Bold Destiny

by Jane Feather

  It closed behind him and Ayesha lay very still, summoning every resource of spirit and body she possessed to bridle the hideous imaginings of what he might be going to. Would she ever know what befell him? When Akbar Khan pronounced her own sentence, would he also tell her what fate he had decreed for the feringhee?

  She was alone with her fears for a long time, before the black-clad woman shuffled in with a bowl of curds and a round of bread for her breakfast. The food brought some renewal of strength, and when she had eaten she dragged the cot below the high window slit and stood on it, squinting down into the main courtyard. Akbar Khan, astride his charger and with a sizable force around him, was preparing to ride out.

  She stared in astonishment, standing on tiptoe as if to verify the scene. Was he just leaving her like this? She had heard him discussing his plans during the ride from the Khoord Kabul, so she knew he was intending to march on Jalalabad, joining up with the other sirdars and their armies in the siege of the city. But what was to happen to her? What had happened to Kit? Had he dealt with the feringhee transgressor and decided to leave Ayesha to the torture of dreadful unknowing in her prison cell?

  It would not be beyond the cruelty of which she knew he was capable. And since she had returned to him he had exhibited none of the softness, the humor, the understanding with which he had in general used her in the past. She had expected to be punished, but after the gift of such a night, there was a barbaric refinement to this carefully engineered ignorance and isolation that went beyond anything she could have anticipated.

  She stepped off the cot, shivering with more than the bone-deep chill in the stone chamber. She had neglected the fire in her hours of reverie since Kit had been taken away and now turned resolutely to rekindle the sullen flame. She had no employment to pass the weary hours, no books, no writing materials, no domestic tasks. She had neither horse nor hawk … not even the freedom of the zenana. What was she to do in the weeks of Akbar Khan’s absence? And it would be weeks.

  The gloomy reflection was enough to cast her into the depths of despondency. She began to recite Omar Khayyam’s rubaiyat to herself, attempting an elegant translation from Persian into English, exercising her mind in the effort of memory and linguistics even if she could do nothing for her body. But she was weary after her sleepless night, and eventually lay down on the cot beneath the furs to seek renewal in sleep.

  She had been asleep for no more than half an hour when the door creaked open and her attendant came in, leaning over to shake her shoulder. Ayesha blinked dopily at the ruined face hanging over her.

  “Men are coming to fetch you,” the woman said. “You must veil yourself.”

  Fetch her for what? Ayesha sat up, shaking the sleep from her brain. It seemed orders had been left regarding her fate. She could find no alarm in her heart, only relief that something was about to happen. Nothing could be as terrifying as the prospect of being confined for an indefinite period without access to any outside stimulation or information.

  “Tell them they must wait,” she said. The woman stared incomprehending at such an instruction. Women did not tell men anything.

  “Tell them I will be ready shortly,” Ayesha said gently. These men, of course, would not be accustomed to the unusual license granted Akbar Khan’s favorite. But then, since Akbar Khan’s favorite was a prisoner in this primitive fortress, one could hardly blame them for failing to accord her her accustomed civilities.

  The woman shuffled out and Ayesha swung herself to the floor, splashed the sleep from her eyes, and fastened her veil. Kit’s cravat had been taken from her early on and a conventional veil procured. Her head spun suddenly at the memory, and the scent of Kit, the feel of his body warmth, filled the air around her as powerful and palpable as if he were beside her.

  “Tell her to hurry. We cannot be kept waiting on the whims of a woman!”

  The harsh tones from the corridor returned her to her senses. The scared eyes of the veiled attendant appeared in the doorway. “Please hurry,” she whispered.

  “I am ready.” Ayesha stepped past her into the corridor, debating whether to assume a confident stance with the three tribesmen standing without. But Akbar Khan was not here to lend credence to such an act and she had no idea what orders he had left for her treatment. She bowed her head before the men and salaamed.

  “Come with us, woman.”

  She followed three paces behind as they marched through the zenana, women fleeing at their approach. Were they taking her to the stoning pit, to the flogging post, to the scaffold? Would Akbar Khan have condemned her to suffer his sentence in his absence? Somehow, she did not think so.

  They emerged in the main courtyard and the three men closed around her, marching her toward a door in the south wall. She heard the voices before the door was pushed open. They were the high-pitched voices of English children, reciting a lesson in unison. A clear voice rose above them, the voice of Mrs. Anderson, she recognized from the days of the retreat, instructing the class.

  She stopped, looking askance at her escort, who gestured brusquely that she should enter the building. “You are to talk with the women and discover what needs they have,” she was told.

  “Those are Akbar Khan’s instructions?”

  “It is not for you to question. Enter.”

  She entered and stood in the dimly lit room where a group of children sat in a semicircle, Mrs. Anderson standing before the fire, other women arranged around the room.

  “Please don’t let me disturb you,” she said quietly. “Where will I find Lady Sale?”

  “Why, Miss Spencer … ?” One of the younger women stood up and came toward her. “We were wondering what had happened to you.”

  “I have been sent to interpret your needs to the guards,” she said carefully, glancing over her shoulder to where her escort stood, making no attempt to hide their contempt for the feringhee women who evinced no modesty in dress or bearing in the presence of men.

  “Annabel?” Colin Mackenzie’s voice rang out in joyful surprise. He came into the room from one of the inner chambers. “I thought it had to be your voice.”

  “Colin!” Forgetting herself, she stepped toward him.

  Instantly, a furious command, a hand grabbing her shoulder fiercely, reminded her of her position. She was an Afghan woman amongst the feringhee. She salaamed, murmuring in hurried conciliation, and the man released her, glowering around the room.

  Colin had gone pale as if for the first time he really understood that she belonged to the Afghan. “I will fetch Kit,” he said, keeping both face and voice expressionless.

  Her head shot up, her eyes alive with hope, then at a threatening movement behind her, she bowed her head, speaking in a low, rushed voice. “He is safe?”

  “Yes, but in an agony over what may have happened to you,” he replied.

  One of her guards made harsh protest at this continued conversation and she said, “They will not permit me to talk directly with men. I will say what I can indirectly, through conversation with the women.”

  “Ah, Miss Spencer. Laurie told me that you were here, but I could scarcely credit it.” Lady Sale billowed into the room, her bandaged hand in a sling, her voice as piercingly energetic as ever. “You are to act as liaison, I understand.”

  “I believe so, ma’am,” Annabel said, greeting her ladyship’s arrival with relief. It would provide some distraction for her grimly alert escort. “Akbar Khan has left, but I am told that I should talk with you about what you might need.” She looked around the room where the children and the other women were staring and listening, wide-eyed and big-eared.

  “You should talk with Major Pottinger as well,” her ladyship announced. “He is the senior political officer.”

  “I will not be permitted to do so, ma’am,” Annabel said swiftly. “I do not understand exactly what Akbar Khan ordered or why, but I must behave as an Afghan woman for the moment. If you will conduct me around your quarters, I could perhaps make some suggestions
as to how you could improve matters within the constraints of this place. The people are poor and have no understanding of European comforts or even of basic cleanliness. I imagine that is why Akbar Khan has deputed me to act for you.” She smiled a little bitterly, but no one could see her mouth. “I understand both sides of the coin, you see.”

  Kit stood in the shadows of the inside doorway, behind Lady Sale. He stood and he looked at her until she felt his presence. She continued to talk to Lady Sale, keeping her head bowed, but her eyes over the veil held Kit’s and a deep peace entered her. He was safe and she was safe, and they were under the same roof. The cat had left the mice for the time being.

  But he had not left them in a position to play. And he had not left them with their fears permanently eased and fates resolved. However one should be grateful for the small mercies, temporary though they might be.

  Annabel winked at Kit and her lips beneath the veil formed her imp of Satan smile that he knew so well. She saw his mouth curve in recognition, both of the smile and of what it stood for. They were not yet defeated. Then he melted into the shadows and she became briskly businesslike with Lady Sale.

  They walked through the five rooms, Annabel with her vigilant escort. Whenever a man approached, a guttural but unmistakable order was issued that sent them into another room.

  “This is most uncivilized,” muttered Lady Sale. “You are an Englishwoman when all is said and done, even if I do not approve of the manner in which you have conducted yourself with Christopher Ralston. Why do these savages consider they have the right to treat you like one of their women in purdah?”

  “Because that is what I am,” Annabel explained patiently. “We are all prisoners, are we not? The terms of my imprisonment simply differ from yours.”

  “Well, I really do not understand it at all. How did you fall into this situation in the first place?”

  “Kit will tell you,” she said. “We have more important matters to discuss. The men will become impatient soon and mistrust our conversation. Then we will have achieved nothing.”

  “Imperious gal, aren’t you?” declared her ladyship, and then began to reel off a list of requirements and complaints, all of which Annabel noted, decided which could be supplied and remedied and which were beyond the limited scope of Budiabad and its peasant occupants.

  She was just leaving the quarters when Brigadier Shelton and Colin strode casually into the room behind her. “It would be interesting to know where Akbar Khan has taken himself off too,” the brigadier said in carrying tones.

  Annabel turned to Lady Sale who had accompanied her to the door. “He has gone to Jalalabad to join with the other sirdars to lay siege to the city,” she said in the same conversational tone she had employed throughout. “I will learn what I can, but I am kept in such close seclusion I can promise little.”

  “Anything will be better than nothing.” It was the brigadier who had spoken, as if to Colin. “Even if you consider it of no importance, it may have significance.”

  “I understand,” Annabel said. She turned to the guards, salaamed, and said in Pushtu, “When am I to be permitted to return here?”

  “When they ask for you,” one of them said. “You must leave now.”

  “I understood what they said.” Major Pottinger had joined the brigadier and Colin at the rear of the room and spoke casually as if to his companions. “We will ensure that you are a frequent visitor.”

  She made no reply because to do so would imply a conversation. She wanted to look over her shoulder, to see if she could catch a glimpse of Kit, but did not dare to jeopardize her chances of returning. The guards hustled her out into the courtyard, where she passed on the hostages’ requirements and was then returned to her prison chamber.

  Later that day, the sounds of voices raised in laughter reached her from the courtyard below. She stood up on the cot again and peered down. A game of blindman’s buff was in progress amongst the hostages, adults playing as energetically as the children. She watched as a blindfolded child of about ten grabbed Kit with an exultant shriek. Kit, laughing, swung the child into the air before removing the blindfold and putting it on himself.

  Annabel felt lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.

  So it continued. She would be taken once a day to hear the hostages’ requests and complaints, frequently spurious but her guards did not seem to guess that they were excuses to enable her visits. She would catch a glimpse of Kit. She would watch them playing backgammon and draughts on boards they had constructed for themselves. She would listen to the children in their makeshift schoolroom. She would tell Lady Sale whatever titbits of information she had picked up from Zobayeda, her attendant, and from the guards when they escorted her on the walks she was permitted to take for exercise: that Shah Soojah had been murdered in Kabul; that General Pollock had marched from Peshawar and had relieved the garrison at Jalalabad and was now camped on the Jalalabad plain facing the Afghan forces; that the British in Kandahar had expelled every Afghan inhabitant because the situation there had become so menacing; that the Afghans had doubled back on Kandahar and were attacking it in force. Good news alternated with bad and moods swung accordingly. She would watch from her prison window as the hostages played hopscotch and blindman’s buff with the children. On Sundays, she would hear the church services they rigorously kept, hear the hymns and the psalms and the prayers bursting through the physical confines of their squalid prison. And she would ache to be a part of that community, close-knit now in the forced intimacy that commonly experienced hardship created. She knew that the purely conventional polish of polite society had been rubbed away. She heard a plainness of speech that would be unthinkable amongst ladies and gentlemen in any other circumstances. And she wept in her loneliness more hours than she would ever admit to.

  Then, on a soft day in early April, when the promise of spring seemed to touch the valley, the news came that Akbar Khan had suffered a signal defeat on the Jalalabad plain and had been forced to retire.

  The jubilation of the hostages rose in direct proportion to the gloom of their guards. The expectation that General Sale would now be free to march to their rescue became the subject of their waking hours, and Annabel permitted herself the luxury of speculation. If the hostages were rescued, then, unless Akbar Khan removed her, so would she.

  In the euphoria engendered by this possibility, she committed a grave error. Kit always positioned himself leaning against the doorway when she made her entrance into the hostages’ quarters, so that she was obliged to brush past him. They never looked at each other, so as not to draw attention to the position, but just that instant of proximity was sufficient to buoy Annabel’s spirits for the rest of the day. But on this occasion, she stopped in front of him, raised her eyes, and said softly, “Salaam, Ralston, huzoor.”

  “Greetings, Ayesha,” he replied, smiling, reaching out a hand to touch her.

  A curved knife slashed, and blood spurted from his hand. Annabel turned on the guard with a cry of outrage. He drew back his fist, then one of his fellows called a warning. Instead of hitting her, he caught her wrists behind her back, wrenching them upward so that she inhaled sharply with the pain. He propelled her across the yard just as British officers emerged from the building, surrounding the injured Kit, turning furiously on the remaining guards, who all drew their knives. Other guards boiled into the courtyard at the sounds of commotion, knives and scimitars drawn. The high wail of a terrified child soared through the soft air.

  Annabel, petrified that her foolishness was about to precipitate a massacre, tried to pull back against her captor’s hold. The guards’ mood had been ugly since the news of Jalalabad, and she had sensed that it would take little to tip them over the edge into a violent revenge for their sirdar’s defeat. But she had also heard the other guards’ warning reminder that it was against Akbar Khan’s orders to offer Ayesha any violence, and the knowledge emboldened her. “Is this what Akbar Khan ordered?” she demanded, ignoring the pain in
her arms. “Did he order a massacre of the prisoners? If he has lost the field at Jalalabad, then he is going to be even more anxious to have negotiating power. Do you think he will thank you for murdering them?”

  The man reviled her for a worthless, deceiving piece of female flotsam, but he abruptly released his grip on her wrists so that she stumbled and nearly fell to the ground. He yelled over his shoulder at the seething, furious mass behind him, and they drew away from the unarmed hostages who were backed against the wall with nothing but their bare hands for defense.

  Annabel searched anxiously for Kit and saw that he was still on his feet, although blood dripped from the knife wound in his hand. It had been her fault. An act of self-indulgent thoughtlessness at such a volatile time. And she knew that she had now denied herself the daily visits which alone seemed to preserve her sanity. Furious with herself, she accepted the penalty as entirely justified, and when she was pushed ungently into her cell and the door clanged shut with a more than usually vigorous slam, she allowed the angry tears to flow unchecked. What if Kit’s wound were to mortify? Medicines and bandages were in short supply as she knew, having been responsible for procuring those they had. There was still dirt and vermin everywhere … it would take little for gangrene to set in … She continued with her merciless self-flagellation until exhaustion took over and she lay down in utter dejection upon her cot.

  The commotion outside had died down and a deep, brooding silence settled over the fortress and its occupants. As evening fell, the silence was shattered by shouts and the clatter of horses’ hooves. Annabel leaped up with a renewal of energy and stood on the cot to look out of the window.

  Akbar Khan had ridden into the courtyard with a sizable entourage.

  She stared down, trying to gauge his physical condition and his frame of mind, but it was hard to read anything at this distance. She thought he dismounted with a little less than his customary vigor, wondered if perhaps his shoulders were less rigid than usual, if there was less spring to his step as he crossed the yard and disappeared through a door beneath her window.