Hart of Empire (43 page)

'Of course,
huzoor
, on my father's life.'

'Then take it,' said George, handing it over, 'and let us say our goodbyes like the brothers we've become.'

George leant from his saddle and clasped Ilderim in an awkward bear hug. At last releasing his grip, he nodded to the Afghan before urging his horse forward down the track.

'If you ever need me,
huzoor
,' shouted Ilderim after him, 'you only have to ask and I will come.'

George raised his arm in acknowledgement, but didn't look back.

He was still mulling over the consequences of his decision to leave the cloak as he approached the same Torkham border crossing he and Ilderim had used to enter Afghanistan four months earlier. Then it had consisted of a couple of sentries and a single whitewashed building; now it was guarded by a fortified camp containing tents for at least two hundred men. 'That's far enough, Mahomed,' called a soldier, covering him with a rifle from the parapet of the fort. 'State your business.'

'I am Captain George Hart. I'm on my way to Karachi, via Peshawar, and have a passport signed by General Roberts.'

'Wait there. I'll get my officer,' said the soldier, disappearing from the parapet, though George could see that other soldiers had him in their sights.

Minutes later the gate to the fort swung open and a young subaltern of the 67th Foot emerged on foot. 'May I see your papers, Captain?'

George dug out Roberts's letter and handed it over. The subaltern took one look at general's signature and snapped off a salute. 'Welcome to Torkham, Captain Hart. I apologize for the sentry's abrupt manner but even you will admit you don't look much like a British officer in that get-up.'

'No,' said George, 'I'll grant you that. Well, if there's nothing else I'll be on my way.'

'Actually there is something,' said the subaltern, pulling a piece of folded paper from his tunic pocket. 'I have a message for you from General Roberts. It arrived last night by heliograph.'

Oh, no, thought George. Don't tell me he's changed his mind and wants me to stay after all. With heart racing, he opened the sheet of paper:

Dear Captain Hart

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that today, after the receipt of reports from Colonel Jenkins, Major FitzGeorge and Lieutenant Duggan, I sent a recommendation to HRH the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, that you be awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry during the fighting of 23 December.

Both Jenkins and Duggan state in their reports that but for your bold initiative the Afghans would have captured the trench beside the native hospital, a loss that might have proved fatal for the whole garrison. Duggan, moreover, states that you personally saved his life. FitzGeorge says that you initiated and led the charge that routed the Kohistani cavalry, and then followed Princess Yasmin into the enemy-held Khirskhana Pass in a vain attempt to save her life.

Of course my recommendation has to be confirmed by both HRH the Duke and HM the Queen before an award can be made. But I cannot foresee any circumstances in which that would not happen.

May I, therefore, offer you my congratulations, and my thanks for all you've done during the recent campaign.

I am, etc.,

Sir Frederick Roberts, VC

George stared at the page, dumbfounded that his self-centred 'brother' had helped to secure this very welcome - but wholly unexpected - recommendation. Was it guilt? A
quid pro quo
for George having let him take the jewelled clasp? He couldn't be sure, but what did it matter? At the age of twenty he had as good as won the Victoria Cross and would get the money he needed after all: not from the government but from his father the Duke of Cambridge; and not two thousand pounds but ten thousand. It would be enough to keep his mother in comfort and let him get on with the rest of a career that now seemed destined, after this, to go from strength to strength. Tears of joy - and relief - welled in his eyes, and he could contain himself no longer. 'Hurrah!' he shouted, punching the air with his free hand.

'Good news, sir?' asked the subaltern.

'Yes, very good. I've been recommended for the VC.'

'How marvellous!' said the subaltern, gazing at George with heightened respect. 'Please accept my congratulations.'

'Thank you,' said George, but already the euphoria was being replaced by nagging doubt. Was Roberts, like Chelmsford before him, offering George the sweetener of a Victoria Cross in return for his silence about the errors made before and during the rebellion? He wouldn't put it beyond him. But then it occurred to George that this time
he
held all the cards: unlike Chelmsford, who had made his recommendation dependent on George's co-operation, Roberts had
already
recommended him for a VC, and any benefit that accrued to the general was entirely at George's discretion; a discretion that, when he wrote his report, he was determined to exercise with extreme caution.

Two weeks later - still dusty from the journey, though by now recognizably European having shaved off his beard, cut his hair and changed into his own clothes - George entered the Metropole Hotel in Karachi and was greeted at the front desk by the manager, Mr Beresford.

'Welcome back, Mr Harper. I trust your business transactions up-country were successful?'

'Yes, thank you. Very successful.'

'I'm glad to hear it. I have a letter for you from South Africa.'

George took the proffered envelope and scanned the handwriting. It was Lucy's. Three months earlier that might have disappointed him, but not now. With his heart racing, he tore the letter open and read the single sheet:

The Lucky Strike

Long Street

Kimberley

Cape Colony

Dearest George

When I received your reply to my previous letter, I fully intended to follow your advice to sit tight and do nothing until you arrived in South Africa. But last week I received another letter from Colonel Harris. In it he claimed to have heard from Mr Thompson's brother that when you met in London you confessed both to the murder and the fact that I was your accomplice. He also warned me that he'll be paying a visit to Kimberley in the New Year, and that if I refuse to return to England he'll expose me as an accessory to murder.

With you in Asia, thousands of miles away, the only person I could turn to was my employer, Mr Barnato. He's offered to protect me from Harris, and to spend whatever it takes on legal fees to prevent my forcible repatriation, but on one condition: that I marry him. I have agreed and the marriage will take place on 20 January 1880.

I don't love him, George. I love you. But I had no choice.

Your loving friend

Lucy

As he read the last few lines, George felt sick - and it suddenly occurred to him that his feelings for Lucy were much stronger than he had ever allowed himself to admit. What if he'd loved her all along, and was only able to acknowledge it now that he was on the verge of losing her for ever? It was certainly possible, he conceded, not least because he knew that if he wedded a girl of working-class origins like Lucy he would forfeit fifteen thousand pounds of his father's legacy: five thousand for marrying 'respectably' and the ten-thousand-pound bonus for complying with all three conditions in the time allotted.

But where did that leave his professions of love for Fanny Colenso and, more recently, Princess Yasmin? He could only assume that, since her last seemingly final rejection of him, he'd fallen out of love with Fanny and had never been truly smitten by the princess. Yes, he'd told her he loved her, but that had been in a vain attempt to save her life; even at the time his half-truth hadn't sat comfortably with him. He'd been infatuated with her, certainly, and may even have been falling in love. But he wasn't 'in' love, and that may have been Lucy's doing.

With his true feelings now clearer in his mind, he still couldn't decide on the best course of action. Would it not, he asked himself, be doing Lucy a service to let the marriage go ahead as planned? After all, Barney Barnato was only a few years her senior, and a man with enough money to keep her safe from her enemies for the rest of her life. Yet seven words kept coming back to him:
I don't love him, George. I love you
. He knew what he had to do.

Looking up, he caught the hotel manager's eye. 'When does the next packet leave for Durban?'

'At eight this evening.'

'Reserve me a cabin.'

Author's Note

Historical fiction always takes liberties with the 'truth': it compresses time, invents conversations and motives that real people never had, and generally tampers with the historical record for the purposes of plot. The trick is to minimize those liberties, and to make sure that when you're writing about historical figures you stay true to the spirit of that person. A made-up character, of course, gives the author the greatest license, but even he or she must conform to the standards/mores/thought patterns of the time.

It helps, too, if the plot is credible. I first came across the Prophet's Cloak - my chief plot device - when I read David Loyn's excellent history of foreign engagement in Afghanistan,
Butcher & Bolt
(see below). From that book and other sources, I discovered that the cloak was said to have been brought to Afghanistan from Central Asia in the 1760s by the first Amir of Kabul, Ahmad Shah Durrani, and today is kept in a locked silver box in the Kharka Sharif shrine in Kandahar. Its last public appearance was in the spring of 1996 when the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, wore it to rally support for his movement's stalled attempt to capture Kabul, proclaiming himself
Amir al-Mu'minin
("Leader of the Faithful
"
). Weeks later Kabul fell to the Taliban. A hundred and fifty years earlier, and for much the same reason, it was donned by Amir Dost Mahomed when he launched a
jihad
against the first British invasion of Afghanistan. Dost was restored to power when the British withdrew in 1842.

There is, however, no evidence that the cloak was used by Mullah Mushk-i-Alam, or any other leader, during the Afghan rebellion of 1879 (part of a conflict known to historians as the second Anglo-Afghan War). But it easily might have been: it seems inconceivable, given the precedent set by Dost Mohamed a generation earlier, that the advantage to be gained by displaying it in public did not occur to them. The mullah certainly proclaimed a
jihad
that was hugely popular until it suffered the crushing military defeat at Sherpur, on 23 December 1879, which is the climax to this book.

Nor is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the British government in London would have sent an agent to acquire the cloak in 1879. Disraeli was furious that Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, had exceeded his brief by invading Afghanistan in the first place in 1878, and by the following year he and his Cabinet colleagues were doubly determined to avoid a fresh outbreak of hostilities. Lytton and many senior political and military figures in India, on the other hand, were convinced that the sub-continent's security depended upon the annexation of all or part of Afghanistan (the so-called 'Forward' policy), and the attack on the Residency was just the excuse they needed for a fresh invasion. After the victory at Sherpur, the preferred plan was to break up the country and only annex Kandahar. But even that province was relinquished when the British, following defeat at Maiwand, finally withdrew in early 1881. Soon afterwards the country was reunited by Britain's preferred choice of amir, Abdur Rahman, who ruled for the next 20 years without foreign interference (though Britain exercised a nominal control over the amir's foreign policy).

My three main characters - George Hart, Princess Yasmin and Ilderim Khan - are all fictional, but most of the people they come into contact with really existed: Sir Louis Cavagnari, Lieutenant Walter Hamilton V.C., William Jenkyns and Doctor Kelly (all of whom perished during the attack on the Residency); Yakub Khan and his wazir, Shah Mohammed Khan; Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick 'Bobs' Roberts (who went on to command the British Army), Brigadier-General Thomas Baker and Colonel Charles MacGregor; and the rebel leaders Mullah Mushk-i-Alam and Mir Bacha. As far as possible I have tried to stay true to the historical record of where these figures were and what they were up to (even, in places, using recorded speech and letters), and the main events in Afghanistan from September to December 1879 - including the sack of the Residency, the re-invasion by Sir Frederick Roberts, Yakub Khan's abdication, Roberts's reverse in the Chardeh valley, and the final British victory at Sherpur cantonment - were as I describe. Yakub Khan, moreover, did abandon his wives and close relatives in the Bala Hissar when he left to join the British in late September.