by Jane Feather
“Yes, of course,” Lady Sale said stiffly. “If I was mistaken, then I ask your pardon. But someone has to regulate matters in the present state of affairs. All standards could be scattered to the four winds if we permitted it, with no one knowing what is to happen to us all, and those savages whooping and leaping outside the gates.”
“Quite so,” Kit said with another bow. “I bid you good morning, ma’am.”
He went out into the cold morning, grinning unashamedly at the ease and satisfaction of his victory. But his satisfaction did not last beyond the front door to the headquarters bungalow.
“Oh, Ralston, I just sent a message to your bungalow.” Lieutenant Watson greeted him distractedly, then jumped suddenly to attention and saluted. “Beg your pardon, sir. I forgot about your promotion. Congratulations, sir.”
Kit waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m not about to stand on ceremony. What’s amiss? More than the usual,” he added.
“It seems the rebels are occupying the forts of Mahmood Khan and Mahomed Shereef,” the lieutenant said. “They’re threatening the southwestern flank of the cantonments, and are blocking our road to the commissariat fort.”
“As someone warned us they would do.” Bob came into the adjutant’s office, raising an eyebrow at Kit, who nodded grimly.
“We’re going to have to pay more attention to those pronouncements,” he commented. “So what’s to be done?”
“We’ve just received a message from Warren at the commissariat fort, saying that he’s in danger of being cut off. The general has ordered that he withdraw and the fort and its supplies be abandoned. A detachment has been sent to cover the withdrawal.”
Kit stared in horror. “You cannot be serious. There’s but two days’ supplies in the cantonment, and no possibility of replenishing them.”
“I think our esteemed commander has decided in his muddled fashion that having erred by ignoring Colin’s plight, he won’t err again.”
“But this is quite different! Anyway, all Colin needed was reinforcements to continue his resistance. Ignoring a garrison under attack or abandoning it are not the only alternatives. What about fighting back, for God’s sake?”
“You tell the general. The commissary officer has been trying to get him to understand the realities for the last half hour.”
“What of Macnaghten?”
“Busy with Mohun Lal, apparently. Plotting their nasty little plots.”
Kit grimaced. “It makes my skin crawl just to think of it.” He turned at the sound of running feet. The door burst open to admit a breathless, red-faced ensign.
“Oh, sir … sir …” He saluted belatedly at the two captains. “I have a message for the general, sir.”
“Well, give it to the adjutant,” Kit said, indicating Lieutenant Watson. “And take a deep breath, Ensign.”
The youngster did so and said, “The detachment sent to bring off Lieutenant Warren and his men have had heavy losses, sir, from the Afghan flanking fire and the occupied forts. They have had to fall back.”
Kit nodded. “I’ll take the message to the general, Watson.” He knocked on the general’s door and went in on the quavering invitation to enter. Elphinstone listened and sighed.
“I really do not know what to do for the best.”
“General, we cannot afford to abandon the commissariat,” Kit said, glancing at the two other officers in the room.
“As I have been saying,” agreed the commissary officer. “With barely two days’ supplies in the cantonment, sir, and no hope of procuring more, it would be madness to yield the fort.”
“It would surely be better to send detachments to storm the forts of Mahmood Khan and Mahomed Shereef,” suggested Kit. “If we can take those forts, then the commissariat will no longer be under attack.”
“Oh, dear … oh, dear,” sighed Elphinstone. “Perhaps a message had better be sent to Warren, telling him to hold out until the last extremity. See to it, Captain Ralston, will you?”
“Very good, sir.” Kit saluted and turned on his heel. “All right, Warren is to hold out to the last,” he told the occupants of the adjutant’s office. “With any luck, we’ll be able to persuade the old man to attack the opposing forts.”
“I’ll send to Lieutenant Warren,” the adjutant said.
“I’m on riding school duty.” Kit glanced at the chart on the wall. “God knows what good is to be done by drilling cavalry troops in the finer points of dressage. They’d do better practicing the arts of the buzkashi at this point in their fortunes.”
“Life must go on, m’dear fellow,” Bob said with a sardonic grin. “Customs and ceremonies are all-important, are they not?”
“On which subject …” Kit took a moment to regale his friend with an account of his interview with Lady Sale. It added a moment of light relief, but the relaxation could only be of short duration as the muddled morass deepened and irretrievable opportunities were lost.
Chapter Thirteen
If Annabel had been expecting a lover’s greeting when Kit returned to the bungalow, she realized her mistake the minute she saw his face.
“What has happened? Was it Lady Sale—?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Amazingly, that went off without too much difficulty, but you were right about the attacks on the commissariat fort.”
“Of course I was,” she said simply. “Is that what’s happening?”
“Yes. The commanding officer has been ordered to hold out to the last extremity, and it’s to be hoped he’ll get reinforcements soon enough.” He paced the small sitting room, a deep frown corrugating his customarily serene brow. “But I think we have to face the possibility of leaving this place under duress.”
Annabel sat down and folded her arms, her head cocked on one side, a picture of slavish concentration.
“All right,” Kit said. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But what I am talking about is making sensible preparations for any eventuality.”
“Speak on, Ralston, huzoor.”
The mockery was so faint that he was able to accept it as simply a shadow of their past dealings, even to smile a little. “You’re going to need a horse, Ayesha.”
“A good one,” she agreed calmly. “But my own is in Kabul.”
“A blood Arabian, unless I much mistake?”
“Yes.” She was watching him closely.
“I assume, if you can handle such a spirited filly, that you ride well enough to handle a horse that is up to my weight?”
“Yes. I would imagine so.”
“I have a string of horses, cavalry horses, not sporting beasts. You will be best mounted on one of them, but I think you need to learn how to manage such an animal.”
She nodded easily. “I did say I would like the opportunity for some exercise … of the outdoor variety.”
He smiled. “I can’t offer you that, but I am on riding school duty for the rest of the morning, drilling a troop of cavalry. I think you had better join them in the ring.”
“In what guise?”
“Afghan. You may leave the explanations up to me.”
“How am I to ride without boots?”
“If you’ll pardon the intrusion, sir, I think I can find miss a pair of riding boots.” Harley appeared in the open doorway. “There’s an Afghan wench I know, in the mess kitchens, sir. She can lay ’ands on all sorts of things … for a price, o’ course.”
“Then replenish Miss Spencer’s wardrobe, Harley,” Kit said briskly. “No questions asked, and no shortage of rupees.”
“Right, sir. If I could just ’ave one of miss’s slippers for the fit?”
“Some enterprising soul with relatives in the bazaar, I imagine,” Annabel said thoughtfully, rubbing her one bare foot. “Consorting with the enemy is not considered an offense if it results in extortion. I daresay she has an entire stall behind the mess kitchens.”
“Well, if it will supply your needs, I’ll not argue its origins,” Kit declared. “It m
ight be best if you went later with Harley and bought what you require yourself. You will know better than he.”
“I’m sure I can also bargain better than he,” Annabel said matter-of-factly. “And I’m going to have to have some wool and fur linings to keep the cold out. Also a chadri would make life easier. The cloak is all very well, but it’s hard to keep oneself completely covered … and probably I’ll need—”
“Enough!” Laughing, Kit called a halt to this lengthening shopping list. “Buy whatever you think you will want; I don’t imagine you will bankrupt me. I’m going to the stables to decide which of my horses will best suit you. Then you can both begin to get used to each other.”
He returned in a short while, riding a powerful and surpassingly ugly piebald. Annabel, who was still one-footed, hopped to the front door, declaring with a laugh, “I would much prefer my Arabian mare.”
“Maybe so, but Charlie here will do you very well. Come and make his acquaintance.”
“I am still missing a shoe.”
Kit dismounted and led the horse to the door, where Charlie and Annabel could examine each other properly. Annabel gently knuckled the animal’s nose. “He’s enormous, Kit.”
“But very well-behaved,” Kit assured her. “And he’s long on stamina.”
“Mmmm.” Annabel and her new horse regarded each other solemnly, then she stood on tiptoe and blew gently into Charlie’s nostrils. The horse wrinkled his velvety nose and rolled back his lips in a responding grin.
Kit nodded his satisfaction. Annabel and horses were clearly well-accustomed to each other.
“I ’ope these will do you, miss.” Harley came up the path, holding a pair of leather boots of Afghan design. “Thievin’ bint wanted a small fortune for ’em, sir.”
Kit shrugged easily, taking the boots and examining them. “They’re sturdy enough. Put them on and we’ll get going.”
Annabel took them and turned herself into Ayesha, veiled, hooded, and cloaked. Kit tossed her up onto Charlie, who managed somehow to look surprised, as if a fly had landed on his back, but high-stepped amiably enough beside Kit to the riding school.
Within the large barnlike structure, twenty cavalry troopers stood beside their horses. A lean, weathered Indian officer was supervising a lad sweeping the sawdust ring into a smooth surface.
“Morning, Captain,” the Indian greeted Kit. “We’re about ready for you.”
“Morning, rissaldar.” Kit returned the salute of the troopers. “Saddles off, please, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly, striding into the ring, adding over his shoulder, “Ayesha, you may keep yours.”
There were no verbal grumbles at the instruction, but the troopers complied with dour expressions, unsaddling their mounts, occasionally shooting curious looks at the still, veiled figure atop the enormous horse they recognized as belonging to the captain’s string.
The rissaldar made no attempt to hide his curiosity. “Got a visitor, have we, Captain?”
“A … a friend of mine, you might say,” Kit said with a conspiratorial grin. “I’ve a wager on that I can teach her to handle that horse in the ring as well as any cavalry trooper, so when I’m on school duty she’ll be here, too. And if you’ve no objection, I might send her over to you now and again for a bit of practice.”
The rissaldar was too accustomed to the generally dissolute, hedonistic amusements of aristocratic officers to show the least surprise at this explanation. “Does she speak English?”
“A little,” Kit prevaricated. “But she understands it very well.”
The riding master simply nodded, commenting, “I don’t suppose Charlie even knows she’s there.”
He scrutinized horse and rider with an expert eye. “She’s going to have to persuade him without brawn that she means what she says.” He shrugged. “But Charlie’s a mild-mannered brute.”
Kit nodded and turned to the troopers, now mounted bareback. “Shall we begin, gentlemen? A caracole to the right, if you please.”
Annabel sat and watched for the moment, realizing instantly why the troopers had looked so disconsolate at the prospect of accomplishing this drill maneuver bareback, encumbered as they were with the long swords that struck her as more ceremonial than useful, and the lances they were required to hold at rest, while their horses executed a series of half turns under the critical eyes of the rissaldar and Captain Ralston.
Charlie began to shift restlessly on the sawdust, as if resenting his separation from his fellows, and she stilled him with a sharp command and a jerk on the bridle. “Just let me see first what we’re supposed to do,” she said softly, once he had stopped his pawing. “You may know how to do it, but I do not.”
She continued to watch, fascinated as much by this new aspect of Kit as by the drill. His voice, light and unfailingly polite, even in his not infrequent criticism and correction, was the only sound in the wooden building as he took the riders through an elaborate ritual that seemed more like a dance than anything to do with battle. But she was in no doubt as to the level of equestrian skill needed to perform the maneuvers, or to the nature of the communication necessary between horse and rider. If she and Charlie could manage to perform together in this fashion, then there was little they could not accomplish elsewhere.
After a while, Kit said something in a low voice to the rissaldar, who took over the drill smoothly. Kit came up to Ayesha, moving with the long, rangy stride of an athlete, the form-hugging cut of his britches and tunic setting off his spare, well-muscled frame to considerable advantage.
“Let’s try a half turn to the right,” he said briskly. “Unless you want to sit like patience on a monument all morning.”
“No, of course I do not,” she responded with a touch of indignation, then saw that his eyes were smiling. “I didn’t want to make a fool of myself if I could help it.”
“You won’t, and Charlie knows quite well what to do, but he won’t be comfortable if you don’t guide him.” He began to instruct her in the same pleasant yet authoritative tone he had used to the troopers, and she found it remarkably painless to follow direction and not in the least irksome when he insisted on corrective repetitions with some regularity.
“What a good teacher you are,” she commented. “It’s a true gift.”
“I am complimented,” he responded with a twinkling smile. “Are you ready to join the others now? I can’t be giving private lessons for the whole session.”
“What are they going to think?” She looked uncertainly at the men in the ring.
“They are here to ride, not to think,” Kit said evenly. “Are you ready?”
And that seemed to be that. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” She urged Charlie forward and he went unerringly to a position in the center of the line of troopers.
“I told you he knows what he’s doing,” Kit said, laughing.
Two hours later, Annabel was exhausted, sweat trickling down her body despite the frigid air in the riding school. It was not hard to imagine how the troopers must be feeling, weighed down as they were with weapons and unsupported by saddle and stirrups.
At last, Kit glanced at his watch. “Very well, gentlemen. That’ll do for today. Thank you for your time.”
The courteous appreciation was received at face value, his salute was returned smartly, and the troopers walked their mounts out of the barn. The rissaldar went off in their wake, and Kit looked up at Annabel and grinned. “Enough exercise for you?”
“That is not funny,” she said with a groan. “I think I’d rather match Akbar Khan along a ravine than—”
“Rather do what?”
“It was a game he liked to play sometimes.” She swung her leg across the saddle and slipped into Kit’s waiting arms. “A test rather than a game,” she amended, allowing him to take her weight for a moment as she explained.
“I used to wonder sometimes what would happen if I failed the test and became like all the other women. Would he become bored with me?” A shiver crept down her spine as she
realized for the first time from the safety of distance how that possibility had dominated her unconscious fears.
She looked up at Kit and suffered a shock. His gray eyes were adamantine, his mouth set in a grim line. “Feringhee!” she accused softly, having no difficulty reading the thoughts behind the expression. “I’ve told you before, you cannot judge them by your rules or place your labels upon them.”
“I can hold them accountable for what they did to you,” he said harshly.
“And what did they do to me?” she mocked gently. “Come now, Ralston, huzoor, I have come to no harm at the hands of Akbar Khan.”
“Haven’t you?” He stared down at her as if he would see into her soul. “Haven’t you, Annabel Spencer? Do you really imagine I will believe that? That I could possibly accept that a child from your background, abducted, hurled into a Muslim zenana, taught things that no child should have to learn, fear amongst them, comes out of such experiences uninjured?”
“Changed,” she said quietly. “Different, but not necessarily injured. Unless, of course, you consider an inability to return to the previous life an injury. I am certainly so changed that I could never do that.”
Premonition stabbed coldly. She wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t said before, and in much the same matter-of-fact tone, but he had traveled in thought such a long way down the future road of his own construction that he had allowed himself to believe her opposition must now be pure form. “Yes,” he said. “I would consider that to be the gravest injury of all, if it should prove to be the case.”
Silence shrouded them as they stood in the graveyard cold of the barn, both aware of the chasm yawning between them.
“Destiny,” Annabel said finally. “We are in the hands of destiny, Christopher Ralston. ‘ ’Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days / Where Destiny with men for pieces plays: / Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, / and one by one back in the closet lays.’ A Persian poet, one of Akbar Khan’s favorites,” she said when he looked confounded. “Eleventh century. His name was Omar Khayyam.”