Far Pavilions (176 page)

‘Who are we going to get to take it, sir?’ asked William, hastily sealing the folded sheet of paper with a wafer. ‘It isn't going to be easy to send anyone out, now that we're surrounded.’

‘Ghulam Nabi will take it,’ said Sir Louis. ‘Send him up here and I'll talk to him. We shall have to smuggle him out by the back door of the courtyard and pray to God that there is no one out there as yet.’

Ghulam Nabi was a native of Kabul and an ex-Guide whose brother was at that time Wordi-Major of the Guides Cavalry in Mardan. He had taken service with the British Mission on their arrival as a chupprassi, and he agreed at once to take Cavagnari-Sahib's letter to the palace. William had accompanied him down to the courtyard and stood by with a revolver while the bolts were withdrawn from a small, unobtrusive and seldom-used door in the back wall of the courtyard, near the tent that housed the baggage.

The wall itself was no thicker than a single mud brick, and behind it lay a narrow street that was part of a network of alleyways and houses, the roofs of the latter already packed with excited spectators, many of whom had armed themselves with ancient jezails and opened fire on the Infidels in the spirit of Jehad. In consequence the street itself was almost deserted, and Ghulam Nabi had slipped through the little door, and crossing to the opposite side where any marksman immediately overhead would find him a difficult target, took to his heels and ran in the direction of the palace in the Upper Bala Hissar.

But even as he vanished round the corner into a connecting alleyway, shouts from behind him and a spatter of shots from above showed that he had been spotted. Feet raced in pursuit, and the door had barely been closed and bolted when fists beat upon it.

Within minutes a crowd had gathered on the far side and were pounding on it with staves and musket butts, and though it was stouter than the main door into the courtyard, there was no knowing how long it would stand up to that sort of treatment. ‘We shall have to block it off,’ panted William; and they had done so with everything they could lay their hands on – tables, yakdans, tin-lined boxes full of winter clothing, a sofa and an imported mahogany sideboard, while Ghulam Nabi, having shaken off his pursuers in the maze of alleyways, reached the palace in safety by way of the Shah Bagh, the King's Garden.

But though he had been permitted to deliver Sir Louis' letter, he had not been allowed to return with a reply. Instead, like the previous messenger, he had been ordered to wait in one of the small ante-rooms while the Amir considered what answer he would send. And there he had waited all day.

Out on the plain near Ben-i-Hissar, the grass-cutters and their escort heard the sound of firing, and Kote-Daffadar Fatteh Mohammed, realizing where it came from and well aware of the hatred with which the Herati regiments and the city regarded the foreigners in the Bala Hissar, was uneasily certain that it spelled danger for the British Mission. Hastily rounding up the scattered foragers, he placed all but two of them in the charge of the four Afghan troopers, with instructions to take them at once to the care of the Commander of an Afghan regiment of horse, one Ibrahim Khan who had previously served with the Bengal Cavalry and whose present command was stationed near Ben-i-Hissar. The remaining two, with sowars Akbar Shah and Narain Singh, would return with him to the citadel immediately.

Riding at full gallop it did not take the five men long to come within sight of the south wall of the city and the roofs of the Residency, and the instant they did so any hopes they may have cherished died; for the roof-tops they had been forbidden to appear on for fear of offending the sensibilities of their neighbours were now alive with men, and that sight told them everything. They knew then that it was their own compound that was under attack, and they spurred towards it hoping to force a passage through the Shah Shahie Gate. But they were too late – the rabble was before them.

Half the city had heard the firing and seen the mutinous regiments running to their cantonments to fetch arms, and the rabble, grasping the situation, had wasted no time. Snatching up any available weapon they had rushed to join the attack on the hated interlopers, and their vanguard were already on the road ahead – racing for the same gate and led by a fakir who waved a green banner and urged them forward with frenzied screams. On their heels came others, many others: the scum of that ancient city, swarming out of every foul-smelling hovel, lane and alleyway, spurred on by the hope of loot and the lust for slaughter, and hastening to be in at the kill.

The Kote-Daffadar reined in savagely, realizing that any attempt to reach the gate first or to cut a path through that murderous horde would be tantamount to committing suicide, and that to seek refuge in the city would be equally fatal. Their best chance – if not their only one – would be to make for the fort commanded by the Amir's father-in-law, Yayhiha Khan; and snapping out a curt order he wrenched his horse round and rode off at a tangent across the plain, his four companions following behind him. But with their goal in sight they were overtaken by the four Afghan troopers, who having placed the grass-cutters in the care of Ibrahim Khan, had followed them with the intention of killing the Sikh sowar, Narain Singh, in which laudable task (for are not the Faithful instructed to slay Unbelievers?) they appeared to think that his four Mussulman comrades would be only too pleased to join. Disillusionment came swiftly…

The two grass-cutters were unarmed except for sickles – which can be wicked weapons in a fight – but the three Guides carried cavalry carbines that can be whipped in an instant from the leather buckets that hang from the saddle and levelled with one hand. ‘Come then, and take him,’ invited the Kote-Daffadar, the barrel of his weapon aimed at point-blank range at the breast of the spokesman, his finger taut on the trigger.

The Afghans looked at the three carbines and the two knife-edged sickles, and drew back, cursing and scowling, but unwilling to face such daunting odds. They had expected that their fellow-Mussulmans would at least stand aside even if they would not assist in killing the Sikh, and with the odds four to one in their favour would have had no hesitation in attacking a single man armed with a carbine, since he could only fire once and they would have been on him before he could reload. But now they were four against five, and the chances were that if they attempted to rush that group of determined men only one of them would live to get within striking distance, and what chance would that one, armed with a tulwar, have against three sabres and two sickles?

With a final burst of profanity they turned and made for the citadel and the eager hordes that were hurrying to join in the attack upon the Residency, leaving the Kote-Daffadar and his companions to ride on to the fort, where luck had been with them; for a sizable proportion of the garrison were Kazilbashis, men of the Kote-Daffadar and Akbar Shah's own tribe, who had escorted all five to safety in the Murad Khana – their own walled quarter of the city.

Ash, watching from his window, had glimpsed the five tiny figures, dwarfed by distance and trailing a white cloud of dust as they rode back at a gallop from Ben-i-Hissar, and guessed who they were. But he did not know why they had turned aside until he saw the first of the riff-raff from the city come pouring in from beyond the stables to his right, because the window-bars were set too close to allow him to lean out, so he could not see the Arsenal – or the Kulla-Fi-Arangi either: that empty enclosure on which Wally had hoped to build forage-sheds and servants' quarters so that he could prevent it being used as a way of entering the compound or, in the event of hostilities, occupied by an enemy.

66

Wally had been speaking to the sepoys on the barrack roof when the city
budmarshes
arrived to join the insurgents, and he had seen a number of mutineers, encouraged by these reinforcements, begin to run forward under cover of the fire from the Arsenal towards the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, from where – if they were allowed to occupy it – they would soon be able to make two thirds of the compound untenable. They would have to be dislodged and there was only one way to do it.

Making for the steps that led down in the thickness of the outer wall he pelted down them, raced across the lane into the Residency courtyard, and up to the Envoy's office where he found Cavagnari and William: the Envoy, with his head bandaged, firing through a slit made by breaking out a slat of the shutter, while his orderly acted as loader, taking the empty rifle and handing him a loaded one as fast as he fired, as methodically as though they had been on a duck shoot.

William was kneeling at one of the windows that faced inwards across the courtyard and returning the fire of a group of men on the roof of a house overlooking the barracks, and the room itself was littered with spent shells and full of the reek of black powder.

‘Sir,’ said Wally breathlessly, ‘they are trying to occupy that Kulla enclosure up on the left, and if they get a foothold there we're done. I believe we could drive them out if we made a charge, only we'll have to do it quickly. If William-’

But Cavagnari had tossed aside the rifle and was already half-way across the room. ‘Come on, William.’ He snatched up his sword and revolver and was down the stairs and shouting for Rosie, who was tending a wounded man. ‘Come on, Kelly, leave that fellow. We've got to chase those bastards out. No, not a rifle, your revolver. And a sword, man – a sword.’

Wally, racing ahead of him, collected Jemadar Mehtab Singh and twenty-five men, and explaining the position briefly, watched the sowars stack their carbines and draw their sabres while the sepoys fixed bayonets and two men ran to open the doors in the archway at the far end of the barrack courtyard. ‘Now we will show those sons of perdition how the Guides fight,’ said Wally joyously. ‘
Argi, bhaian. Pah Makhe
– Guides
ki-jai
!’
*

Ash saw them stream across the lane and into the barracks, where the canvas awnings hid them from his view until they burst out through the archway and into the open, the four Englishmen, Wally leading, running ahead with the Guides racing behind them – the sepoys charging with the bayonet and the sowars with sabre and pistol.

They tore cheering across the bullet-swept compound, the sunlight flashing on their blades; and through all the din and tumult of shouting and rifle fire he could hear Wally singing at the top of his voice: ‘… “And hearts are brave again and arms are strong, Alleluia! – All-e-lu-ia!” ’

‘A day for singing hymns,’ thought Ash, remembering. ‘Oh God – a day for singing hymns…’

Two of the Guides fell before they reached the Cavalry lines, one of them pitching forward on his face as he ran, and recovering almost instantly, rolling aside to avoid being trodden on and limping painfully away to the shelter of the stables; the other checking, to sink slowly to his knees and topple sideways and lie still. The rest swerved to avoid his body and ran on out of Ash's range of view, and he heard the firing stop abruptly and realized that both the enemy and the sepoys on the barracks had been forced to hold their fire for fear of killing their own men.

He did not see the attacking party reach their objective. But Nakshband Khan had done so, for the waste ground of the Kulla-Fi-Arangi lay directly in view of the house where he had taken refuge, and the Sirdar, peering from an upper window of that house, saw them vault over the low mud wall that enclosed it, and charging up the slope, drive the enemy before them: ‘The Afghans running like sheep before wolves, said the Sirdar, describing it later.

But Ash had seen them come back, walking now, for they brought three wounded men with them, but moving swiftly and confidently like soldiers who have acquitted themselves well and won a victory, though all of them must have known that it could only be a temporary one.

The sowar who had been the first to fall had managed to drag himself back to the barracks with a broken leg, but the second man was dead, and two of his comrades stopped to retrieve his weapon and carry the body into a near-by godown before following the others into the barracks where Wally waited under the arch, his stained sabre in his hand, to see them all safely in before the doors were closed behind them and they returned to the Residency.

The firing that had ceased during the attack on the Kulla-Fi-Arangi broke out again with renewed fury as Kelly hurried back to the wounded, while Cavagnari reeled into the dining-room and called for a glass of water: and when it came remembered that, war or no war, the Mohammedans who had fought with him were keeping the Ramadan fast, and put it down untouched. Jenkyns, the civilian, who had no such scruples, drank thirstily, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand said hoarsely: ‘What were our losses, Wally?’

‘One dead and four wounded – two of them not too badly. Paras Ram's leg is smashed, but he says that if the Doctor-Sahib will put a splint on it and prop him up at a window, he can still shoot.’

‘That's the spirit,’ approved William. ‘We got off pretty lightly when you think of the damage we must have done. We must have killed at least a dozen, and wounded twice as many more when they were scrambling to get back through the entrance or over the far wall. It was like shooting at a row of haystacks. That ought to hold them for a time.’