Far Pavilions (165 page)

Sirdar Nakshband Khan's story struck at his personal pride as well as his official dignity as the representative of Her Britannic Majesty the Empress of India, and he would have liked to disbelieve it. Instead he replied coldly that he would inquire into the matter, and having dismissed his visitor, sent for William Jenkyns and ordered the secretary to find out at once if anyone in the Residency compound had in fact witnessed such an incident as Nakshband Khan described.

William was back within fifteen minutes. The story, he reported, was unfortunately true. It had not only been vouched for by several of the Residency servants, but by two grass-cutters and a dozen men of the escort, including Jemadar Jiwand Singh of the Guides Cavalry and Havildar Hassan of the infantry.

‘Why was I not informed of this before?’ demanded Cavagnari, white with rage. ‘By God, I'll have those men disciplined! They should have reported it at once, if not to me, then to Hamilton or Kelly, or to you. And if young Hamilton knew, and did not tell me – Tell him I wish to speak to him immediately.’

‘I don't think he's here at the moment, sir. I believe he went out about an hour ago.’

‘Then send him to me the minute he comes back. He has no right to slip off without letting me know. Where the devil has he gone?’

I'm afraid I've no idea, sir,’ said William woodenly.

‘Then you should have. I will not have my officers leaving the Residency whenever they think fit. They ought to have more sense than to go jaunting about the city at a time like this. Not that I believe…’

He left the sentence unfinished and dismissing William with a curt gesture, sat scowling into the middle-distance and jerking at his beard with lean, angry fingers.

But Wally was not jaunting about the city. He had ridden out to see Ash, whom he had arranged to meet on the hillside to the south of Kabul where the Emperor Barbur lies buried. For it was the eighteenth of August and his birthday: he was twenty-three.

61

The last resting place of Barbur – ‘Barbur the Tiger’, who had seized the Land of Cain only a few years after Columbus discovered America, and gone on to conquer India and establish an imperial dynasty that had lasted into Ash's own life-time – was in a walled garden on the slope of a hill to the south-west of the Shere Dawaza.

The spot had been known in Barbur's day as ‘The Place of Footsteps’, and it had been a favourite haunt of his, so much so that though he had died far away in India, at Agra, he had left instructions that his body was to be brought back there for burial. This his widow, Bibi Mubarika, had done, travelling to Agra to claim her husband's body and take it back through the passes to Kabul.

Nowadays the garden was known as ‘The Place of Barbur's Grave’, and few people visited it at this season, for Ramadan, the month of fasting, had begun. But as it was regarded as a pleasure park, no one would think it odd that the young Sahib who commanded the foreign Envoy's Indian escort should choose to visit such a historic spot, or that once there he should fall into conversation with one of the local sight-seers. In fact, Ash and Wally had the garden to themselves, for though the day had been sultry and overcast, no rain had fallen as yet, and the hot wind that herded the sluggish clouds across the valley was stirring up enough dust to keep all sensible Kabulis indoors.

A little stream in a formal channel flowed past the worn slab of marble and the ruined fragments of a pavilion that marked the great man's grave, and the wind strewed the water with fallen leaves and sent eddies of dust whirling between the trees and flowering shrubs, and through the carved wooden arches of a small memorial mosque – an open-sided, unpretentious building that like Barbur's tomb was sadly in need of repair. There had been only one devotee there that day, and it was not until he rose and came out that Wally realized it was Ash.

‘What were you doing in there?’ he inquired when they had greeted each other.

‘Saying a prayer for the Tiger. May he rest in peace,’ said Ash. ‘He was a great man. I've been reading his memoirs again, and I like to think that his bones are lying here under the grass and that I can sit beside them and remember the tremendous life he lived, the things he saw and did, the chances he took… Let's get out of the wind.’

There were other humbler graves in the garden. A number of conventional Moslem stelae in weathered marble or stone rose out of the parched grass, some still standing upright, but the majority canted to left or right by the hand of time, or lying half hidden on the ground. Ash by-passed these and having paused a moment by Barbur's grave, led the way to a level piece of ground that was sheltered from the wind by a clump of shrubs, and sat down cross-legged on the dusty grass.

‘Many happy returns of the day, Wally.’

‘So you remembered,’ said Wally, flushing with pleasure.

‘Of course I did. I've even got a present for you.’ Ash groped among his robes and produced a little bronze horse: a piece of ancient Chinese craftsmanship that he had bought in the bazaar at Kabul, knowing that it would delight Wally. It had done so; but the donor had not been pleased to discover that Lieutenant Hamilton had ridden out to meet him without an escort.

‘For God's sake, Wally! Are you mad? Didn't you even bring your syce?’

‘If you mean Hosein, no. But you can keep your hair on, because I gave him the day off so that I could bring one of our troopers instead: Sowar Taimus. You wouldn't know him – well after your time. He's a first-rate fellow with guts enough for six. The Kote-Daffadar says that he's a Shahzada in his own right and a Prince of the Sadozai dynasty, which is probably true. What he doesn't know about Kabul and the Kabulis isn't worth knowing, and it's due to him that we managed to sneak out without trouble, and without having a couple of Afghan troopers trotting along behind us. He's waiting outside with the horses, and if he doesn't like the look of anyone approaching this place you can be sure he'll let me know. So will you be calm now, and stop fussing like an old hen.’

‘I still say you should have brought at least three of your sowars with you.
And
your syce,’ said Ash angrily. ‘I would never have agreed to meet you here if I'd dreamt that you'd be such a chucklehead as to ride out without a proper escort. For God's sake, don't
any
of you realize what is going on around here?’

‘Faith, and that's a foine way to talk to a feller on his birthday, so it is,’ grinned Wally, unabashed. ‘Yes, you old ass, of course we do. I'll have you know we're not nearly as stupid as you think. In fact that's precisely why I came here on the sly with only Taimus, instead of attracting a lot of attention to myself and stirring up the angry passions of the locals by clattering out with an armed escort at my heels.’

‘That's as maybe,’ retorted Ash, still shaken. ‘But I understand the Amir himself has advised your Chief to avoid riding through the streets for a time.’

‘Through the streets, yes. His Nibs seems to think it would be better if we weren't seen going about his city just now. But there are no streets here and it's a long way from the city – and where did you hear that, anyway? I thought that particular bit of advice had been given to Sir Louis on the quiet. It's not at all the sort of thing he'd like every Tom, Dick and Harry to know.’

‘I don't suppose they do know,’ said Ash. ‘I heard it from that pensioner of ours, Risaldar-Major Nakshband Khan. Who incidentally got it from the horse's mouth – Sir Louis himself.’

‘Did he now,’ murmured Wally, lying back on the grass and firmly shutting his eyes. ‘And I suppose it was yourself put that old spalpeen up to calling at the Residency to warn us that the city was full of rude, rough boys from Herat, and that if we didn't hide indoors until they went away, some of them might call us naughty names or even thumb their noses at us? Sure I might have known it. No, don't be telling me that it's all in the line of duty, because I know it is. But dammit, today's my birthday, so can't we just for once forget the political situation and all this Intelligence business and talk about other things for a change? Pleasant things…’

There was nothing that Ash would have liked better, but he hardened his heart and said: ‘No, Wally: I'm afraid we can't, because there are several things I have to say to you. To begin with, you're going to have to stop these mounted sports you've been arranging between your fellows and the Afghans.’

Wally abandoned his restful pose and sat bolt upright, staring and indignant. ‘Stop them? What the blazes for? Why, the Afghans love ‘em! – they're damned good horsemen and they thoroughly enjoy competing against my chaps. We always have a huge turn-out, and there couldn't be a better way of getting on friendly terms with them.’

‘I can see why you think so. But then you don't understand how these people think. They see it quite differently, and far from encouraging friendly feelings it has caused great offence. The truth is, Wally, that your sowars are too damn good at this type of sport, and the Kabulis have been saying that you hold them solely in order to show how easily you can defeat them, and that when your men ride at a dangling lemon and slash it in half with a sabre, or spear a tent-peg out of the ground on the point of a lance, they are merely demonstrating how they would cut down or spear their enemies – in other words, the Afghans. If you'd been able to stand among the spectators and listen, as I've done, and hear what they say among themselves as they watch, you wouldn't talk so glibly about “establishing friendly relations with the Afghans”, when in point of fact all you are doing is helping to make them a deal sourer than they are already; which God knows is sour enough.’

‘Well if that isn't the outside of enough!’ exploded Wally. ‘So
that's
why you were dressed up like a scarecrow and carrying off the prizes for the opposition that day. I couldn't think what you were playing at, and for two pins I'd have –’ Words appeared to fail him and Ash had the grace to look ashamed of himself and say defensively: ‘I didn't do it for fun, whatever you may think. I hoped it might even up the balance a bit and take some of the heat out of the situation. But I didn't think you'd recognize me.’

‘Not recognize you? When I know every trick of riding you possess and the way you always - Holy smoke! It's yourself who's mad, so it is. Have you any idea of the risks you were running? It's all very well for me to spot you, but I'm willing to lay you a year's pay to a rotten orange that there isn't a single jawan in the Escort who doesn't know by now who you are.’

'I wouldn't take you,’ said Ash with a crooked smile. ‘I imagine they know a lot more than you think. But they also know how to keep their mouths shut. Have any of them, for instance, reported to you that whenever they show their faces outside the citadel, the Kabulis don't just insult them, but make the worst kind of abusive remarks about you and Kelly and Jenkyns, and particularly about Cavagnari? No, I can see they haven't! And you can't blame them. They'd be ashamed to let any of you know the sort of things that are being said about you in the bazaars; which is your bad luck, because if they spoke out you might learn a thing or two.’

‘God, what a people,’ said Wally disgustedly. ‘That Sikh obviously knew what he was talking about after all.

‘What Sikh?’

‘Oh, just a Havildar of the 3rd Sikhs I was talking to one day when we were in Gandamak. He was scandalized by the Peace Treaty and the fact that we were pulling the army out of Afghanistan, and seemed to think we were all mad. He wanted to know what kind of warfare this was, and said, “Sahib, these people hate you and you have beaten them. There is only one treatment for such
shaitans
(devils) – grind them to powder.” Perhaps that is what we should have done.’

‘Perhaps. But it's no good talking about that now, because the main thing I came here to tell you about is a deal more important than your mounted sports. I know I've brought this up before, but this time, whether you like it or not, you're going to have to talk to Jenkyns about it. As I've already told you, the Amir has allowed a rumour to get around that the Mission is only here to act as paymaster and general benefactor: in other words, to be milked of rupees like an obliging cow. Almost everyone believes this to be true, so the sooner Sir Louis persuades the Viceroy to let him act the part, and sends him enough money to pay off the arrears owed to the troops, the better. It's the only thing that may stop the pot from boiling over and scalding everyone within sight, because the minute that starving rabble from Herat have been given their just dues, they'll leave Kabul; and once they are out of the way the disaffected elements in the city can simmer down a bit and give the Amir a chance to get a firmer grip on his country and restore some respect for authority. I'm not saying that a large injection of cash will solve all that wretched chap's problems, but at least it'll help to shore him up and delay the roof falling in on him – and on your precious Mission as well.’

Wally was silent for a moment or two, and then he said irritably: ‘It would take a deuce of a lot of money, and I don't see why we should be expected to stump up the arrears of pay that are owed to the armed forces of a country that we have been at war with – an enemy country! Do you realize that a large part of what these fellows claim they are owed seems to be back pay, so that if we were fools enough to foot the bill we'd actually be paying those men for fighting us? Paying them for killing Wigram? – and a whole lot more of our fellows too? No, it's obscene! It's a monstrous suggestion and you can't possibly mean it.’