by John Wilcox
‘Very well, Ali, I agree with much of your argument, certainly about exploitation of your poor people. But your accusation about putting Indian against Indian does not exactly hold water, you know. I know, for instance, that a subedar within the fort here had one son defending it and two outside attacking it.’
‘Ah yes. Subedar Akbar Khan. A fine fighter. His sons were sorry that he died. But I must remind you, Mrs Fonthill, that Pathans are not Indians. They are not truly of the Punjab. They are virtually an individual race of many tribes, but if one must be nationalist, then we should call them Afghans. These hills are more a part of Afghanistan than India.’
Alice frowned and, in exasperation, took a far larger sip at her brandy than she meant to and coughed. Damn it, she was being worsted in argument! If this man was used to getting his own way, so too was she, in debate.
Ali seemed not to notice and leant forward earnestly again. Was he trying to convert her, she wondered?
‘But this is not a political revolt, you know,’ he went on. ‘This is as much about religion as it is about who owns what territory. The Pathans are dedicated Muslims, as am I, and—’
Alice immediately raised her eyebrows and leant forward to meet him, interrupting his discourse. She pointed at his cup. ‘I thought Muslims did not touch alcohol.’
He immediately slumped back on the cushion and, for a moment, looked embarrassed. ‘This,’ he said, tapping the cup, ‘is a very bad habit I learnt in England. I trust that Allah will take it into account when he comes to decide whether I should enter Paradise. But back to the Pathans, they not only hate the English for occupying their land, taxing them, and telling them how to live. They hate them for being infidels, unbelievers. It is a double disgrace, you see, for a militant race to allow such people to rule them.’
‘Yes, I can see that. So it must be easy for the mullahs to raise the individual tribes. Like putting a match to dry grass.’
‘Of course. I am glad you understand.’ He lifted the brandy bottle. ‘Now, this is an interesting conversation and one of the things I learnt at Cambridge is that one can debate better with the help of a little alcohol. So you really must help me finish the bottle. Come along, now.’
Reluctantly, Alice leant forward and offered her glass. He upended the bottle into it. She took another sip. It really was excellent cognac. She felt it speed through her nervous system like the effect of the hashish she had once tried in the Sudan. But she really mustn’t encourage him by asking its provenance – and she mustn’t, she really mustn’t get tipsy. Ali was continuing and she frowned in concentration.
‘So, as you say, it wasn’t so difficult for the mullahs – and some of them, like this one, Mullah Sayyid Akbar, are splendid preachers – to raise the flag of rebellion. What’s more, my dear Mrs Fonthill, this is no petty little revolt.’ He put down his glass and, leaning forward, clasped both of Alice’s, brandy glass and all, in both of his, to emphasise his story. Alice found herself looking deeply into those brown eyes and made no attempt to withdraw either hand.
‘Do you know,’ Ali was now gripping her hands tightly and moving them to emphasise every other word so that the brandy slopped around in the glass, ‘there are about a quarter of a million Afridis living in roughly one thousand square miles of hill country south and west of the Peshawar Valley in the Safed Koh range. The only one of the seven clans living there that has consistently rejected the British is the Zakka Khel. The British have never been able to recruit any of them to be sepoys. So,’ he threw back his head and gave a silent guffaw of triumph, ‘once we had the Zakka Khel in our bag, the other clans flocked to our flag immediately. It was, as you said, like putting a match to dry tinder.
‘The result is that this is not just a revolt, Mrs Fonthill, it is a damned great revolution. We have twenty thousand or more with us. We have set the Border afire and all your troops and generals in the world will not put this out. You will see.’
He gripped her hands ever tightly in one more act of emphasis, then relaxed his grip. He raised his glass again. ‘I cannot expect you, madam, to drink to that but please allow me to do so.’ And he drained his glass.
They sat in silence regarding each other for a few seconds, then, absent mindedly, Alice raised her own glass to her lips and drank. The Indian slowly leant towards her and Alice found herself dreamily going to meet him before she jerked herself back and cleared her throat. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘that was very interesshi … interesting, Ali. But now, you really must excuse me. I musht retire. Thank you for the brandy. Very … er … shtimulating. Yesh.’
She handed him the glass and tried to regain her feet. He put her glass onto the table, put both of his hands in hers and raised her. He then lifted her hands to his lips, kissed her knuckles and smiled into her eyes. ‘You are a most … a most … interesting woman, Mrs Fonthill.’
Then he took two paces backwards and bowed formally from the waist. ‘You will be perfectly safe in here for the night,’ he said. ‘But do not attempt to leave the tent.’ He frowned for a moment and lowered his gaze. ‘There is a thingummijig, a what-do-you-call-it? Oh dash it, a potty, in that corner.’ And with that he was gone.
Alice clutched at the central tent pole, smiled dazedly, swung around it once and collapsed fully clothed onto the divan. Within a minute, she was fast asleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was the early hours of the morning before Alice awoke, her head pounding. The lantern was guttering but there was still enough flame to light up the interior of the tent and she looked down at her bloodstained garments with disgust. Unbuttoning her blouse and riding breeches, she threw them into a corner and removed her undergarments. She wrenched off her boots and stockings and then washed at the little bowl provided. Feeling considerably better, she crawled back into the bed intending to rest for just a moment before dressing and investigating the possibility of escaping in the darkness. But sleep immediately took over again.
She had no idea what time she awoke but shards of light were streaming in through the entry to the tent, although the flap was tied. Alice swung her legs to the floor and sat for a moment, composing her thoughts. Her head was now clear. At least she hadn’t been drugged; the brandy had been pure and, undoubtedly, of a good quality. But equally undoubtedly, she had been drunk.
She put her head in her hands and felt ashamed as she recalled the events of the evening. It was not so much becoming tipsy, although that was bad enough. Alice was not unused to strong drink but the last time she had been undoubtedly drunk was as a teenager at school in Switzerland. These days, she was careful to drink only moderately. No – it was the memory of her dark and undoubtedly attractive captor that made her shudder. For God’s sake, she had almost kissed him! She shook her head. This was not like her. Clearly, it was the effect of the brandy on a brain and body that had been weakened by fatigue and worry. No more of that now!
She stood and rummaged in her bag for a change of clothing. Ali was right, she was travelling light so there was little choice. She had packed an additional set of jodhpurs when they had left Marden, but, on reflection, she put them back and donned a long cotton dress. Dark blue, it was plain and might – just might – pass as Muslim wear if she could find something equally anodyne to wear over it. She attempted to clean the riding boots with her towel and stuffed them into her riding bag and put on a pair of nondescript slippers. Digging out a dark-coloured scarf to wrap around her head as a makeshift burkha, she contrived to hang the blanket around her as a top garment.
She had no mirror with which to judge the result but it would have to do. In the semi-darkness, hopefully she might pass for a Pathan woman. There was, however, one more item she needed.
Alice plunged back into the bag and felt for a little side pocket near the bottom whose opening she had sewn up so that it would appear virtually invisible to a not-too-meticulous searcher. She tore away the light stitching and produced from the pocket a small, Belgian Francotte 6.33mm automatic pistol that she h
ad bought in London before embarking. Checking that it was loaded with six cartridges, she tucked it away under the blanket in the pocket of her dress and felt better immediately.
While she slept, someone had brought a plate containing buttered black bread, two slices of cold meat and fresh fruit and left it on the table. A cup containing goat’s milk stood by its side. Alice devoured it all with relish. Whatever was intended for her, she was being looked after. Fattening up the calf for slaughter? She shook her head. Hardly likely. She was needed for some purpose. But what?
Taking a deep breath, Alice unthreaded the flap covering the entrance to the tent and stepped outside. The air was fresh – obviously they were comparatively high in the hills – though the sun shone from a cloudless sky and she looked around her with interest.
The camp seemed to be quite large, for tents of various sizes stretched away in all directions. Equally, it was not a permanent base, for there was no building to be seen. This seemed to be, then, the staging post for an army on the move – on the move, but to where? If all the forts had been taken, then the Khyber Pass was clearly in the hands of the Pathans, as Ali had confirmed. Would the Pathans now continue eastwards to attack Jamrud, Peshawar and attempt to invade the Punjab? Alice wrinkled her nose. That would be a most ambitious undertaking, for surely the Viceroy would now be gathering considerable forces there. The Khyber Pass had become a totemic symbol to the British in India, as the gateway to Afghanistan. It most certainly would not be left under the control of the Pathan insurgents.
There were tribesmen milling about amongst the tents, fierce-looking men with hawk-like faces and eyes as black as their skins. They loped by with a loose, athletic gait and seemed to pay no attention to her – ah, was her cobbled-together disguise working?
The camp itself gave off a distinctive odour, despite the crispness of the air. It smelt of woodsmoke, of course, and spiced cooking. But also of something else, something less tangible behind those obvious aromas: perhaps just strangeness and even apprehension, the combination of the purity of the clear sky and the ferocity of the expressions of the tribesmen. Did they never smile?
Alice turned her head to look for Ali. There was unfinished business between them. She would demand to know what he intended to do with her, and also perhaps she could extract from him something more about his identity and, more importantly, of the next move of this rabble of a Pathan army. But she could see no sign of the tall, beautifully clothed Indian amongst the tribesmen milling around.
Then a blow to the small of her back sent her sprawling on the ground. She lay there, partly winded partly stunned by the unexpectedness of it, and looked up. A tribesman, dressed in the ubiquitous, dun-coloured clothing of the Pathan, with crossed bandoliers across his breast and an unstable turban on his head, stood over her, yelling imprecations and gesturing. His fury seemed to mount until he drew a curved dagger from its sheath in his waistcloth, bent down and pulled back her head so that her throat was exposed.
Alice grabbed his wrist but it was like seizing a piece of steel and she was unable to deter him from lifting it before its descent. Then, an arm appeared from behind the man and encircled his throat, lifting him so that his sandals dangled at least three inches above the ground. Words were shouted into his ear from very close quarters until, with a twist and a shrug of the shoulders, the man was hurled away, leaving Scarface to look down on Alice.
She had not realised how big and strong was her erstwhile stretcher-bearer and carer. But his anger seemed no less aroused than that of her attacker, for he stood above her and screamed at her in a native dialect, drawing his own knife and pulling the blade across his throat.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, man,’ Alice screamed back, struggling onto all fours. ‘I was only taking some fresh air. I wasn’t launching an attack on the whole blasted Pathan race.’ She hauled herself until her eyes were level with his chin and looked up at him. ‘If you think I am staying in that bloody tent all day, Sinbad,’ she shouted, ‘then you are quite wrong.’
For a moment, the two stood glaring at each other. Then the grizzled features of Scarface lapsed into his broken-toothed grin. He shook his head, patted her head in an avuncular fashion and pointed to the entrance of the tent. His meaning was clear.
Alice allowed herself to give him an answering and conciliatory grin and nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go inside. But, my friend, I am not going to stay there, I promise.’ She bent her head and moved back into the tent. Then she was aware that the flaps were being laced together behind her.
With a scowl she squatted on a cushion. It was obvious that Scarface was her jailer as well as her carer and, it seemed, her protector. When he drew his blade across his throat he was not only implying that he would cut it but that there were plenty of others in the camp who would be only too happy to kill her also if they had the chance. They obviously did not like British memsahibs. Obviously, it would be even more dangerous than she originally thought to try to steal away through the camp, even during the hours of darkness. This deserved further thought.
She put her hand under the blanket and fingered her small pistol. She sighed. That wouldn’t be of much use against the whole Pathan army. Even if she could slip away from the tent – perhaps under that slight gap under the bottom of the canvas to the rear, there – and evade Scarface or whatever guard they had placed at the entrance, she still would have to find her way in the dark, leaving no tracks, and hiding by day and walking by night, what? – some twenty miles or so – to Jamrud, through country teeming with men who would, it seemed, as happily slit her throat as look at her or to …
Alice gulped as the thought of rape re-emerged. Somehow, it seemed as if Ali would be more likely to attempt a gentlemanly seduction, possibly with the aid of expensive cognac, than a sexual assault. Although what could be certain in this primitive wilderness? It was quite likely that, after she had collapsed in the cookhouse, he had himself taken part in the killing and ritual mutilation of the wounded there. The blade of that sword of his was covered in blood. A Cambridge accent and Winchester vocabulary was no guarantee of civilized behaviour in these benighted hills.
She shivered and gave a slight shake of the head. No. There would be no attempt at escaping, at least that night. Perhaps later, when her strength was fully recovered and she had hopefully lured her captors into a state of complacency. And, anyway, she wanted to question Ali more, for he would surely return.
But he did not do so during the remainder of the day and the evening. She sat all day, occasionally rising to peer through the gaps in the entry flap fastenings to learn a little more of her surroundings. Apart from the ever-present threat of danger, she became completely bored, for there was nothing to distract her, although she did manage to prise open a little more the gap at the rear of the tent wall. Yes, she felt she could just about squeeze through it when the opportunity occurred. Otherwise there was nothing for it but to attempt a few desultory sit-ups and other exercises to help her regain her strength.
More and more her thoughts turned to Simon. Surely, his country-wise Guides would have picked up the news that the Khyber had become closed to troops of the Raj. And surely, he would find a way of reaching Peshawar by some alternative and less dangerous route?
That night she dreamt that her husband had arrived at the encampment, had defeated the tribesmen there, killing Scarface in single combat, and swept her up on his horse and carried her away to safety. On wakening, she curled her lip. This was no scenario from some Walter Scott novel. Both she and Simon were in real danger and she devoutly hoped that, even if he did discover what had happened to her and found where she was imprisoned, he would not attempt any foolhardy rescue.
Ali arrived shortly after Alice had finished her modest lunch. He paused at the tent flap, coughed and called, ‘May I come in, Mrs Fonthill?’
She quickly pushed a comb through her hair, briefly felt ashamed of herself for feeling pleased that she had earlier applied a touch of face
powder and rouge, and then called, ‘Of course.’
He entered the tent, seeming to fill it, and gave her that flashing smile. ‘Jolly difficult to knock on a tent flap, of course.’
She deliberately refrained from returning the smile and merely said, ‘Quite.’
He lowered himself onto a cushion and arranged his face into an expression of concern. ‘I was disturbed to hear that there was some … er … violence directed at you while I was away. I do apologise and hope that you were not seriously hurt.’
‘No, thank you. I was merely knocked to the ground. No more than I expected in this place.’
‘Oh dear. I am so sorry. Abdul – he is the scarfaced man who is my special retainer and, I suppose, bodyguard – had strict instructions to ensure that you were not interfered with in any way. The man who attacked you has been dealt with. He was a particular hater of the British, you see.’
‘Was? Is he no longer alive?’
‘Ah, please don’t worry about that.’ He hurried on. ‘I am also sorry that I had to leave you but there was urgent work to be done further up the valley.’
Alice seized her chance. ‘Work? Reconnaissance, I presume?’
‘Well, something of the sort, perhaps. I hope that – despite that brief lapse – Abdul has been looking after you?’
‘Yes, indeed. Tell me, Ali. Who guards your … er … body while he is otherwise engaged, keeping me imprisoned, for instance?’
His eyes hardened at the sneer implicit in the remark. ‘I do not need a bodyguard every day, Mrs Fonthill. I assure you that I can well look after myself, most of the time. It is just that … ah well, better not go into that.’
She leant forward. ‘What exactly do you intend to do with me, Ali? How long are you going to keep me a prisoner and what will be the end of it all?’
He stood up, walked towards the tent flap and hitched it back so that light and air came into the tent. ‘Well, it all rather depends upon your husband, Mrs Fonthill.’