African Enchantment (12 page)

‘Have you been in Lady Crale's service long, Jali?' she asked as the deft-fingered girl braided her hair.

‘Many months,' Jali said with a smile. ‘ My brother is groom here and my aunt is in the kitchens.'

Harriet toyed with her glass-stoppered jar of rose-water. ‘ Does Lady Crale have slaves as the Turkish governors do?'

Jali shook her head vehemently. ‘There are no slaves in her ladyship's household. Her ladyship thinks slavery is very bad … very wicked.'

‘But other people keep slaves?' Harriet asked.

‘Of course. There have always been slaves in Khartoum. It is better to be a slave than to starve.'

‘Thank you, Jali.' Harriet rose to her feet. She had intended asking the servant girl if Raoul Beauvais kept slaves but could not bring herself to do so. She would discuss the subject with no one but Raoul himself. Not even with Lady Crale.

‘My dear child, you look charming and perfectly refreshed,' Lady Crale said as Harriet entered the breakfast room. ‘I have heard from my husband this morning. He expects to be in Khartoum by the end of the month. I think we can safely leave arrangements for your return to England in his hands.'

Despite the heat, silver salvers held bacon, kidneys, scrambled eggs and kedgeree. Harriet ignored them and contented herself with coffee and fresh fruit.

‘Dr Walther was most concerned about your health last evening. I assured him that it was merely tiredness but he insisted on seeing you. Rather than him calling here, I thought it would be more enjoyable for you if we visited him. The carriage ride will give you an opportunity to see more of the city and I like to pay my calls in the morning. After midday the heat makes any kind of exercise impossible.'

‘Oh, but …' Harriet protested and then halted. A refusal to go because of Raoul Beauvais' expected visit would only reopen the distressing conversation of the previous evening.

‘Sebastian will be accompanying us. He and Dr Walther are to be companions on an expedition in the near future and are both making plans.'

Harriet curbed her initial panic. The visit was to be a morning one and no doubt they would have returned before Raoul called at the consulate. Even if they had not done so, he would call later in the day and the very fact that a message would have been left would prepare Lady Crale for the apology she would have to make.

Sebastian Crale entered and served himself generously with eggs and bacon.

‘You gave us all a fright last evening, Miss Latimer. I am glad to see that you are looking as ravishing as ever this morning.'

Lady Crale frowned and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor. At twenty-seven, Sebastian's romantic entanglements had all been undesirable and he was going to make an already complicated situation worse if he persisted in paying such attention to Henry Latimer's penniless daughter. She had not been happy at his proposed trek south, but now she viewed it with a certain amount of relief. The expedition left within days. It would curtail any involvement Sebastian might be contemplating where Harriet was concerned.

‘We are leaving for the Walther's at ten o'clock, Sebastian. Please be ready or I shall be obliged to leave without you.' Her tone of voice made her displeasure at his behaviour obvious. Sebastian was unrepentant and annoyingly on time.

The open carriage was lavishly sprung, and if she had been in the streets of Cheltenham Harriet would have considered herself to be in the lap of luxury. The noise and smell of Khartoum overcame any such pleasures. Narrow, dusty streets teemed with natives and traders. Now and then there was a glimpse of the Nile and a litter of masts and felucca sails. Close to, the mosques were shabby, their domes and minarets tawdry. Harriet lowered her veil to shield her face from the dust and flies. Lady Crale was pointing out to her the governor's palace and other landmarks which she thought might be of interest. Harriet smiled politely and murmured appropriate remarks, but her thoughts were elsewhere: with Raoul and whether or not he was already at the consulate and annoyed at finding her absent. They had been apart for a day. Every hour seemed a lifetime. She had never imagined it possible to miss any human being so much. She ached for his company; for his deep, strong voice; for his laughter and even for his anger. Sebastian Crale sat inches away from her and she found his presence an irritation. She wanted to see dark eyes in a hawklike face, not grey eyes and sleek moustaches. She wanted to see the lean, tanned contours of a body used to decisive action, not the softness of a man accustomed to being driven in a carriage. She yearned for the indefinable smell of maleness and not the sweet perfume of Sebastian Crale's eau de cologne.

She wanted reassurance: she wanted to be told that the stories bandied about the Crale's dinner table had been scandalous lies. She wanted to hear him ask formally for her hand in marriage. She felt hot, remembering his kisses, his touch. She wanted him and him only for the rest of her life.

Lady Crale tapped an ivory-topped cane on the carriage floor in exasperation. ‘ How foolish of the man to have taken this route! He should have avoided the square at all costs! It will be near half an hour before we are free of this mob!'

Waking from her private reverie, Harriet looked around her with surprise. The carriage was at a near standstill, the crowds were so thick. A little way in front of them was a square and it was obviously the driver's intention to cross it. It also seemed to be the sole destination of the crowds around them.

‘What is the attraction?' Harriet asked curiously.

‘A slave auction,' Lady Crale said, tight-lipped. ‘How the Turks can deny such things exist when they take place for all to see, I cannot imagine.'

The noise and the clamour had intensified and then, by dint of brute force and little regard for those underfoot, the horses broke through and Lady Crale's carriage hurtled out of the street and into the square. Harriet gasped and the colour left her face.

‘It's as well for you to see for yourself,' Lady Crale said, averting her eyes. ‘Unless you do, you will never be able to conceive the barbarity of the slavers.'

They stood on the auction block, men, women and children yoked together like cattle. Half dead from hunger, naked and bewildered, they ranged in a long line from the youngest to the oldest.

Lady Crale urged the driver to make a speedy exit from the foetid square, as embarrassed by the nakedness of the women on public display as she was at their being displayed at all. Harriet tried to avert her head and could not. The slaves' eyes were dull and listless. The eyes of those who had long since abandoned all hope, their bodies covered in sores and whip marks. At either end of the chained line guards with swords and spears stood to attention while the slave traders prodded first one and then another.

‘What is he saying?' Harriet asked, her voice a whisper of horror.

Lady Crale did not hear her. She was too busy exhorting the carriage driver to remove them from the scene.

Sebastian Crale looked uncomfortable. ‘He is telling prospective buyers what tribes his slaves are from. The light-coloured, bearded slaves are probably Nyam-Nyam from the south-west and cannibals. The black fellows Madis; the thin-legged slaves Dinkas or Shiluks. The handsome fellow at the end is probably a Calas or a Bonga and the undersized ones are the Akka pygmies.'

Harriet pressed a handkerchief against her mouth as several of the girls were made to walk and run for the benefit of prospective buyers.

Sebastian Crale shifted uneasily on the leather-padded seat of the carriage. ‘It is unfortunate that you have had to see this, Miss Latimer. Usually they hold their auctions in the desert on the outskirts of the city. The bought slaves are then marched off along caravan routes to the Red Sea for shipment to Arabia or Persia. This particular trader would not have had the effrontery to have held this auction here if my father had been in the city.'

‘Can't we stop it?' Harriet asked in anguish. ‘Is there nothing we can do?'

Sebastian looked perplexed. ‘Against this crowd?'

Harriet was uncaring of the crowd. She cried out in protest as a crying woman was released from the chains and handed to an Arab for a paltry number of notes.

Lady Crale's head swivelled. Sebastian Crale blinked. Harriet was uncaring. ‘We can't just watch and drive on while people are being sold like beasts!'

‘Contain yourself, Harriet,' Lady Crale said firmly as heads began to turn in their direction. ‘There is nothing we can do.' She smacked the driver on the shoulder with her cane. ‘ I demand we leave this square
immediately!
'

‘He won't do so well with that lot,' Sebastian remarked as the carriage finally shot out of the square. ‘The slaves who bring high prices are the Abyssinian and Circassian girls bought for the harems of the East.' Harriet shuddered. No wonder her father had devoted his whole life to fighting against such barbarity.

She was so distressed that she took very little part in the conversation at the Walther's. Magdalene was chillingly polite, reserving all her friendliness for Sebastian. Dr Walther was genuinely concerned for her health and when assured by Lady Crale that she was quite recovered, beamed thankfully and didn't persist in his questioning.

‘We shall be leaving within days,' he was saying to Lady Crale, polishing his glasses furiously. ‘The expedition to end all expeditions!'

‘The hunting will be phenomenal,' Sebastian added, his eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. ‘Rhino and hippos and elephants in plenty.'

‘And fame,' Magdalene added, her dark-lidded eyes burning with sudden passion.

Harriet tried to pay attention. She had lost the drift of the conversation going on around her.

‘I would be surprised if you managed to journey further south than Gondokoro, Dr Walther,' Lady Crale said, balancing a china teacup and saucer delicately in a white-gloved hand.

‘Nonsense!' Dr Walther said good humouredly, striding backwards and forwards, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘We are well equipped and able. This time the question of the Nile will finally be resolved! We shall find out the truth, Lady Crale. The Nile's source will be a secret no longer!' His eyes had the same glazed expression in them that Harriet had often seen in her father's.

‘Is that the purpose of your expedition?' she asked, gazing at Sebastian and Dr Walther incredulously. ‘To find the source of the Nile?'

‘It is!' Dr Walther's cherubic face was ecstatic. ‘I have spent a whole year planning, six months preparing. We are waiting for one gentleman only and he is now amongst us.'

Lady Crale coughed. Dr Walther looked suitable chastened.

‘A necessity, Lady Crale,' he murmured. ‘We cannot choose our companions in such circumstances. We must journey with those best suited to our purpose.'

Harriet set her cup and saucer down on a chinese lacquered table. ‘I hope you are successful,' she said quietly. ‘ It was my father's dream to find the secret source of the Nile.'

Lady Crale rose to her feet. She had no intention of discussing such inanities any further. The expedition would reach Gondokoro, the farthest point south that was mapped, and would return. It would keep Sebastian out of trouble for six months and enable her to come to an arrangement with a bosom friend. The friend has a daughter who, at twenty-one, was not yet married, nor seemed likely to be. Sebastian could be coerced. There would be a wedding before the year was out if she had to drag her son to the altar herself.

‘You are leaving so soon?' Dr Walther asked, disappointment flooding his face.

‘Sebastian is staying. I understand there are still things to discuss in connection with your expedition. Good day, Mr Walther. Good day, Magdalene.'

Magdalene, happily unaware of Lady Crale's plans for a suitable bride for Sebastian, was almost pleasant as they took their leave.

Harriet smiled at her warmly, overjoyed at the prospect of an early return to the consulate. He would be there. He would be waiting for her. His dark eyes would be angry, his sun-bronzed face hard and uncompromising. Then she would tell him of how she had been obliged to accompany Lady Crale to the Walther's and the hard lines of his mouth would soften. He would ask for permission to speak to her alone and Lady Crale would be baffled and disconcerted, but would have to grant him his request. He would take her in his arms, kissing her with unsuppressed passion and she would yield as naturally as a flower opening its petals to the sun. He would ask her to be his wife and together they would face Lady Crale and all misunderstandings would be a thing of the past.

‘Raoul,' she said softly to herself. ‘ Raoul …'

He was there, head and shoulders above the crowd, sleek black hair gleaming in the sun, curling low in the nape of his neck, his strong-boned face instantly distinctive amongst the surge of Arabs and Turks who thronged around him. Her heart seemed to cease beating. For a second she could not breathe and then joy welled up in her like a shining fountain. ‘Raoul!' she called, ignoring Lady Crale's gasps of horror. ‘
Raoul!
'

He was striding quickly through the crowd, talking to a companion that Harriet could not see.

‘Raoul!' She rose in the moving carriage, waving frantically. The crowd surged and fleetingly parted.

The girl at his side was no older than herself. Olive skin glistened seductively. Ebony hair hung sleekly down her back. Her robe shimmered, fluttering round her slender body. Smooth, neat feet were sandalled as Harriet's had been on the journey from Berber. They were walking quickly and as a portly gentleman threatened to separate them, she saw Raoul's hand reach out and grasp the girl's wrist. He was looking down at her, his face animated.

The girl said something and Harriet saw him laugh, and then they continued, threading their way deftly through the crowd, oblivious of Lady Crale's carriage. Oblivious of Harriet's stricken figure.