Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  And why could they not see that innocents like Dittoo and her poor, terrified aunt would be forced to pay the unfair price of their folly?

  She forced herself to her feet and began to pack.

  They would all be lucky, she thought, as she tucked Haji Khan's paper securely into her bodice, if that price were no more than the misery of living in a barracks, or a tent in the snow.

  “Captain Sturt was stabbed in the face yesterday, by a courtier at the Bala Hisar,” her uncle told her two hours later, as they stood waiting for their horses. “His tongue and face were paralyzed. For hours he could neither swallow nor speak. Lady Sale and her daughter have nursed him all night. Thank God, he is now expected to recover.”

  Uncle Adrian looked puffy-eyed, as if he, too, had not slept. “It seems that the Afghans are gathering in large numbers. The road between here and the city is full of armed villagers on their way to join the uprising. Please say nothing about this to your aunt. I cannot wait for General Sale and the First Brigade to arrive.”

  The horses had come. Yar Mohammad led Mariana's mare to the mounting steps, his demeanor as calm and watchful as always. He must have worn that same expression as he led her safely from Haji Khan's house, his long kukri knife ready in his hand.

  He had been her faithful protector for two years: a bony-faced mountain villager who never seemed to hurry, but whose quick action had once saved her when she was bitten by a snake, and who had guarded her from the child thief who had come all those months ago to steal Saboor.

  Every time Mariana looked at Yar Mohammad, or at blunt, faithful Ghulam Ali, she thought of Lahore, and Saboor, and of Hassan Ali Khan.

  She ducked her head to hide the tears gathering in her eyes. Please let nothing ill happen to them now….

  Followed by a train of laden donkeys, they pushed their way through the gate in the rampart wall that divided the Residence compound from the military cantonment.

  Looking about her, Mariana saw that everything had changed.

  When she had last seen it, the open parade ground had been occupied by groups of red-coated soldiers practicing intricate drills. It was now home to rows of tents, piles of cannonballs, and sprawling heaps of baggage. The sounds of thudding hammers and rasping saws came from what remained of the parade ground's open space.

  A white blur of distant tents had appeared along the cantonment's southern rampart. The native bazaar, it seemed, had been brought inside the cantonment's protective walls.

  An excited crowd of Indian men, women, and children milled about near the barracks. As Mariana watched, several British officers appeared and herded them out of the way.

  Near the gate, red-coated infantrymen climbed ladders to the parapet, to stand guard behind its toothlike fortifications.

  When one of them pointed south, toward the city, Mariana noticed a rent beneath the arm of his coat.

  Were all the soldiers as unkempt as that man? She frowned as half a dozen native lancers rode past her. They were indeed, she concluded, observing their patched trousers and threadbare coats. They must not have been issued new uniforms for a year at least.

  Accompanied by heavily bearded Indian gunners, a team of horses pulled an artillery piece toward the main gate, its long barrel pointing backward, while a mounted British officer barked orders beside them.

  No one had taken any notice of Mariana and her family.

  “Why are we stopping? Why are they putting me down?” cried Aunt Claire from her palanquin when Mariana and her uncle reined in their horses, looking for someone to show them their new quarters.

  “I think,” Uncle Adrian said, pointing toward a walled compound just visible past the tents and baggage, “it would be wise to go to Lady Sale's house for now, until things are calmer here.”

  Half an hour later, they, Lady Sale, and a subdued Lady Macnaghten sat on high-backed chairs in the Sales’ spartan drawing room, while bustling footfalls overhead told them of the continuing effort to care for the wounded Captain Sturt.

  Attending all night to her son-in-law had done nothing to reduce Lady Sale's accustomed forcefulness. “This insurrection has been mismanaged from the beginning,” she said bluntly, as she took a glass of sherry from a tray. “We have only the supineness of our own command, and their silly fantasy of our security to blame for these attacks.”

  “Exactly.” Mariana opened her hands, delighted to find someone who agreed with her. “And I cannot imagine why we have not avenged Sir Alexander's murder. After all, it was four days ago. If we were Afghans—”

  “Murder? Four days ago?” Lady Sale's rangy body came to immediate, stiff attention. “How dare you say such a horrible thing? And who are you to claim knowledge of Sir Alexander's fate?”

  Mariana shrank into her chair, her heart thudding. Although the room was cold, she felt hot moisture seeping down her back. She did not dare look at her uncle.

  “But we all know he has taken refuge with friends in the city!” Lady Macnaghten's hand trembled as she reached for her sherry. Her hair, Mariana now noticed, was the tiniest bit untidy, and her gown less than perfectly ironed. “We all know he has only a minor leg wound.”

  “Miss Givens is only guessing,” Uncle Adrian assured her. “My niece is a very foolish young lady,” he added, glaring at Mariana.

  “And a disrespectful one at that,” Lady Sale added nastily. “She has no right to remark upon the policies of Her Majesty's appointed officials. If there is anything I cannot abide,” she sniffed, “it is a croaker.

  “We have no more than three days’ worth of food within the cantonment walls,” she went on, exempting herself from any such charge. “All the rest of our stores are in the commissariat fort. If we lose it, we shall have lost more than the vital food and medical stores inside it. The insurgents will also have gained control of the Kohistan Road, and cut our contact with the city.”

  “The city?” Aunt Claire frowned. “But why should we want contact with Kabul? Is it not full of Afghans?”

  Lady Sale stared at her. “The city, my dear lady,” she said loudly and slowly, as if to an imbecile, “is where everything is.”

  “I am sure,” Lady Macnaghten put in with forced brightness, “we shall all manage somehow. My husband is very skilled at talking to the Afghans. He speaks Persian, you know….”

  Her voice faded. Mariana tried to catch her eye, but she looked away.

  Uncle Adrian cleared his throat. “Let us talk of something else,” he said firmly. “I understand, Lady Sale, that Captain Sturt is now able to speak. You must be very relieved.”

  “I am indeed.” Lady Sale offered him a narrow-lipped smile. “He appeared to have been dreadfully wounded at first, but he is now sitting up and asking for soup.”

  UNCLE ADRIAN and his family had been assigned the shared quarters of three junior officers: three cupboardlike bedrooms and an ill-furnished sitting room with a fireplace and two windows looking toward the infantry barracks. As soon as they arrived at the low, ugly building, Mariana shut herself into her room, a tiny, ice-cold chamber that seemed, from articles that still remained, to have belonged to a Lieutenant Cowperthwaite.

  She would listen to her aunt's complaints later.

  Where was Fitzgerald? She opened her large trunk and surveyed its contents, hoping he was not out in the open, being shot at by Afghans. But he must be, for he had not sent them so much as a single message.

  It was no use wondering what had become of Hassan.

  “It is all your fault that we have not been invited to dine with Lady Sale,” Aunt Claire trumpeted accusingly from her palanquin that evening, as they wove their way across the dark parade ground on their way to dinner.

  She was, of course, correct. And as a worried-looking subaltern showed them to a makeshift table in a corner of the British cavalry officers’ mess, Mariana saw that as disagreeable as dinner at Lady Sale's might have been, this one promised to be even worse.

  They were not alone. Sharing their table were two silent of
ficers’ wives and their seven collective children, all of whom seemed too dispirited to eat. But worse than their lackluster companions, and Mariana's feeling of being an interloper in that martial setting, was the general atmosphere of the dining room.

  The officers at their long table were festively enough dressed, in elaborate mess kits covered in gold braid and epaulettes, and the room was candlelit and full of regimental silver, but the conversation was subdued, and the faces around the table, young and old, fresh and weather-beaten, looked sullen and angry.

  The food, when it came, consisted of soggy rice and stringy boiled chicken. As she pushed it about her plate, Mariana listened to the sounds around her—the hushed voices of the children, the scrape of knives and forks against china, and an occasional, barked order for more wine.

  There was no laughter, no joy in that room.

  It was no wonder, Mariana thought, that the officers preferred drinking to talking. It was widely known that two thousand gunmen could be seen waiting on the nearby hills, but for all that and for all the reports of a steady stream of armed villagers heading for the city, no orders had come from General Elphinstone to launch a proper attack.

  “May I trouble you for the salt?” whispered one of the wives.

  Mariana could offer the woman only a half-smile.

  “Only time will tell what lies ahead,” her uncle said glumly, as they braved the cold walk back to their quarters, with Aunt Claire's palanquin bearers puffing behind them.

  Half an hour later, someone knocked at Mariana's door.

  “It is Charles Mott, Miss Givens,” said a muffled voice. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  He wore no coat. He shivered in the narrow passageway, his top hat in his hands. “I apologize for intruding at this late hour,” he said rapidly, “but I fear greatly for your safety. I know that Mr. Lamb will never desert his post, but I feel I must tell you that there is a way for you and Mrs. Lamb to get away from here before it is too late.”

  “Too late?” She frowned into his earnest face.

  “Yes.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I cannot go into it, but you must go to one of the Afghan chiefs and ask him for asylum for yourself and your aunt.

  “Asylum is an unwritten law of the Pushtuns,” he added. “You will be perfectly safe in their custody. Of course Mr. Lamb would never avail himself—”

  “Panah?” she interrupted. “You want me to ask for panah?”

  He nodded. “You have heard of it. I should have known. Please do it, Miss Givens. It is your only hope. I could not,” he added, his face filled with painful longing, “bear it, if anything were to happen to—”

  “Thank you for your advice, Mr. Mott,” Mariana said hastily. “I shall keep it in mind.”

  He must be mad, she thought, as she prepared for sleep. No circumstances, no matter how dire, would force her to seek protection from her enemies.

  SHE WAS startled awake at dawn by the thudding of artillery. As she sat up on Lieutenant Cowperthwaite's string bed, her quilt to her chin, Dittoo appeared with her coffee tray. “The tents are very cold, Bibi,” he offered from between chattering teeth, “and there is only enough coffee for one more day.”

  Hoping the sound of the guns indicated some positive action, she gulped her cooling coffee, buttoned herself into her warmest gown, pushed her curls into the first bonnet she found, and opened her door.

  There was no one in the corridor. She pushed open the heavy outer door and stepped onto the beaten earth outside.

  Between rows of tents, fires crackled and smoked, each one surrounded by a cluster of native soldiers with shawls thrown over their uniforms. Hollow coughing echoed from row to row.

  No Europeans were visible save Lady Sale, who had emerged, booted and bonneted, from her compound across from the officers’ quarters, a riding crop in her hand.

  “What are you doing here?” she inquired coldly, when Mariana went up to greet her. “You should be attending to your aunt.”

  Mariana raised her chin. “I wish to know what is going on. I want to see the fighting.”

  “You cannot see it from here.” Lady Sale pointed upward. “I have already tried to get a view from my rooftop, with no success. I can hear the artillery plainly enough from there, but the battle itself is out of sight.”

  She raked Mariana up and down with narrowed eyes. “Yesterday, with great authority, you announced that Sir Alexander Burnes had been murdered four days before. You must tell me where you got that information. Do not attempt to lie to me. If you do, I shall know it at once.”

  Mariana stiffened. “I cannot say.”

  “I do not like you,” Lady Sale said flatly, “but I can see that you are an unusual young woman. I will not repeat what you tell me.”

  She was imperious and rude, but she did not look like a gossip.

  “Very well,” Mariana replied. “I was in Kabul when Burnes was killed. The mob rushed past us, shouting that Aminullah Khan had ordered an attack on his house. It was clear to me, and everyone else, that he would be dead within the hour.”

  Lady Sale raised an impatient hand. “What an utterly preposterous—”

  “I was dressed,” Mariana added evenly, “as an Afghan woman.”

  Lady Sale's hand froze in mid-gesture.

  “And that,” Mariana concluded, “is all I am willing to say.”

  Refusing to drop her eyes, she returned Lady Sale's stare.

  In the end, it was Lady Sale who looked away.

  “Well, then,” she said briskly, after a moment's pause, “since you are standing here, you may as well come with me.”

  Without another word, she strode off at a rapid pace, past rows of tents, barracks, and horse lines, toward the south-facing side of the cantonment, home now to the shabby tents of thousands of former occupants of the Indian bazaar, who, like the soldiers, now squatted in groups, warming their hands over smoky cooking fires, babies on their laps.

  After pushing her way by heaps of baggage and tethered animals and driving off a pursuing crowd of barefoot Indian children with menacing pokes of her riding crop, she pointed to the cantonment's outer rampart wall.

  “We can see the native bazaar from here,” she announced.

  Beside the southwest corner bastion, a substantial crack in the wall afforded a clear view of a crooked lane in the now-deserted bazaar. Lady Sale put her eye to it. A moment later, she drew back, grim satisfaction on her face.

  “As I suspected,” she said, drawing back to let Mariana look, “it is full of the enemy. They have reached the very foot of our outer wall.”

  Mariana peered out. On either side of the lane, double-storied buildings had been thrown together to provide shops and housing for the blacksmiths, musicians, tailors, merchants, and other camp followers who had accompanied the army from India.

  At first she saw nothing, but then a white-clad figure emerged from a low door, carrying something in its arms. The figure, that of a heavily armed man, flitted across the lane and out of sight behind another door, as a musket ball from the parapet above raised a little puff of dust by his flying feet.

  “Since it cannot be seen from here,” Lady Sale said matter-of-factly, “the present fighting must be taking place at the commissariat fort, which is out of sight through the trees. If they had taken the elementary step of keeping our food and medical stores inside the cantonment, none of this would have happened.” She sighed. “All the wine and beer are there as well.”

  Drums beat the call to arms. A short while later, a body of red-coated European infantrymen, accompanied by a gun and six gunners, quick-marched past them on their way to the main gate.

  How many of those men would return alive? Mariana shuddered.

  As if in response to her question, a cart pulled in through the same gate. A score of wounded native soldiers had been flung into it, as if in the midst of battle. One of them sat against the side of the cart, sobbing hoarsely. Shiny blood covered one side of his uniform, staining his white cr
oss belt.

  When the cart turned, she saw that his left arm had been nearly severed at the shoulder.

  “That reminds me,” Lady Sale said briskly, “we shall be needing bandages. I shall expect you tomorrow morning. Bring every sheet and towel you can spare. We shall need all our strength to hold out until my husband returns.”

  As much as she disliked General Sale, Mariana could not wait to see that old, scar-faced veteran lead his reinforcements in through the cantonment gate.

  “I KNOW everything!” Nur Rahman cried that afternoon, as Munshi Sahib removed his shoes outside Mariana's door. “There was a battle at a fort near the main road. I heard the story from a man who was there.”

  “But where?” Mariana demanded. “At which fort?”

  Please, let it not be the commissariat fort

  “The one where the food stores are kept.” He pointed toward the southwest. “Thousands of people have come, hungry for the wheat and beans and rice, and the tea and oil and sugar. They are carrying it all away.”

  Mariana dropped into her chair and ran a hand over her face. What would they do now? How would the babies from the bazaar or the small children from last evening survive a siege in freezing weather?

  Her teacher entered and gestured for silence, but Nur Rahman was unstoppable. “All the nearby forts are full of gunmen,” he went on excitedly, “and so is the King's Garden. They have blocked the road to—”

  “Enough!” Munshi Sahib flapped an authoritative hand toward the doorway, and turned to Mariana. “With your kind permission, Bibi,” he said gently, “Nur Rahman and I will take our leave. This is not a good day for a lesson.”

  “No.” She reached out a pleading hand. “Please, stay with me.”

  He looked into her face, then nodded serenely, his qaraquli hat elegant on his narrow head. “I shall stay if you wish, Bibi,” he agreed, “but today will be a holiday from the poetry of Sa'adi and Hafiz. Instead, I shall tell you a story, or rather the first part of a story, for it is too long to be told all at once.”