The Distant Kingdom

by Daphne Wright

  ‘Frugal or not, Perdita, they are very handsome, and I shall wear them with pleasure. Now where are those children?’

  Five days later she was sitting down to write a reply to Charles Byrd’s letter, when Edward came into the morning room. He paused in the doorway, thinking what a charming picture she made in her pink-and-white-striped gown, with her loosely dressed curls catching the morning sunlight. He dreaded having to tell her that he was to leave for Calcutta at the end of the week, and so when she looked up he put off the moment.

  ‘That is a lovely box. It does not look Indian. Where did you find it, Perdita?’

  ‘Lady Beaminster sent it out to me when she wrote to us after Charlie’s birth. I think it was meant to say something like “Well, at least you have produced a son; this is to express my modified approval of you.”‘

  Her glinting smile took any bitterness out of the words and he laughed with her.

  ‘I am glad that you can find her amusing.’

  ‘It helps, I find. One day, perhaps, I shall find other things amusing too, and then there will be nothing to fear.’

  He decided not to ask her to explain that elliptical but all-too-understandable sentence. Instead he said:

  ‘Perdita, I shall have to leave you again. His lordship has written, telling me he wants me to go back down to Calcutta.’

  Her head drooped a little, and she said shakily:

  ‘I do not find that so very amusing.’

  He felt wretched for her. Accustomed to travelling on his own, he could still understand something of her loneliness. He said:

  ‘If I could take you and the children with me, I should, but you know I cannot. And what would Beaminster say if the army were to return and he found you gone?’

  She stiffened her slender neck and brought her chin up to say:

  ‘Of course, Papa. We shall do very well. But I shall miss you.’

  ‘I too. But life here won’t be so bad once Auckland and his private staff are back in the spring; although I am not sure how society can be formally pursued with forty-odd ladies and only about twelve gentlemen.’

  ‘Yes: we shall be unique in the history of Anglo-India; but I expect Miss Eden will contrive something.’ She smiled carefully and went on:

  ‘You must not worry about me. I ought not to have said what I did. We shall do well enough: I have my books and letters to write, and the children are too young to know what they lack.’

  Nevertheless, when the day came, she clung to her father as they said goodbye, and he could feel her trying to control herself. He folded his arms about her and rocked her slowly against his chest without speaking. After a while he said gently:

  ‘It is not for very long, Perdita, and I’m sure Beaminster will be back soon.’

  She lifted her head and unlocked her hands from around his neck, sniffed childishly and said:

  ‘I know. I am behaving like a baby. I am sorry.’

  He brushed the goldish-brown hair from her smooth white forehead, kissed it and said:

  ‘I like it. But I must go now. I shall write to you, and I hope to be back before the next cold weather.’

  ‘You will have all the heat in the Plains.’

  ‘I know. But it won’t hurt me. I’m an old India hand.’ He smiled and was gone.

  Resisting the impulse to collapse on to a sofa and howl like a masterless puppy, Perdita picked up her pale green barège skirts and walked briskly towards the nursery, thinking of all the tasks she had to accomplish and all the entertainments she should attend once the season started in April, trying to suppress all thought about the two short weeks she and Edward had spent together. The one she could not quite ignore was the question that returned again and again: ‘How could my mother have wanted to live apart from him? He is the best company I have known and the kindest man. And how could she have left all this luxury for that dreadful, cold little house in comfortless Fakenham with her sanctimonious brother and his bitter wife? How could she?’

  He, meanwhile, riding towards Sabathoo on his way down country, was wondering about his son-in-law and hoping that his daughter’s mixture of unfailing sweetness and sometimes sinewy intelligence would bring Beaminster closer to her once they were together again. For himself, he would have found her irresistible, as the young American clearly did. He wished he had known something about their dealings while he was in Ferozepore so that he could have found out about the man.

  So they each thought about the other as the distance between them lengthened until other concerns gradually drove their personal preoccupations into the background.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Apart from the serious shortage of gentlemen, that season in Simla was much like any other. Gossip and flirtation, balls and picnics, the whole round of time-passing occupations began to speed up after the opening ball at Auckland House on 17 April. Perdita, still desperately worried about what might be happening to Marcus, had avoided that, pleading a slight chill, and did her best to get out of all the large formal entertainments that she was afraid would be a severe ordeal without his support, or Charles’s.

  But she went several times to dine en famille with Miss Eden, her brother and Miss Fanny Eden, finding them entertaining and a better source of intelligence than anything else available. Mr Macnaghten, now Sir William, had stayed with the army to be official Envoy to the court at Caubul once the new king had been installed, but Mr Colvin had returned with the Edens, and could always be relied on for comforting little bits of news.

  And they were needed, for it slowly became clear to the waiting wives that all was not well with the army. Despite the enormous number of private servants and baggage animals that the officers had with them, the crates of wine, cigars, soap and jam, there was little food. The commanders had expected the troops to live off the land through which they marched, but a severe famine and the internecine struggles between the commissariat officers of the Bombay and Bengal divisions of the army, not to speak of the depredations made by bands of Balooch plunderers, had combined to bring the officers and men close to starvation. Rations had to be cut and cut again. Innumerable camels died and the loads they carried had to be abandoned. Before the column reached Candahar, their first objective, the men were said to have been reduced to eating sheepskins half cooked in blood.

  They were in no condition to win what would have to be a decisive victory for Candahar if the expedition were not to be a failure before it had hardly begun. The city was under the control of two of the Dost Mohammed’s brothers, who ruled there by his favour. They had to be overcome, and the city secured and garrisoned, before the Army of the Indus could move on to its next stage on the road to Caubul.

  Sir William Macnaghten was perfectly certain that the Sirdars who ruled Candahar would not resist and said as much at every opportunity; but as he was a political man, the military commanders, Sir Willoughby Cotton of the Bengal Division and Sir John Keane of the Bombay Division, were not so sanguine, and their subordinates had still less respect for the Envoy’s military judgement.

  On 19 April the great army camped outside the walls of Candahar, and it was reported that a force of some 1,500 Afghan horsemen was preparing to attack. The hungry and exhausted English waited; but nothing happened, and that evening Keane held a pleasant relaxed dinner party in his tent for some of his favoured officers.

  The following morning some horsemen did ride into the camp from the city, but they turned out to be deserters, ready to join Shah Soojah and his English supporters. They proved to have been a good omen when, two days later, the Candahar Sirdars fled the city before the English had fired their first shot. The people then sent embassies to the approaching Shah, and he was eventually welcomed into Candahar with salutes, feux de joie and flowers. And the fields, gardens and granaries of the place were opened to the starving troops.

  The news reached Simla just in time to make the Queen’s birthday ball on 24 May a double celebration. Perdita had always been afraid that she would have to atte
nd that ball even if she avoided every other, but once it had been transformed to honour not only the girl queen but also the success of her valiant troops, Perdita was glad enough to go.

  The ball was to be held in a series of tents in the valley of Annandale, and once the quite unseasonable rain had stopped just three days earlier, the organizers proceeded to transform the valley. They erected a temporary hall and two large tents where the guests could dine, and laid a dance floor in the open air between the tents. Then they hung huge signs in as many of the surrounding trees as would bear them, saying ‘Victoria’and ‘Candahar’in wreaths of flowers. Flowers also edged the dance floor and decorated all the tables in the tents.

  Perdita, hearing of all the splendour from Maria Jamieson, knew that she should make an effort with her dress and appearance, and decided to wear Runjeet’s emeralds. She had had a new gown made to wear with them, from a piece of heavy green satin sent up by dawk by the indefatigable Mrs Macdonald in Calcutta. The colour was so striking and the necklace so spectacular that Perdita had resolved to have no trimmings on the gown at all – rather to the distress of her durzee, who thought an evening gown without lace an impossibility. But by asking after his progress and reiterating her instructions daily, she got what she wanted.

  Once her ayah had dressed her and fastened the jewels around her throat, Perdita examined her reflection critically, but with confidence, in a long pier glass that stood by the silver dressing table.

  Her hair had been dressed in the loose curls Edward had admired and the green satin seemed to accentuate the golden lights in it. The necklace fitted perfectly, with its large pendant emeralds lying on her white skin just above the low-cut green satin bodice. The great stones seemed to catch all the light that fell near them and flash it back in sharp brilliant bursts.

  When she arrived at the valley, rather late, she saw that the ladies outnumbered their possible partners by nearly five to one, and she made her way over to a group of chairs where Emma Colvin was sitting with her sister, Harriet Beadon. They greeted Perdita with all the friendliness she had come to expect from them, and enviously admired her jewels. Mrs Colvin, who was wearing a modest string of pearls, said:

  ‘It is quite beautiful. Tell me, where did Lord Beaminster find it?’

  ‘Oh, it is not from him. My father gave it to me. I believe it comes from Lahore; it was a farewell gift from Runjeet Singh.’ The charming smile on Mrs Colvin’s face froze and she looked sadly towards her sister. Perdita drily added, ‘And my father bought it back from the Company for me.’

  Mrs Colvin had the grace to blush, but the awkwardness of the moment was dissipated only when her husband came to take her and Lady Beaminster into dinner. Perdita was seated on his right, and when he turned to her with a courteous remark, she smiled and congratulated him on the army’s success. He would not accept her accolade for himself, but he did say:

  ‘It is very gratifying: we have laid the foundations for reorganizing the entire Afghan nation. It will be something in after-life to have been in some sort a sharer in such important events.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And I am so glad that the army will be able to rest for a while and eat properly now.’

  His face contracted, and she regretted her instinctive remark. He said coldly:

  ‘I see that the croakers have been writing to you too. I find it hard to believe of Beaminster.’

  ‘My husband has written very little of military matters, Mr Colvin, but you must know that everyone in Simla has been concerned at the reports that say the soldiers have been close to starving, and persecuted by Balooch bandits on their march.’

  ‘Soldiers expect hardship, madam, and marching through a country that has suffered a famine is bound to entail some privation.’

  He changed the subject by asking if she had heard anything of the fireworks that were to be lit after dinner. She had not, and allowed him to talk of them until a change of course let him turn to his other neighbour.

  They ate their way through the sumptuous dinner, and Perdita wondered if she were alone in thinking of the incongruity of 150 Europeans set down in a heathen country where large numbers of people starved to death each year, eating salmon sent from Scotland and sardines from the Mediterranean. But a little later she caught an amused glance from Miss Eden, and after dinner discovered that her thoughts were shared.

  They were standing together by the flower-edged dance floor, watching a quadrille, when Maria Jamieson came up to them on her way into one of the tents. She greeted Miss Eden simperingly and then walked on past a group of blanket-wrapped Hill men who had come down from their poor villages to watch the cavortings of the foreigners. They bowed down to the ground as Mrs Jamieson walked by, unseeing, and Miss Eden whispered to Perdita:

  ‘I sometimes wonder they do not cut all our heads off.’

  Perdita could only agree, and found that her few moments with the astringent and intelligent great lady helped to control the dreadful boredom of the rest of the evening. It was with enormous relief that she called for her carriage at midnight.

  By then she had danced with most of the officers there, and once with Doctor Drummond, who had looked down at her as the music ended and said:

  ‘Lady Beaminster, you must allow me to tell you how happy I am to see you looking so well. You had such an unhappy time last year.’

  Her lovely eyes seemed to glitter in the lamplight as she smiled up at him.

  ‘But there were good things too.’

  ‘I am glad of that.’ As he bowed over her hand, he gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘Well, adieu, Lady Beaminster. I trust that having emerged from your seclusion on this occasion, you will not spurn my hospitality next week.’

  ‘Oh, Doctor Drummond, I do not really like to go out while Beaminster is with the army.’

  ‘I can quite understand that. But it won’t help him, you know, for you to mope yourself into a decline just because he is seeing a little fighting. And the news is good. Please consider it.’

  Perdita promised she would, but when the time came, she succumbed to temptation and sent her apologies, spending the evening at home writing letters and rereading the ones she had received from her husband and Charles Byrd. Both were well, if their letters did not lie, and Marcus’s description of the joys of reaching Candahar were almost enough to wipe out the picture Perdita had formed of the starving army making its way painfully through a barren country to face a savage and intractable enemy. Marcus wrote of magnificent rose trees and delectable fruits, of the enthusiastic welcome the people of Candahar gave to Shah Soojah, and told her comfortingly that ‘this business’would soon be over.

  Like all the other wives, Perdita passionately hoped that he was right, and like them waited for news. They soon heard that the army had left Candahar for Ghazni, a supposedly impregnable fortress that stood squarely between them and Caubul, on 27 June.

  By the next dawk came letters from Lahore, announcing the death of Runjeet Singh. The politicals left in Simla were worried about the effect this news might have on their treaty, for without the active support of the Punjab, or at least a guarantee of open lines of communication between Afghanistan and British India, the army would be in serious trouble. But most of the ladies were more interested in the news of his obsequies.

  They heard that the old man had spent his last few hours on earth distributing his unrivalled collection of jewels to shrines around the city to ensure that the priests prayed for him in perpetuity. Only the wailing protests of the sirdars gathered around his bed had prevented the legendary koh-i-noor, the light of the universe, from disappearing into a holy shrine for ever.

  The old Lion’s determination to secure a favourable reincarnation was echoed by some of the ranees, his wives, who announced their determination to share his pyre, in spite of the protests of their stepson, Kurruk. Simla was partly horrified, partly thrilled by the news, and when the minute guns were fired there (one for each year of Runjeet’s life), there were few who did not shive
r at the thought of that pyre.

  Soon eyewitness accounts began to filter down to Simla in letters from friends, relatives and fellow-officers stationed at Lahore, and the full horror was passed from person to person. Perdita learned of the details in a letter from Charles Byrd, who had stayed on at Lahore with old General Harlan, a compatriot of his, when the army moved on towards Afghanistan. She found herself at once admiring the courage of women who would burn themselves alive for love, and disgusted by the waste and cruelty of the custom.

  Parts of Charles’s description of the occasion stuck in her mind and fuelled nightmares for months. Almost the worst was his account of one of the ranees walking unveiled and barefoot to her torturing death, preceded by a man walking backwards and holding up a looking glass so that she could assure herself that she showed no fear. Drums rolled, and the young queen walked forward, intent on keeping her feelings out of her face. She was followed by three more, carried in palanquins, and then by the old man’s female slaves who were to burn with him. Some of them were as young as fourteen, and for them, at least, the fate cannot have been voluntary.

  ‘It seems rather unfair,’ added Charles, ‘that his boys are excused by reason of their sex from the fate when they have shared everything else with these unfortunate women.’ Perdita did not quite see the point he was trying to make, but it did not seem very important compared to the rest.

  But soon there was good news to chase the rest into the background of her mind. In early August came the announcement that Ghazni too had fallen. Sir John Keane had carried it with a brilliant surprise attack at night. The Army of the Indus lost only 17 men, with about 150 wounded, but the defenders had been taken entirely by surprise and nearly 500 of them were killed. Simla considered the result to be very satisfactory, and its sequel even more so.

  Afzul Khan, one of the Dost Mohammed’s sons, had been watching the fortress from the safety of the heights above it, and when he saw the colours of the 13th Light Infantry hoisted on the citadel on the morning of 23 July, he rode hell-for-leather with his thousands of horsemen to Caubul to inform his father of the invaders’invincibility.