by Jane Feather
Kit tried to deny the wash of helplessness that seemed to sap him of all energy and determination. But he could not deny the reality of the situation, the horrible sensation of being creatures in Akbar Khan’s vivarium. “I won’t let him hurt you,” he heard himself say, even as he knew it to be ridiculous.
She shook her head, but the mockery he had feared was withheld. “You will suffer as much as I will, Kit, and I will not be able to protect you any more than you will be able to protect me.”
“Return to Kabul now,” he said with painful urgency. “I am doomed here anyway, but you are not. It is my responsibility that you are in this position. I want you to return to him.”
“But I don’t wish to,” she said softly. “I told you that I have made my choice. Nothing has changed. And who knows?” She shrugged lightly and her voice became more animated. “Destiny may have something else in store for us. Let us wait and see.”
“You and your damned Destiny,” Kit said, but for some reason the exasperation he thought he was expressing was not there. He could hear only relief and a strange joy in his voice.
Annabel heard it too and her smile this time held no bitterness. “Well, at least I shan’t be cold,” she said cheerfully, as if the last moments of intensity had not taken place, as if the shadow of fear could be banished by sheer willpower. “And it will be wonderful to have a change of clothes. I think I shall ask Harley to prepare me a bath.” She reached up to kiss him. “Had you not better report for duty? It would be useful to know how long the food supplies can last, and what’s being done to replenish them. It’s a pity I don’t have my hawk,” she said, her eyes crinkling with sudden mischief. “Perhaps I should send to Akbar Khan for my peregrine. He could keep us well-supplied with sparrows and field mice.”
“I’m not sure whether Harley’s culinary skills extend to making such creatures palatable,” Kit responded in the same tone. “But the idea is a sound one. I’ll take my gun out this evening and see what I can bag.” He held her hips lightly; despite the easy tone, his eyes were serious as he scanned her upturned face. “Are you certain?” When she nodded, unsmiling, he kissed the corner of her mouth. “All right. I’d better get moving, but I’ll take you over to the riding school this afternoon and you can do some work with the rissaldar.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said with a mock groan. “I’m sure he’s not as polite as you.”
“No, he’ll bawl at you,” Kit told her. “But you’ll learn, I promise you that.”
He made his way to headquarters, noticing how the atmosphere in the cantonment was even more subdued than usual. A small boy ran out into the deserted street after a ball. Kit picked up the ball and tossed it gently to the child, who caught it in a hug to his chest and gazed wide-eyed at the officer, before an irate ayah swooped down upon him, scolding in Hindi as she bore him back into the garden of his bungalow. The child yelled, furious and imperious, at his nursemaid, and Kit went on his way, wondering whether little Annabel Spencer had been imbued with the same innate sense of superiority where native servants were concerned, even those who were supposed to have some degree of authority over the child in their care. Her upbringing would have been most unusual if she hadn’t, he thought, turning into headquarters. They were all the same, these brats of the raj. But what was going to happen to these poor little devils? The unbidden question chilled him, and he pushed it away as he went into the adjutant’s office.
“Anything new?” he asked the room at large.
“Morning, Ralston.” A bewhiskered major turned from the chart on the wall. “I was waiting for you to come in. D’you fancy a skirmish?”
Kit wasn’t at all sure he did, but there was only one answer. “Certainly, sir. Where to?”
“The fort of Mahomed Shereef. If we knock ’em out of there, maybe we can reclaim the commissariat,” Major Griffiths said. “Someone’s got to show some fight around here. Why don’t you pick a dozen handy men to follow you? Assemble in the barrack square at dusk.”
“Very good.” Kit saluted and went in search of Havildar Abdul Ali. The sergeant was his customary phlegmatic self.
“Do my heart good to get my hands on them, sir,” he said. “I’ll find the right men for you.”
“My thanks, Havildar.” Kit returned to headquarters, where an atmosphere of enthusiasm reigned for once, inspired by Griffiths’s determination and the idea that resistance was both possible and desirable.
“Lucky devil!” Bob Markham said. “Wish I were going.”
Kit gave him a twisted grin. “If anything happens, keep an eye on Annabel for me.”
Bob nodded in instant comprehension. “Hope you’ve told her you’re going this time.”
“Not yet, but I will.”
He went back to the bungalow at noon and found Annabel talking to Harley’s precious hen in the small back garden. “They do say they lay better if you talk to them,” she said, straightening up. “But I fear Harley’s right. This scrawny old bird is fit only for the pot.”
“I’m not sure Harley really means that,” Kit said, leaning against the wall of the house, for the moment banishing everything but his pleasure in the simple sight of her. “He brought Priscilla all the way from India. You do look enchanting in that color.”
She was unaccustomed to compliments, and a trace of pink touched the cream-white complexion as she brushed a little self-consciously at her emerald-green tunic. “It was always one of my favorites.”
“Women tend to know what suits them,” he observed, then continued in much the same tone, “I am joining a detachment with orders to storm the fort of Mahomed Shereef.”
Annabel nodded. “When?”
“At dusk.”
“That’s sensible. Not that they won’t be expecting you, but shadows make good friends when one is on the offensive.”
“Somehow, I thought you’d be dismayed … cross, even.” He offered a rueful smile.
She frowned. “How silly of you. I get cross when you don’t tell me what you’re doing and I have to sit around wondering. But, of course, you have to fight.” She shrugged. “You forget I’ve lived amongst men for whom the defining characteristic of their existence is fighting.”
“Bob will look after you if anything happens,” he said directly, accepting that anything less than forthrightness would be foolish with this woman.
“I won’t need to be looked after in any way you mean, Kit,” she responded with the same directness. “This is my country. I will know what to do if you are killed.”
His hands opened in an inarticulate gesture. How did one describe what one felt for a woman who needed none of the supports one expected and wanted to provide, who had her own strengths, who offered those unstintingly, and who now stood smiling with gentle reassurance in the winter sunlight? And he had to leave her and might never see her again.
She stepped toward him, instantly comprehending. “Destiny, love,” she said, taking his hands. “Accept it. You will come back this time. I know it.”
“How can you?”
“It’s written upon your forehead.” She traced the frown lines on his brow with a fingertip. “Do what you have to. A man can do no more.”
“I have to go to the strategy session.” He took her hands in a painful grip. “I wanted to take you to the riding school, but I haven’t the time.”
“I am quite willing to forgo an afternoon of being bawled at by that riding master,” she said. “I shall talk to Priscilla and see if I can coax a few more eggs out of her.”
“Sweetheart … ?”
“Go, Kit. I’ll be here for you when you return.”
He stood holding her hands for a long moment, then bent and kissed her, a quick, light brush of his lips, before he turned and left her. She touched her fingers to her lips in valediction as he cast a final glance over his shoulder, and he smiled.
Alone in the garden, Annabel dashed a recalcitrant tear from her cheek and regarded Priscilla with a quizzical eye. “How about two
brown eggs, Prissy? Ralston, huzoor, is going to want a good breakfast when he gets home.”
“We’re not making so much as a dent!” Major Griffiths yelled over the rattle of grapeshot from the horse-artillery gun. “The bastards just seem to pop up out of the stonework. Look at ’em.”
Kit looked. The enemy was massed on the parapets, the long-range fire from their jezzails mowing down the squares of British troops firing upward with their muskets. Griffiths was right. As fast as the grape riddled the line of Ghilzais, another line sprang up to replace it.
“We need a second gun,” Kit said, just as fire shot through his hand. He stared down in disbelief at the blood welling between his fingers. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Here, sir.” Abdul Ali proffered a handkerchief. “Bind it up. Must have been a stray ball, just nicked you.”
Kit wrapped the wound as tightly as he could, knotting the makeshift bandage with his teeth. All around him, men were falling and the crew at the gun were dropping with exhaustion. Intimations of the wintery dawn were just to be detected in a graying of the night-dark. They had been attacking the fort all night, and with no success. The storming detachment of cavalry under his command was in the rear, ready to move in the minute the artillery fire had cleared the parapets, which so far it had signally failed to do.
“Sound the retreat,” Major Griffiths ordered, a sigh of fatigue escaping him. Then he added with renewed vigor, “But by God, I’m going to take it next time. Ralston, command the gun crew, would you? I’ll have you covered as best as I can.”
The bugle’s mournful cry sounded above the firing as Kit galloped to the gun and its near-prostrate crew. He directed the limbering of the gun and the harnessing of the team, trying to keep his voice brisk and cheerful, to encourage the troopers as the deadly fire of the jezzails wreaked havoc, even more devastating now that the British gun had been silenced. A square of infantry offered as much protective fire as they could, but their muskets were of little use against the jezzails. At last, however, the precious gun was limbered up, the team harnessed, and the retreat could begin.
The exhausted and much-depleted force staggered through the gates of the cantonment as dawn broke. They were pursued across the plain by a triumphant contingent of Ghazi fanatics, hurling insults and rifle shots, and turning back only at the bridge across the canal, which was held by a troop of cavalry.
“Better get that hand seen to, Kit,” Griffiths said, dismounting in the barrack square. “You game for another try tonight?”
“Oh, yes,” Kit said with absolute truth, no more prepared than the major to accept the wasted lives of the past night as simply contributing to an effort of complete futility. “But we’ll need two guns.”
Even as he spoke, his eyes scanned the square where order was emerging from the seeming chaos as the troops were fallen out, the wounded taken to the hospital, the cavalry horses led off. He saw her standing in shadow on the far side of the square, enwrapped in the white chadri, and he could feel those jade eyes devouring him through the white silk thread of the ru-band. He raised a hand in acknowledgment and she salaamed in response before turning and slipping out of the square.
Clearly, she had learned the lesson of discretion, he thought with an inner smile that did much to alleviate his bone-deep weariness. The handkerchief around his hand was so blood-soaked now that it was doing nothing to staunch the unremitting bright welling, but he decided that a visit to the hospital could wait; there were more pressing matters to attend to.
“Any further orders, Major?” he asked formally, dismounting with one-handed awkwardness.
Griffiths shook his head. “Get some rest and we’ll tackle it again tonight. Unless that hand is going to give you trouble.”
“I doubt it.” Kit saluted with his good hand and made his way home with a degree of energy he wouldn’t have believed possible after such a night.
Annabel was standing in the open front door as he turned onto the street. “I was going to be very angry if you hadn’t come to me immediately,” she declared, running to meet him, but her tone belied the words and her eyes engulfed him in warmth.
“I can’t hug you in the street,” he protested, as she opened her arms to him. “You were beautifully discreet in the square. Don’t spoil it now.” He kept his injured hand behind his back and flicked her hip with his other, encouraging her return to the bungalow.
“Did you storm the fort?”
“No,” he said. “It was a bloody shambles! But we’re going to take another crack at it tonight. If we’d had two artillery guns it would have made all the difference.”
“Oh,” she said. “Did you have many losses?”
A shadow darkened his eyes and his mouth thinned. “Those damned jezzails have such a long range.”
“Yes,” she said, stepping back as they reached the front door so that he could precede her. “Kit, there’s blood all over the path. Where are you wounded?” Her voice didn’t sound any different, not a trace of panic, and he wondered why he had been afraid she would faint or fall into hysterics. He was judging her by the wrong standards again.
“Just my hand. It’s only a graze, I think.”
“Let me see.” She took his hand, grimacing at the sodden rag. “That was not at all clever of you, was it?”
“No,” he agreed meekly, allowing himself to be pushed into the house. “But I don’t really think I could have helped it.”
“Oh, my goodness, sir. You’re hurt!” Harley looked aghast.
“Fetch some hot water, will you?” Annabel said briskly. “And some thick towels to mop the blood so that I can see how serious it is.” She pushed Kit down into a chair in the sitting room and poured a glass of brandy from the decanter on the sideboard. “Here, I think you might put this to good use.”
“A skilled surgeon, are you?” he teased, taking a sip as she unwrapped Abdul’s handkerchief.
“You’d be surprised,” she retorted.
“No, I wouldn’t. Nothing about you could surprise me anymore.”
She looked up and gave him a quick, glinting smile, before directing Harley to put his burden of hot water and towels on the floor beside her.
“Is it bad, miss?” he asked, anxiety twisting his customarily stolid features.
“It’s hard to tell with all this blood.” Delicately, she washed the wound clean and examined it in silence, while Kit sipped his brandy and let lethargy creep over him, and Harley continued to wait anxiously. “I think it’s a splinter,” she pronounced eventually.
“A splinter!” Kit was shaken out of his lethargy. “How mortifying, Annabel. Surely it was a musket ball, or at least a piece of shrapnel?”
“Kit, are you wounded?” Bob Markham appeared suddenly in the sitting room. “The front door was open, so I didn’t bother to knock,” he explained, coming into the room with long, impatient strides. “How severe is it?”
“It’s a splinter,” Annabel said without looking up from her probing.
“It hurts like the devil,” Kit said, sitting now on the edge of his chair.
“It’s a very long splinter,” she said comfortingly, “and very deep. Harley, why do you not make us some tea?”
“Very well, miss.” The batman took himself off a little huffily.
Kit drew in a sharp breath suddenly. “Dammit!”
“Sorry,” she said, softly apologetic, “but if I do not get it all out, then it will mortify. Have some more brandy.”
“No, I’ll wait for the tea,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Just be quick.”
“I’m doing my best,” she responded with perfect calm. “There now.” Triumphantly, she held up a long, very sharp sliver of wood. “If that had gone into your throat, it would have killed you,” she said. “It’s like a dagger.”
“That makes me feel a great deal better,” Kit said wryly. “Where the hell did it come from?”
She shrugged, staunching the renewed flow of blood. “A bullet smacking into a tree wi
ll scatter splinters to the four winds.”
“You seem to know a great deal about such matters,” Bob observed.
She looked up at him briefly. “I know a great deal about the way the Afghans fight. They have many tricks like this one.” She began to bind Kit’s hand with a strip of bandage. “It’s only a superficial wound, I know, but it’s going to bleed like the devil.”
“Annabel, watch your language!” Kit reproved, only half-joking.
“I am sorry. I didn’t realize you had such delicate ears,” she retorted. “I haven’t noticed you modifying your language in my presence.”
Bob chuckled. “She’s got you there, Kit. Can’t demand ladylike restraints when you don’t watch your own tongue.”
Harley appeared with the tea tray before Kit could come up with an adequate response. “Shall I pour, miss?”
“Yes, would you,” she said absently, concentrating on her bandaging. Kit’s eyebrows lifted. Some subtle changes were taking place between Harley and Annabel if one were to judge by that exchange. The batman had most definitely deferred to the lady in a domestic matter.
“Must you go out again tonight?” Annabel asked, sitting back on her heels, regarding him gravely. “The slightest jolt will set it off again, and you won’t be much good if you’re pouring blood everywhere.”
“Sweetheart, I cannot plead a splinter as excuse,” he said, taking the cup Harley offered him. “Even if I wished to, which I most definitely do not.”
“I’m going to find myself a niche in this one,” Bob said with determination. “No, no tea, thanks, Harley. I’m off to offer my services to Griffiths. Get some sleep, Kit. You’ve earned it.”
“I won’t argue with you,” Kit said, burying his nose in his teacup. “But listen, do me a favor later, will you? Take Annabel to the riding school and give her an hour or so of dressage on Charlie.”