The Damascened Blade

by Barbara Cleverly

  Calm and authoritative, Iskander said a few words to James and stepped forward to lead Grace to her horse. He handed her up on to the tall grey and took the reins of his own horse while Grace waved goodbye to the line of civilians and turned her head resolutely to the Khyber. The cort`ege started on its way. With the pipe band still playing enthusiastically, Joe, Lily and Betty began to make their way back into the fort.

  ‘Let’s go up on to the wall to watch them go,’ said Lily. ‘Anywhere so long as it’s out of earshot of this mob!’

  But once inside the fort Betty hurried to her room in distress. Walking slowly, Lily took Joe’s arm. It was an emotionally charged moment and clearly she was wrestling with indecision, wondering perhaps whether to confide in him until, ‘Go ahead – ask me, Joe!’ she said finally. And when, tactfully, he just looked a question, ‘Nothing to tell, I’m afraid. He hasn’t said a word about his intentions! He had chance enough but I suppose he has to get back to Kabul to find out what his position is there. Who knows – he may turn up in Simla or Delhi and then we’ll think again. But I’m not counting on it! I think he’s gone for good, Joe.’

  Joe looked at her carefully. What was he looking for? Signs of a broken heart? There were none. No tears. A level tone. Could Grace have misinterpreted Lily’s interest? She seemed thoughtful but there was something overriding this. Relief? Yes, he thought – relief. Perhaps Lily Coblenz had, after all, regretted her rash offer of a golden cage to a man of the hills. She would take back to Chicago the romantic and desperately sad tale of a handsome Pathan who broke her heart and whose heart she broke when she left him behind, in the comfortable knowledge that the man himself was not there to spoil her story with his awkward, untameable nature.

  Joe wondered whether he was close enough to Lily to risk asking her directly about her feelings for Iskander. What the hell! He decided he was. ‘Look, Lily,’ he said. ‘They made me responsible for your welfare and your safe return to Simla. Not a job I wanted but it’s turned into more than just a responsibility. I care very much that you should return in good heart as well as sound in limb. What I’m trying to say is – well – I’d be very distressed if I thought you’d given your affections to a man who is incapable of returning them, a man who, as we speak, is riding away over the frontier, perhaps for ever. It might sound like the last reel of a moving picture, cinema organ playing in the background, but in real life it can be miserable! So – can you tell me? I’m your friend, remember!’

  Lily took his hand in hers and smiled up at him, a smile full of kindness and humour. ‘I didn’t “give my affections”, Joe. They were snatched! I fell for the man! And it hurts, it certainly hurts that he didn’t feel the same way. But I’ll tell you something – when I was little, ten years old I think, Father took me to the mountains one summer. One of the hands brought in a black bear cub, an orphan I guess. Have you ever seen a black bear cub, Joe?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but I can imagine the effect one would have on a ten-year-old girl!’

  ‘Yes. Well, this was a particularly lovable animal and I was a very susceptible little girl. I was allowed to keep him for the whole summer. But it came time to go back to Chicago and I had to send him back into the forest to take his chances. Nearly broke my heart. I cried for a week and made everyone’s life a misery. And perhaps that was a sort of . . . what do you call it? . . . an inoculation? It’s happened again but I’ll get over it. Strong heart, Joe!’

  They trailed slowly on, each wrapped in thought, but suddenly Lily turned an anxious face to Joe. ‘Listen! The band!’

  Joe grimaced. ‘“Bonnie Dundee”! Again! Must be the third time they’ve been through that tune! Surely they could stop now?’

  Lily was pale and tense. She gripped his hand. ‘Not if no one told them to! They’re awaiting orders. They’re waiting for James to tell them to pack it in and fall out.’ And then, ‘Where is James? He’s not come in!’

  For an agonizing moment Joe was fixed to the spot, cursing himself for having ignored his instincts. He turned and started to run back towards the gate.

  ‘Joe! Wait!’

  He turned, angry at being delayed.

  ‘No gun! Here! Catch!’

  In one swift movement Lily threw a small gun to him.

  He reached the gate and looked about. The Afghan troopers were well on their way to the Khyber but James had disappeared and only the pipe band remained, sweating and puffing. He seized a Scout by the arm. ‘Major Lindsay?’ he yelled above the din. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone to cemetery with Iskander Khan,’ he said pointing. ‘Say one last prayer for Zeman Khan, sahib.’

  Two hundred yards away James was walking briskly with Iskander, their backs to Joe. Iskander was leading his horse. Desperately Joe shouted a warning but it was drowned by the opening chords of the fourth rendition of ‘Bonnie Dundee’. He set off to run, remembering at last the gun in his hand. He looked at it with dismay. Christ! What was this? Somebody must have put this in Lily’s Christmas stocking! Would it repeat or was it single shot? Was it even loaded? Would it stop a man? A determined man? Joe had his doubts. But still it might make a warning noise. He fired it into the air. The two figures walked on oblivious.

  Joe ran faster, thoughts pounding in his head as the energy coursed through his body. Iskander had even warned them. ‘Always an Afridi,’ he had said. He had reminded them that he also lived by the Pathan code of pukhtunwali. It had no significance for him that Ramazad and the tribe had washed away their right to badal – Iskander never had! He wouldn’t be bought off. He had stayed true to his customs and to his friend. He loved Zeman and had taken it upon himself to exact retribution from whoever had killed him. Alexander and Hephaestion? That’s what poor Lily had run into, all unknowingly. And he had returned to the fort as he had told them clearly himself to identify the killer and had sat opposite James when he confessed to the killing. He wouldn’t kill James while he was under the shield of his hospitality but now, outside the walls of the fort in the Muslim cemetery, he was free to do so. And what better place than at Zeman’s grave?

  Yes, that’s what he was planning to do! Leave James’s body on top of Zeman’s grave. The symbolism was obvious. A grave for two warriors! Joe could hardly breathe. The hot air was scorching his lungs and through cracked lips he gasped and heaved as he ran. Sweat ran down his face blinding him. He swept his eyes clear to see that the two men walking companionably together had arrived at the grave-side and Iskander had tethered his horse and taken up a position facing the fort. James, across the grave from him, still had his back to Joe and his head was bent in prayer. Joe screamed again and fired the gun. James almost turned around but Iskander spoke to him and reclaimed his attention. Iskander had spotted Joe.

  He put his left hand into his tunic, drew something out and extended his right hand to James. James leaned nearer. The old Pathan trick! Grasping their target warmly by one hand they would use the other to stick a knife in his ribs.

  ‘James! No! The knife! James! Watch for the knife!’ Joe could hardly raise the breath to shout. Too late, Joe saw James turn towards him, hearing him at last but now, by the very act of turning, exposed and fatally distracted. Joe had played into Iskander’s hands. The deflection of James’s attention left him wide open to the inevitable quick lunge.

  The crack of a rifle shot threw Joe automatically to the ground. He crashed down, raising a cloud of dust and sand that clogged his mouth and filled his eyes. Unbelieving, he raised his head and rubbed the grit from his eyes to see the body of James lying over the grave. Iskander, weaving from side to side, his left arm shattered and bloody, had been sent spinning back several yards by the force of the shot. As Joe watched he staggered back to the grave, stood for a moment and collapsed across James’s body.

  Careless of further rifle fire, Joe surged to his feet and hurled himself forward, arriving, lungs bursting, to stand groaning helplessly over the two blood-drenched bodies.

  ‘Shit! God Almighty!
Fucking hell!’

  Joe sobbed with joy to hear a stream of curses such as he had not heard since he and James had shared a trench.

  ‘Course I’m all right! When a bloody .303 bullet whizzes past your ear, you hit the ground! See you did too! How did you know, Joe? My God! Get this murderous bugger off me, will you? And who the hell fired that shot? Wasn’t you with that little pop gun!’

  They looked back to the fort where for a second a blonde head bobbed between the battlements and disappeared.

  ‘Oh, my God! Annie Oakley!’ said James.

  Together they raised Iskander’s body, from which the blood was pumping at an alarming rate. The left arm was a shredded mass of flesh and ribbons of khaki sleeve. But, ‘He’s alive!’ said Joe. ‘James, he’s still alive! Give me your lanyard and I’ll try to get a tourniquet on this.’

  With practised hand, Joe worked swiftly to stop the blood flow. ‘Grace! Where are you?’ he groaned. ‘Half-way to bloody Kabul by now! Here, put a finger on this, James.’

  As they worked on him a knife slipped from the shattered left sleeve and fell on to the blood-soaked earth. Rubies winked in the black jade hilt and Joe recoiled from it as from a rearing cobra. Iskander’s eyes flickered open for a moment and Joe caught a familiar green gleam of amusement.

  ‘God! That was meant for me!’ said James. And with relief of tension came a flood, a rush of confused words. ‘He asked me to come out here with him. To discuss the siting and wording of a headstone for Zeman . . . said he wanted to say one last prayer for him . . . thought it would be a good idea if I joined him. Least I could do, I thought. He was going to kill me,’ said James. ‘Wasn’t he, Joe? For Zeman. He was finishing the job for him. Look.’ He reached over, shuddering, and took something from Iskander’s right hand.

  Joe peered at it. ‘It’s a crucifix,’ he said in puzzlement.

  ‘It’s my crucifix,’ said James. ‘I put it into the hand of Harry Holbrook seconds before I shot him. He was a good man. A man of God. I thought it might bring him some comfort at the last. He firmly believed that God was with him in these hills. Though the behaviour of those two bloodthirsty tormentors must have tested his faith to the limit . . . They were torturing him, Joe. The very worst they could think of . . . He could never have survived such treatment. He couldn’t ask me not to give Grace all the dreadful details – they’d torn out his tongue – but I knew what he wanted me to say when I got back and I said it. I’ve never told anyone the truth until now. But Zeman must have found the crucifix on the body and kept it all those years. A talisman? A reminder? A clue to the identity of the man who killed his brothers?’

  ‘All those, I expect,’ said Joe, putting a calming arm around his friend’s shoulder. ‘And he must have vowed to return it one day. I think he had it with him to press into your hand as he killed you. Iskander removed it from Zeman’s body – there was a moment on the stairs when he and his men had sole access to the corpse. He must have taken it then and put it away intending always to use it himself. To complete the circle.’

  ‘Well, it seems to have taken a rifle shot to get their attention! Here comes Eddy Fraser sprinting ten yards ahead and the whole pipe band at the double!’

  As the sun dipped behind the line of the Hindu Kush a bugle sounded the haunting notes of the Last Post and the small party by the second fresh grave in the Muslim cemetery turned and began to make its way slowly back to the fort.

  Betty left James to escort Lily and hurried to take Joe’s arm. ‘There’s no good time, Joe,’ she said, ‘to thank you for what you’ve done. This is a bad time and I’m having trouble with my thoughts and my words . . . but if I’ve learned anything from this awful country it’s to do and say things at once however badly because it doesn’t often give you a second chance. If you hadn’t noticed that James was missing it’s his grave we’d be standing by now.’

  ‘And Iskander would be well on his way to Afghanistan, his duty done.’

  ‘Not happy, though,’ said Betty. ‘I will do him the justice of saying that he would not have been happy.’ She paused for a moment, looking at the two warriors’ graves side by side. ‘His men didn’t come back for him. Why, do you think? They must have heard the shot?’

  ‘Obeying orders. I think it was simpler for Iskander to just say, “Ride! Don’t look back, don’t come back. Take Dr Holbrook and I’ll join you if all goes well.” It’s what I would have done.’

  Betty sighed. ‘So Grace is a hostage up there with those barbarians?’

  Joe laughed. ‘Grace is never a hostage! She is up there with friends. Friends who understand her, who value her and who will make sure she gets to the Amir in safety.’

  ‘And there’ll be no reprisals? About Iskander, I mean.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. You heard Sir George on this. What he had to say was brutal perhaps but the truth. Iskander was an outlaw. There will be no follow-up from the Afridi. The Amir? Iskander wasn’t directly related to him and there’s no shortage of eager young officers to take his place. That end of things should be all right, I think, especially since there’ll be Grace in position to keep the lid on.’ Joe was being determinedly cheerful. Betty had twice in the past week had to deal with murderous attacks on her husband and, if he had it right, was carrying a sad burden. He wondered if she would ever be ready to share it with him.

  ‘How do you think Lily’s taking it, Joe? I mean, I have a feeling she thought Iskander rather special . . . not so special as Zeman perhaps but she seemed to get on well with him. What do you think a woman feels when she’s killed a man? Lily had to do it, I know, but even so . . . taking a life, Joe, that’s something women should never have to do. It’s something completely against our nature. We save life . . . we give life. Will she ever . . . do you think there’s a chance she will ever be reconciled with what she’s done? With what she had to do?’

  ‘Devastating. It was devastating and it will take her a long time to recover from it but she’s a resilient girl and very intelligent. She knows she did what had to be done.’ He smiled. ‘Do you know what she said when James asked her why she hadn’t simply ordered the sentry to fire at Iskander from the wall? She said, “I didn’t know the feller – how was I to know how good a shot he was? This was a job that had to be done right. First time. I knew I could do it so I grabbed his rifle.” She had the time to think about what she was doing and made, in my estimation, the right decision. Bless her, she tried for a wounding shot – went for his left arm – darned near impossible at that range – and she very nearly pulled it off. But it’s not only women whose natural impulse it is to thwart an aggressor. It’s a very basic human reaction. We’re born with it and so I suppose you could argue that it’s God-given. But women have one great advantage over men. We can take lives but we can’t create them. It may seem an odd thought but it’s my idea that when Lily has a child of her own, when she has created life, that’s when I think she’ll start to forgive herself for taking one. I shall pray for Lily. No reason why God should listen to me, I’ve been off the air so to speak for quite a while, but I’ll have a go.’

  Betty stopped walking, turned to him and looked up at him earnestly. ‘Joe?’ she said quietly. ‘When communications are restored – would you mention my name too?’

  Joe squeezed her arm. ‘I already have.’

  Lily was glad of the support of James Lindsay’s strong right arm. Pale, with red-rimmed eyes, she was avoiding contact with everyone except for James and Joe. They had found her, a shaking heap behind the battlements, wild-eyed and speechless, the .303 rifle by her side, and it had taken Joe a long time to persuade her to let him take her back to her room. He recognized shock when he saw it and stayed with her for hours, his arm around her shoulders, talking quietly. If she’d been a man he’d have known exactly what to do. What the hell! He’d summoned a havildar and sent him off to find half a pint of rum.

  ‘I’ve arranged with Sir George that he will take you back to Simla tomorrow if that’s still
what you want, Lily,’ James said. ‘Joe will be going with you too. Couldn’t have a more perfect pair of knights to escort you.’

  Lily managed a smile. ‘Joe is more like Sir George than he would ever want to admit, I think. In fact, give him a few more years and you won’t be able to distinguish the one from the other.’

  ‘Lily,’ said James. ‘Will you forgive me for ever thinking . . .’

  ‘James!’ said Lily, interrupting. ‘I think we’ve both had to do a little reassessing. I was a lot smarter than you gave me credit for and you were a lot dumber than I thought. Forget it.’

  ‘Well, at least let me thank you for what you did this morning. I can’t believe it but I haven’t until now had a chance to . . .’

  Again she broke in. ‘Thank me for saving your life? Any woman would have done the same. Ask Betty.’

  James stood still and looked about him. They were out of earshot of the rest of the group. ‘You know?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘But how? What . . .?’

  ‘Joe and I looked into your room. We knew what we were looking for and we found it. Candlesticks on each bedside table. You and Betty are both right-handed. I notice these things. If you, James, had really hit Zeman you would automatically have picked up your own candlestick from the table on the right of your bed – that’s on the side away from Zeman’s knife hand, and hit him . . .’ She aimed the side of her hand at James’s head. ‘Allowing for the fact that he was hovering over you . . . somewhere about there. On the left side of his head. You’d need to be a contortionist to have hit him where he was hit – over the other side. But for Betty, reaching for her own candlestick . . .’

  ‘Does Joe know this?’

  ‘We haven’t talked about it but he’s pretty smart so I shouldn’t wonder. He seems to catch on to things a minute or two after I’ve worked it out.’ Again a faint smile. ‘But we’re neither of us the kind to go shooting off our mouths where it’s not necessary. I think it would be a very bad idea if anyone else were to find out. For Betty’s peace of mind. And that’s what you have to hold on to, James. Not much else matters in this ghastly affair. Don’t be concerned for me. I’m tough and I guess I don’t have Betty’s Christian conscience to wrestle me down. Don’t get me wrong – I have a relationship with God but it’s not the regular kind.’