Far Pavilions (168 page)

The regiments concerned, panic-stricken by the sudden loss of so great a number of their comrades, had settled for part of the pay they were owed plus forty days furlough to return to their homes, and rushing to the Bala Hissar to hand in their arms, had not even waited to obtain their certificates of leave before marching away from the city, hurling threats and abuse as they went at the Commander-in-Chief, General Daud Shah, who had come to see them leave.

From Sir Louis's point of view, this could not have been better. They had caused a great deal of trouble, and the effort of preserving a bold front, and keeping up the pretence that the undisciplined behaviour of a rabble of mutinous troops was a matter of complete indifference to him instead of a constant source of anxiety, was becoming increasingly tedious. Not that he had at any time been in the least afraid of the disgruntled troops from Herat, whom he regarded as no more than hooligans.

All the same, it was a relief to know that a considerable number of them had at last been paid off (he had always known that the money would be forthcoming as soon as the Amir and his ministers realized that there was no other way of ridding themselves of a dangerous nuisance), and had handed in their arms and left the city. He fully realized that fear of the cholera had probably played a greater part than money in bringing about that welcome exodus; and also that not all the Herati regiments had left – some were still encamped in cantonments outside the city, and a number of men drawn from these were actually helping to guard the Arsenal, which on the face of it seemed a little unwise. But then the Amir had assured him that they had been carefully selected and were well disposed towards him, which Sir Louis took to mean that they had probably been paid something on account.

There remained the Ardal Regiment from Turkestan and three Orderly Regiments, whose pay was also many months in arrears. They too were pressing for their money, but had shown no signs of emulating the deplorable behaviour of the Heratis. And as General Daud Shah had apparently promised them that if they would only have a little patience they would all be paid at the beginning of September, Sir Louis felt justified in taking a more rosy view of the future.

It was unfortunate that this year the start of Ramadan, the Mohammedan Month of Fasting, should have fallen in mid-August, since during Ramadan the Faithful may not eat or drink except between sunset and the first streak of dawn, and men who have fasted all day and gone without water in the heat and dust of August are apt to be short-tempered. But then August would soon be over, and with it that long, eventful summer that had seen the metamorphosis of plain Major Cavagnari into His Excellency Sir Louis Cavagnari, K.C.S.I., Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary. Only another week, and then it would be September.

Sir Louis looked forward to the autumn. He had heard that it was almost the best time of year in Kabul: not as beautiful as spring, when the almond trees were in bloom and the valley was white with fruit blossom, but with a spectacular beauty of its own as the leaves of poplars and fruit trees, vines, walnuts and willows flamed gold and orange and scarlet, the snow-line crept down the mountain-sides, and thousands of wild fowl on their way south flew in from the tundras beyond the great ranges of the Hindu Kush. The stalls in the bazaars of Kabul would be piled high with apples, grapes, corncobs, walnuts and chillies, and there would be snipe and quail and chikor in the uncultivated grasslands and on the lower slopes of the hills. And tempers would cool with the coming of the cooler days.

The Envoy smiled as he contemplated the day's entry in his diary, and putting down his pen he rose and went to stand by one of the windows that faced south across the darkening plain, gazing out at the far snow peaks that a short while ago had glowed bright pink in the last of the sunset, and now showed silver in the light of a sky that blazed with stars.

The storm of the previous week had been followed by several days of hot sunshine and a blustery wind that had dried up the puddles and filled the valley with a haze of dust. But yesterday rain had fallen again, not in a deluge as before but gently – the last dying tears of the monsoon – and now the new-washed air was fresh and cool.

The night was full of sounds, for after the abstinence of the day all Kabul, released from fasting by the setting of the sun, was relaxing over the
Iftari
, the evening meal of Ramadan, and the darkness hummed like a hive. A contented hive, thought Cavagnari, listening to the cheerful medley of noises that came from the Residency compound, and sniffing the scent of wood-smoke and cooked food and the pungent smell of horses. He could hear someone in the King's Garden that lay near by, behind the Residency, playing a flute; and from further up the hill came the faint sound of drums and sitars and a woman's voice singing a song of Barbur's day –
‘Drink wine in this hold of Kabul – send the cup around…’

Beneath his window-sill the wall of the citadel fell away into darkness, its shadow blotting out the road below. Yet here too there were sounds – the clip-clop of unseen hoof-beats on the hard earth and the sound of footsteps and voices as a party of travellers hurried towards the Shah Shahie Gate. Only the shadowy plain and the vast wall of mountains lay still and silent.

Cavagnari sniffed the night breeze, and presently, hearing feet on the stair, said without turning: ‘Come in, William. I've finished the letters for the dâk, so you can put the code book away; we shall not need it tonight. No point in sending another telegram to Simla when there is nothing new to report. They'll find anything they need to know when they get the next diary. What day does that go off?’

‘Morning of the 29th, sir.’

‘Well, if anything of interest comes up before then we can always send a
tar
. But with a bit of luck, the worst is over and things should settle down a bit now that mosfof those pestilential nuisances from Herat have dispersed to their homes. You can take the letters. I must change for dinner.’

Half-a-mile away, on the rooftop of Nakshband Khan's house, Ash too had been looking at the mountains and thinking, as Cavagnari had been, that the worst was over. After last week's downpour and the rain of yesterday there was more snow on the high hills, and tonight there was a distinct hint of autumn in the cool air, so it was more than likely that the worst of the cholera was over – or soon would be. And like' Sir Louis, Ash had been encouraged by the departure of the mutinous regiments.

Now if only the Amir would pay the rest of his troops what they were owed, or the cholera scare them away – or the British Envoy buy time for himself and the Amir by insisting that the Government of India lend the Afghan treasury enough money to pay the soldiers – there was a reasonable chance that the Mission might yet succeed in turning the present hostility and distrust of a resentful people into something approaching tolerance, or even, with luck, a certain degree of respect if not liking. Time was what both Cavagnari and the Amir needed, and Ash was still of the opinion that money could buy it; and only money.

‘Yet if the Amir was able to find the money to pay the Heratis,’ reasoned Ash, ‘he can probably find enough to pay off the others. He must have realized by now that he can't afford not to, and that the money must be raised somehow, even if he has to squeeze it out of his rich nobles and merchants, or from the money-lenders.’

He must have spoken the last words aloud without realizing it, because Anjuli, sitting beside him in the curve of his arm with her head resting on his shoulder, stirred and said softly: ‘But such people do not give willingly. And if it is taken from them by force they will extort it in their turn, by one means or another, from the poor. This we know. So how shall it profit the Amir if in order to appease his soldiers he angers his nobles and rich men, and incurs the hatred of the poor? That way the unrest will not only remain, but grow greater.’

‘True, my wise little heart. It's a hard knot, but until it is untied or cut there will be no peace in Kabul – least of all for those in the Residency compound or in the Palace of the Bala Hissar.’

Anjuli shivered at the name, and instinctively his arm tightened about her; but he did not speak, because he was thinking of Wally…

He had not spoken to Wally since the afternoon they had spent in the garden of Barbur's tomb, though he had seen him often enough from the window of the Munshi's house – fleeting glimpses of him going about his duties in the Residency compound. He must arrange another meeting soon, which might not be so easy now; it had been tolerably simple until the day that Cavagnari had angered the Amir by insisting on the removal of the Afghan sentries, but since then none of the four European members of the Mission had been able to move a yard beyond the compound without a double guard of Afghan cavalry clattering at their heels, in addition to their own escort.

In these circumstances it had been impossible for Wally to go anywhere on his own, let alone stop and fall into conversation with some apparently chance-met Afridi. But working in the Bala Hissar had its uses, for Ash had recently learned something that was not yet known to the Residency: that from the first of September the British Mission would be required to collect the fodder needed for their horses themselves.

Hitherto, the grass and
bhoosa
for this purpose had been supplied by the Amir, but now this practice was to be discontinued. In future the Guides' own grass-cutters would have to go out to forage for what they required, and as it was certain that for their own safety the foragers would be accompanied by an escort of sowars, it would not be thought in the least odd if Wally were to ride out with them.

The inevitable Afghan guard would of course be there to keep an eye on him, but the chances were that after the first day or two they would relax their vigilance and make it possible for Ash to have speech with him without arousing anyone's suspicions. In that way the two of them ought to be able to meet at least once or twice before the end of Ramadan, by which time, if fate were kind, it was possible that the ominous tide of hate and unrest that had been washing through the streets of Kabul for the past few weeks would have turned at last and begun to ebb.

One person at least appeared to harbour no doubts as to the ebbing of that tide. Sir Louis Cavagnari was convinced that it had already turned, and on the twenty-eighth of the month he instructed William to dispatch another telegram to Simla to say that all was well with the Kabul Embassy, and two days later wrote in a private letter to his friend, the Viceroy, that he had nothing whatever to complain of as regards the Amir and his ministers: ‘His authority is weak throughout Afghanistan,’ wrote Sir Louis, ‘but, notwithstanding all that people say against him,
I
personally believe he will prove a very good ally, and that we shall be able to keep him to his agreements.’

The only other contribution to the out-going dâk that day had been a light-hearted post-card from Wally to his cousin in India, signed only with an initial. It had clearly been written in high spirits, but William, whose duties included sealing the mail bag, had caught sight of the concluding words and been startled by them. For Wally had ended: ‘
Scribe a votre Cousin in exilis vale, and now farewell till
…’

63

‘Faith, that's a fine way to begin the autumn, I must say!’ exclaimed Wally indignantly. ‘You'd think those scutts could have given us a bit more notice, wouldn't you now? It's a shabby lot they are and no mistake.’

‘Oh, come now, babe,’ protested William. ‘They know very well that we have our own grass-cutters and that they are under no obligation to provide us with fodder for our horses, yet they've been giving us the stuff free, gratis and for nothing ever since we arrived. It's only fair that now we've settled down and found our feet, we should start to fend for ourselves.’

‘I suppose you're right,’ conceded Wally. ‘But it wouldn't have hurt His Imperial Afghan Highness to let us know beforehand that he meant to cut off supplies at the end of August, instead of waiting until the first of September to break the news that from now on we can get out and forage for ourselves. Because it's not something we can do straight off the bat, you know. At least, not in this particular country. Unless we want to find ourselves up to our eyebrows in trouble, we're going to have to make dashed certain where we are allowed to go, and even more important, where we are not – which isn't something we can sort out in five minutes.’

‘You mean that
I
can sort out. It'll be on my tray, not yours,’ retorted William wryly. ‘But we must have a good two days' supply in hand, surely? That last consignment ought to tide us over at least until the day after tomorrow, so I don't know what you're complaining about. I'll have a talk with the Chief about fixing up where our grass-cutters can go, and they can trot off and start earning an honest living again on the morning of the third. I suppose you will have to send a guard with them?’

‘There's no “suppose” about it,’ said Wally bitterly. ‘They wouldn't budge a yard without one.’