Far Pavilions (35 page)

There had been no polo on that particular evening, so he had taken a gun and gone after partridge in the scrub-land along the river, and returning shortly after sunset he met a man on the cantonment road by the cavalry lines: a sowar of his own squadron. The light was fading fast and it was only when they were almost abreast that Ash recognized him. Returning the man's salute, he walked on, and then stopped and turned, checked by a sudden memory. It was partly the man's gait – he had a trick of hitching one shoulder very slightly to match his stride. But there was something else: an old scar that divided his right eyebrow into two and that Ash had seen, without realizing it, on the upper part of a face glimpsed briefly in bright moonlight.

‘Dilasah Khan.’

‘Sahib?’ The man turned and came back. He was an Afridi-Pathan, and his tribe was one of many who in theory owe allegiance to the Amir of Afghanistan, but in practice acknowledge no law save their own. Recalling this, it occurred to Ash that the men Dilasah Khan had gone out to meet were almost certainly kinsmen bringing him news from his village, and that in all probability it concerned some blood-feud with a neighbouring tribe, one or more of whose members might be serving with him in the Guides.

British territory was held to be neutral ground and no blood-feud might be carried into it. But one step beyond the Border things were different, and Dilasah's fellow tribesmen might not wish to be tracked there. In any case, he had not been breaking the law, so it was hardly fair, thought Ash, to catechize him about something that he obviously wished to keep private. As he himself had suffered from similar interference in his time, and resented it, he did not say what he had meant to; which was, perhaps, a mistake, for if Dilasah had taken fright he might have changed his mind and his plans, and thereby saved, amongst other things, his own life. Though as his creed taught him that his fate was tied about his neck and could not be avoided, he would presumably have refused to believe that any action of his own, or anyone else's, could have altered it.

In the event, Ash said nothing of having seen him out on the plain by night, and spoke instead of some trivial matter concerned with the riding school, before sending the man on his way. But the incident, now that it had been recalled, refused to be dismissed from his mind, and for some unknown reason it nagged at him with the persistence of a fly that keeps settling on the face of a drowsing man. Because of this he paid more attention to Sowar Dilasah Khan than he would otherwise have done, and decided that he did not like him. The man was a good soldier and a more than adequate horseman, and there was no fault to be found with him on that level. But there was something about him that Ash could only define as ‘shifty’. Something in his manner which was tinged with obsequiousness (a most uncharacteristic quality in a tribesman) and in the way his eyes slid away, avoiding a direct gaze.

‘I don't trust that fellow Dilasah,’ confessed Ash, discussing the troop with his Squadron Commander. ‘I've seen one or two horses with that sort of look in their eyes, and I wouldn't have one if it was being given away with a pound of tea.’

‘Dilasah? Oh, nonsense,’ said the Squadron Commander. ‘Why, what's he been up to?’

‘Nothing. It's just that… I don't know. He gives me an uncomfortable feeling between my shoulder blades, that's all. I saw him out on the plain one night –’

Ash described the incident and the Squadron Commander laughed and dismissed it with a shrug of the shoulders and an interpretation that was similar to Ash's original one: ‘Ten to one there's been a row between his lot and the next-door village, and they were merely warning him to watch out for himself next time he goes on leave, because his cousin Habib has just shot their headman's son, Ali, and Ali's relations will be gunning for all or any of Habib's. Bet you it's that.’

‘I thought so too at first, but it can't have been, because he went out to meet them. That means that it was all arranged beforehand. The meeting, I mean.’

‘Well, why not? They'd probably sent a message to say that they had news for him. If it was about a killing, they wouldn't have risked saying more than that.’

‘I expect you're right. All the same, I've a feeling we ought to watch that fellow.’

‘You do that,’ agreed the Squadron Commander cordially. His tone conveyed a distinct suggestion of ‘run away and play’ and Ash flushed and dropped the subject. But he did not forget it and he was sufficiently interested to ask Ala Yar to make a few inquiries into the history and background of Sowar Dilasah Khan.

‘There are five others of his clan in the
rissala
(cavalry),’ reported Ala Yar. ‘All proud, fierce men – Afridis who have joined the Guides for
izzat
(honour) and because they love a fight. And also perhaps because their clan is rent by many blood-feuds, and here they cannot be ambushed and shot down without warning. There are two of them in your own troop: Malik Shah and Lal Mast.’

‘I know that. And they are both good men – the best. I have been out on
shikar
with Malik half a dozen times, and as for Lal Mast -’

Ala Yar held up a hand: ‘Hear me out. I had not finished. Their clan is a small one and so they are all in some way tied by blood – third, fourth and it may be fifteenth cousins a dozen times removed. Yet it is a fact that not one of them has any liking for their kinsman, Dilasah. They say he is a cheat and sly; and like yourself, they distrust him.’

‘Why? In what way?’

‘Oh, for a dozen small things done in childhood. You know how it is with children: one of their number lies or cheats or runs tale-bearing to those in authority, and for this his playmates hold him in dislike. Even when they grow up and become men, the dislike remains. The others were not pleased when he joined the Guides, and they say that they do not understand why he did so, for it was unlike him. But he came with a good horse and rode it well, and he is also a fine marksman; he won his place fairly in competition with others, and as his officers speak well of him his kinsmen can have no complaint and from pride in their clan they will stand by him. Nevertheless they still dislike him, for he has at one time or another done each of them an ill turn – boy's tricks only; but men, as I have said, do not forget. Ask Malik or Lal Mast, next time you go out shooting with them.’

Ash had done so. But he had learned no more than Ala Yar had told him.

‘Dilasah? He is a serpent,’ said Malik Shah. ‘His blood runs slow and his tongue drips poison. When we were boys –’ He told a long tale of a childhood escapade that had ended in punishment and tears for all save Dilasah, who had instigated the whole affair and then betrayed his playfellows to authority and avoided the consequences by some spirited lying. It was plain that the episode still rankled, yet Malik admitted that a year in the Regiment had improved Dilasah out of all knowledge: ‘He has made a good soldier, and when we of the Guides are again called upon to fight battles, he may even bring credit upon us, and on his clan also. Still, it is strange that he should have wished to serve under the Sirkar and submit himself to discipline, for I would have said that he was the last man to choose this way of life. Yet – who knows? – he may have done some killing that has made life in our hills too dangerous for him, and so has sought safety here for a while. He would not be the only one to do so!’

Malik laughed, and Ash, who knew that last was true enough, did not pursue the subject. But less than a week later it became all too clear why Dilasah Khan had enlisted in the Guides. And equally clear that his kinsmen's distrust and Ash's suspicions had been well founded.

12

There had been no moon on the night that Dilasah disappeared from Mardan, taking with him his own and one other Government-issue cavalry carbine. Nor had anyone seen him go, for he, like Malik, could move like a shadow when he chose.

He had been on sentry duty in the last watch before dawn, one of two men who were patrolling the lines, and the fact that he had not knifed his fellow sentry was probably due to a dislike of being involved in further blood-feuds rather than any respect for human life. But the man had suffered a bad case of concussion and it was some time before he could tell his story. He had naturally not expected any attack from such a quarter and could not remember being hit; but it was obvious that Dilasah had felled him with the butt of his carbine before gagging and binding him with his own turban, and dragging him away into the shadows out of earshot of the sleeping camp. The aggressor had then made off into the darkness, and must have had at least an hour's start before the groans of the bound man at last aroused someone to investigate, for although patrols on horseback had galloped out to scour the countryside and track him down, they failed to find him.

By nightfall there was still no sign of him, and the following morning the Commandant demanded to know how many other members of his clan were serving with the Regiment. These were summoned to his office and ordered to remove every piece of uniform or equipment that was the property of the Corps, and they had obeyed in silence, each in turn adding to the pile on the matting-covered floor before returning to his place to stand rigidly at attention.

‘Now go,’ said the Commandant. ‘And do not let me see your faces again until you have brought back both rifles.’

The men had gone without a word, and no one had questioned the Commanding Officer's action except Ash, to whom it had come as the culmination of a particularly harrowing week.

‘But he can't do that,’ stormed Ash to his Squadron Commander, white-lipped with anger. ‘What's it got to do with them? It wasn't
their
fault. Why – why they don't even like the man! They never have.’

‘They belong to the same clan,’ explained the Squadron Commander patiently, ‘and the C.O's a very shrewd bird who knows what he's doing. He wants those carbines back because we can't afford to have that kind of weapon being used in the passes – and because we can't afford to allow one of our fellows to get away with this kind of thing either. It might give a lot of other men ideas. No; he's done the only thing he can. It's a question of
izzat
. Dilasah has let his clan down and his fellow clansmen will get those carbines back for their own sakes. You'll see. They've probably got a pretty good idea where he's heading for, and the chances are that they'll be back inside forty-eight hours with the rifles.’

‘What if they are?’ demanded Ash. ‘They've had their uniforms stripped off them and they've been flung out – punished and publicly disgraced for something that had nothing whatever to do with them. If there was any justice,
I'm
the one who ought to be punished –
or you
! I knew that man was up to no good, and so did you. I warned you, and you brushed it off as though I'd brought you some footling fairy-story. But I could still have done something to prevent this, and Malik and the others couldn't. It isn't fair!’

‘Oh for God's sake grow up, Pandy,’ snapped the Squadron Commander, losing his patience: ‘You're behaving like a child of two. What's got into you? You've been going round like a bear with a sore head for the last few days. Aren't you feeling well?’

‘I'm perfectly well, thank you,’ retorted Ash angrily. ‘But I don't like injustice and I'm going to see the C.O. myself.’

‘Well, rather you than me. He's not in a particularly good mood at the moment, and after you've heard what he has to say you'll wish you'd had more sense.’

But Ash was beyond the reach of reason, not only on account of Dilasah Khan's defection and the dismissal of his fellow clansmen. That had merely been the last, and by no means worst incident, in a week that he was to look back on as the blackest period of his life. Ever afterwards, nothing would ever seem so bad again, because he himself was never again to be the same kind of person that he had been until then…

It had begun with the arrival of a letter by the morning post, and he had not even recognized the writing on the envelope, but had opened it casually in the mess, expecting it to contain only another invitation to a dinner-party or a dance. Mrs Harlowe's well-meant letter, informing him that her daughter was engaged to be married, had been as unexpected as the first shock of an earthquake.

Belinda was so
very
, very happy, wrote Mrs Harlowe, and she did so hope that he would do nothing to spoil that happiness, but be sensible about it and not enact them any tragedies, for it must have become plain to him by now that he and Belinda were
quite
unsuited to each other, and in any case he was much too young to be thinking of marrying and settling down. Ambrose was in every way a far more suitable husband for Belinda, and she felt sure that Ashton would be unselfish enough to rejoice in her daughter's great happiness and wish her the best of good fortune in the future. Belinda had asked her to break the news to him, as owing to all the foolish talk there had been between them, the dear child felt that he might prefer it that way…

Ash sat staring at the letter for so long that eventually one of his friends had inquired if he were feeling all right, and had had to repeat the question three times before receiving an answer. ‘Yes – I mean, no. It's nothing,’ said Ash confusedly.