Mark Hodder - Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

Is that him?

Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside. The blue-coated man stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.

Oxford yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.

They detected Zanzibar first with their nostrils, for, prior to the island darkening the horizon, the sultry breeze became laden with the scent of cloves. Then the long strip of land hove into view at the edge of the sapphire sea, its coral-sand beaches turned to burnished gold by the fierce sun.

“By Jove,” William Trounce whispered. “What's the word for it? Sleepy?”

“Tranquil,” Krishnamurthy suggested.

“Languidly basking in sensuous repose,” Swinburne corrected.

“Whatever it is,” said Trounce, “it's splendid. I feel as if I'm inside one of Captain Burton's tales of the Arabian Nights.”

“More so than when you were actually in Arabia?” the poet enquired.

“Great heavens, yes! That was just sand, sand, and more sand. This is…romantic!”

“Seven weeks!” Krishnamurthy grunted. “Seven weeks on a blasted camel. My posterior will never recover.”

Ahead, the land swelled seductively, coloured a reddish brown beneath its veils of green, which wavered and rippled behind the heavy curtain of air.

“What do you think, Algy?” Trounce asked. The members of Burton's expedition were all on first-name terms now-one of the more positive effects of their gruelling trek through central Arabia. They were also all burned a deep brown, with the exception of Swinburne, whose skin was almost as crimson as his hair had been before the sun bleached it the colour of straw.

The poet looked up at the detective, then followed his gaze to the prow of the ship-the Indian Navy sloop of war Elphinstone -where he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton standing with Isabel Arundell.

“If you're asking me whether the romance of Zanzibar is infectious, Pouncer, then I take it you haven't read Richard's account of his first expedition.”

“There's little time for reading at Scotland Yard, lad. And, for the umpteenth time, don't call me Pouncer.”

Swinburne grinned cheekily. “Apparently, the island's infections are nothing to celebrate. By the same token, I'd suggest that Richard and Isabel's relationship is probably not exactly as it appears from here.”

He was correct. In fact, had he been able to eavesdrop upon their conversation, Swinburne would have reported to Trounce that Isabel was giving Burton “what for.”

“You're a pig-headed, self-absorbed, stubborn fool,” she said. “You have never failed to underestimate me or to overestimate yourself.”

Burton fished a cigar from his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“You'll not drive me away with tobacco fumes.”

He put a flame to the Manila, inhaled the aromatic smoke, and gazed down at the water that gurgled and sparkled against the hull below. A few yards away, a shoal of flying fish shot out of the sea and glided some considerable distance before plunging back in.

Isabel pulled a small straw-coloured cylinder from a pouch at her waist and raised it to her lips. She struck a lucifer and lit its tip.

Burton smelled the tart fumes of Latakia and looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

“Good grief! Surely that's not a cigarette?”

“All the rage since the Crimea,” came her murmured reply. “Do you object to a woman smoking?”

“I-well-that is to say-”

“Oh, stop stammering like an idiot, Dick. Let's set it out plainly, shall we? You disapprove of my lifestyle.”

“Nonsense! I simply asked you why you have chosen to live as a Bedouin when you belong to the House of Wardour, one of the richest families in Britain.”

“The implication being?”

“That you could have Society at your feet; that the comforts and advantages of an aristocratic life are yours to enjoy. You aren't Jane Digby, Isabel. She fled England after her scandalous behaviour made it impossible for her to remain there. Not so, you. So why endure the hardships and dangers of the nomadic life?”

“Hypocrite!”

“What?”

“How often have you railed against the constrictions and restraints of the Society you now endorse? How often have you purposely provoked outrage and challenged social proprieties at dinner tables with your shocking anecdotes? How often have you styled yourself the outsider, the man who doesn't fit in, the noble savage in civilised clothing? You glory in it, and yet you denounce Miss Digby! Really! They call you Ruffian Dick. I call you Poseur Dick!”

“Oh stop it, and tell me why you've settled upon this extraordinary lifestyle.”

“Because I'm a woman.”

“Indubitably. How is that an answer?”

“Just this: I accepted your proposal of marriage not just because I loved you, but because I saw in you the solution to my problem, and in me the solution to yours.”

“Mine?”

“When we met, you had no security. You were adrift. I could have given you a sense of belonging.”

A breath of wind pushed at them, driving away the scent of cloves and replacing it with the odour of putrefying fish. Burton wrinkled his nose, puffed at his cigar, and looked at the looming island.

“And in you,” Isabel continued, “I might have found liberation from the suffocating corsets of the English gentlewoman. I mean that metaphorically, of course.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Well, perhaps not entirely metaphorically.”

Burton flashed a savage smile and turned his attention back to her.

“What I mean to say,” Isabel continued, “is that I require something the Empire is not willing to give to a woman.”

“You mean liberty?”

“And equality. I am not one to be laced-up and condemned to the parlour to while away my days crocheting antimacassars. Why should I allow my behaviour to be dictated by the protocols of a society in which I'm granted neither a voice nor representation?”

“I hardly think Bedouin women have a better time of it,” Burton murmured.

“That's true. But at least they don't pretend otherwise. Besides, I'm not a Bedouin woman, am I? And the Arabs don't know what to make of me. To them, I'm a curiosity, whose foreign ways can be neither understood nor judged. I've found a niche where the only rules that apply are the ones I make myself.”

“And you're happy?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, Isabel-believe me-I don't disapprove. I detected both courage and resourcefulness in you very soon after our initial meeting, and I've always admired you for them. I salute your spirit of independence. And, incidentally, while it may be true that I was at one time uncertain of myself, I assure you that's not the case now. As the king's agent, I have a purpose. I no longer feel that I don't belong.”

She sought his eyes. “But still there's no room for a wife.”

He took another drag at his cigar, then looked at it with dissatisfaction and flicked it over the side of the ship. “When I called off our engagement, it was because I thought my new role would be dangerous for anyone too closely associated with me. Now I know for certain that I was right.”

“Very well,” she said. “And accepted. But if I can't support you as Isabel the wife, I shall most certainly do so as Al-Manat, the warrior.”

“I don't want you in harm's way, Isabel. It was good of you to escort us through the desert to Aden, but there was no need for the Daughters of Al-Manat to sail with us.”

“We will march with you to the Mountains of the Moon.”

Burton shook his head. “No, you won't.”