Far Pavilions (181 page)

But the hope was no sooner born than he saw the Fakir and the rabble surrounding him begin to leap and yell and throw up their arms in frenzied welcome, and knew that this was no relieving force that was being hailed, but some form of enemy reinforcements, probably a fresh contingent of mutinous troops from the cantonments, thought Ash.

He did not see the guns that were being man-handled by scores of men through the narrow approaches by the Arsenal until both were well clear of the surrounding buildings and almost level with the cavalry lines. But the Guides on the barrack roof had seen them as they were manoeuvred through a breach in the mud wall and into the compound, and while a sepoy ran to tell Hamilton-Sahib of this new danger, the rest turned their fire on the scores of Afghans who were dragging and pushing the two guns towards the barracks.

The sepoy's news had spread through the Residency with lightning swiftness. But it is one of the advantages of military life that in times of crisis the issues are apt to be clearly defined, and a soldier is often faced with a simple choice: fight or die. No one had needed to wait for orders, and by the time Wally and the men who had been with him on the upper floor of the Envoy's House reached the courtyard, William and every active sepoy and sowar in the Residency had already assembled there.

All that was necessary was to tell the jawan who had brought the news to warn his companions to concentrate their fire on the enemy beyond the perimeter, and to send two men ahead to unbar the far doors that closed off the archway from the barrack courtyard. But even as they ran across the lane, both guns fired almost simultaneously. The men staggered as the ground rocked to the deafening crash of the double explosion, but reeled on, coughing and choking, through an inferno of smoke and flying debris and the reek of saltpetre.

The echoes of that thunderous sound reverberated around the compound and beat against the furthest walls of the Bala Hissar, sending flocks of crows flapping and cawing above the roofs of the palace, and drawing a howl of triumph from the mob as they saw the shells explode against the corner of the barrack block. But unlike the two buildings in the Residency, the outer walls of the barracks were not lath and plaster but built of mud bricks to a thickness of more than six feet, while the two corners at the western end were further protected by the fact that each contained a stone stairway to the roof.

The shells had therefore done little damage to the men behind the parapets, who, though momentarily blinded by smoke and debris and deafened by the noise, obeyed their orders, and lifting their sights continued to fire at the enemy as Wally and William, with twenty-one Guides, emerged from the archway below them and raced towards the guns.

The fight was a brief one, for the mutineers who had dragged the guns into position and fired them were exhausted by their efforts, while the rabble from the city had no taste for facing trained soldiers at close quarters, and fled at the sight of them. After a fierce ten minutes the mutineers had followed their example, abandoning the guns and leaving behind them more than a score of dead and wounded.

The cost to the Guides had been two men killed and four wounded, yet that by comparison was a far higher figure for a force whose numbers were being whittled down with frightening speed, and though they had captured the guns – and with them the shells that had been brought down from the Arsenal and abandoned when the amateur gunners fled – that too proved to be a hollow victory. For the guns were too heavy and the distance to the barracks too great; and now scores of enemy rifles and muskets were opening fire again…

Despite that storm of bullets the Guides had struggled desperately to pull their booty back, harnessing themselves to the ropes and straining to drag the unwieldy things over the dusty, stony ground. But it was soon clear that the task was beyond them: it would take too long, and to persist could only result in the entire party being killed.

They took the shells, though that was small comfort as it was obvious that further supplies would soon be hurried down from the Arsenal; but they could not even put the guns out of action, for in the heat and urgency of the moment one small but vital thing had slipped Wally's mind – the fact that though he alone among his men had been in uniform when the mutineers from the pay parade had invaded the compound, he had not been wearing his cross-belt, and had not thought to put it on since, or had time to do so. But a cross-belt carries two small items that are not intended for ornament but strictly for use: the ‘pickers’ that can be used, among other things, for spiking guns.

‘It's my own fault,’ said Wally bitterly. ‘I ought to have thought. If we'd even had a
nail
– anything. I'd clean forgotten we weren't properly dressed. Well, the only thing for it is to concentrate all our fire on those bloody guns and see that no one is able to re-load them again.’

The doors inside the archway had been closed and barred again behind them, and the survivors slaked their thirst from chattis of cold water that had been brought up from the hammam: Mussulmans as well as Unbelievers, for the regimental Mulvi had declared this to be a time of war, and at such times it is permissible for soldiers engaged in battle to break the fast of Ramadan.

Having drunk they had returned to the Residency which they had left barely a quarter of an hour ago – only to find it fulfof smoke, for the enemy behind the wall had not been idle while they were gone. More ladders had been pushed out from house-tops on the far side of the street, and while the Afghans, crawling along these perilous bridges, had reinforced the survivors of the fight on the stairway, their friends in the street below had hacked their way through the flimsy walls and thrust live coals and oil-soaked rags through holes they had made in the foundation.

The Residency and the compound, already hemmed in on three sides, was now being assailed from above and below as well, since besides possessing themselves of the stables and cavalry lines and every house-top in sight, the enemy had established themselves in force on the roof of the Mess House and had broken through its foundations.

The courtyard, the ground-floor rooms and the barrack-block were full of dead and dying men, and of the seventy-seven Guides who had seen the sun rise that morning, only thirty were left. Thirty… and the ‘troops of Midian’ who ‘prowled and howled around’ numbered – how many thousands? Four?… six?… eight thousand men?

For the first time that day Wally's heart sank, and facing the future squarely and clear-eyed he deliberately abandoned hope. But this was something that William, as a member of the Foreign and Political Department and an apostle of Peace by Negotiation and Compromise, was still not prepared to do.

William had returned from that abortive attack on the guns to exchange the unfamiliar sabre and service revolver for his shot-gun, and hastily filling his pockets with cartridges, he hurried up to the roof of the Envoy's House to fire at the Afghans who were massing on the roof of the higher house on the opposite side of the courtyard. It was only then that he became aware of the volume of smoke that was billowing out from the ground-floor rooms of the Mess House, and realized that if the fire took hold they were lost.

Yet even then he did not give up hope, but once again, lying on the roof among five jawans who were also engaged in discouraging the opposition entrenched on top of the Mess House, scribbled another desperate appeal to the Amir, using a blank page ripped from a small notebook he carried in his pocket. They could not hold out much longer, wrote William, and if His Highness did not come to their aid, their fate – and his own – was sealed. They could not believe that His Highness was prepared to stand aside and do nothing while his guests were murdered…

‘Take that to Hamilton-Sahib,’ said William, ripping out the page and handing it to one of the jawans. ‘Tell him he must find someone among the servants who will deliver it to the Amir.’

‘They will not go, Sahib,’ said the man, shaking his head. ‘They know that four Mussulmans have gone with letters and none have returned, and that the Hindu who went was hacked to pieces in full sight. Nevertheless –’

He tucked it in his belt, and wriggling away in the direction of the stairs, vanished down them in search of his Commanding Officer, whom he found over at the Mess House, firing from a window on the first floor at a group of mutineers who were attempting to reload the guns. Wally took the scrap of paper and dismissing the messenger with a brief nod read it through and wondered with a detached feeling of curiosity why William should think it was worth sending another appeal to the Amir, when the only tangible result of previous appeals had been one evasive reply that could hardly be matched for weakness and hypocrisy. In any case none of the messengers had returned, so it was always possible that all of them had met the same fate as the unfortunate Hindu, and it seemed pointless to Wally to send yet another to his death. But though the entire responsibility for the defence of the Residency had fallen on his shoulders, young Mr Jenkyns, as the Envoy's Secretary and Political Assistant, still represented the civil authority, and so if William wanted this letter sent, then it must be sent.

‘Taimus,’ called Wally.

‘Sahib?’ The sowar who had been firing from the other window lowered his carbine and turned to look at his Commanding Officer.

Wally said: ‘Jenkyns-Sahib has just written another letter to the Amir, asking for help. Do you think that you could reach the palace?’

‘I can try,’ said Taimus. He put his carbine down and came across to take the paper, and folding it small, hid it among his clothing.

Wally smiled and said quietly: ‘
Shukria, Shahzada
(Prince).
Khuda hafiz
!’

The man grinned at the title, saluted and went out to cross the lane into the barracks and survey the situation from the barrack roof, but a bare half-minute was enough to show him the impossibility of attempting to leave by the compound, for by now the mob were everywhere and not even a lizard could have got through. There was nothing for it but to go back to the Residency and see if he could not find some other way of escape. The back door had been blocked long ago, and since to have opened it again would have been to invite a flood of armed Afghans into the courtyard, he turned in desperation to the Envoy's House and went up to the roof, where one of the jawans who were still holding out there helped him up on to the curtain wall that shielded the roof from the view of the houses behind the Residency.

Standing there, he had been in full sight of the enemy on the roof of the Mess House and in the street below; and as he gazed down on the close-packed crowd of yelling, hate-distorted faces, he was suddenly filled with the same contempt for the mob that Cavagnari had felt much earlier that day. For Sowar Taimus, though serving as a trooper of the Guides, was also a prince of a royal line: a Shahzada – and an Afghan. His lip curled in disdain as he surveyed those contorted faces, and drawing a deep breath, he deliberately leapt into space, launching himself feet-first into the thick of the press below and landing on heads and shoulders that broke his fall.

The mob, momentarily stunned by shock, recovered itself and set on him with a howl of fury, but he fought his way through them, shouting that he was a prince and an Afghan and that he bore a message to the Amir; which would not have saved him had he not been recognized by a close friend, who rushing to the rescue had managed by dint of blows, high-words and cajolery to extract him from the clutches of the mob – battered and bleeding but alive – and helped him to reach the palace. But once there he had fared no better than anyone else.

The Amir was locked away, weeping, among his women; and though he had eventually agreed to see the Shahzada Taimus and to read the message he carried, he would only bewail his fate and reiterate that his Kismet was bad and that he was not to blame for this and could do nothing – nothing.

He had given orders that the Shahzada was to be detained, and this had been done. But though the Amir's Kismet was undoubtedly bad, Taimus's had proved to be far otherwise, because in the room into which he had been hurriedly thrust by the palace guards lay an Afghan who had been shot in the back during the first attack on the compound. The wounded man had been left to look after himself, and though by now he was in considerable pain, no one had done anything to help him because of the panic that prevailed in the palace. But Taimus had learned something of the treatment of wounds during his service in the Guides, and he had extracted the bullet with his knife, and having washed the wound and managed to staunch the bleeding, had bound it up with the sufferer's waist-cloth.

His grateful patient, who had proved to be a man of some standing, had repaid the debt by smuggling him out of the palace and arranging for his escape from Kabul. And Fate had been doubly kind to him that day, for not five minutes after he had leapt from the roof of the Envoy's House, and while he was still fighting his way forward through the frenzied crowd with his life hanging in the balance, behind him in the Residency the garrison who had been battling equally frantically to dowse the burning foundations of the Mess House were driven back by a sudden uprush of flame that burst through the blinding clouds of smoke, and seconds later the whole lower storey was ablaze.

There had been no question of saving the wounded; the fire had taken hold far too suddenly and violently to allow anyone to attempt it. Those who could do so had run for their lives, and scorched, choked and half blind, had stumbled across the smoke-filled courtyard to take refuge in the Envoy's House.

The Afghans on the roof of the burning building, realizing with what swiftness the flames would destroy that ramshackle wood and plaster structure, had scrambled back across their ladders in haste, and instantly transferred their attentions to the opposite house. Thrusting out other ladders onto the high parapet that Taimus had jumped from, they clambered across and leapt down among the half-dozen men who still held out there: and though their leaders died as they came, falling sideways into the street or pitching head-first on to the roof, those behind them pressed forward, and as William and the jawans reloaded they sprang down to the attack…