Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  “Where?” Aunt Claire's fingers closed on Mariana's knee.

  Mariana started. Lieutenant Harry Fitzgerald was passing not a hundred feet away, on a gray gelding Mariana recognized from two years earlier. How could she have missed that distinctive uniform with its black, shiny helmet and long, scarlet horsehair plume? How could she have missed Fitzgerald's handsome Roman profile or his strong, stocky body, so different from Hassan's long slim form in its flowing Eastern clothes?

  Panic overtook her. She looked away, unable to speak.

  Aunt Claire pinched her leg. “Is he among them?”

  “Do they not look handsome in their dress uniforms?” fluted Lady Macnaghten.

  Lady Sale sniffed audibly.

  All the participants had ranged themselves along the sidelines, to wait for their events. Fitzgerald now stood near the finish line, among a group of British officers.

  To her relief, he did not turn or look upward toward the tents.

  He was not in the first event, a display of charging drills by the 5th Light Cavalry. Nor was he in the second. Keeping her eyes from him, Mariana tried to summon her usual curiosity as preparations were made for the third event.

  Men had been hammering tent pegs into the ground fifty yards down the course, each peg marked with a colorful flag. Twenty yards beyond the pegs, two more flags marked a finish line. More men appeared beside the track, with drums of varying sizes suspended from their necks. As they beat a steady, hypnotic rhythm, four tribesmen rode toward the starting line, each man carrying a lance.

  “They call this naiza bazi,” Lady Sale's officer said helpfully. “Each horseman must ride down the course, spear one of the pegs at full gallop, then carry it over the finish line without dropping it.”

  “There is no need to tell me,” snapped Lady Sale. “I know tent-pegging when I see it.”

  Lances upright, the riders turned their backs to the course and waited for the signal, their horses dancing, shoulder to shoulder.

  “But those horses are all entire,” Lady Sale cried over the din of the drums. “Stallions, all of them. How extraordinary!”

  At a squealing trumpet blast from the Amir's enclosure, the four animals spun about and charged in perfect unison down the course, their riders bent low over their necks, lances lowered and ready.

  The drumming rose to a crescendo. As it did, all four horses launched themselves into the air as if they were clearing an invisible jump. An instant later, they landed and galloped on as all four lances swept upright, a tent peg impaled on each one.

  “Ah,” cried Lady Sale, “what horsemanship!”

  “How romantic,” sighed Lady Macnaghten.

  After three more rounds of tent-pegging, it was Fitzgerald's turn at last: a four-mile race. Mariana watched reluctantly as he rode to the starting line with several other officers: two from the 5th, and two others whose uniforms Mariana did not recognize. Other horsemen joined them, a pair of wild-looking mustachioed men from the Irregular Horse, and a handsome Afghan boy on a tall black mount.

  “Another stallion,” observed Lady Sale.

  “They are to ride to the end of the course, circle a plane tree at the end, and then return,” said the officer.

  Another trumpet blast and the horses were off in a thundering line. The young Afghan was in the lane nearest the tents. Mariana saw his whip arm rise and fall.

  Fitzgerald must have known she would be among the spectators, but he had not looked up to find her. Mariana searched the galloping crowd, a hand to her eyes, but could see only dusty confusion as the field pulled away.

  A cloud of fine grit rose over the spectators and filled the tent. Lady Macnaghten and Aunt Claire held lace handkerchiefs to their faces. The pregnant woman coughed noisily.

  Lady Sale took no notice of the dust.

  Thousands of Afghans stood on the slope below the tents and all along the edge of the course, watching as the horses returned, strung out in a line by now, a cavalry officer out in front on a tiring bay. Mariana looked for Fitzgerald's gray gelding, but could see only the big black stallion closing in on the lead, his young rider standing in the stirrups, his clothes billowing as he drove his horse to the finish, a thin arm lifting and falling in time with his horse's stride.

  A moment later it was over. With a burst of speed, the black stallion overtook the bay. As it charged across the line, the boy rider threw his head back and spread his arms in victory.

  “I should like to see,” Lady Sale said tartly, “how that native child would have fared if he had been wearing a tight uniform and a dragoon helmet.”

  Fitzgerald was eighth.

  After a few shorter races, all won by British officers, the meet was finished. The winners pushed their way up the crowded slope to receive their prizes from the Amir.

  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 horsemen appeared in the dusty distance. “The races are over. No one else is supposed to—”

  Long lances at the ready, twelve horsemen 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 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 horsemen?” Mariana murmured to her uncle's assistant, 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 assistant 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 hoarsely.

  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 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 Pishin 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 grass 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 munshi 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 God 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 municipal 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 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.”

  “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 passes 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 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 assured 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 troops and more 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!”