by Saul David
‘We can do that, huzoor, but what hope have we of stealing the cloak with so many men against us?’
‘Not much, it’s true. But we did it once and we can do it again. I say we wait until they’ve all gone to sleep, then sneak in and take it. The princess will have it with her. We need to find out which is her tent. Keep close,’ said George, unslinging his carbine before setting off from the wood in a stooped trot.
The camp lay six hundred yards below them, across two maize fields separated by an irrigation ditch. On the far side of the second field was the orchard of walnut trees that George had identified as the ideal place to lie up. After a nervous minute or two spent crossing open ground in the half-light, with Ilderim cursing silently as he slipped a foot into the icy water of the irrigation ditch, they reached it unobserved. Now just eighty yards from the camp, and even less from the crowd round the fire on a plateau just above the tents, they crawled on their bellies to the bottom of the orchard where a small mound provided a convenient rest for their carbines. All eyes in the crowd, meanwhile, were on the woman speaking.
Beneath the cloak she was dressed in the same green tightly fitting jacket and white jodhpurs that she had worn on the night they had taken the cloak from the mullah. She was also veiled, presumably as a sop to the conservative Kohistani tribesmen, but her clothes, flashing eyes and extravagant hand gestures left George in no doubt that she was Princess Yasmin. Her words provided the confirmation. ‘I won’t deny,’ she cried, straining to make herself heard at the back of the gathering stretched out before her, ‘that the shame my brother has brought on his family, and on Afghanistan, by throwing off his dynastic responsibilities is a stain that cannot easily be wiped clean. But with Allah’s help, and your assistance, I will try. I know there are many here who would question my right to rule . . .’
Whistles sounded from one or two in the crowd.
‘. . . but I say to you, cast aside your prejudices and let me prove myself. Did not Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi, show herself to be a worthy ruler, as valiant in battle as she was wise in counsel, during the sepoy rebellion against the Angrez?’
Someone in the crowd shouted that the rani was a Hindu not a Muhammadan, and that no Afghan would shame himself by hiding behind a woman’s skirts.
‘Did her religion make her any less inspiring to her people?’ responded Yasmin. ‘No. And if you need an example of a Muhammadan woman ruler, begums have been ruling the princely state of Bhopal in central India for more than fifty years.’
This last remark prompted a grey-bearded chief to rise from the front row and take the floor. ‘What you say is true, Princess, but the begums of Bhopal are pawns of the Angrez. Is that how you would rule, a petticoat imitation of your lapdog brother?’
‘How dare you suggest such a thing, Sher Khan?’ snapped Yasmin, her eyes narrowed in fury. ‘Would I have urged you to march on Kabul, with myself at your head, if I was planning to throw myself at the feet of the Angrez? No! I swear to you all that in return for your allegiance I won’t rest until the Angrez have been driven from our land.’
A handful of tribesmen cheered their assent, but they were quickly silenced by glares from their maliks and headmen, at which point a second younger chief, gorgeously attired in an emerald green kurta with a yellow sash and matching yellow turban, rose to say his piece. He was lighter-skinned than most Pathans, with blue eyes and a reddish tint to his immaculately trimmed and carefully oiled beard. ‘We all admire your spirit, Princess,’ declared the young dandy, ‘but to defeat the Angrez we will require more than that: a general needs cunning, determination and military experience. I possess all of those qualities, and you do not.’
Yasmin paused before answering, as if aware of the serious threat this chief posed to her ambitions. ‘I won’t deny you’ve seen more fighting than I have, Mir Bacha. What man has not? But it’s rumoured that years of peace under my father Sher Ali have made you soft, more interested in women and fine clothes than in the rigours of a campaign.’
A few in the crowd sniggered, while Mir Bacha glared and Yasmin nodded knowingly. ‘And there’s one more thing you lack, cousin,’ she continued, ‘and that’s the royal blood of the Barakzais that flows through my veins. Without it, how can you imagine the people of this country will accept you as their ruler?’
‘Why do you think I want to rule, Princess? We are not here to decide the next amir. That is for the loya jirga to decide, though I won’t deny my preference is for your uncle Wali Mahomed. We are here today to choose a military commander for the thousands of Kohistani tribesmen who, in a few days, will march on Kabul and destroy the Angrez. I want to be that commander. It is my destiny.’
Listening intently from his hiding place, George could sense that the charismatic young chief was getting the upper hand and that the princess had one last chance to win over the crowd.
‘No, Mir Bacha. It is my destiny. Am I not wearing the sacred cloak of our Prophet?’ she asked, arms spread wide to illustrate the fact. ‘Did I not pluck it from the undeserving hands of the Ghazni mullah, a man who would hope to impose a medieval theocracy over our country that would set it back hundreds of years?’
Boos rippled through the crowd as the princess realized she had underestimated the mullah’s popularity with the conservative Kohistani chiefs. ‘How dare you malign one of Afghanistan’s holiest men?’ said Mir Bacha, accusingly. ‘The mullah has no ambition to rule. His call for a jihad to rid this country of its foreign invaders is a patriotic act, not a selfish one, and all true believers have a duty to respond. We have done that, and I for one will co-operate with the mullah’s troops, under Mohammed Jan, when we reach the capital.’
‘Then you’re a fool, cousin. He will use you to defeat the Angrez, then take control.’
‘I don’t agree. But let us give my fellow chiefs and maliks their say, shall we?’
‘As you wish,’ answered Yasmin, convinced that the cloak would win her a majority.
Mir Bacha turned to the crowd. ‘Which of you would choose Princess Yasmin to lead you into battle?’
Not a single voice or hand was raised in her support.
‘And which of you would choose me?’
A forest of arms went up.
‘The council has spoken,’ declared Mir Bacha. ‘I will lead the advance on Kabul. It only remains, Princess, for you to hand over the cloak. I will see that it is returned to its keepers in Kandahar.’
‘Give you the cloak so you can use it for your own ends? Never!’ vowed Yasmin, her hands placed defiantly on her hips.
‘If you will not give it to me, I shall have to take it,’ said Mir Bacha.
But as he reached Yasmin and tried to spin her round so that he could remove the cloak, she whipped out a tiny pistol from her cummerbund and pointed it at her cousin’s head. ‘Take your hands off me,’ she warned. ‘You shall have this cloak over my dead body.’
Seeing the princess produce a weapon, a number of Mir Bacha’s adherents drew theirs, but their chief merely laughed. ‘Does the cloak mean so much to you that you’d kill one of your kinsmen to keep it? What then, Princess? You wouldn’t get five yards.’
‘With you dead, no. But that is your choice. Now, tell your men to place their weapons on the ground or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.’
Mir Bacha hesitated, not certain that she had the nerve to carry out her threat. But a look into her unblinking brown eyes, fixed like a cobra on its prey, assured him that she did. ‘Put down your weapons,’ he ordered.
One by one his men complied. Yasmin then directed Mir Bacha, her gun still to his head, towards the brushwood enclosure where she instructed him to saddle a horse. ‘You will regret this,’ he snarled, as he put a bridle on the nearest mount. ‘Princess or no, I will hunt you down, and when I do you will wish you had killed me first.’
‘Save your idle threats, cousin. If we do meet again, it is you who will be begging for mercy. Now, hand me the reins and hurry with the saddle.’
Fr
om his vantage point above the camp, George had held his breath as the princess drew her weapon and pointed it at the young chief, convinced she was just seconds from death. But her luck had held and now, incredibly, it looked as if she might get away. He admired her steely nerve and silently chided the Kohistanis for refusing to recognize her outstanding qualities.
‘Huzoor!’ whispered Ilderim, pointing to the left of the enclosure. ‘A gunman is aiming at her.’
George followed the line of Ilderim’s gesture, but could see nothing. ‘Where?’
‘There! He’s behind a rock with a rifle.’
A slight movement caught George’s eye. He squinted harder and could just make out the top of someone’s head, poised above a rifle barrel. He lifted his carbine and lined up the sights on the Afghan’s head. He knew that if he fired the tribesmen would swarm up the hill like a hive of disturbed bees, but if he did not the princess would be killed. He fired, the noise reverberating across the valley as the bullet thudded into the gunman’s temple, jerking his head sideways.
The crowd scattered, some taking cover while others ran for their tents to retrieve their rifles. Yasmin mounted in the confusion and urged her horse up the track that led to Gulbahar as Mir Bacha shouted at his men to follow her. Two heeded his call, not even bothering to saddle their horses, but neither got further than the perimeter of the camp. One had his horse shot by Ilderim and was pitched headlong into the road; the other became George’s second victim. By now the tribesmen were returning fire and George knew it was time to go. He signalled to Ilderim and they scrambled back up the hill, stopping every hundred yards or so to fire at their pursuers who, thanks to the gloom, had little to aim at.
Once under the cover of the trees, they hurried along the track to where they had left their horses, pausing only to tighten their girths before rejoining the road to Charikar where they hoped to intercept Yasmin as she fled south. A mile short of the town, they pulled off the track, and hid behind some rocks. It was now dark, though the half-moon and clear sky provided enough light to see the track, and the temperature had plummeted to well below zero. The only sound was the distant howl of a wolf. Then, faintly at first, and slowly getting louder, they picked up the regular beat of a horse approaching at the trot, its rider preferring not to canter by moonlight. George peered round the rocks and confirmed that it was the princess.
They waited until Yasmin was almost level with them before spurring on to the road. Uncertain who they were, she tried to get away by swerving her horse round George, but Ilderim managed to grab her reins and bring the animal to a halt. He looked up and found himself staring at the barrel of a pistol.
‘Don’t shoot, Princess!’ shouted George, as he rode up. ‘It’s Captain Hart and Ilderim. We saved your life back at the camp.’
She kept her weapon levelled at Ilderim. ‘It was you who shot the man sneaking up on me?’
‘Yes, and the two horsemen who tried to follow you.’
‘Why would you help me after I left you at Ghazni?’
‘Because I now know what you were trying to do, and I sympathize, and because you still have the cloak. Now hand it over.’
‘Why should I? I could kill you both.’
‘No, Princess,’ said George, pointing his carbine with one hand. ‘You might kill one of us, but not both.’
She thought about the odds for a moment and saw sense, lowering her pistol and jamming it into her cummerbund. Then she began to take off the cloak, which, close up, was even more striking than George had imagined. The sleeves were plain enough, but the body was a mixture of many different strands of fine thread – reds, blues, greens, yellows and blacks – that had been beautifully worked into a single garment.
‘Look after it,’ said Yasmin, as she handed it over. ‘It’s very delicate.’
George took it and was stunned by the brilliance of the jewelled clasp, the centrepiece of which was a diamond the size of a thumbnail, surrounded by scores of smaller gems. The solitaire alone must have weighed ten carats. As for the cloak’s material, it felt as soft as silk, but not so fine. ‘What is it made from?’ asked George.
‘Camel hair,’ replied Yasmin. ‘But not the hair of any camel, only those that reside in Paradise. Legend has it that the cloak was woven by the Prophet Enoch, and presented by Allah to Muhammad after the great Prophet’s Night Journey and Ascension to Heaven. It is said to have the power to cure disease, convert the faithless, and end national disasters. You should handle it with respect.’
A shiver went down George’s spine as he grasped the historical significance of the 1300-year-old garment in his hands. To a Muhammadan it would be like holding a piece of the True Cross. He could sense the weight of history between his fingers, and was fiercely determined that the cloak would come to no harm. ‘I will,’ he replied, carefully folding the garment and stowing it in his saddle-bag. ‘And now we must leave before your Kohistani friends find us.’
‘And go where?’
‘I haven’t yet decided but away from here.’
Three hours later, having left the hills for the wide expanse of the Shamali plains, they were sitting round a camp-fire, wrapped in blankets to keep out the bitter cold. Ilderim was snoring softly, but George and Yasmin were awake, both aware that the other needed to talk. Yasmin spoke first.
‘I’m sorry for what I did at Ghazni,’ she said, staring intently into the flames, ‘but I had my reasons.’
‘I understand.’
‘You should hate me, and yet you tell me you understand.’ She turned to look at George who met her gaze. ‘Would you have done the same in my position?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No – how could you? You’re an Angrez, after all. Your empire reaches every corner of the globe. How can you imagine what it feels like to see your country invaded by a foreign power, its soldiers given licence to plunder and rape? You can’t. But I’m going to tell you. It shames you. It boils your blood and turns your heart to stone. It leaves you determined to do everything in your power to see that foreign presence removed. That is why I betrayed you. I needed the cloak. I thought it would cause others to follow me, and together we would free Afghanistan. But I was wrong. Did you see those fools back there? They can’t or won’t admit that a woman might make a better ruler than a man. I might as well have been wearing sackcloth for all the good the cloak did me. So much for its fabled power,’ she said bitterly, tears streaking her beautiful face.
George reached across and took one of her hands in his. ‘I heard what you said to them and they are fools. I would have followed you. I do understand your strength of feeling. You may think I’m a typical Angrez officer but I’m not. I was born in Ireland, a country that has long felt itself occupied by the Angrez, and I have Zulu blood.’
‘Zulu? What is that?’
‘An African tribe. My mother is half Zulu, yet earlier this year I fought for the British against the Zulus in a war I knew to be wrong.’
‘Why?’
George sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain. I didn’t agree with the war, but I felt it might have a positive outcome for the Zulus if it resulted in the destruction of their king’s brutal system of rule.’
‘And did it?’
‘Time will tell. But I wanted you to know that I’m not what I seem to be. This,’ he said, indicating his tanned skin, ‘should give you a clue.’
Yasmin smiled. ‘You’re not very different in colour from me. I thought you’d been too long in the sun. But I’m glad you understand why I acted as I did.’
George nodded. ‘There’s just one thing that still bothers me. Did you feign your affection for me to get close to the cloak?’
‘At first, yes. I do like you, more than any man I’ve met – not that my family has exposed me to many – but my personal feelings will always come second to my duty.’
‘So you don’t regret betraying me?’
‘I did it for the noblest of reasons. But I am sorry that my actions might have caus
ed you pain, Angrez. Tell me what happened at Ghazni. How did you escape the mullah’s men?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘But . . . here you are.’
‘I got away eventually, thanks to him,’ said George, nodding towards Ilderim’s sleeping form.
‘And before that? Were you badly treated?’
‘I’d prefer not to talk about it,’ said George, staring intently into the flames.
Yasmin leant closer to him and gently stroked his face. ‘I’m sorry, Angrez, I truly am.’
George turned to face her. ‘It’s forgotten, in the past. What matters now is that we work together to end the war and the British occupation.’
‘I’m with you, Angrez. But how do we do that?’
‘By keeping the cloak out of the hands of the Ghazis and tribesmen converging on Kabul, and by warning General Roberts that he’s about to be attacked. Because if Roberts is taken by surprise, and his force at Kabul is destroyed, the Indian government will send more troops and use the defeat as an excuse to annex the whole country.’
‘You’re asking me to betray my own people? I won’t do it!’ she said, with a shake of the black mane hanging loose down her back.
‘You wouldn’t be betraying your people, just those who would seek to profit from war,’ said George, patiently. ‘Surely most Afghans would choose peace over war.’
‘Yes, but not at the cost of their independence.’
‘It need not come to that if we give Roberts sufficient warning of an attack.’
Yasmin seemed unconvinced. ‘But even if we do save your General Roberts, what makes you think he and all the other Angrez soldiers will then want to leave?’
‘They won’t. Not immediately. They’ll go when they’re ordered to by London, of course, but that will not happen if our troops have been defeated in the field. So it’s vitally important to prevent that.’
‘So what you’re saying, Angrez, is that your people are less likely to leave if they’ve been defeated in battle?’