“For this is Easter, and we are all Christians and friends,” says he. “You are my best friend of all, and I shall open my heart to you and to all your people!”
Which he did next day with a civil note to Napier and a gift of a thousand cattle and several hundred sheep; [52] bent on reconcilia tion he might be, but he was no fool, knowing that if Napier accepted them, it was tantamount to a truce and might even be regarded as a settlement, since he’d freed the prisoners, which was supposedly all that was required. Crafty old Theodore—but equally crafty old Napier, for he refused the gift, but responded with a decent gesture, sending up the body of old Gabrie, which our stretcher-bearers had collected from the battle-field of Arogee.
Flad brought it back, and Theodore was much moved; because of some misunderstanding by the interpreters, he didn’t realise at this time that Napier had rejected his cattle, so he was all gladness and good humour, bidding Flad jovially to go up to Magdala and collect Mrs Flad and the remaining prisoners, “and God give you a happy meeting.” So Flad went, and a stranger procession you never saw than that which presently emerged from the Kobet Bar, for where I’d expected about forty Europeans, there was a caravan of more than two hundred folk, mostly black or chi-chi, for most were servants, with a few Ab wives and chicos of the prisoners. There were more than three hundred beasts laden with baggage, and it looked like the Exodus as they churned up the dust down the winding track from Magdala rock, through the empty market stalls at the foot, and out across the deserted plain of Islamgee. There was hardly an Ab soldier in sight, for they’d struck their camp and withdrawn to Selassie and Fala.
Theodore watched them go by from his pavilion. He’d sent for his queen—the real one, Tooroo-Wark, a lovely slip of a lass—and her son, little Alamayo, and at her request sent a nurse to one of the prisoners’ wives, a Mrs Morris, who was about to pup, and indeed did so the next day in the British camp; they called the kid Theodore in appreciation. Mrs Morris had a palki; Mrs Flad and the other wives were on mules, and presently they disappeared down the road to Arogee, men, women, beasts, babes in arms, porters, bags and baggage—and that, Theodore seemed to think, was the end of it.
How wrong he was he learned on that sunny Easter Sunday evening, when word came that Napier had turned back his cattle, and it sank in at last that we would settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender, which must mean what he had always dreaded: the delivery of his royal person to a foreign enemy. Perhaps that fear was in his mind when he had his gun-teams drag the artillery from the Fala summit to the far end of the Islamgee plain, either in an effort to convince Napier of his peaceful intent or to prepare a last defence for Magdala. I don’t know which, but I know that his high spirits when the prisoners left wore thin as the hours went by, and no good word came from Napier.
“What more can they want? Oh, my friend, have I not done all that they asked? They have beaten my army and broken my power; it must be peace, my friend, tell me it must be peace!”
If he said it once he said it a dozen times, but there was no re assuring him. In the pavilion lamplight the handsome face was tired and haggard; he’d aged a year in a few days, and I’ll swear his hair was even greyer. Strange, there was nothing mad about him now, just a flat sober certainty in his words when Meshisha, his executioner, who’d been in charge of taking the cattle down to our lines, came back after dark to report that they’d been turned back by Speedy; the mention of that name struck Theodore like a blow.
“The Basha Fallakal My enemy, always my enemy! So now, having got what they want, these people will seek to kill me!” He stood, fists clenched, a picture of despair. “There is nothing left for me here. The time has come to find a new home in the place where I was little, long ago. There, by the power of God, I may find peace at last.”
You can always tell when something is coming to an end. You know, by the way events are shaping, that it can’t last much longer, but you think there are still a few days or weeks to go… and that’s the moment when it finishes with a sudden bang that you didn’t expect. Come to think of it, that’s probably true of life, or so it strikes me at the age of ninety—but I don’t expect it to happen before tea. Yet one of these days the muffins will grow cold and the tea-cakes congeal as they summon the lads from belowstairs to cart the old cadaver up to the best bedroom. And if I’ve a moment before the light fades, I’ll be able to cry, “Sold, Starnberg and Ignatieff and Iron Eyes and Gul Shah and Charity Spring and all the rest of you bastards who tried to do for old Flashy, ’cos he’s going out on his own, and be damned to you!”
This cheery reflection is brought on by my memories of that Easter Sunday night, when I knew the curtain must soon come down on Magdala, perhaps in a day or two… and ’twas all over, receipted and filed before Monday sunset. It happened so quickly that I can remember only the vital moments; the hours between have faded. (Mind you, a shell splinter in the leg is no help to leisurely observation; we’ll come to that presently.)
But I’m clear enough about the almighty row that broke when Theodore summoned his chiefs and told ’em it was time to cut and run, that they must be off before dawn, making for Lake Tana where Napier could never follow them. They shouted him down, swearing they could never assemble their families and goods in such short time, and demanding that he make peace. He cussed them for dis loyal cowards and they heaped reproaches on him.
“If you had not released the captives we could have made terms with the farangisV cries one.
“And if they had refused we could have cut the white dogs’ throats and made the hearts of their countrymen smart!”
“Aye, at least we could have been revenged! As it is, we have no choice but to make peace!”
“We are your men to the end, but only if you make terms. If you will not, you are alone.”
He might have read the end of his rule in the scowls on their black faces, but he still couldn’t bring himself to surrender. He told Damash to start dragging guns and mortars from Islamgee up the rocky track to Magdala, and Engedda, the firebrand, thinking this meant a last stand, swore to stand by him, but the rest dispersed in sullen silence, and it was from that moment that the desertions began in earnest. Scores of warriors and their families left their posts on Selassie and Fala, and only a few hundred were prepared to help Damash move the guns, while Theodore struck his camp below Selassie. Then we must all retire across the Islamgee plain in the gathering dark, Flashy aboard a mule with his heart in his boots, for like Engedda I assumed that his fickle majesty had changed his mind yet again, and was determined to fight it out. I was mistaken, but before I come to that I must tell you how the land lay in the closing act of our Abyssinian drama.
From the deserted village market-place at the far end of the Islamgee plain, Magdala rock rose three hundred feet sheer, with only one way up: a narrow track that was really no more than a ledge running steeply up the cliff-face. Near the top it turned sharply to the right towards Magdala’s first gate, the Kobet Bar, flanked by a high wall and stockade reinforced by thorn bushes. The gate was massive, with supporting towers and a sloping roof like that of a lych-gate. Fifty yards behind it was a second gate, and beyond that lay the Magdala plateau proper with its little township of houses and churches and the palace, big thatched buildings of typical Ab design.