The Far Pavilions (125 page)

53

The December weather had been unusually mild, but with the arrival of the New Year the temperature had begun to fall, and there came a day when Ash was aroused in the small hours of the morning by the furtive touch of soft, cold fingers on his cheeks and his closed eyelids.

He had been dreaming again, and in his dream he had been lying half-asleep by the side of a rushing stream in a valley among the mountains. Sita'svalley. It was spring and there were pear trees in blossom, and a breeze blowing through the branches loosened the petals and sent them floating down to rest upon his face.

The cool touch of those falling petals and the rushing sound of the stream combined to wake him, and he opened his eyes and realized that he must have slept for a long time, and that while he did so the wind had arisen: and it was snowing.

He had been afraid of this the previous evening. But there had been no wind then, and having lit a small fire in the back of a narrow cave among the rocks, he had cooked himself a meal, and when darkness fell, rolled himself in his blanket and gone to sleep, warmed and comforted by the glow of the firelight. The wind must have arisen some hours later, and now it moaned among the hills and drove a flurry of enormous snowflakes into the cave.

The flakes had settled on Ash's face and beard and he brushed them away, and rising stiffly shook the snow from the folds of his blanket before rewrapping it about his head and shoulders above the sheepskin poshteen that he had worn day and night for the past week or so. The poshteen smelt rankly of smoke and rancid oil, unwashed wool and unwashed humanity, but Ash was grateful for its warmth as the cave was bitterly cold, and would become colder still. Besides, he had become inured to evil smells and did not let such things trouble him.

Peering out into the whirling greyness, he realized that dawn could not be far off, and he turned and groped his way to the back of the cave to light another fire with the aid of a tinder box, using the last of a small supply of charcoal he carried with him, and some spare brushwood that he had taken the precaution of collecting the previous evening. It was not much, but it would serve to heat enough water for a bowl of tea that would warm his stomach and help to bring the circulation back to his numbed feet and cold fingers; and he still had the best part of two chuppattis.

He watched the grass flare up and catch the sticks of wood, and when the charcoal began to glow, placed his brass water-bowl on top of it and sat back to wait while it boiled; and while he waited, thought of all that had happened during the last weeks of the old year and the first few weeks of the new, and wondered how soon he would be permitted to throw his hand in and go back to Mardan; and to Juli.

Lord Lytton's war against Shere Ali (the Viceroy had made a great point of insisting that he had no quarrel with the Amir's subjects) had got off to a good start, despite a series of distressing blunders due to faulty planning. These mishaps, however, had not prevented the fall of Ali Masjid within two days of the outbreak of hostilities, with a loss to the victors of a mere fifteen killed and thirty-four wounded; or, a few days later, the occupation of Dakka and the subsequent occupation of Jalalabad. New Year's Day had seen the British firmly in possession of these three strongpoints, and there had been similar successes on other fronts, notably the occupation by the Kurram Field Force, under the command of Major-General Sir Frederick Roberts, of the Afghan forts in the Kurram Valley.

But something else had occurred in the New Year. Something that had seemed to Ash of such enormous importance that once again he had decided that he must talk directly to Major Cavagnari, who having accompanied the victorious army in the capacity of Political Officer, was at that time in Jalalabad, where he had addressed the durbar held by Sir Sam Browne on the first day of the New Year and endeavoured to explain, to the few Afghan chiefs who had attended it, the reasons for the British Government's declaration of war and its peaceful intentions towards the tribes.

Ash did not think that he would have much difficulty in arranging a meeting with Cavagnari once he reached Jalalabad, for by now the local inhabitants would have realized that they stood in no danger of being massacred by the invading infidels, and would have flocked back to their homes, intent upon selling goods to the troops at greatly inflated prices. The town would therefore once again be swarming with Afridis, and one more would not be re-marked.

But he had not allowed for snow, and now he wondered if he would be able to get to Jalalabad at all, because if the present storm continued for long it could obliterate all the tracks and landmarks that he needed to guide him – if it had not done so already. The thought was a grim one and he held out his hands to the fire with a shiver that was not wholly due to the cold. But his luck was in, for the snow had stopped falling by the time it was light enough for him to start, and towards noon he fell in with a small party of Powindahs making for Jalalabad, and in their company reached the outskirts of that walled city a full hour before sunset.

The business of getting in touch with Major Cavagnari had proved reasonably easy and late that night he had been met by arrangement, at a spot outside the walls, by a shadowy figure wearing a poshteen and further protected from the freezing night by a dun-coloured shawl; the latter worn wrapped about head and shoulders without entirely concealing a cavalry turban be neath. After Ash had identified himself and answered a few whispered questions, he was taken past the sentries on the gate and along a series of narrow unlit alleyways between the blank walls of houses, to a small and unobtrusive door where a second muffled figure awaited him. A minute later he was being ushered into a lamp-lit room where the ex-Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar, now Political Officer to the Peshawar Valley Field Force, was working late on the piles of reports that littered his desk.

The news that Ash brought was both startling and tragic, though its tragic side escaped Major Cavagnari, who had never had any sympathy with Shere Ali.

The Amir, on learning that his reply to Lord Lytton's ultimatum had arrived too late and that his country was being invaded and his fortresses falling like ripe nuts in a gale, had lost his head and decided to throw himself on the mercy of the Tsar.

The mounting pressure of events had already forced him to acknowledge his eldest son, Yakoub Khan (whom he had kept under house-arrest for many years, and still hated), as his heir and co-ruler in open council, but it had been a bitter and humiliating experience for him, and the only way in which he could avoid the painful embarrassment of having to share his councils with an unfilial son, while his heart still bled for the death of a dearly loved one, was to remove from Kabul. This he had done, explaining that he intended to journey to St Petersburg to lay his case before the Emperor Alexander, and demand justice and the protection of all right-thinking European Powers against the encroachments of Great Britain…

‘Yes, I know all this,’ said Major Cavagnari patiently, adding with a tinge of rebuke that Ash must not think he was the sole source of information as regards affairs in Kabul. ‘We heard of the Amir's intentions. In fact he himself wrote to inform the British Government of the step he was taking, and challenged them to establish their case and explain their intentions to a Congress to be held in St Petersburg. I presume he got the idea of this from the Congress of Berlin, where our differences with Russia were discussed and resolved. I was later informed that he left Kabul on the twenty-second of December for an unknown destination.’

‘Mazar-i-Sharif, in his province of Turkestan,’ supplied Ash. ‘He arrived there on New Year's Day.’

‘Indeed? Well, I expect we shall soon receive official confirmation of this.’

‘I'm sure you will. But in the circumstances I thought you should know about it as soon as possible, because of course this will make all the difference. ’

‘In what way?’ inquired Cavagnari, still patiently. ‘We already knew him to be hand-in-glove with the Russians, and this merely proves that we were right.’

Ash stared. ‘But sir – Don't you see, he's no longer of any importance? He's finished himself as far as his people are concerned, because after this he can never return to Kabul or sit on the throne of Afghanistan again. If he'd stayed and stood firm, he would have become the rallying point of every infidel-hating Afghan in his Kingdom – which means ninety-nine and a half per cent of the population – but instead he chose to turn tail and run away, leaving Yakoub Khan to hold the candle. I do assure you, sir, he's finished; bust, smashed,
klas-shu
! But that's not why I came here, for it is no longer of any importance. I came to tell you that he will never reach St Petersburg, because he is dying.’

‘
Dying
? Are you sure?’ demanded Cavagnari sharply.

‘Yes, sir. Those who are closest to him are already saying that he knows this himself and is hastening his death by refusing food and medicines. They say that he is a broken man. Heart-broken by grief at the death of the son he doted upon and the humiliation of having to acknowledge as his heir the one he detested: and also by the intolerable pressures brought to bear on him by Russia and ourselves. He has nothing left to live for, and no one believes that he will ever leave Turkestan – or would get very far if he tried to, as the Russians would certainly turn him back. Now that they have officially shaken hands with us, Afghanistan has obviously become a bit of an embarrassment to them, and I imagine they'd prefer to forget about the place… until the next time, of course. I have also heard on good authority that Shere Ali has written to General Kaufman asking him to intercede on his behalf with the Tsar, and that Kaufman has written back urging him not to leave his kingdom and advising him to make terms with the British. So he must know by now that there is no help to be expected from Russia, and that in leaving Kabul he has made a fatal and irreparable mistake. One cannot help feeling sorry for him; but at least it means that the war can now be ended and our troops sent back to India.’

‘Back to India?’ Cavagnari's brows snapped together. ‘I don't understand you.’

‘But surely, sir… Didn't the Viceroy's proclamation say that we had no quarrel with the Afghan people, but only with Shere Ali? Well, Shere Ali has gone. He's left Kabul, and you of all men, because you understand these people, must know that he will never be allowed to go back again – Yakoub Khan will see to that! Besides, as I've told you, he's a dying man and any day now you are going to hear that he is dead. But whether he lives or dies, he doesn't count any more. So who are we fighting?’

Cavagnari did not answer, and after a moment Ash spoke heatedly into the silence:

‘Look, sir, if it's true that we have no quarrel with his people, then I'd like to know what the hell we are still doing here, weeks after he threw up the sponge and did a bunk? I'd like to know what our excuse is now for invading their homes and annexing their territories, and when they resist (which shouldn't surprise us), shooting them down and burning their villages and fields so that their women and children and the old and feeble are left without food and shelter – and in midwinter, too. Because that is what we are doing, and if Lord Lytton meant what he said about having no quarrel with the Afghan people, he should stop this war now, at once; for there is no longer any reason for going on with it.’

‘You forget,’ said Major Cavagnari coldly, ‘that as Shere Ali appointed his son Yakoub Khan co-ruler, Yakoub will now be acting as Regent. Therefore the country still has a ruler.’

‘But not an
Amir!
’ – it was almost a cry of pain. ‘How can we pretend that we have any quarrel with Yakoub, when he has been held prisoner for years and his release has been urged again and again by a number of our own officials? Surely, now that he is virtually ruler of Afghanistan, it should at least be possible to call a truce until we see how he means to behave? It couldn't do us any harm, and it would save a great many lives. But if we are going, to press on with this war without even waiting to see what he will do, we shall throw away any chance of turning him into a friend, and merely ensure that he too, like the father he hated, becomes our enemy. Or is that what we want? Is it?’

Once again, Cavagnari did not answer, and Ash repeated the question again, his voice rising dangerously. ‘Is that what you
really
want? – you and the Viceroy and the rest of His Excellency's advisers? Is this whole blood-stained business just an excuse to take over Afghanistan and add it to the Empire – and to hell with its people, with whom we say we have no quarrel? Is it?
Is it
? Because if so –’

‘You forget yourself, Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn,’ interrupted Cavagnari icily.

‘Syed Akbar,’ corrected Ash with acidity.

Cavagnari ignored the correction and swept on: ‘And I must ask you not to shout. If you cannot control yourself you had better leave before you are overheard. We are not in British India now, but in Jalalabad, which is full of spies. I would also point out that it is neither your place nor mine to criticize the orders we are given, or to question matters of policy that lie outside the scope of our knowledge. Our duty is to do what we are told, and if you are incapable of this, then you are of no further use to me or to the Government I have the honour to serve, and I feel that you would do better to sever your relations with us now.’