by Saul David
‘It seems,’ said Roberts to George, ‘that you are who you now say you are. Whether the rest of your story is true is another matter. But as there’s no way to verify it, I’ll have to let the matter rest until after the battle. In the meantime, I’m sending you and your Afghan companion to assist Colonel Jenkins of the Guides Infantry. He’s a good man, one of the best I’ve got, and is in charge of the vulnerable eastern sector, which, if the princess is right, will face the brunt of the assault. He’ll need every man he can get.’
‘I’m glad to help where I can,’ said George, ‘as is Ilderim Khan. He served for many years in the Guide cavalry, retiring as a subadar, and may still know some of the officers. Will we retain our ranks?’
‘No, your ranks are unverified and mean nothing to me. You’ll both serve as privates. But remember this: if you’re playing me false, you’ll suffer the consequences. I promise you that. As for the princess, she’ll be kept within these walls until it’s possible for her to join her brother in exile.’
‘You mean to keep her under lock and key?’ George was aghast.
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ said Roberts, waving dismissively. ‘She’ll be given a guard of honour, as befitting her royal status.’
‘And if she tries to leave the cantonment before the battle?’
‘Then she’ll be, um – how can I put it? – dissuaded. She’ll be much safer here. I’d be grateful if you could explain that to her.’
‘I’ll try, but she won’t like it.’
‘Maybe not, but there it is. Goodnight, then,’ said Roberts, bowing slightly to Yasmin as he rose from his chair. ‘FitzGeorge will arrange your quarters and the princess’s guard.’
Once Roberts had departed, George turned to Yasmin and translated what the general had said.
‘Great God!’ responded Yasmin, eyes blazing. ‘Am I to be kept here against my will?’
‘I’m afraid so. At least until the battle is over.’
‘That’s not quite how the general put it,’ interrupted FitzGeorge, also speaking Pashto.
‘Isn’t it, Major?’ said George. ‘Then perhaps you’d care to explain what he did mean.’
‘Simply that it wouldn’t be safe for the princess to leave while the rebellion is in full spate.’
‘So you won’t allow me to, is that it?’ asked Yasmin.
‘Um, yes,’ said FitzGeorge, ‘but for your own good.’
‘What nonsense! Why can’t you admit I’m your prisoner?’
‘Because it’s not true, Your Highness,’ said FitzGeorge, lamely. ‘You should think of yourself, instead, as a guest with restricted movement. Now, if you’ll allow me, I’ll show you to your quarters.’
George was lying fully clothed on a camp-bed in his room over the main gate, mulling over the events of the evening, when a knock sounded at his door. ‘Who is it?’
‘FitzGeorge. I’ve a message from the princess.’
George rose wearily from the camp-bed, padded to the door and opened it. FitzGeorge was standing there, his head cocked to one side, a half-smile on his lips.
‘What message?’
‘She wanted you to know that she doesn’t blame you for what’s happened, and that she trusts you’ll stick to your side of the bargain. I’m intrigued as to what she means by that.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said George, more than a little irked that Yasmin felt she needed to remind him to keep the cloak secret. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘I meant to ask you earlier if you ever found out what became of the cloak.’
So surprised was George by the question that he just stared, open-mouthed. ‘The cloak? What cloak?’ he said at last, playing for time.
‘You know perfectly well what cloak. The Prophet’s Cloak, of course. You asked me about it at Ali Khel, and I confirmed it was on its way to the mullah at Ghazni. The question is, did it get there?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said George, trying to keep his gaze away from the saddle-bag beside the bed. ‘But, given the success of the mullah’s call to arms, I’d say it’s a safe bet he has it.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But none of my spies has mentioned it, which they would have done if he’d worn it in public.’
‘Maybe he’s waiting for the right moment.’
‘That moment’s been and gone. The only logical explanation is that he doesn’t have it yet. But if that’s so, who does?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I don’t suppose so. Either way the tribes have risen and if Lytton holds his nerve we’ll soon have them licked. Then we can choose at our leisure which bits of the country we’d like to keep hold of.’
‘This is what you’ve been planning for all along, isn’t it?’ asked George. ‘To break up the country, divide and rule.’
‘Of course. It will secure India’s frontiers and give us the opportunity to extend British trade.’
‘What do you care about trade?’
‘Nothing, ordinarily,’ said FitzGeorge. He paused. ‘But I’m a little short of cash at the moment and an Armenian merchant, prominent in the Calcutta business community, has offered me a very generous sum if I secure for him a monopoly over certain Afghan exports.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Fruit and nuts, to begin with. Have you tried them? They’re excellent.’
‘What else?’
‘Opium. My merchant friend is keen to find out if Afghanistan, particularly the Helmand province in the south-west, is suitable for the production and export of high-grade opium. The Chinese can’t get enough of it.’
‘And why is that?’ asked George, indignantly. ‘It’s because twice in the last forty years we’ve fought wars to force the Chinese to open their ports to our trade, particularly opium grown in India. Why do you think we acquired Hong Kong in forty-two if not as a base for opium smuggling? And why do you think in sixty we destroyed the Imperial Summer Palace at Peking, one of the wonders of the world, if not to promote free trade? It certainly seems to have worked because this year, according to The Times, we exported twice as many chests of opium to China as we did in eighteen sixty. The result is that three of every four Chinese males are addicts – and you’re happy to extend this wicked trade here, as if the Afghans haven’t got enough to worry about. What kind of a monster are you?’
FitzGeorge snorted with derision. ‘Don’t get pious with me, Hart. We’re all in it for something, even you. And why shouldn’t my Armenian friend take over? He’ll make more money out of the opium and fruit trades than the Afghans ever could. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years’ time, they name a Kabul street after him.’
‘How much?’
‘How much what?’
‘How much is your cut?’
‘He’s offered me a lakh of rupees, which is ten thousand pounds to you, but I’m sure I can squeeze a little more out of him.’
George looked at FitzGeorge scornfully, almost ashamed now that they might be brothers. ‘Aren’t you forgetting one thing?’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a battle looming that we might not win. Much good ten thousand pounds will do you when you’re cold and in your grave – if the Afghans can be bothered to bury you, that is, which I very much doubt they will. Goodnight,’ said George, and shut the door before FitzGeorge could respond.
Chapter 20
North-east corner of the Sherpur cantonment, Kabul, 23 December 1879
George blew on his hands for warmth as he peered across the cantonment to the Asmai Heights where, if Yasmin’s intelligence was correct, the Mullah Mushk-i-Alam would light a fire to signal the start of the battle. He and Ilderim were keeping watch behind a raised parapet on the roof of the native field hospital, a walled enclosure that was the keystone to the otherwise makeshift defences in the cantonment’s north-east corner. It was pitch black and bitterly cold, and most of their new comrades in the 28th Punjab Infantry were still asleep in their tents.
The day before, in li
ne with General Roberts’s instructions, George and Ilderim had reported to Colonel Jenkins, a tall, snowy-haired officer in charge of the cantonment’s eastern defences that stretched from the trenches on the lower slopes of the Bimaru Heights to the corner bastion facing the Siah Sang hills. After a breezy welcome, Jenkins had posted them to the 28th, which was holding the unfinished east wall as far as the native hospital. Ilderim had wanted to join his old comrades in the Guides, manning the trench system that linked the hospital to the loopholed village of Bimaru, but Jenkins would not relent, even when George told him they had fought alongside the doomed Guides at the Residency. ‘We’re all desperate to avenge our fallen comrades,’ he had said, ‘but you can do that just as well in the Twenty-Eighth as with us. They’ve lost quite a few men in recent days, and will welcome the reinforcement.’
So George and Ilderim had been directed to the headquarters of the 28th, a low building set back from the unfinished wall, where a red-faced quartermaster had issued them with Sniders and the battalion uniform of light blue turbans, short black boots, khaki tunics and trousers, and white cross-belts holding a bayonet and ammunition pouches for forty rounds. Then they were assigned to a company of a hundred men defending the hospital. The company commander, in turn, had put them on night sentry duty, which was why they were standing alone on the hospital roof with orders to rouse Havildar Singh as soon as they saw the first sparks of a fire on the distant Asmai Heights.
‘Can you see anything?’ asked George, as he stared into the inky blackness.
‘No, huzoor, but I can hear something being dragged across the snow.’
George listened hard and could just make out a swishing sound, like a sledge. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘They might be bringing ladders closer to the wall.’
George shivered again and this time it wasn’t the cold. He knew, as did every defender in the improvised fort, that if the Afghans broke in they would give no quarter. It was Isandlwana all over again, only this time they knew an assault was imminent, and from which direction. ‘If the princess is correct,’ said George, ‘they’ll attack the south wall first, but their main effort will be against us. Why is it that we always find ourselves in the thick of the action?’
Barely had George spoken than the garrison clock struck the hour, its six chimes heralding the near approach of dawn. George looked again to the Asmai Heights away to the south-east. On the topmost crag he could just see the spark of a tiny fire. Fed by oil, or ghee, and brushwood, it quickly grew until it was a blazing beacon, its flames and sparks shooting skywards and casting a reflection upon the fort below.
‘That’s the signal, Ilderim,’ said George. ‘Tell Havildar Singh.’
Ilderim sprinted across the rooftop and down the steps. Within minutes the battalion had been roused and a hundred tall Sikhs and Punjabi Muhammadans were pouring into the loopholed lower rooms of the native hospital and onto its roof. The hurried spectacle was being repeated across the cantonment as the bulk of four British and twelve Indian regiments hurried to their allotted places on the perimeter. All of the ‘martial races’ so beloved of the British were represented – Sikhs, Pathans, Gurkhas and kilted Highlanders – and the majority of the best regiments, the 28th included, had been placed on the southern and eastern walls.
As the Punjabis fell in on either side of George, each man cocking and loading his Snider with practised ease, a single rifle shot rang out from the direction of the amir’s garden, a walled enclosure just a few hundred yards from the south wall that had been occupied by the rebels a few days earlier. More shots came from the villages on the south-east and eastern flanks, and one or two whistled over the top of the hospital, causing George and others to duck their heads.
‘Hold your fire until I give the order,’ bellowed Havildar Singh, an imposing figure of a man with a long black beard and a ready smile. But he needn’t have worried, because it was still too dark to see individual objects and the first attack, as everyone knew, would come from the south. It was heralded by a rolling thunder of musketry against the south wall as thousands of Afghans, hidden behind every conceivable scrap of cover, opened a covering fire designed to keep the defenders’ heads down.
Then, from the amir’s garden and a fort to its right, came the sound of sandals slapping against snow as small groups of men with huge ladders broke from cover and made for the centre of the southern wall, a sector held by the dismounted troopers of the disgraced 9th Lancers and the 14th Bengal Lancers. The cavalrymen held their fire until star shells had lit up the battlefield, revealing numerous clusters of Afghans as they closed in on the walls. At last the order was given and the south wall exploded in a storm of carbine and howitzer fire, the bullets sweeping the open ground and the shells targeting the strongholds beyond. Scores of Afghans were hit, while their comrades ditched their ladders and sought cover behind broken walls and in ditches.
So much for the diversionary attack, thought George, as he watched from the hospital roof. The star shells were still arcing up into the night sky and throwing an eerie light onto the now empty battlefield in front of the south wall. There was a brief lull and then the storm broke with increased ferocity on George’s sector.
It began with a mighty roar as ten thousand Afghan throats shouted their battle cry ‘Allahu Akbar!’ (‘God is Great!’) and a storm of fire was opened onto the unfinished wall, the field hospital and the entrenchment that linked it to Bimaru village. Then, as the two sounds mingled in a deafening clamour, the Afghans attacked in human waves. At first George found it hard to distinguish the attacking masses in the grey dawn, but as they got closer he could see they were led by fanatical Ghazi warriors dressed in white and waving green standards, and backed up by tribesmen in black and former soldiers in red. The majority seemed to be heading for the shallow trench system and wooden stockade on George’s left that covered the four-hundred-yard gap between the hospital and Bimaru village.
‘Wait for it! Wait for it!’ shouted Havildar Singh.
George squinted down the sights of his Snider, the trigger cold against his finger. The nearest Afghans were four hundred yards away, and well within range, but still the havildar waited because Roberts had ordered the troops to hold fire until the very last moment. George glanced to his left, past Ilderim to the trenches beyond, and wondered what the Guides were thinking as thousands of Afghans bore down on their exposed position. George himself was in a relatively secure spot, behind a parapet twenty feet above the ground, yet his mouth still felt dry and his palms sweaty. He wiped his trigger hand on his trousers and took a last swig from his water bottle. The liquid tasted brackish and he spat it over the parapet.
On raced the Ghazis, and the range was down to a hundred and fifty yards or so, and virtually point blank, when the havildar bellowed, ‘Fire!’
George gently squeezed the trigger and felt a buzzing in his ears and a sharp pain in his shoulder as the rifle recoiled, throwing the foresight off the big Ghazi he had been aiming at. For a few seconds his view, and that of his neighbours, was obscured by a thick wreath of smoke from the black cartridges they had fired. As it cleared he could see no sign of the Ghazi and assumed he was one of many lying prone in the snow, their gaping wounds staining the white landscape with vivid patches of red. But for every casualty another twenty warriors were racing towards the east wall, determined to get to grips with the hated infidel.
At Singh’s command, the men on the hospital fired successive volleys into the onrushing mass, as did the troops on either side. Shell fire and case shot from the artillery on the heights added to the maelstrom of flying lead and steel. Yet still the attackers kept coming, though they had resorted, like the Zulus at Isandlwana, to short rushes from one piece of cover to the next, while others used their marksmanship to pick off the defenders.
George was leaning forward to load his Snider when a bullet ricocheted off the parapet in front of him and into the neck of the soldier on his right. The man tried to staunch the flow
of bright red arterial blood with his hand, but it kept spurting between his fingers, spraying George and even Ilderim beyond. George tore open a dressing and clamped it on the wound, only to find a much bigger gash on the back of the man’s neck where the bullet had exited. A second dressing was applied, but by now the soldier was choking on his blood, his frightened eyes pleading for help. George wanted to lay him down, to comfort him in his last few minutes of life, but he was reminded of the harsh realities of war by Havildar Singh.
‘Leave him and pick up your rifle, you bloody fool! If those buggers down there get a foothold in the fort, we’re done for,’ he shouted, drawing his hand across his throat.
Horrified by the havildar’s callousness, George was about to tell him to go to hell. But then he remembered that the havildar was, for the moment, his military superior and, more importantly, he was right. This was no time for sentiment. So he held his tongue, wiped the dying man’s sticky blood from his face and resumed his place on the parapet.
The noise of battle was, if anything, even louder, yet the smoke from the defensive fire had drifted across the battlefield, making it hard for the defenders to target their foe. Many Ghazis had taken advantage of this and George could see groups of the white-clad warriors emerging from the obstacles of telegraph wire that had been placed just thirty yards ahead of the trench to their left. He snapped off a shot and missed as more Afghans broke through the obstacle and raced for the barrier of trees that protected the trench. ‘Havildar, look!’ shouted George, pointing towards the danger. ‘The Guides are about to be swamped. Let me take thirty men to reinforce them.’
The havildar swivelled his head and, for just a moment, considered the seriousness of the situation. George fully expected him to refuse permission and a row to ensue. But the havildar surprised him. ‘Go, and take every other man from the parapet. We’re safe enough here.’
George called out the order and the men fell in. ‘Shall I come too, huzoor?’ asked Ilderim who, by the havildar’s calculations, was supposed to stay.