The Far Pavilions (139 page)

He was to make others. ‘Once we are there, it'll be up to us to see that we get on good terms with the people,’ he had told Ash on that night in Mardan. And now he set about doing so with enthusiasm, organizing Mounted Sports, that because they called for skilled horsemanship would appeal to the Afghans, whom he invited to compete with the Guides at tent-pegging, lemon-cutting, spearing a ring with a lance and similar contests. Nor were the others behindhand in the task of fostering good relations; Ambrose Kelly laid plans to start a dispensary, while the Envoy and his Secretary filled their days with informal talks with the Amir, discussions with Ministers, and endless visits of ceremony from nobles and officials.

Sir Louis also made a point of being seen daily riding through the streets, though at the same time he issued an edict forbidding all members of the Mission access to the roofs of any of the Residency buildings, and ordered canvas awnings to be stretched across the barrack courtyard; the aim of both these measures being to protect the susceptibilities of neighbours in the Bala Hissar from the possibility of being affronted by the sight of the ‘foreigners’ taking their ease.

‘This is an amazing country,’ wrote Wally, replying to a cousin serving in India who had written to congratulate him on winning the Victoria Cross and inquire what Afghanistan was like. ‘But you wouldn't think much of Kabul. It's a seedy-looking place…’

The letter had included a light-hearted account of a well-attended ‘
Pagal
Gymkhana' he had organized on the previous day, and contained no suggestion that the Herati regiments in the city were a continuing source of trouble. But the dâk-rider who carried that particular letter to the British-held outpost of Ali Khel, where all the Mission's telegrams and letters were either forwarded or received, had already carried a telegram from Sir Louis Cavagnari to the Viceroy that read: ‘Alarming reports personally reached me today from several sources of the mutinous behaviour of the Herat Regiments lately arrived here, some of the men having been seen going about the city with drawn swords and using inflammatory language against the Amir and his English visitors, and I was strongly advised not to go out for a day or two. I sent for the Foreign Minister and, as he was confident that the reports were exaggerated, we went out as usual. I do not doubt that there is disaffection among troops on account of arrears of pay, and especially about compulsory service, but the Amir and his ministers are confident that they can manage them.’

A further telegram, sent on the following day, was considerably shorter: ‘State of affairs reported yesterday continues in a milder degree. Amir professing complete confidence to maintain discipline.’ Yet in the diary that Sir Louis wrote up every evening and sent off at the end of each week to the Viceroy, he described the arrival of the mutinous Heratis in Kabul, clamorous for pay and completely out of hand.

It was all very well, thought Sir Louis, for the Amir's Foreign Minister to assert that these men would be given their arrears of pay in full within a day or two, after which they would return to their homes; or to insist (as he did) that the reports of their lawlessness and looting were greatly exaggerated and due solely to the behaviour of a ‘few wild spirits’. But Sir Louis had his own sources of information and he had been given several well-authenticated accounts of the conduct of the malcontents that implicated far more than a ‘few wild spirits’ He had also heard that the troops had flatly refused to disperse to their homes until each man had had every anna of his back pay counted out into his hand, but that there was not enough money in the Treasury to pay them. None of which squared with the optimistic statements of the Foreign Minister and his master the Amir.

Yet in one way Ash had been right in thinking that Sir Louis did not fully appreciate the danger in which he and his Mission stood.

The Envoy was by no means ignorant of what was going on in Kabul, but he refused to take it too seriously. He preferred to accept the Minister's assurance that the situation was under control, and to immerse himself instead in schemes for reforming the administration of Afghanistan, together with plans for an autumn tour with the Amir, rather than concentrate on a far more urgent and immediate problem – the devising of ways and means of bolstering up the Amir's shaky authority in the face of the rising tide of lawlessness and violence that had flooded into the valley of Kabul, and was now threatening to engulf the city, and even the citadel itself.

‘He cannot know what is going on,’ said Ash. ‘They are keeping it from him. He must be told, and you are the one who must tell him, Sirdar-Sahib. He will listen to you because you were a Risaldar-Major of the Guides. For their sakes, I beg you to go to the Residency and warn him.’

The Sirdar had gone and Sir Louis had listened attentively to everything he had to say, and when he had finished, smiled and said lightly: ‘They can only kill the three or four of us here, and our deaths will be avenged,’ an observation that enraged Ash when he heard it, as he felt certain that in the event of trouble not only ‘us’, but the entire Escort, together with the numerous servants and camp-followers who had accompanied the Mission to Kabul, would also be killed.

Ash had not heard of the remark that Cavagnari was reported to have made before leaving Simla, to the effect that he would not mind dying if his death led to the annexation of Afghanistan, but nevertheless he began to wonder if the Envoy had not become a little unhinged of late and perhaps saw himself as a willing sacrifice on the altar of Imperial expansion. It was a crazy suspicion, and instantly dismissed. Yet it returned again and again in the days that followed, for there were times when it seemed to Ash that there could be no other explanation for the Envoy's lofty attitude towards all warnings.

The Sirdar, disturbed by the swaggering insolence of the Herati troops and worried about the safety of the Guides, had paid a second visit to the Residency in order to tell Sir Louis of certain things that he himself had seen and heard:

‘I do not speak from hearsay, Your Honour,’ said the Sirdar, ‘but only of what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. These regiments march through the streets with their bands playing and their officers at their head, and as they march they shout threats and vile abuse at the Amir, and revile the Kazilbashi regiments – who being loyal to him they accuse of cowardice and subservience to the infidels, jeering at them that they, the Heratis, will show the Kazilbashi slaves how to deal with foreigners. You too, Excellency-Sahib, they abuse – naming you by name. I have heard them. This you should know, for it bodes ill and should be stopped while there is yet time.’

‘But I do know,’ said Cavagnari. ‘And so does His Highness the Amir, who has been before you in this, having already warned me to keep away from the city until the trouble dies down, which it will surely do. As for the Heratis, you need have no fear, Risaldar-Sahib. Dogs who bark do not bite.’

‘Sahib,’ said the ex-Risaldar-Major gravely, ‘these dogs
do
bite. And I who know my people tell you that there is great danger.’

Sir Louis frowned at the implied criticism, then his face cleared and he laughed and said: ‘And I tell you again, Sirdar-Sahib, that they can only kill us; and if they do, we shall be terribly avenged.’

The Sirdar shrugged and gave up.

‘It was profitless to say more,’ he told Ash. ‘Nevertheless, after I had left his presence I saw Jenkyns-Sahib leaving the courtyard, and I followed him and asked permission to speak to him apart. We walked together by the stables in the cavalry lines while I disclosed the same matters to him, and when I had done, he spoke sharply, saying “Have you told Cavagnari-Sahib this?” When I told him that I had just done so, and of the reply I had received, he was silent for a space, and then he said: ‘What the Envoy-Sahib says is true. The British Government will not be harmed by losing three or four of us here.” Now I ask you, what can one do with men like that? I have wasted my time and theirs, for it is clear that they will not be warned.’

Ash had fared little better with Wally, whom he had managed to meet on several occasions and with comparative ease, as Sir Louis' policy of encouraging visitors and keeping open house meant that the Residency was always full of Afghans, who left their attendants in the compound where they fell into conversation with the Residency servants and the men of the Escort. This had made it a simple matter for Ash to mingle with them and get a message passed to Wally making an assignation to meet at some spot where they could talk together without attracting attention, and after that first meeting they had also devised a simple code.

But though Wally was always unfeignedly glad to see him and took a deep interest in all he had to say, there was never any question of his attempting to pass on anything Ash told him to Sir Louis. The Commandant, with whom Ash had discussed this point in Mardan, had recognized the trouble this could lead to, and in briefing Wally before he left, had impressed it upon him that the Envoy would have his own sources of information and that it was no part of Lieutenant Hamilton's duties to supplement them. If at any time he had reason to believe that Sir Louis was ignorant of some vital matter that he himself had learned from Ashton, then he should mention it to the Envoy's Secretary and Political Assistant, William Jenkyns, who would decide whether to pass it on or not.

‘I did that the other day,’ confessed Wally ruefully, ‘and never again. Will bit my head off. Told me that Sir Louis knew a damn sight more than I did about what went on in Kabul, and suggested that I run away and play with my soldiers – or words to that effect. And he's right of course.’

Ash shrugged and remarked ungraciously that he sincerely hoped so. He was feeling worried and apprehensive, not only on account of the many disturbing things that were being said and done in the city, or his fears for the safety of Wally and the Guides, but because he was afraid for Juli. For there was cholera in the city. There had as yet been no cases of it in the Bala Hissar or near the quiet street in which Nakshband Khan's house stood, but the disease was rampant in the poorer and more congested quarters of Kabul; and there came a day when Ash heard from a friend of the Sirdar's, a well-known Hindu whose son was in the service of the Amir's brother Ibrahim Khan, that it had broken out among the disaffected troops.

Had it not been for the fact that half India, to his certain knowledge, was also suffering from a raging cholera epidemic that year, he would almost certainly have taken Anjuli away that same day and abandoned Wally and the Guides without a second thought. But there being nowhere he could take her with any certainty of escaping it, he had decided that it was probably safer for her to stay where she was, as with luck the cholera would not reach their quarter of the city; and in any case it was bound to diminish drastically with the onset of autumn. But it was an anxious time, and he grew thin from strain and found it increasingly difficult to talk to Wally of the dangers that threatened the Mission. Or, with his mind filled with fears for Juli, to sit around discussing that indefatigable poet's latest composition.

A visit to the village of Bemaru, scene of the outbreak of the Kabul disaster of 1841, had inspired a particularly tedious epic, and Ash had wasted a precious afternoon listening in growing frustration while Wally strode to and fro reciting lines that only the author himself or his doting family could possibly have regarded as serious poetry –

‘Though all is changed,’ declaimed Wally, ‘yet

remnants of the past

Point to the scenes of bloodshed, and, alas!

Of murder foul; and ruined houses cast

Their mournful shadow o'er the graves of grass

Of England's soldiery, who faced a lot

That few, thank Heaven! before or since have shared; –

Slain by the hand of Treachery, and not

In open Combat…’

There had been more to the same effect, and the poet (who had put in a lot of hard work on it and was not displeased with the result) was disconcerted when Ash had merely remarked thoughtfully that it was curious that the four Europeans in the Residency should think and speak of themselves as ‘Englishmen’ when one was a Scot, two were Irish, and the fourth was half Irish and half French. A comment that showed he had been thinking of something else and missed the finer points of the poem.

All the same, Wally drew more comfort than he would have cared to admit from the knowledge that his friend spent a large part of each day in a house that backed on the Residency compound. It was consoling to know that he need only glance up at a certain window to confirm whether he was there or not, for each morning, when Ash came to work, he would place a cheap blue and white pottery jar with a spray of flowers or greenery in it between the two centre bars of his window, as a sign that he was still there and had not left Kabul.