The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  Lady Sale’s head sang with her own bravery, and she jutted her jaw out in defiance.

  ‘Yes, that’s so,’ Mrs Sturt said casually. Lady Sale looked at her in surprise; she was a foolish woman, but surely she appreciated the danger they were all in? ‘Yes, he is strong – look, his little hands, how they grasp and tug – yes, I can see him as a soldier when he grows up. Where is my dear Sturt? And Dr Brydon, too, abandoning us so swiftly – but I am really disappointed in Sturt.’

  ‘My dear,’ Lady Sale said, as kindly as she could, ‘you know that a soldier has many calls on his time, and even the birth of his son must take second place to such pressing duties.’

  Mrs Sturt waved this away and subsided into an enormous sulky yawn she did not trouble to cover. ‘… first son,’ she finished. ‘Lord, how fagged I am. D’you suppose it is quite as tiring for them – for him—’ she nodded downwards at the baby, ‘—I mean? He looks as if he has just woken from a good deep sleep.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lady Sale said impatiently.

  ‘Where can Sturt be?’ Mrs Sturt said. ‘So unlike him. Everything is so quiet, is it not? I want Sturt by me – I want to talk of names for the little one. Do you think Horatio a nice name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lady Sale said. Really … ‘Perhaps a naval name, rather than a military one.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Mrs Sturt said comfortably. ‘And I do so feel he will grow up to be a soldier. I wish General Sale were here still.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lady Sale said. ‘But I start to think he is lucky to be in relative safety, although he would never have credited it when he set off.’

  ‘He would be kind to me, were he here,’ Mrs Sturt said, a note of complaint coming into her voice. ‘He was so very solicitous about my welfare, he would not leave me lying here quite alone while he went about his duties. Really, I grow cross with Sturt.’

  Lady Sale gave a silent prayer of thanks for Mrs Sturt’s stupidity; sometimes not being able to understand or think, she considered, could be a blessing.

  Sturt was at the walls of the cantonments, with the men; the officers patrolled up and down in the early morning, watching, waiting. The night had risen into the air like smoke, leaving no trace. The city seemed quiet, and the empty hills behind the cantonments were calm as if nothing had happened; as if the riotous fury of the night had never occurred. There was nothing but a pall of smoke over the city to show what had happened. The city had risen, once, its jaw and teeth stretched wide, and bit and swallowed, once, before subsiding again to the deep, leaving nothing behind, and the English contemplated the smooth tranquil expanse with terror.

  Macnaghten had withdrawn to his quarters, and had left instructions that he was not to be disturbed, except in the case of the direst emergency. Outside, the nazir himself stood guard implacably; inside, undisturbed, Macnaghten shook, and wept, and from time to time wrote with wild bursts of speed, his hand scrawling loosely across the page. He was not to be disturbed; because what he was writing would, in the end, excuse him, and he knew that he might not have very long. He wrote, not in his usual precise, slanting hand, but in the loops and flurries of a man with no time, and as he wrote, his uncontrollable tears made blots on the page. ‘I may be considered culpable for not having foreseen,’ he wrote, and then stopped, trembling; the terror rose up in him like a wave, and it choked in his throat. He tried to start to write again, but could not; his hand rested on the page, and would not move. Go on, he told himself; go on; but it would not. He had to set down what he knew must be the truth, that he had always done his best, and no man could have done better, but he could not go on, setting down the folly of Burnes and the helplessness of his own position; he shook with the effort of keeping his tears silent. There was nobody now but him, and he could not show himself. The great hero, hiding in his tent, waiting and crying.

  By the end of the afternoon, he had cried himself out; drained, dry, exhausted, he felt limp as an empty waterskin. He had finished writing his testament, and there was nothing to do now but to take charge, and show himself once more. In the mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself, raw, red and frightened. That would not do. For the moment, he had no idea what to do but wait, but he called for his body-servants to shave and wash him. They came quickly, and, once they had shaved him, he washed his face alone, slowly. As he put on his uniform, buttoning up, a single idea came to him, and he felt consoled.

  The troops were all in position, waiting for something which might never come. They were all wrapped deep in their coats and blankets against the sharp cold, and from time to time stood up and stamped, their breath clouding in the thin mountain air like oxen. The place seemed to have changed. Familiarity had stopped them seeing it, but with the news from the old quarter of the city, it was as if the land had become strange again. It looked like the city they had first seen, unfamiliar and hostile. The country had a bareness about it; outside the city walls, no tree grew all the way to the horizon, and no earth softened the contours. The city was set down in a rocky and bleak valley, climbing the cliffs for no reason, and beyond its bounds, no life, no animals, no orchard subsisted. Who had stopped here, centuries ago, and begun to build? But it was here that Kabul was, and now, that was all the life there was. The country, buried deep in shining snow, closed them in, and the soldiers stamped their feet and watched for what would come next. The skies were clear, but the silence all around them was like the silence between cracks of thunder, weighty and oppressive.

  Macnaghten’s little court was summoned, and despatched into the city. On their return, Elphinstone, who had remained at the walls with the men, cornered the nazir, and learnt that Macnaghten had sent them to the old quarter, laden with gifts; they had distributed what gilded objects, what gold the camp could now supply. Everything was now quiet, the nazir said, but he was not cheered by what he had seen; and when Elphinstone asked him further about the state of affairs, he learnt that a son of Dost Mohammed’s was in the city, and the city believed with a certainty which could not be hopeful superstition, that Akbar’s men were camped beyond the ridge, and waiting their moment. How many men? The nazir did not know, and all his bribes had not been able to find out. Many; very many. That was what they had all said, locking away the English gold and shaking their heads. The nazir went, and Elphinstone repeated all this; Macnaghten emerged from his tent, looking shaken and cold, and was told what he already knew, that the city by now could not be bought, and the bribes had been spread to no purpose.

  Beyond the ridge, the army of Akbar lay, waiting. After nightfall, a scout was sent out, and returned in an hour to confirm the truth of this; perhaps five thousand men. There was no sign of movement, but the still night seemed full of unbroken thunder, and the guards on the walls stayed as they were, snatching an hour or two of sleep where they could. Five thousand out there; twenty-five or thirty thousand men of fighting ability within the city; no bravery, now, could be enough in the face of a concerted rebellion. Akbar was there, somewhere in the city, and soon would summon his men from where they circled the stony horizon. They waited on his pleasure, their clenched jaws scything and chattering in the deep night cold.

  In the morning, a message came from Akbar, and it was an astonishing one; the three bearers of the message, high disdainful princes, each with a long shining dagger hanging from his kummur-bund, stood and waited with a taciturn lack of obeisance while Macnaghten read the strip of parchment. The letter, brief and to the point, offered the English a truce. ‘I had not realized …’ Macnaghten began, but he stopped in the face of Akbar’s terrible messengers. There was no point in saying to these men that he had not realized that Akbar had declared war on the occupiers. Burnes’s murder was not a single thing, and now there was no reason to pretend that any of them did not see it for what it was. Macnaghten went to his desk with the nazir, and, while the three princes waited, wrote a courtly letter back to Akbar. In the light of recent events, he felt that it would be useful if Akbar presented himself at the English
settlement; he made it quite plain that in no circumstances would such a meeting occur outside the walls of the cantonments, and added that Akbar would find that his security would not be threatened in this meeting. Macnaghten meant it; there were those, such as Frampton, who strongly urged that Akbar, once within the cantonments, should quite simply be shot pour encourager les autres. Macnaghten refused this advice. There were dozens of sons of Dost Mohammed, and if they were so foolish as to cut off one head, no one could seriously doubt that many more would spring up in its place, until the English found themselves killing every Afghan. The only hope was to placate Akbar, by any means necessary, and see what he demanded. He explained what he was writing, carefully, to the messengers, and to his slight surprise, they did not immediately demur, as if Akbar had already decided to deliver himself into the hands of the English; whether this was foolishness, or came from a knowledge that they were now quite helpless, Macnaghten could not guess.

  They left, and Macnaghten turned to Elphinstone, who had been standing there throughout.

  ‘I need a memorandum from you, sir,’ Macnaghten said. ‘There is nothing else for it. You are to write, in your own words, a statement declaring our position here to be beyond hope.’

  ‘Macnaghten—’ Elphinstone began.

  ‘There is nothing else for it,’ Macnaghten said again. ‘If we cannot convince Jalalabad to send reinforcements, and quickly, then we are done for. You are to write a letter, in the strongest possible terms, declaring our position to be quite desperate. That is all, gentlemen.’

  The truce began, it seemed; and it was only the truce that demonstrated that, now, they were in a state of war. That afternoon, the unfamiliar silence of the city was suddenly broken, as a lone figure wandered its way towards the walls of the cantonments. The men raised then lowered their muskets. This was no soldier; a small boy, bearing two huge baskets of dried fruits. One of the soldiers started to laugh; the pedlars who had gone constantly between the city and the camp had disappeared in the last few days, and this was the first sign that things, perhaps, were returning to normal. And behind the boy came more merchants with their wares, plodding cheerfully through the snow, coming right up to the mud walls of the camp, and waving their wares over the barrels of the soldiers’ muskets. All that afternoon, the pedlars came, selling their wares to their enemies, and the soldiers laughed, and bought, and squatted in the mud, chewing bits of dried plum, nuts, tobacco. This was a lot of nonsense. But by the time night fell, they were all gone again, and the same silence had returned to torment them. Now, there was nothing to do but to wait for Akbar, and see what he would do with them. Macnaghten’s and Elphinstone’s declaration was despatched, and reinforcements begged for; but nobody in the camp thought that they waited for anything but the exercise of Akbar’s pleasures.

  8.

  The next day, the enemy descended from behind the hills, all at once, like weather.

  The men at the walls raised their weapons, and tensed at the sight; dozens, hundreds, thousands of men, pouring over the brow of the hill. Even at this distance, their blades flashed in the bright sunlight, and the British prepared themselves to shoot. A mass of men, an army, assembled from the far lands, and Akbar’s truce seemed worthless. But they did not ride towards the cantonments; they rode directly down the hill, towards the river, and there the mass of men slowed, pooled, stopped, about a mile away. Elphinstone, behind his men, got out his telescope and peered through it. The army had stopped, he saw, at the bridge the British had built the summer before. More than that, he could not see. It was only half an hour later when the army began to move again, and there, somewhere behind, there was a flash and, two seconds later, an echoing roar. The bridge had been mined with explosives, and destroyed.

  The army was patient, it seemed, and they gave the cantonments a wide berth, riding about it towards the gates of the city. This, then, was only a display. The men slowly lowered their guns and watched them go; near enough to hear the thunder of the massed Afghan cavalry. They let them go their way, knowing that soon they would be back, and the city swallowed them up.

  That afternoon Akbar presented himself, with three attendants – the same three who had delivered his announcement. He was conducted directly to Macnaghten’s quarters. Macnaghten stood up to greet him stonily. The Prince was young, he observed, and startlingly clean; his eyes watchful and alert, taking in the whole of the military tent in one sweep. The tent was almost full; with his suite, Macnaghten had filled his quarters with guards, sepoys and attendants, who closed behind Akbar and the three princes of the court. The business began immediately; today, there were to be no compliments.

  ‘We require Shah Shujah-ul-mulk,’ Akbar began. ‘He will surrender to us, and leave the Bala Hissar.’

  This confirmation that Shah Shujah was still alive, and walled up in his palace, was welcome, but Macnaghten only nodded.

  ‘You are to leave my father’s country and return to India,’ Akbar said. ‘You will be afforded safe passage. After your return, the Amir Dost Mohammed will be returned safely to us; we require that some of your men shall remain here as our guests until he is safely returned. You will surrender, too, all arms before any of this may happen.’

  ‘This is quite impossible,’ Macnaghten said. ‘We can agree to none of your demands. Good day, sir.’

  ‘You may wish to consider our offer, and the consequences of your refusal,’ Akbar said. ‘We are quite willing to wait while you think whether this is not, in fact, the best opportunity you are likely to have.’

  ‘There is no point—’ Macnaghten said, but Elphinstone was drumming on the desk furiously. Macnaghten looked up, and Elphinstone gave a quick nod. There was nothing to discuss, but it would do no harm to make Akbar wait while all the British were brought to agreement. ‘Very well. The sepoys will take you to a place where you may refresh yourselves.’

  When they had gone, Elphinstone leapt in. ‘Macnaghten, we gain nothing by refusing immediately like this. Remember, Dost Mohammed does not command anybody’s loyalty, or only a part of the country. Agree, and we split Akbar’s men, and throw them off their guard. Here, treachery is part of daily life – we should betray them after agreeing to their demands. There is no reason why we should not.’

  To Macnaghten’s surprise, the other officers seemed to agree with this, and in a few minutes assent had been given; agreement would be made, and conditions extracted. Shah Shujah, after all, might prove to hold some popularity, and if Akbar’s army could unite against the British, they would surely divide again when asked to support a king so many of them had reason to dislike. Akbar was sent for, again.

  ‘After all,’ Macnaghten remarked while they were waiting, ‘they will not have forgotten so soon our generosity, and I do not believe that this is anything but Akbar’s request; once the word gets out that he has evicted so generous an occupier as we have proved, there is a strong possibility that his support will melt away. Sir.’

  Akbar, entering, bowed, coldly.

  ‘We have considered your offer, and consider it fair,’ Macnaghten said, scanning Akbar’s face for any expression of surprise at this sudden change of sentiment. ‘We are prepared to meet your demands. We will withdraw forthwith. You yourself are to accompany us to the borders of the country, and be responsible for our safety. Four British officers will remain here in Kabul, the names of whom will be supplied to you shortly. The Amir Dost Mohammed Khan will return, and Shah Shujah removed from his present position. We are meeting, you see, all your demands rather than fall into a futile war which could only destroy you and which would damage the friendship between our two countries. In return, I would ask that this agreement remain between yourself and us, and that the other chiefs of the nation know nothing of it. That, you will agree, is a reasonable request in the circumstances. Good day, sir. We will speak again tomorrow.’

  A flicker of something like interest had passed over Akbar’s face as the other chiefs were mentioned, but now he sank back into hi
s calm unspeaking contempt. He nodded, turned, and left.

  ‘We will get through this, you see,’ Macnaghten said. For the first time in days, he seemed imbued with confidence at his own plans. ‘He will say nothing, and when his allies learn, their support will vanish. He is not furthering his own interests by plotting in this extraordinary manner.’

  Macnaghten’s suite melted away, taking their leave quietly one by one, and not meeting their chief in the eye. They were returning, as they had to, to the ramparts of the cantonments, and preferred to say nothing of what had passed. In a few minutes, there was nobody left by Macnaghten but Elphinstone; even the nazir had gone. Macnaghten turned sharply to his old sparring partner, but had nothing to say. Elphinstone shrugged, helplessly.

  ‘What is it, sir?’ Macnaghten said. ‘Tell me: what is it you wish to say? You wish to say something to me? Do not fix me with your eye, sir; do not stare so; if you wish to say something, say it. You wish to say something? Sir? Sir? No, sir, do not go – no – sir – this fever – this winter fever – I beg you, sir, go, go now …’

  9.

  It was a week later when Macnaghten rode out of the gates of the cantonments in something like triumph, feeling thoroughly justified. In his pocket, he carried a letter from Akbar, and now the terror of the previous week had dissipated into the air. With three of his junior officers, Macnaghten was going to meet Akbar – not in the cantonments, nor in Akbar’s lair in the depths of the city, but outside the walls, half a mile from the British settlement. And Akbar, certainly, had learnt what kind of man Macnaghten was, and, without direct pressure, had given way. The nazir had courted the other great princes of the city with gifts and money and promises, and Akbar’s support had started to crumble beneath his feet. The letter Macnaghten carried showed that Akbar had learnt of this, and his initial demands had mysteriously diminished to no more than this. Shah Shujah to remain; the British to remain, and leave within a year, at a moment of their choice; the assassins of Burnes to be handed over for execution; and Akbar to receive £300,000 in gold and the military support of the British in future. The settlement was acceptable – more, it was impeccable, and Macnaghten rode out with the certainty that he had achieved more than anyone, more, even than Burnes could have conceived possible.