Companions Of Paradise Part 22

"It is already winter," Ha.s.san pointed out. "Hards.h.i.+p will be our companion whatever the weather. As for your Hindu caravan, Zulmai," he added with a sour smile, "it is either too late to be of use, or else it does not exist."

Ghulam Ali raised his chin. "And what of thieves on the way?" he asked, roughly, to conceal his fears.

Zulmai smiled, then recited something in Persian, a hand waving for emphasis.

"The greatness of the wayfarer's goal," he translated for Ghulam Ali, he translated for Ghulam Ali, "can be seen in the steep windings of the track, and the high pa.s.ses, and the bandits lying in wait. "can be seen in the steep windings of the track, and the high pa.s.ses, and the bandits lying in wait.

"That is from Rumi," he added.

The greatness of the goal. Ghulam Ali glanced at Ha.s.san, and saw him look quickly away. Ghulam Ali glanced at Ha.s.san, and saw him look quickly away.

"Do not fret," Zulmai added. "The people here are all Bangashes. They have no quarrel with us, or the British. The Ghilzais are on the other side of the Paiwar Kotal."

The next morning they set off on the narrow caravan track leading southwest to Thal where they would turn again, this time to the northwest, and follow the Kurram River valley past the Safed Koh mountain range and into the heart of Ghilzai country.

Ha.s.san and Zulmai rode in front, Ha.s.san in a new, embroidered poshteen, with a musket at his side, talking quietly to his lovely Ghyr Khush, and Zulmai, heavily armed, a thin shawl flung over his shoulders and his feet bare inside heavy shoes with upward pointing toes. Behind them followed the laden animals with their drivers, Ghulam Ali, two dozen coolies, and a crowd of servants, all in sheepskin and leather boots, while the hungry-looking Bangash guards, some too young for beards, strode alongside, jezails hanging from their shoulders, their black eyes rimmed with kohl beneath turbans or tight-fitting skullcaps.

"A turban is an Afghan's honor," Ghulam Ali had been told on the road to Jalalabad, "and his weapons are his jewelry."

THREE DAYS later, Lady Sale stopped Mariana as they pa.s.sed each other in the parade ground.

"Dr. Brydon tells me you may as well visit Fitzgerald," she said abruptly. "If you promise not to faint, I shall take you to see him. Come for tea this afternoon."

When she heard the news, Mariana's aunt let out a little cry of delight from within her m.u.f.fling shawls. "Ah, my dear," she cooed hoa.r.s.ely, "you must must go to him at once." go to him at once."

Tea at Lady Sale's was a curious affair. Lady Sale was now a guest in her own spa.r.s.ely furnished drawing room, having gone to stay in her daughter's house when the Macnaghtens arrived from the Residence compound. The tea the ladies drank, and the sugar they stirred into it, were both courtesy of Nur Rahman.

Mariana wrapped her fingers around the warm cup, appreciating the fleeting comfort it offered her.

Since the battle of Bibi Mahro, the weather, and everyone's condition, had grown worse. While the temperature dropped and snow blanketed the ground, soldiers in ragged uniforms s.h.i.+vered weakly on the ramparts, knowing they would remain cold after they came off duty because General Elphinstone, inexplicably, had forbidden the lighting of fires.

Seven hundred of the men were already ill.

The bark and all the twigs from the cantonment's trees had gone to feed the animals. Horses and mules gnawed desperately on tent pegs. Camels lamented as camels do, then lay down and died.

By now, the newly dead pack animals were being used for food. The cantonment butchers gave the best of their meat to the British officers and their families, and the remainder to those native troops whose religion allowed them to eat it.

Only the picked bones of the starved donkeys and camels now found their way onto the rotting pile outside the gate, whose stink permeated every corner of the cantonment.

Lady Sale finished her tea and laid down her cup. "We must pay our hospital visit before dark," she decreed.

"I shall join you." Lady Macnaghten adjusted several embroidered shawls about her shoulders as she spoke.

Her appearance had changed in the weeks since Vijaya's illness. A hint of gray had appeared at her temples. Her dewy skin had become chapped, and her frilly gown looked as if she had slept in it.

She drew herself up, as if expecting refusal. "It is my wish," she added soulfully, "to succor the poor, wounded officers in any way I can. I have thought of offering them each a daily cup of tea. I am sure your Afghan boy will provide enough for that purpose, Miss Givens."

"If that is what you wish, I shall be glad to escort you." Lady Sale's plain face filled with disapproval. "But I must warn you that this will not be a social call. I do not know that tea will do the officers much good."

"Of course it will." Lady Macnaghten stood, her skirts rustling. "Everyone likes a nice cup of tea," she said plaintively.

"If you do not mind," Aunt Claire quavered from her chair, "I believe I shall return to our quarters."

Mariana looked up at the sound of male throat-clearing to see Sir William Macnaghten standing in the drawing room doorway.

He, too, had changed. His hair, a glossy black when she first arrived in Kabul, was now entirely gray, as were his imposing eyebrows. Behind wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes seemed large and dark as if he were terribly afraid of something.

They all must look different now.

He glanced at his wife. "I shall be working in the dining room this afternoon," he said. "I hope it will not inconvenience-"

"Not at all, dear William!" Lady Macnaghten offered him a loving smile. "We are on our way to call upon the wounded officers."

He did not reply, but his bleak look told Mariana more than she wished to know.

"Do not say anything to excite Fitzgerald," Lady Sale warned her a little while later, as they crossed the frozen ground to the cavalry officers' mess, now the officers' hospital. "You must simply let him know you are there. As for the other officers," she added, "try not to look at them too closely. Some have been very badly injured."

As she stood in the hospital doorway, Mariana understood Lady Sale's warning.

What had made her think it would boast an orderly row of occupied beds? Why had she imagined the patients dressed in night-clothes and propped up on pillows, like every sick person she had seen before?

Wrapped in b.l.o.o.d.y bandages and heaped with quilts, thirty-two officers lay crowded haphazardly into the dining room and its adjacent sitting room. They occupied string beds, sideboards, even the long mess table that now stood out of the way, beneath the windows. Some of the wounded even sat slumped on chairs, apparently due to a shortage of places to lie down.

A dozen native sepoys squatted on the floor between the beds, attending to the injured. One of them held an uneaten plate of mushy lentils hopefully in front of a wan-looking officer with a bandaged head, who stared into s.p.a.ce, drool running from the corner of his mouth.

Covered chamber pots stood in corners and beneath the beds. The reek of stale, urine-soaked clothing and blood added itself to the pervasive stink of rotting carca.s.ses from outside the gate.

Realizing she was being watched, Mariana forced herself to take her hand from her nose.

Some of the wounded turned and stared at the ladies in the doorway, but most seemed too preoccupied to notice them. One young man lay, snoring loudly, near the door, his mouth wide open, his eyes shut. Another sat up, gazing into s.p.a.ce, a cus.h.i.+on beneath his chin propping up his heavily bandaged head and neck.

"That is Lieutenant Haughton," whispered Lady Sale. "He has lost a hand, and the muscles on one side of his neck have been severed, so that he cannot hold up his head. He is not expected to survive."

A man in a filthy army uniform with a stubble of beard bent over a boyish officer, whose face seemed to be wet with tears. He looked up, nodded briefly, and went back to his work.

"That is Dr. Brydon," murmured Lady Sale.

Mariana swallowed. If this was the condition of wounded British officers, what must be the fate of the native soldiers, who had no servants and no doctor?

Fighting a desire to run from the scene, she took hold of Lady Macnaghten's trembling elbow and followed Lady Sale over the threshold.

Heavy, labored breathing filled the room. The terrible sighs of the injured added themselves to the stench, giving the room a h.e.l.lish atmosphere.

A red-headed man twisted from side to side on a pair of rough planks that had been stretched between two chairs, his breath hissing between clenched teeth. He had no pillow. One of his legs protruded from his quilts, revealing a shot to the upper leg, covered with a blackened bandage.

Ha.s.san's wound had been almost the same as this man's, but when Mariana had last seen him, he had been lying in his own house, cared for by his family, including Safiya Sultana, who had fed him opium for his pain.

These brave souls had no such luxury. All the medicines for the entire cantonment had been stored in the lost and looted commissariat fort.

Where was Fitzgerald?

As if she had read Mariana's thoughts, Lady Sale pointed to a corner of the room. "He is there," she said.

Fitzgerald lay on a string bed. A red beard Mariana had not seen before covered his lower face. He was perspiring heavily in spite of the cold. His face and hands were as dirty as they had been when his men carried him inside the gate, but someone had at least put a clean bandage on his wounded shoulder. Mariana glanced toward his feet, and saw them both outlined beneath his blankets. At least they had not cut off his foot.

"Miss Givens," he whispered. "How good of you to come."

His lips, she noticed, were cracked and b.l.o.o.d.y.

Lady Sale appeared at her side. "A ball from an Afghan jezail smashed his shoulder at close range," she said in an undertone. "Dr. Brydon says the bones have been so badly broken that he will never move his left arm properly again. But he has also been shot through the lung. That is the more dangerous wound. Do not let him see that you are worried."

Mariana smiled down at him as warmly as she could manage.

"He is young and strong enough to survive," Lady Sale went on quietly, "but if his fever does not abate within the next few days, we must be prepared for the worst."

Mariana bent over Fitzgerald, her hands at her sides. "Are you in great pain?" she asked, and instantly feared she had said the wrong thing.

"No." He gasped, then grimaced as he tried unsuccessfully to move his bad shoulder. "There are others here far worse off than I."

She reached down and laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder. "I am certain you will be much better soon," she offered brightly, forcing herself to look into his eyes, "but I will not tire you now."

As she turned to rejoin the other ladies, Fitzgerald's brave front slipped. For an instant, Mariana glimpsed raw longing on his face.

As she arrived at Lady Sale's side, the snoring by the door reached a crescendo, and then stopped abruptly, leaving an empty echo of itself among the sighs of the wounded.

She glanced at the doctor in time to see him signal to one of the servants. In a flash, the man dragged the sleeping patient's quilts away, revealing a pair of b.l.o.o.d.y, bandaged legs, cut off above the knee. A moment later, he spread the quilts over someone else.

"What is he doing?" doing?" Mariana whispered. "Why has he taken away the poor man's-" Mariana whispered. "Why has he taken away the poor man's-"

"That officer is dead," Lady Sale replied harshly. "Did you not hear him stop breathing?

"I shall return in a moment," she added over her shoulder, as she started away to greet a tall officer with two bandaged arms.

A rustling thud came from behind Mariana. Lady Macnaghten had fallen, unconscious, to the floor.

SIR WILLIAM'S meeting had begun soon after the ladies had left the house.

"What?" he now exclaimed from his seat at the head of Lady Sale's dining table. "Are you telling me that the fighters who drove us from the field at Bibi Mahro were no more than tradesmen and artisans from the city!"

"I fear," Mariana's uncle replied gently, "that is exactly who they were."

"So our brave army ran from the citizens of Kabul?" the citizens of Kabul?"

"They did. The only good news is that Abdullah Khan has since died of his wounds."

Macnaghten mopped his face. "And the Afghans who are now offering us terms are those same ordinary men?"

"No, Sir William. They are the tribal chiefs who still owe their allegiance to Dost Mohammad. They are acting on the orders of Akbar Khan."

"Dost Mohammad's son? But I thought he had vanished into the north over a year ago."

"He has returned, sir, and sworn to avenge his father's humiliation."

"I wish our enemies had identified themselves from the beginning," Macnaghten said irritably. "When we came, everyone behaved as if we were rescuing them from a tyrant."

Lamb cleared his throat. "Not all of them, Sir William. Akbar Khan never accepted us.

"Aminullah Khan and Abdullah Khan never accepted Shah Shuja, either," he added gently. "Of course Afghans do not always tell the truth, especially to people they do not know or trust."

Macnaghten sighed. "And now they have joined forces with Akbar?"

Lamb nodded to his a.s.sistant. "Will you explain Akbar Khan's terms to the Envoy, Charles?"

Lady Macnaghten's nephew cleared his throat. "As I understand it, sir," he said, "Akbar has asked us to leave Kabul, and return to India. He will not harm us, he says, but we must must go, and we must leave some of our people here as hostages, to be released when his father has been returned to the throne." go, and we must leave some of our people here as hostages, to be released when his father has been returned to the throne."

Macnaghten frowned. "And what of Shah Shuja?"

"He is to remain here."

"But we brought him all the way from India! We cannot simply leave him behind, to be blinded, or murdered, or both, and all this in order to save our own skins!"

Mariana's uncle shrugged. "That is what Akbar is asking for, sir."

"Think of British honor, man!"

A bony-looking subaltern put his head around the door. "A number of the enemy have come from the city, Sir William," he announced. "They are a hundred yards away, demolis.h.i.+ng our bridge across the river."

"And what has been our response?"

The subaltern stood straight, his cheeks flus.h.i.+ng. "We have not responded, sir. Our officers are only watching them, from behind our parapet."

"Not responded?" Macnaghten shouted. "Go at once, Andrews, and tell them they Macnaghten shouted. "Go at once, Andrews, and tell them they must must respond. Tell them that if they do not, I shall have a court of inquiry set up in this dining room respond. Tell them that if they do not, I shall have a court of inquiry set up in this dining room tomorrow morning. tomorrow morning."

After the subaltern had bowed and left, Macnaghten turned wearily to Mariana's uncle. "How has this happened, Lamb? How is it that I find myself responsible for every every decision we make? Why are the senior military officers so hopelessly incapable? decision we make? Why are the senior military officers so hopelessly incapable?

"We have an army four thousand strong and not a single single decent senior officer," he added. "Shelton made a perfect hash of the battle at Bibi Mahro. Monteith allowed gunmen to enter his camp at night and slaughter his men. All of them failed to save the commissariat fort, or even poor Burnes, for that matter. Even now, they do not lift a hand to defend us. The list goes on and on. I tell you, Lamb, I am living in a nightmare." decent senior officer," he added. "Shelton made a perfect hash of the battle at Bibi Mahro. Monteith allowed gunmen to enter his camp at night and slaughter his men. All of them failed to save the commissariat fort, or even poor Burnes, for that matter. Even now, they do not lift a hand to defend us. The list goes on and on. I tell you, Lamb, I am living in a nightmare."

Mariana's uncle nodded silent agreement.

"I still think we ought to move to the Bala Hisar," Charles Mott put in from his end of the table.

Macnaghten nodded. "It offers our best chance to defend ourselves and survive the winter. With luck Elphinstone will be persuaded to agree with the rest of us. Sturt has gone to him this afternoon. If the old boy does agree, then we can ignore that fool Shelton and all his his croaking, and make arrangements to leave here." croaking, and make arrangements to leave here."

He sighed. "Until Sturt returns, all we can do is wait."

Without another word, he turned away from his visitors and stared fixedly out the window.

FORTY YARDS away, in his own house, General Elphinstone regarded Captain Sturt distractedly from beneath the knitted nightcap that he had pulled down almost to his eyes.