellsted, and return to port with not one fully trained officer in my crew,’ he sneers as if Wellsted is laying a trap for his reputation.

‘I won’t go far, sir. Just to where the desert meets the coastal territory. It might take two or three days at most. We’re stuck here anyway.’

Haines considers. He looks over the tatty rooftops of Aden and up into the hills. He wishes he had sent Wellsted instead of Jessop on what it is now clear has been a doomed mission.

‘We owe them that at least, sir. An investigation of a couple of days?’

Haines taps out his pipe. He will have to account in Bombay for the decision he makes here, and Wellsted will be in his rights to make it known that he requested permission to search further and that the captain deemed it unnecessary. That might look shabby. Haines tries to think what Moresby would do.

‘Oh very well,’ he snaps. ‘You’ll go alone. No more than two days and the first sign of trouble and you get back here.’

At the camp inland, at the crossroads where the trade from the sea meets the trade from the sands, Wellsted makes his salaams. A white man is a curiosity here, though unlike further north where they are considered a threat, these travellers are men of the world – they have seen most things before. At the oasis news is swapped easily no matter the colour of your skin. After all, only a fool does not want to know what he is travelling into.

Wellsted drinks the obligatory coffee and eats sweet, lush, mujhoolah dates with the other men. The tribesmen laugh at the story of his first attempts to ride a camel and marvel at the length of the journey across the sea from Southampton. Wellsted knows this swapping of tales is an important part of the bond of the campfire. He also knows that the closer in time to an event and closer in geography, the less opportunity there is for hyperbole to take over. So when the men tell him they heard that a party of two infidels, lead by Dhofari guides, have offended the emir and are now taken and at his disposal, he believes them.

‘Do you know their names? What do they look like? Are they alive?’

The Bedu are nonchalant. They sip the coffee slowly and speak without intonation, for noisy or enthusiastic banter is considered low bred. They do not know any names for the Nazarene or if the men are still alive. Their news is a fortnight old at least. Who can tell what might have come to pass by now? One of the men has golden hair though, that much is certain. And (here a shrug of the shoulder) the other hurt the emir’s daughter.

Wellsted cannot imagine Jessop being stupid enough to dishonour a woman in a camp where he is receiving hospitality. The doctor is a gentleman in every sense of the word. However, he is delighted that on last sighting at least, Jessop and Jones are alive.

‘And what are you expecting us to do now? Hare off across the desert on a wild-goose chase?’ Haines is incandescent with rage when Wellsted reports to him. ‘The natives are raving. Storytelling round a campfire. And even if it’s true, Jessop and Jones are probably dead by now,’ he insists. ‘Bound to be. I’d say their guides did for them. That’s what I reckon. Jessop had instruments worth a fortune.’

The captain prefers the certainty of a blood-and-guts beheading by the savages of the ancient sea. Wellsted realises the man has been overly influenced by the fundamentalism of the Wahabis further to the north. Their threatening behaviour, all heavily armed, wild promises of doom, dark beards and flashing eyes are a jumble of aggression that has coloured the captain’s view of every Musselman in the Peninsula. Now he does not appear to grasp the difference between the tribes or at least does not apply any such knowledge to his judgements. Still, the idea of a band of renegade Dhofaris does not hold water with Wellsted if for no other reason than the guides’ bonuses for any trip are always payable on return to the coast.

‘The Dhofaris are business minded and largely liberal,’ he points out.

‘You are dismissed, Lieutenant,’ the captain snaps.

After a week waiting at Aden to no avail, it is clear that Haines is so ill-disposed towards Wellsted that the lieutenant wonders if he ought to have presented his findings as the result of an enquiry made by one of the midshipmen. He keeps his peace for whatever he says only provokes outrage. Still, the captain clearly does not feel comfortable abandoning the search entirely.

‘We will continue to Muscat,’ he announces. ‘There may be news there.’

It is, for everyone on board, a relief to cast off.

After a brief rendezvous with the Benares during which Wellsted is forbidden to attend the officers’ dinner, the sight of Muscat harbour is welcome to every soul aboard the Palinurus, and all for entirely different reasons. The truth is that in the wake of the malaria many of the crew had not anticipated making it back around the Peninsula alive and, having unexpectedly done so, they are only too delighted to be able to avail themselves of the illicit grog shop that trades from the back of one of the old warehouses down on the docks.

Wellsted, however, has not given up on the missing officers and, refusing to discuss the matter with the midshipmen, who have taken to asking him questions they ought to reserve for their commanding officer, the lieutenant obtains leave to go ashore. With the ship safely at anchor and his duties complete, Wellsted strides out from the dock and makes for the office of the Navy’s agent in Muscat, hoping that the man might have some contacts that will help in the search. Haines’ priority is to dispatch a report on a clipper that is to leave for Bombay directly but that, Wellsted cannot help thinking, is more about covering the captain in his decisions than actually finding out what happened to his men.

As he strides out, he ignores the stares a white man in naval uniform necessarily excites on the crowded streets of the capital. He ignores too the pressing heat of his well-tailored jacket as he passes through the stripes of sunshine and shade. He is not under orders but that matters little to him – he simply wants to know what has happened, not only for Jessop and Jones’ sakes, but also because it’s important to build up his knowledge of the Peninsula and how things work here. In fact, if he is to make his name, it is vital. By hook or by crook. Whatever it takes.

The agent’s office is a modest, whitewashed, two-storey house a little way up the hill and beyond the frantic press of streets that make up the dockside district. The man’s name is Ali Ibn Mudar and he has served the interests of the Indian Navy for the best part of twenty years, for which he receives a hefty retainer in addition to the proceeds of the thriving business he runs as a trader in textiles, particularly silks. These two activities dovetail well and Ibn Mudar’s ships often obtain preferential treatment when they come into contact with Indian Navy vessels. Ibn Mudar speaks perfect English. He has, it is rumoured, a European wife, captured from a shipwreck some years before and bought at an astronomical price for his harim. This lady has never been seen in public and no one knows if the rumours are true, but if it is she who has tutored Ibn Mudar in what can only be assumed is her native tongue, she has done a good job; he speaks English, somewhat comically though, with a heavy Irish accent. For this reason he is known in Bombay, exclusively behind his back, as Mickey Ibn Mudar or Our Dear Mickey. That notwithstanding, the agent is considered well-connected, helpful and courteous, and although Wellsted has never met him before, he has high hopes as he knocks on the sun-bleached front door and waits.

Inside, he is shown into a cool, tiled courtyard by a young slave boy in a robe as yellow as a canary, his eyelashes so long that they could dust the ceilings of their cobwebs. The boy offers Wellsted a copper bowl of cool water and rose petals in which to make his ablutions. He does so noticing how much better he feels only a little way out of the oppressive heat. Then, courteously, the slave ushers him upstairs and Ibn Mudar welcomes the young lieutenant into his office on the first floor. The slatted wooden shutters keep the room shady and warmed by the sun, and also give out a pleasant aroma of sandalwood. Between the slats and cut-out stars there are glimpses of an impressive view over the bay. To one side there is a large, cedarwood desk with scrolls of accounts and ledgers stored behind it on a series of intricately carved, wooden shelves and burr cubby holes. On the other side there is a comfortable seating area with low, embroidered cushions and goatskin throws. This is not the agent’s home, however. That is far grander and much higher up the hill. He prefers to keep his working life separate, always has.

As the man smiles and rises to greet his visitor, Wellsted quickly notes that Ibn Mudar’s plain jubbah is made of very fine cotton – curiously unshowy given that the main part of his income comes from a textile business. The lieutenant considers mentioning his own family’s background in the same trade but deems it inappropriate. Instead, he sizes up the Navy’s agent silently. Ibn Mudar, with a greying beard, in his mid-fifties, is only slightly overweight and his eyes seem to take in everything and give nothing away. He clears his throat to make his salaams, but he does not invoke Allah. The custom in this office is the same as it would be in Liverpool or Southampton so the Navy’s representative reaches out to shake Wellsted firmly by the hand and smiles.

‘How do you do? I was to send to the ship shortly, you know. Would you partake of a coffee, Lieutenant?’

Wellsted does not laugh, though not to do so is an effort. The man’s accent is as thick as treacle. He might as well be from Cork. ‘Thank you. I would enjoy a coffee.’

The agent waves a hand and his slave disappears to fetch what is needed as the men sit down together on the pile of cushions on the floor. Wellsted likes him immediately. There is something cut and dried about this man and competent too. Our Dear Mickey feels like an apt moniker.

‘You have come for your letter from London, have you?’ Mickey says.

Wellsted starts. He has, in his whole time in the service, never received a personal letter. It is an amazement that such an item has found him here.

‘From London?’ he repeats, the shock showing in his voice.

His heart races with the realisation that this could be a momentous turn of events – is it possible that Murray has already responded to his manuscript? Surely it will take longer than this, but then who knows the ways of the famous publisher? It has, he counts the weeks, probably been long enough. With surprise, he notes that his palm feels suddenly sticky and his stomach flutters nervously.

Mickey reaches into a large, burnished box beside his cushion and passes a folded envelope franked in Mayfair. Wellsted breaks the small, red seal. Inside, the handwriting is haphazard – not what he would expect from a man of Murray’s education and renown. Wellsted takes a deep breath, comprehending that this missive is even more momentous than one that might contain John Murray’s comments on his account of the Socotra trip. This letter has emanated from his family home in Molyneux Street and is dated in May – two months ago.

Dear Brother,

I regret to inform you that after some months of suffering our grandfather has died. We buried him at the parish church a week past. Apart from this sad news all is well here. Edward has taken the oath to be a customs man at Greenwich. Please when you write now, address yourself to our father.

Most sincerely,

Your brother,

Thomas Wellsted Jnr

James turns the paper over. It seems unnecessarily brief. He remembers young Thomas as an infant only just out of his nappies and rosy-cheeked, learning to climb out of the cot – a child as he had been in the year James Wellsted left home. For a moment James indulges himself, wondering what the boy looks like now or if, indeed, there might be more infants that followed his departure and he has nameless brothers and sisters growing up in his parents’ home. A Charles perhaps. Even an Emily or Elizabeth.

Mickey allows a pause long enough for Wellsted to take in his news, whatever it may be. ‘All is well in London, I hope,’ the agent says gently.

‘News of home, that is all,’ Wellsted dismisses the letter briskly, pushing it into his pocket. He has no time for personal matters or at least he never makes any. ‘I did not come for the letter,’ he admits. ‘I am here on another more serious matter. We have two officers gone missing in the interior. They were led across the jabel and into the desert by Dhofari guides to visit the Bedu several weeks ago. Dr Jessop who was our ship’s surgeon and First Lieutenant Jones. They missed their rendezvous and have not been heard of since. We docked at every decent-sized port along the coast but have found out very little, though outside Aden I encountered a group of Bedu. I heard the men were prisoners of the emir – that they had offended him in some way and were being held in his caravan. The description the Bedu gave was consistent with the appearance of the men though the captain – Captain Haines, that is – believes them dead. When we made rendezvous with the Benares however, Captain Moresby was of the view that we must be sure.’

Mickey scratches his cheek with a long, carefully manicured finger, which sports a thick ring of yellow gold with a red stone embedded on the face. He takes a sip of his strong coffee.

‘Captured by an emir’s caravan and held there? Now that’s not good. I will make enquiries,’ he says. ‘Leave it with me, Lieutenant Wellsted, and I will see what I can find out.’

‘It is a matter of some urgency, sir.’

Ibn Mudar bows. ‘Of course. Immediately.’

With the efficiency of a man who is used to getting a great deal done, Ibn Mudar calls his slave boy.

‘Bring me Rashid,’ he snaps. The yellow-robed child immediately disappears to find the chief clerk, who is stationed at Mickey’s warehouse, a few streets away.

Wellsted’s cup is refilled and the agent asks polite questions.

‘And your work? How goes the survey?’

‘Slow but sure,’ Wellsted grins. ‘The reefs are all but impossible but the charts are coming along.’

‘Any French vessels?’

This is of interest to any trader with ships on the nearby seas.

‘Only very close to the Egyptian coastline. Where you would expect, really.’

‘It will be good to have maps,’ Mickey points out and Wellsted says nothing in reply, only downs the rest of his coffee.

‘Do you think they might still be alive?’ he asks.

The agent’s face does not alter its expression one iota. ‘My brothers would say it is in Allah’s hands,’ he says. ‘Let me see if I can find out what Allah has in mind. I will send Rashid the moment he comes. He is the man for this job. Leave it to me.’

The men shake hands and Mickey sees the lieutenant to the door of his office.

While he waits, Mickey strokes his thick, salt-and-pepper beard and retreats back onto the comfortable cushions in the corner of the room to consider matters. The British survey interests him tremendously, for if it is successful there will be a far greater volume of English ships in the Red Sea and he will be contracted to see to their needs. He is determined to do his job well for the English. Mickey is inclined to do everything well – he is careful and fastidious in all his dealings. He will apply this to the search for Jessop and Jones – which potentially, he realises, is one of the most dangerous situations with which he has been asked to help. Men die all the time, but kidnap is a different matter.

Watch out, he says to himself. God knows what they are up to, the tricky bastards. And now there are two of them missing.

When Mickey thinks of the English, the voice in his head is always that of his Irish wife, Farida, who maintains that without question the English are untrustworthy. Her tribe, it seems, are perpetually at war with the lily-skinned sailors, though they share the same tongue. Mickey trusts Farida’s judgement. He was young when he bought her at auction after she had been captured on a shipwreck. He was a brash, young buck of a merchant of twenty who had made his fortune quickly. He wanted to show the world that he was cosmopolitan and he knew an exotic, white-skinned beauty in his harim would make his name as much as any bale of fine silk ever had. There was no question of love. When he met her, however, he realised just how much he had focussed all his attention on his business and how little he knew of the world beyond it. At first he expected she resented being captured and sold, but she told him frankly after only a fortnight, that his house was a hundred times the size of the cottage in Rowgaranne, County Cork, where she was brought up, that she had spent much of her young life there hungry, cold and in want and that she would gladly stay in his beautiful harim, especially as his wife.

The land of white men still seems to Mickey like a fairy-tale kingdom. The landscape Farida describes is undoubtedly accurate and yet it is so outlandish. She swears on her life that Cork is so rainy that much of the land is bog, and so cold that sometimes when it rains the drops freeze solid. He finds this particularly difficult to imagine – Mickey, for all that he is a trader, has never left the south of the Arabian Peninsula and the thought of freezing, squelching mud flats is almost incomprehensible to him. That the people who live in such a place should subsist on potatoes and that spice is almost unheard of is bizarre. In fact, he finds the lack of camels and gazelles in the stories his wife tells of her homeland profoundly eerie. And the infidels have such strange names – Macgregor, McLean and O’Donnell.

‘Why, you are silly,’ Farida laughs, dismissing him with a wave of her elegant, snow-white hand. ‘That’s only your Ibn. Macgregor is the son of Gregor (that is the name of the man who taught me to read – our priest at home) and O’Donnell (which is my name, you know) is Son of Donnell. It’s exactly the same as yours – Ibn Mudar – the son of Mudar. Or Ibn Rashid is the son of Rashid. The word Ibn is only O or Mac in English, or rather in the Gaelic. We shan’t go into the Fitzes now, my dear. But it’s only a way of identifying your family – like all names. Don’t you see?’

At first Mickey can’t get used to it – European languages simply have too many consonants. He is certain that he’ll never become fully accustomed to the sound.

‘You Arabian lads,’ Farida continues, ‘have great swagger and no mistake. We only call our chief soldiers, our boxers and wrestlers The Knife or The Hurricane. Whereas you fellas have legions of names like that – serious fellas can be Al this or Al that. The Dog, The Thief, The Lion. Well, fair play to you, I say. You’re warriors one and all. You can be my Ali Ibn Mudar, Ali Al Malik – Ali the King. I am your possession now, after all, and you my master, like royalty.’

Mickey kisses his wife hotly on the lips. She is a wonderful woman. She has taken to his household far more easily than could have ever been hoped and, better still, she is a boon in business. Farida has no qualms about Arabian manners or customs and her open-mindedness rubs off on her husband, who finds himself more and more intrigued by her tales. His world is opening up.

The strangest thing of all though is that in Farida’s country, it seems, men only take one wife. Or, as she says with a characteristic giggle, ‘One wife at a time’. This shocks Mickey to the core – it seems such a barbaric practice.

‘But what happens to the other women the man desires?’ he says.

‘Exactly, my boy,’ Farida grins. ‘Now in these parts here you have what I would term a practicable system. I can see this working out very nicely indeed.’

Over the years she has remained indescribably foreign for all her aptitudes and the whole-hearted fashion in which she has adopted her new, Arabian life. While his other brown-eyed beauties scent themselves interminably with exotic oils, coil their hair into glossy ringlets and dote on the nursery of children that they have produced, Farida or Fanny as she originally wished to be called, on her very first day demanded pen and ink to draw pictures of the plants in Mickey’s courtyard garden and write reams of descriptive prose and poetry. Within six months of her arrival, the Pearl, as he has come to call her, is speaking Arabic like a master at the university. She reads and memorises long portions of the Quran and fashions herself a set of silk garments from the harim’s stock of materials that prove to be deeply enticing to Mickey O’Mudar.