by Thalassa Ali
Mariana opened her mouth to ask precisely what advantages he meant, but the elderly Commander in Chief spoke first.
“That may be, and I certainly hope it is,” General Elphinstone observed in a kindly tone, “but nevertheless, it seems to me that there are too many small Afghan forts near our cantonment. I suggest we arrange to buy them all, and raze them to the ground. We would also be wise to throw a bridge over the wide irrigation canal that runs close to our eastern boundary.”
“Yes, a bridge would be useful,” returned Sir William, “but I am unsure, General, what the government in Calcutta will say about the little forts.” He signaled to a servant to refill Alexander Burnes's wineglass. “Surely there is nothing to be feared from a few small buildings, even if they are occupied by Afghans.”
Mariana frowned. He and Burnes were certainly sanguine over the arrangements for the cantonment. She glanced across the table at General Sale's son-in-law, in time to see a fleeting bitterness darken his face.
Captain Sturt, she remembered, had been the engineer in charge of building. From his expression, the cantonment's plan had not been his. Who, then, had been responsible? Was it the recently retired General Sir Willoughby Cotton, now replaced by General Elphinstone? And who had put poor old Elphinstone in charge of the British force, with his gout and his shaking hands?
“There is nothing to fear!” Alexander Burnes declared. “To date, our enterprise has been so successful that we have nothing to do but enjoy ourselves. I spend most of my time planning dinner parties at my house in the city. You have no idea how many Afghans are in attendance. I would say they compete for my invitations!”
“I quite agree,” put in his friend Captain Johnson. “It is quite wonderful how interesting Kabul can be.”
Lady Macnaghten gave a little tinkling laugh. “But you must be joking, Captain. From what I hear, Kabul is as filthy as any Oriental town.” Peacock-feather eyes rolled as she waved her fan.
“I understand,” Uncle Adrian offered quietly, “that one of the more difficult chiefs has been seen several times north of here, in Kohdaman.”
Sir William smiled expansively. “Do you mean the insolent braggart who gave that unexpected tent-pegging exhibition at the horse races a month ago?”
Uncle Adrian nodded.
“Believe me, Lamb, that fellow is no threat to us at all. He does nothing but ride about the countryside with a handful of men. If it came to a real fight, he would run like a rabbit. Besides, he returned last week to the Pishin valley, where he belongs.”
“It is a wonder,” Burnes put in lazily, changing the subject, “how easily one can obtain brandy and cigars from India these days.”
On Mariana's right, the Hero of Ghazni shifted heavily in his seat. Needing distraction, she turned to him. Here was someone worth speaking to: General Sir Robert Sale, who had been made a Knight Commander of the Bath two years earlier, after his successful siege of the mighty fortress of Ghazni ninety-three miles south of Kabul. It must have been a great sight—the invading British Army of the Indus moving north toward Kabul on its way to oust Dost Mohammad from his throne, taking every fortress in its path
“I am delighted to meet you, Sir Robert,” she began eagerly, imagining the letter she would write to her father in the morning, describing their conversation. “I understand that the fortress of Ghazni had never been taken until your successful action two years ago. Your victory certainly parallels that of—”
“My dear young lady,” he interrupted, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I never discuss military matters with females. Let us speak instead,” he added, gesturing carelessly, “of something nearer to your heart—bonnets, perhaps, or the best view for an afternoon outing.”
She stiffened. “Sir Robert, I—”
“My wife,” he went on, glancing down the table, “is the only woman who knows a jot about war.” He smiled, one of his eyes closing due to the long scar down one side of his face. “Now there is a woman who understands a good fight.”
Stung, Mariana raised her chin. “In that case, General,” she replied, “I shall save for Lady Sale my comparison of the storming of Ghazni to the Siege of Constantinople in 1453.”
Hero of Ghazni, indeed.
“What?” He cleared his throat. “The Siege of Constantinople, you say?”
“Yes, indeed.” She leaned forward. “Here, the naval element was missing, but the fortifications at Constantinople can scarcely have been stronger than the ones at Ghazni. In your case, of course, there was a weakness in the Kabul Gate, while in their case it was the Kerkoporta that had been—”
“Yes, yes,” he barked. “And now, may I ask why you are so interested in military history, when you should be finding yourself a husband? My daughter here,” he flapped a hand toward the plain young woman seated opposite, “was married when she was seventeen. You look much older than that. How old are you?”
Perhaps Sale was a good general. Perhaps he looked after the men under his command, but Mariana no longer cared. Her face heating, she turned smartly away from him.
On her other side, Fitzgerald was busy with the doddering old General Elphinstone. Until that conversation ended, she and General Sale seemed doomed to sit side by side, trapped in uncomfortable silence.
They were not. “And now, Lady Macnaghten,” he trumpeted, turning casually away from Mariana, “how did you enjoy Peshawar when you were there? I found the Sikh governor most hospitable when I was there.”
As Mariana toyed angrily with a plate of river fish, Fitzgerald turned toward her.
“I wonder, Miss Givens,” he murmured, “if you would like, some afternoon, to hear my account of the storming of Ghazni.”
“He knows nothing about Mehmet the Second's Siege of Constantinople,” she whispered furiously. “He does not even know that it marked the end of—”
“—the Middle Ages,” they said in unison, then smiled together for the first time in over two years.
He smiled crookedly. “General Sale does not need to know anything. He's a fighting general, not a thinking one. He makes certain he is wounded in every battle. His men will do anything for him.” He dropped his voice. “No one will tell you this, but he nearly lost the battle at Ghazni. Fortunately everything turned out all right in the end.”
Mariana stared. “He nearly lost?”
“He ordered his men to retreat when they should have advanced, but changed his mind at the last instant. It was lucky for him.”
As if by magic, Lady Macnaghten's voice rose above the hum of conversation. “Now, General Sale,” she fluted, “do tell us all of your exploits at Ghazni. We understand you were exceedingly brave, as always.”
“Ah.” General Sale smiled again, his face bunching around his scar. “They were nothing. I was wounded in the foot, at first, but that was nothing. My one moment of danger came after I was felled by a blow to the face.” He gestured carelessly. “Major Havelock should be credited with saving my life. He turned up, usefully, as my assailant and I were grappling upon the ground. I ordered him to run his sword through the body of the infidel. He did so, and I escaped.”
“Hah!” crowed Burnes. “ ‘The body of the infidel’!”
Infidel? Without faith?
“Then they were pagans?” Mariana heard herself ask. “But I had thought they were all—”
“Mohammedans, of course,” Sale interrupted heartily. “Wretched, godless Asiatics, every one of them.” He gave a satisfied grunt. “There was great carnage. They all fought like mad dogs. Some of the wounded tried to escape by the blown-in Kabul Gate, and fell onto the burning timbers, where they were roasted in their sheepskin coats. It was most satisfying.”
“Hear, hear.” Lady Sale raised her wineglass.
“Hear, hear,” repeated the others, all except for Mariana, who dropped her fish knife noisily and deliberately onto her plate.
The table grew silent. Sir William Macnaghten peered in her direction, his glass still raised. At the table's far
end, Lady Macnaghten frowned, her fan motionless in her fingers. Across the table from Mariana, Aunt Claire made little flapping gestures, begging her not to speak. Beside her, Fitzgerald cleared his throat warningly.
But what if she did speak? What if she told these self-satisfied, overstuffed people that the Afghan “mad dogs” they referred to had only been defending their own fortress, that Muslims were very far from godless, that it was not satisfying for human beings to be roasted to death?
What if she told them of the horrors she had seen in Lahore?
She imagined the terrible scene that would follow her outburst— the accusations of brash ignorance, of disloyalty to the Queen, of siding with the enemy. Who would speak first, General Sale, his features swollen with martial fury, Sir William Macnaghten, his thick brows knitted in disbelief, or Lady Sale, whose attack would be the deadliest of all?
What right, they would say, had she, an unmarried woman, to voice an unfavorable opinion about a British army action? Who was she, a person of no great fortune or family, whose reputation had already been blackened once by scandal, to criticize her elders and betters?
All this would mean the ruin of Lady Macnaghten's carefully arranged party. Lady Macnaghten, who was generously trying to help her, would never speak to her again.
But General Sale, it seemed, was too intent on his remembered triumph to take her breach of manners into account. “The horses were a different matter,” he boomed, shaking his head. “Dozens of them had been wounded in the assault. When we entered the fort, we found them galloping about, hysterical and dangerous. In spite of all our efforts to spare them, quite a number had to be shot.”
“A pity,” agreed Burnes.
Macnaghten nodded sorrowfully.
Mariana gazed from face to face, searching for someone who shared her feelings.
“I shall be leaving for Kandahar in the morning.” Fitzgerald leaned toward her, interrupting her troubled thoughts. “I do not know when I shall return. May I write to you while I am gone?”
“Yes, of course.” She nodded absently. She had studied military strategy since she was twelve. All that time she had likened war to a game of chess
General Sale turned to her. “And now, young lady,” he trumpeted, “may I ask if you have seen our cantonment?”
“No, Sir Robert, I have not,” she replied flatly.
“Since you have such a keen interest in military matters, if you will present yourself at the gate at three o'clock sharp tomorrow afternoon, one of my subalterns will bring you inside and show you about. And bring your uncle. I like him.”
“Thank you,” was all she could manage.
Now, Mariana,” her uncle told her as they rode under the archway of the cantonment's main gate, “as we shall not be invited again to see the workings of the cantonment, I encourage you to examine it thoroughly. It is rather impressive, is it not?” He flushed happily beneath his top hat as he surveyed the huge, enclosed military compound.
Mariana smiled carefully, not wishing to disturb his expansive mood. Several times recently, she had caught her uncle staring into space, his face creased with worry. He never told her what information he had gained from his informants about the true state of Afghanistan, or whether Sir William Macnaghten had paid attention to his warnings. But whatever her uncle's concerns were on that score, she could see that he had every confidence in the safety of the cantonment.
This was no time to tell him how puzzling and unwise she found the location of the cantonment and Residence compounds, both overlooked by nearby hills and surrounded on every side by occupied forts.
Why on earth had Sir William Macnaghten so airily dismissed General Elphinstone's plan to buy and destroy those buildings?
Furthermore, the ground on which the cantonment and Residence stood seemed to have been chosen for its beauty rather than its utility, for it was wet orchard land, full of trees and covered like a checkerboard with deep irrigation ditches.
How did they expect to move heavy guns about on this sort of terrain?
She would also not mention that the very length of the cantonment's outer walls, enclosing an area nearly a thousand by six hundred yards, would make it extremely difficult to defend in the event of trouble.
She looked about her. To her left, past a small artillery park with thirteen guns of various sizes, an orchard had inexplicably been left standing, rendering the high rampart between the northern end of the cantonment and the Residence compound nearly invisible through the trees. To her right, neat rows of mud brick barracks and officers’ quarters occupied a large area. Behind them she glimpsed the walled compounds of the generals. Straight ahead of her on a large parade ground, groups of red-coated infantrymen wheeled to shouted orders. In the shade of the barracks, other soldiers sat in groups, cleaning weapons and polishing brass.
Pack mules filed past, their harnesses jingling, led by grooms in loose, native clothes. A troop of mustachioed cavalrymen trotted toward the parade ground on tall, handsome chargers. Camels strode through a side gate, carrying heavy sacks of foodstuffs.
“I shall ask our guide,” her uncle continued, in a businesslike tone, “to show you the full view from each corner bastion, and to give the measurements of the surrounding rampart wall and its parapets. You have already passed the commissariat fort between here and the city many times, of course, and you know that the fresh water supply comes from the irrigation canal outside our eastern wall.”
He looked about him. “I am certain we shall be allowed to watch the infantry drilling while we are here, but I doubt we shall see an artillery practice today, since no one seems to be anywhere near the guns. Even so,” he added happily, “that should be enough to satisfy you and the Would-Be-General.”
Lost in thought, Mariana nodded again.
She did not have to climb the cantonment's corner bastions to know the location of the several small forts that Macnaghten had taken so lightly at dinner. All were within a few hundred yards of the outer walls, one of them almost between the cantonment itself and the commissariat fort where all the food supplies had been stored.
“Here comes our guide.” Her uncle gestured toward the curly-haired youth who hurried toward them. “It is a pity Fitzgerald has left us for Kandahar. A horse gunner would do a better job of explaining our artillery than this poor little infantryman.”
Mariana sniffed to herself. Thirteen guns scarcely qualified as “our artillery.”
She returned the young officer's bow. She must stop worrying and pay attention. After all, Papa would like nothing better than a detailed account of the cantonment.
But as the young man began to speak, she did not hear what he was saying, for the vision she had seen all those weeks before at Butkhak returned without warning. It filled her mind's eye with mourning figures, and her heart with dread. She blinked, begging it to leave her, but it remained—the same black-clad funeral procession her munshi had refused to explain, marching somberly past her and across the empty parade ground, to the beat of invisible drums.
Her uncle silenced their guide with an upraised hand. “Is something wrong, my dear?” he asked her.
“Nothing, Uncle Adrian.” She pressed a damp hand to her forehead. “Nothing at all.”
He nudged his horse closer, his face full of concern, then signaled to their guide.
“Forgive us, Lieutenant Mathieson,” he said. “Miss Givens is not at all well. We must return to the Residence compound at once.”
“No, Uncle Adrian,” she objected. “I—”
“Nonsense,” he interrupted firmly. “You have gone quite white.”
As he led her slowly home, Mariana noticed her munshi walking in the lane, on the arm of their strange young visitor.
What did Munshi Sahib know? she wondered. And why had he given her that hollow look, his hand tightening on the Afghan boy's shoulder?
“I DO not like the boy,” Dittoo said firmly, as the English lady and her uncle rode toward the bungalow.
&nb
sp; He spoke with the conviction of a man experienced with foreigners. “Bibi,” he declared, “knows nothing of these people. Without knowing it, she has let a thieving little dancing boy into this house. And I can tell you something else. Now that he is here, he will be difficult to get rid of.”
Having said his piece, he hawked and spat into the dust beneath the tree where he squatted with his two companions. Birds chattered above his head. A goat bleated in a neighbor's garden.
Ghulam Ali grimaced. “I would have told her not to take him in,” he pointed out, “but she sent me inside to fetch Munshi Sahib.”
“You should have said something, Yar Mohammad,” Dittoo added accusingly. “You had the opportunity, but you stood there and said nothing.”
“It was for Munshi Sahib to decide if the boy should stay.” The tall groom got to his feet, and turned far-seeing eyes upon the other two men. “It was not for us to offer our opinions,” he added, as he started away to take the lady's horse.
Dittoo clucked to himself as he hunched his way to Mariam Bibi's bedroom with a reviving cup of tea. Her munshi was a clever old gentleman, there was no doubt of that. But he was old, and old men made mistakes.
This was certainly a serious error. How would they manage, with a boy of ill repute in the house?
Nothing would upset Dittoo more than to see his unusual English lady hurt.
He had served her through many adventures over the past three years, but the first of these, her miraculous rescue of Saboor, had been the greatest.
He sighed, missing the child.
He would never forget the moment on a winter night in Lahore, when he entered her tent and found her sitting on her bed, a badly treated native baby in her arms.
In his twenty-five years of serving the British, Dittoo had never seen a European woman weep over one of his own people.
When it dawned on him that the child was Saboor, Maharajah Ranjit Singh's heavily guarded child hostage, whom the Maharajah believed had magical powers, his embarrassment at the lady's previous, unpredictable behavior had turned to admiration.