Companions Of Paradise Part 2

Lady Macnaghten yawned delicately behind her fan. "I suppose-" she began.

Whatever she supposed was interrupted by a fresh wave of sound from the plain below. The drummers were at work again, in greater numbers than before.

Pounding their double-ended drums, dancing to their own rhythms, they were certainly celebrating something, but what was it?

The crowd below was craning toward the far end of the course.

"What is this?" shouted an officer, as a line of hors.e.m.e.n appeared in the dusty distance. "The races are over. No one else is supposed to-"

Long lances at the ready, twelve hors.e.m.e.n galloped in single file toward the four small tents that had appeared so mysteriously, their guylines pegged out in a vulnerable line along the margin of the track.

One by one, the horses jumped. One by one, their pegs removed, the little tents trembled, then collapsed.

The riders pulled up dramatically, their horses rearing, in front of the royal enclosure. As the drums continued their din, their leader, a burly man with a thick black beard, wrenched the peg from his lance, hurled it toward the fallen tents, then galloped away, his henchmen behind him.

"Those tribesmen did not not seem friendly to our cause," observed Lady Sale, when the drumming had ceased. "If I were Envoy," she glanced pointedly at Lady Macnaghten, "I would make sure they were brought round, whoever they are." seem friendly to our cause," observed Lady Sale, when the drumming had ceased. "If I were Envoy," she glanced pointedly at Lady Macnaghten, "I would make sure they were brought round, whoever they are."

"Who were those hors.e.m.e.n?" Mariana murmured to her uncle's a.s.sistant, as they waited for the palanquins to arrive. "Did you and Uncle Adrian know of them?"

"No, Miss Givens." He flicked dust from his sleeve with nervous fingers. "No one has said a word. Miss Givens," he added, "would it be-"

"Charles! Charles Mott," Lady Macnaghten called out petulantly. "Stop talking to Miss Givens, and help me into my palanquin."

Mariana watched with relief as he rushed away. During the long journey from Calcutta, she had seen enough of her uncle's damp-faced a.s.sistant to last a lifetime.

A knot of officers had been standing a short distance away. One of them detached himself from the group and approached her, a black dragoon helmet beneath his arm.

It was Fitzgerald.

Mariana stiffened.

He bowed smartly. "Miss Givens," he said, "how delightful to see you here in Kabul."

He looked heavier than Mariana remembered. His straight, fair hair gleamed in the sun. He offered her a careful smile.

Mariana touched her aunt's arm. "Aunt Claire, may I present Lieutenant Fitzgerald?" she said, equally carefully.

"Oh," exclaimed her aunt. "Oh!"

"He is so much handsomer when seen face-to-face!" Aunt Claire burbled ten minutes later, as they got out of their palanquins. "Did you see his smile, so gentlemanly, so restrained? I cannot wait for him to call on us!"

Mariana did not reply. As she had stepped into her palanquin, Fitzgerald had offered her a second, different smile, a crooked, knowing one that she had nearly forgotten.

He was a living, breathing person. Until this moment, she had not even considered that fact.

March 26, 1841 The following morning, the sound of someone scuffing off his shoes outside her door announced the arrival of Mariana's manservant with her coffee.

Dittoo was a champion talker, whose many opinions were best heard when one was properly awake. As usual, as he pushed his way inside, the tray rattling in his hands, Mariana closed her eyes and feigned deep sleep.

He dropped the tray noisily onto her bedside table. "This house," he announced, ignoring her subterfuge, "is not good enough for you and your family, Bibi. The dining room is too small. Only five servants can fit inside while you are eating. Ghulam Ali says that open verandah will fill up with snow in the winter, and there are only these two bedrooms.

"As to the servants' quarters," he went on. "They have given only six rooms for forty servants, including the sweepers! I do not know where Ghulam Ali and Yar Mohammad will sleep, since they are Muslims, and-"

"Enough, Dittoo," she snapped. "We will build more quarters. Now go," she added firmly.

He leaned closer. "This is a dangerous place, Bibi," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

She opened her eyes.

Her servant's ill-shaven face was bunched with anxiety. His shoulders drooped beneath his shabby uniform. He glanced over his shoulder. "Everyone is talking," he went on, "about the Afghan chief who came to the races yesterday, and swore his revenge against the British and their new king. These Afghans do terrible, cruel things. Your British people should never have come here, and thrown out their real ruler."

She sat up, the quilts to her chin, and swept the hair from her eyes. "That chief did not swear to anything," she declared. "And even if he had, we have an enormous fort, and a great army. With such protection, why should we fear one Afghan, even if he is a chief?"

She frowned as he hunched his way out of her room without replying.

"I thought they wanted wanted us to come here, Uncle Adrian," she said later that morning. "I thought the Afghans had invited Shah Shuja to be king." us to come here, Uncle Adrian," she said later that morning. "I thought the Afghans had invited Shah Shuja to be king."

"Some of them had." Her uncle shrugged. "But some had not. In any case, we only invaded Afghanistan to prevent the Russians from taking the country over for themselves. No one wanted them threatening our possessions in India."

"And were the Russians really coming to India?"

He ran a hand through his fringe of hair. "It was never certain that they would. I understand," he added, "that yesterday's tribesmen were Achakzais from the Pis.h.i.+n valley, and their leader is the chief there, but he is not Shah Shuja's only enemy. Aminullah Khan from the Logar valley is another. Aminullah was one of Shuja's greatest allies at first, but he now has left in a huff, and we fear he has changed sides. People say he is old, palsied, and very deaf, but they also say he has ten thousand fighting men at his command, and is well-known for his cruelty."

Remembering Dittoo's fears, Mariana glanced toward the window. Outside, newly sown gra.s.s had begun to sprout in front of the verandah. Past the nearby houses, the high walls of the Residence rose protectively around Sir William Macnaghten's vast garden. It all seemed so peaceful.

"Macnaghten and Burnes do not seem to understand the locals," her uncle continued, "not even the previous royal family. I discovered only yesterday that Dost Mohammad's eldest son has not gone into exile in India with his father, but has vanished instead into the mountains north of here. No one seems to know, or care, where he is. If he is like other Afghans, he will not forget the injury we have done his father. I fear," he added thoughtfully, "we may have failed to understand the depth of these people's pride."

Pride. Mariana's muns.h.i.+ had told her that pride meant everything to an Afghan. Any one of them, especially a Pashtun tribesman, would willingly throw away his life to prove a point or defend a principle. He would never forget a service, would defend a guest to the death, and would offer asylum to anyone who asked properly, even someone who had murdered a member of his own family. Mariana's muns.h.i.+ had told her that pride meant everything to an Afghan. Any one of them, especially a Pashtun tribesman, would willingly throw away his life to prove a point or defend a principle. He would never forget a service, would defend a guest to the death, and would offer asylum to anyone who asked properly, even someone who had murdered a member of his own family.

"If an Afghan's honor requires revenge," her old teacher had told her, "he will exact it, whatever the price. We have a saying in India: May G.o.d save me from the fangs of the snake, the claws of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan. May G.o.d save me from the fangs of the snake, the claws of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan. " "

If all this were true, she thought, Afghanistan would be no easy country to control.

FOR SIXTEEN hundred years, through the coming and going of kings great and small, through endless destruction and rebuilding, the Bala Hisar had stood upon a high spur of the Sher Darwaza heights, overlooking the Kabul plain.

Its mud brick walls and heavy corner bastions had suffered considerable neglect in Dost Mohammad's time, but even in its dilapidated condition, the old citadel still cast a formidable shadow over the city at its feet.

Inside its walls, the Bala Hisar was crowded with buildings. Palaces, barracks, courtyards, stables, gardens, and munic.i.p.al buildings crammed its lower reaches, while above them, the fort, with its armory and its fearful dungeon, looked out upon its long, crumbling, fortified walls that even now climbed up and down the distant hills, protecting the Kabul plain from the ghosts of long-forgotten marauders.

On the morning after the horse races, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, King of the Afghans, sat on a raised platform in the frescoed audience hall of his largest palace, his ministers ranged behind him. Sunlight entered the breezy clerestory windows above the king's head, glanced off his great striped turban, fell onto the shoulders of his embroidered coat and the silk bolster he leaned against, and bathed the rug where he sat, turning its tribal dyes to the color of precious stones.

Two black-coated Englishmen sat on chairs before the king's platform, their own retinue of officers behind them.

Shah Shuja regarded his guests with unhappy eyes. "Victory," he announced in high-pitched Persian, "has become dust in my mouth."

The British Resident and the British Envoy glanced at each other. "Dust, Sire?" the Envoy repeated.

"The chiefs," the Shah responded impatiently, "show me no respect. You saw what Abdullah Khan did yesterday. Why should he, or anyone else, honor me when my enemies are still alive and un-blinded?"

The king's ministers nodded, their eyes on Macnaghten and Burnes.

"We do not," replied the bespectacled Sir William Macnaghten, "believe it necessary to kill chiefs simply because they do not like us. Besides, Highness, they are paying their taxes. They would not be doing so, or offering you respect, if they were dead."

"Or if their eyes had been put out," added the round-faced Sir Alexander Burnes.

"Taxes, taxes." The king raised beringed hands. "The Pashtun chiefs should not pay taxes."

"But," argued Burnes, "the chiefs must must pay you. You are their sovereign." pay you. You are their sovereign."

Shah Shuja's hands dropped into his lap. "I am elder among elders, chief among chiefs. I am no despot, to be wringing money from tribes who share amongst each other. Wherever I look, I have new enemies. If you would let me charge the customary duties on your trade caravans, I would not need these taxes."

"Sire," said Macnaghten in his smoothest tone, "we cannot allow you to tax our kafilas." our kafilas."

"If I may not charge your kafilas, then you should give me the money I need. India is a rich country. Ahmad Shah Durrani supported this kingdom for years by plundering India. Now your people are enjoying its wealth, but you are not sharing it with me."

The king gestured about him. "Look at this household," he said, his voice rising. "I have three hundred retainers to maintain, not to mention the royal guard or the women. What of my ministers and their families? Surely, with all the millions of rupees that pour into your Indian treasury, you have enough to spare for these."

"As I have said, Sire," Macnaghten insisted, "the chiefs are paying their taxes."

"Then," Shah Shuja said wearily, "we are doomed."

"But why?" his visitors chorused, disbelief on their faces.

"The Eastern Ghilzai chiefs must be given gold to keep the pa.s.ses open between here and India, while others must have their gold taken from them. Why should we take gold from one man, and hand that same gold to his enemy? Mark my words, the chiefs will not endure this inequity for long."

"We have heard your complaints, Sire," Macnaghten said a trifle sharply, "and now we must confer with our generals. If you will give us your kind permission, we shall return to the cantonment."

After the British delegation had been seen out past the intricately carved doorway of the audience chamber, the Shah turned to his elderly, earless vizier.

"Humza Khan," he sighed, "these feranghis feranghis will be our undoing. Only their useless elephants will remain here in the Bala Hisar, devouring camel-loads of fodder each day, a testament to British folly and arrogance." will be our undoing. Only their useless elephants will remain here in the Bala Hisar, devouring camel-loads of fodder each day, a testament to British folly and arrogance."

"Ah, Sire," replied the old vizier, "who can tell the future?"

ALTHOUGH THEY had been a.s.sured that none of the Shah's court understood English, Macnaghten did not speak until they had trotted their horses through the Bala Hisar's high main gate.

"First Shah Shuja wishes to kill the chiefs," Macnaghten said at last, "then he objects to taxing them. The man makes no common sense."

"And the money he spends!" Burnes shook his head. "His ministers were all wearing imported silks again. What have you heard from Calcutta?"

"I had another letter this morning, demanding we reduce our expenses." Macnaghten sighed. "If he had any political imagination, Lord Auckland would send more more troops and troops and more more money. If we captured Herat and Peshawar, we would control this whole part of the world." money. If we captured Herat and Peshawar, we would control this whole part of the world."

"Quite true, but impossible, given the visionless government we have," agreed Burnes as he steered his horse past an obstacle course of rocks.

Macnaghten shook his head. "I have no idea what to do now," he said heavily. "I suppose we could always turn our backs on Shuja, and return to India."

"And if we did," Burnes reminded him, "he would lose his head, and we would lose Afghanistan. Worse, we would no longer have the fruits and pleasures of Kabul to enjoy."

He smiled broadly as they and their escort clattered under the Lahori Gate and into the walled city. "Ah, Macnaghten," he cried, "how I love this country!"

That night, at the sound of a string bed creaking in the darkness of her bedchamber, Shaikh Waliullah's twin sister opened her eyes.

Ha.s.san was awake. He sat hunched over on the edge of his bed, his hair tangled, his bearded face scarcely visible in the starlight from the window, his heavily bandaged leg at an awkward angle from his body.

Dawn was far off, Safiya Sultana guessed, for she felt no instinctive urge to rise and wash for the pre-sunrise prayer. Instead, she raised herself on an ample elbow and studied the nephew she had nursed for the past nine weeks. "What is it, my dear?" she inquired. "Are your wounds troubling you?"

"No, Bhaji," Ha.s.san Ali Khan replied softly. "I am thinking of Yusuf."

Safiya nodded. "May Allah Most Gracious bless and keep your dear friend."

"It was my fault," he said abruptly. "It was I who killed him."

Fully dressed, as always, in a comfortable shalwar kameez shalwar kameez, Safiya sat up and cuffed her bolster into a more comfortable shape. "Nonsense," she declared. Her voice, as deep as a man's, echoed in the small chamber. "You and Yusuf were both shot in the Hazuri Bagh. You lived and Yusuf died. That is all there is to it."

He dropped his head. "They shot him because of me."

So that explained why Ha.s.san's wounds were taking so long to close. Remorse was certainly no aid to healing. Needing time to think, Safiya offered her nephew a noncommittal grunt.

Memories of the recent civil strife that had led to Ha.s.san's wounds and Yusuf's death were still raw in the walled city of Lah.o.r.e, indeed in the whole kingdom of the Punjab.

It had taken Maharajah Sher Singh, the present king, three savage January days to wrest the throne of the Punjab from his hated rival, Rani Chand Kaur. While Sher Singh's gunners shot down into the Lah.o.r.e Citadel from the high minarets of the old Badshahi Mosque and his artillery sent cannonb.a.l.l.s through its smashed-in Alamgiri Gate, damaging the royal palace and military buildings and slaughtering courtiers, soldiers, and servants, thousands of his own hungry, unpaid soldiers found their way into the old city that shared the Citadel's ancient, fortified wall. There they had rampaged, uncontrolled, through the city's bazaars, invading its houses and murdering its citizens.

The wounds remained.

It was only through Allah's Grace that the Waliullah family's old haveli had been spared.

Ha.s.san's odd English wife had proved useful more than once during that time. For all her odd behavior, the girl had her good points.

During the battle for the throne, an ambitious Englishman had tried to murder Maharajah Sher Singh. Learning of the plot, Ha.s.san Ali had braved the fighting in the Hazuri Bagh with his friend Yusuf and two Afghans. Together, they had managed to thwart the a.s.sa.s.sination, but at the cost of Yusuf's life.

The Afghans had since disappeared, leaving the wounded Ha.s.san the only witness to what had happened that day.

Afterward, wracked by fevers, Ha.s.san had left that story to the imaginations of others. Too ill to care, he had ignored the speculation about his complicity in the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, and the gossip that his English wife had sided with the British plotters and persuaded him to kill the Maharajah himself. Later, after Sher Singh had learned the truth, and the city had covered him with glory, he had still remained silent.

He had borne without complaint the surgeries that had rescued his left hand and cleaned out the wide, putrefying flesh wound on his leg. He had cried out, of course, as the surgeon plied his knives and his cauterizing tools, but to Safiya's ears, Ha.s.san's groans had sounded like those of a man who knew he deserved punishment.

"I should never have gone to the Hazuri Bagh that day," Ha.s.san said harshly. "I should have let Yusuf, Zulmai, and Habibullah do the work of stopping the a.s.sa.s.sination. Unlike me, they were well versed in the art of killing."

"It is true that you are no soldier," Safiya agreed, "and that the battlefield is no place for the a.s.sistant Foreign Minister. And it is also true that Yusuf was a fighter, but what of your Afghans? I thought they were mere traders, men who come to Lah.o.r.e every year, bringing saffron, rubies, and horses."

"Zulmai and Habibullah are merchants, but they are hard men, and expert shots." Ha.s.san shook his head in the dimness. "If I had stayed in this house and not insisted on joining them, Yusuf would still be alive."