Companions Of Paradise Part 11

Mariana studied him. His eyes, as green as hers, were unafraid. No longer clenched, his hands now rested on his knees. They were covered with dry lines, as if they had been well used. He had not been thinking of her at all.

"This has already happened, in the Kohdaman valley," he added. "I can see clearly that the Afghan fighting style is very different from ours. Their warriors appear, then retreat, then appear again, and each time they come back, there are more of them. there are more of them.

"We, of course, march out openly, in our red and blue uniforms. We fight in an orderly fas.h.i.+on, in columns and squares. They go into battle in ordinary clothes the same color as the dust and the rocks. Their movements are impossible to predict. They come unexpectedly, from nowhere, do what damage they can, then vanish like ghosts, or they snipe at us, invisibly, from behind rocks. They have no fear of our guns, whatever our people may say, and no chivalry. They descend upon our wounded like vultures. Sometimes they even cut off-I am sorry," he said hastily, seeing the look on her face. "This is no proper conversation for a lady."

He dropped his eyes. "I have no one to speak to about this. Whenever I have tried to discuss it, I am called a croaker. I am only telling you because we talked about military matters so often before-"

Her revulsion gone, she resisted an impulse to lay a hand on his arm. It had been months since an English person had spoken seriously to her.

Perhaps, for now, he would be her friend.

"I am certain that we can beat the Afghans," he continued, interrupting her thoughts, "but to do so, we must outwit them. I fear we have dangerously underestimated them.

"I am very worried, Miss Givens," he added, "very worried."

"I am so sorry," she whispered.

Turning to her, he stared for an instant at the front of her gown, as if he were gazing at the flesh beneath her bodice. "I could not bear," he said huskily, "to know you were in any danger."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," was all she could manage.

A moment later, Harry Fitzgerald excused himself, and was gone.

Twenty feet away, Aunt Claire regarded her with a small, fas.h.i.+onable, and unmistakably triumphant smile.

"I AM so pleased," cooed Lady Macnaghten as she rode beside Mariana on the way back. "I thought you made a handsome pair, you and your lieutenant. What were you speaking of with such concentration?"

"I hardly remember," Mariana replied vaguely.

"And you were looking quite nice, but a curl of your hair had come loose. The whole time you were speaking with Fitzgerald, it hung irritatingly down over your left ear.

"And now," she continued, s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably in her sidesaddle, "you must pursue your advantage. Be ready at all times for him to call on you. And for goodness sake, there is no need to show all all your teeth when you smile." your teeth when you smile."

October 19, 1841 In the five days since Harry Fitzgerald's return, he had called on Mariana three times. Three features had characterized each of those visits: Aunt Claire's simpering idiocy, Fitzgerald's patient good manners, and Mariana's growing irritation.

While her aunt's efforts to safeguard Mariana's good name had protected her from any upsetting declaration he might have made, her breathless reminiscences about her childhood in Suss.e.x were agony to listen to.

"My aunt, Claire Woodrow," she burbled over sherry one afternoon, as Mariana fidgeted beside her, "my father's elder sister after whom I was named, came to live in Weddington when I was small. Her husband had recently died died, you see"

Saved from the work of conversing, Fitzgerald had offered no more than a series of bland smiles. When he stood up to leave, Mariana followed him, her lemon silk skirts rustling, then turned and faced her aunt after the front door had closed behind him.

"I do believe," her aunt sighed, "he is the handsomest handsomest-"

"Handsome he may be," Mariana said pointedly, "but must we talk of ourselves all all the time he is here?" the time he is here?"

Aunt Claire drew back, her chins trembling. "But what on earth should we talk of?"

"Him." Mariana sighed. "You wish me to marry Fitzgerald, but we know nothing about him." Mariana sighed. "You wish me to marry Fitzgerald, but we know nothing about him."

Her own vetting, she knew, was a cold, unloving exercise that, in the end, would cause someone hurt. It pained her to hear the lilt in her aunt's voice, and the little humming noises she made as she busied herself about the bungalow.

While Aunt Claire sang to herself, Mariana waited for Ghulam Ali.

Where was he now? Was he on his way back from India, preparing to travel safely through the pa.s.ses after Jalalabad, now that General Sale had cleared the way? Was Ha.s.san's reply to her hidden in his clothes, or had Ha.s.san sent back no reply but only silence, the bitterest answer of all?

If only she had sent Ghulam Ali sooner, he would have returned safely and she would already know....

Until she knew the truth of Ha.s.san's feelings, she would remain as she was, trapped between hopefulness and resignation.

THAT EVENING, as she tightened her stays in preparation for another of Lady Macnaghten's dinner parties, Mariana steeled herself to learn more about Harry Fitzgerald.

She knew that he was the younger of two brothers, both serving in India, who had lost their father when they were very small, and that a kindly uncle had later purchased commissions for them in the Indian army. When Aunt Claire had actually asked him a question about himself, Mariana had also learned that his mother had been ill for some years. When he spoke of her, his expression had softened, revealing, Mariana hoped, a capacity for tender feelings.

She had known since they first met that he was a thinking officer, as ardent a student of military strategy as she had been, and loyal to the men in his battery. He had suffered without complaint when false gossip had damaged his reputation. These were good signs, but they told Mariana nothing of how he would treat her if they were married. Would the Bengal Horse Artillery mean more to him than she or her children? Would he forget her existence once she was his?

It was not uncommon for Indian army officers to be posted to remote corners of the country. In some cases, their wives had been the only European women in small stations. Left alone with no one to talk to while their husbands campaigned for months on end, some of them had lost their minds. Who knew how many might have been saved if their husbands had thought to send them to friends or relatives.

She would not ask for Fitzgerald's love, because she could not offer her own, but she must know he would not be as cruel as that.

One woman who had endured that experience had been the dauntless Lady Sale, who seemed none the worse for it. The woman must be made of iron.

Mariana sighed as she dropped her best rose-colored evening gown over her head, then struggled with its tiny covered b.u.t.tons. Whatever Fitzgerald was, if she understood him in advance, she would be better able to bear her fate.

The party, an extravagant affair featuring roast boar from a recent hunt, was a compromise, for it followed several attempts by Lady Macnaghten to organize a dance. Her latest effort had been abandoned at the last moment due to disturbances in the Kohdaman valley which had kept Sir William and the army too occupied to partic.i.p.ate.

Everyone would be in attendance this evening save for Lady Sale, who never went out when her husband was away, and General Elphinstone, who had been confined to his bed since the cricket match.

"Why, good evening, Miss Givens." Charles Mott bowed before her, his hair fas.h.i.+onably mussed into the appearance of a dish mop, his coat so wasp-waisted that it was a wonder he could breathe.

As she replied to his greeting, a man who had been standing with his back to her spun about and frowned in her direction. Lady Macnaghten caught his look as she rustled past.

"I am sure, Sir Alexander," she fluted, gesturing with her fan, "that you remember Miss Mariana Givens."

Burnes bowed. Mariana inclined her head, hoping he would be gone when she looked up, but he was not. Instead, he stood in front of her, his Clan Campbell tartan as resplendent as Charles Mott's dandified clothes. His round face held no shame, only keen interest. "I take it," he said smoothly, "that Miss Givens has learned to speak a little Persian."

"I would not know about that." Her interest waning, Lady Macnaghten swept off to greet another guest.

Burnes leaned closer and dropped his voice. "I also take it that Miss Givens enjoys an occasional jaunt into the wicked city of Kabul. I find that most interesting. Of course I was shocked when I first heard-"

Before he could finish, or Mariana could think how to punish him, Aunt Claire appeared and clutched her above the elbow. "He is here," she stage-whispered, pointing with urgent indiscretion toward the drawing room doorway. is here," she stage-whispered, pointing with urgent indiscretion toward the drawing room doorway.

Five minutes later, a hand on Fitzgerald's arm, Mariana stood waiting to go in to dinner.

This was no time to think about Burnes. Dining at Fitzgerald's side would offer her the investigative opportunity she sought, although she had already noted how little attention he paid to her best gown, her carefully arranged curls, or even the hint of rosy cochineal powder Vijaya had applied to her cheeks. Instead, he glanced at her pleated bodice with such unnerving hunger that she had taken a hurried step backward.

Servants crowded the edges of the dining room. A liveried serving-man in a starched turban pulled out her chair. She sat down before Lady Macnaghten's gleaming silver and drew in her skirts, grateful that she was not sitting next to Alexander Burnes.

If she had been, she would have feigned a sudden, piercing headache.

From the moment they sat down, Fitzgerald began to talk, freely, in an undertone, about the military situation in Kabul. "The city smiths are making weapons by the dozen," he murmured, as Lady Macnaghten laughed gaily at the table's end, "but not for us. They refuse our requests in an insulting, ill-mannered way. I understand they spat at the feet of one of our officers. And I wonder about these- "What is the matter with Burnes?" he added, as Mariana stirred her mulligatawny soup. "He has been staring at you all evening. I beg your pardon for the indelicacy, but has he begun calling upon you in my absence?"

"No," Mariana answered emphatically. "He has not."

Dinner proceeded with all the usual clatter, conversation, and excess of wine. Lady Macnaghten, her cheeks suspiciously rosy, flirted her fan at one end of the table; her husband smiled at the other. Burnes drank even more than usual.

"-spreading a rumor that we are planning to seize the tribal chiefs and send them to London London!" Mariana heard him say. "Of course I put that ruffian Abdullah Khan in his place. I called him a dog, and threatened to crop his ears. It did him no end of good. As for the aged Aminullah Khan, if I ever meet him, I shall wait for the right moment, then put out my foot and trip him up!

"I shall enjoy seeing the palsied old creature crawling about as he tries to get up again!" he added, over the laughter of his fellow guests.

As three servants burst through the door, carrying the roast boar on a great wooden plank, an apple in its jaws, Burnes leaned across the table toward Mariana.

"What," he asked loudly between the silver birds, "did you say your name is?"

"My name," she said tartly, "is Mariana Givens."

"Ah, yes, Miss Givens." He smiled loosely. "We have something in common, you and I."

For an angry instant she felt trapped. Then Harry Fitzgerald put a calming hand on her arm and leaned heavily over his plate. "I do not believe, Sir Alexander," he said in a level tone, "that the lady understands what you mean."

Buoyed by his support, Mariana offered Burnes a level green gaze. "Nor," she said evenly, "do I care. care."

His pale face stricken, Charles Mott looked despairingly from Fitzgerald's hand to Mariana's face.

Sir William Macnaghten coughed noisily at the table's end. "The boar has arrived!" he announced.

Burnes subsided into his seat. Fitzgerald turned to Mariana. "I do not like that man," he said, "but you have nothing to fear from him as long as I am here."

He smiled at her in a way she had almost forgotten, beautifully, crookedly, his chin raised. "And I hope that will be a very long time."

"Why on earth were you so short with the Resident?" her aunt inquired on the way home. "Whatever has he he done to deserve such rude treatment?" done to deserve such rude treatment?"

October 20, 1841 It had taken Ghulam Ali longer than it should have to reach the Punjab. Parched and filthy from the dust of the road, the courier had emerged from the Khyber Pa.s.s and into the hilly Peshawar valley a little more than four weeks after he had tucked the English lady's letter into his clothes and bidden her good-bye.

His heart lifted at the knowledge that he was now in his home country, but with that lifting came new anxiety. He had serious work before him.

At the beginning of his journey, aware of the dangers of solitary travel, he had fallen in with a large Tajik wedding party on its way to Jalalabad. Jovial and celebrating, the family had moved unhurriedly through the first several pa.s.ses between Kabul and their destination, bringing with them forty camel-loads of bride gifts and trade goods, and scores of horses and donkeys. Small children in brightly embroidered clothes had ridden in baskets tied to the backs of donkeys. Live chickens had hung upside down, tied uncomfortably by their legs to the backs of the loaded camels.

Ghulam Ali had enjoyed the family's company, especially after they killed a sheep at Butkhak and enjoyed roast meat and music until the stars overhead began to fade. He had been grateful for the good humor of their chief, a man with a thick beard and curly mustache, for the route to Jalalabad had not improved since he had taken it to Kabul six months earlier with the English party. The six-mile-long Khurd-Kabul gorge had not lost its forbiddingly steep sides, the icy stream that rushed along its floor, or the narrow, stony pathway that crossed the little river no fewer than twenty-three times. The perpendicular basalt walls of the Jagdalak Pa.s.s had been unchanged; at its narrowest, the Jagdalak, with its right-angle turns and frighteningly narrow bottlenecks, had still been only six feet wide.

He had enjoyed himself with the Tajiks, but after taking three leisurely weeks to cover half the hundred-and-forty-mile distance to Peshawar, he had tired of their slow progress. When he met a group of Eastern Ghilzai nomads outside the city of Jalalabad, he had fallen in with them, grateful to learn that they expected to cross the Khyber Pa.s.s within ten days.

Had the Tajiks offered him the news that he learned from his new Ghilzai hosts, Ghulam Ali would never have taken time to savor their smoky kababs or enjoy the beauty of their music and the sight of the men stamping their feet as they danced in the firelight. He would instead have abandoned them, and hurried on alone, toward India.

The Ghilzais, who were driving a great, bleating flock of fat-tailed sheep down to the Punjab, had been sinewy and rough-featured, with untrimmed beards and hair that fell to their shoulders beneath carelessly tied turbans. Like all tribesmen, they had been conspicuously armed.

Ghulam Ali had joined their party as they prepared to travel across the flat desert between Jalalabad and the Khyber Pa.s.s. They were prodding their charges with long sticks while a dozen camels stood waiting, already loaded with black woolen tents and cooking vessels.

He had kept his distance at first, staying out of their way, waiting to be included. They, honoring the Pashtoon law of hospitality, had made room for him beside their cooking fire at the noon halt.

One of them, a handsome, lanky fellow, had gestured for Ghulam Ali to join him as he kneaded dough beside a cooking fire. "Where are you traveling?" he had inquired in accented Punjabi, after learning that Ghulam Ali was from Lah.o.r.e.

"My cousin is getting married in Lah.o.r.e," the courier had lied, not revealing his real purpose, for everyone knew that couriers carried cash.

The man's name was Qadeer. The men in his group came from two families. They were the first of their tribe to start the annual migration to India, for it was autumn, and time for the Ghilzai nomads to travel from their summer quarters in the high, brutal mountains of Central Asia to the hot, fertile Indian plains, through pa.s.ses that brought some of them to Peshawar and the Punjab beyond, and others to the great towns of the Dera Jat, in the south.

Qadeer and his fellow tribesmen had, as always, gone ahead, driving the sheep. The rest of their families, their camels, donkeys, women, and children would join them after a month. Other groups would do the same at their own pace. The last of the Ghilzai nomads would leave Kabul by early December.

"The last families go only as far as Peshawar," Qadeer said. "They like the cold weather, but we continue on as far as Lah.o.r.e. That is where I learned to speak your language. We take what we need on the way."

He offered Ghulam Ali a satisfied smile. "I stole a lovely horse in SarG.o.dha two years ago. It is a good life."

Ghulam Ali kept to himself, sleeping near their fire, eating the food Qadeer pressed on him with fierce hospitality.

On the third evening, one of the other men folded himself down next to Ghulam Ali, his ragged shawl trailing in the dust. He said something in Pushto and smiled harshly into Ghulam Ali's face.

Qadeer tipped his head toward his friend. "Shah Gul here wants to know whether you are really going to a family wedding," he said matter-of-factly, his hands moving with gentle precision as he wedged a four-legged iron plate over the fire and adjusted the kettle among the coals.

"He thinks you are a servant of the British feranghis."

"I am not with the foreigners." Ghulam Ali raised his chin and lied for the second time. "I came with a kafila bringing indigo and cotton cloth from India. Now I am going home."

"That is good," Qadeer replied. "If you had been a servant of the feranghis, I would have killed you after you left us."

Killed? Ghulam Ali swallowed. Ghulam Ali swallowed.

"The British should not have come," Qadeer added, as he dropped a flat round of dough onto the hot metal plate. "And now that they have cheated us, their time here is finished. The night of long knives has begun."

Cheated? Long knives? Ghulam Ali's mind reeled. How could this be? Why, the English lady and her family had gone picnicking in the hills only the day before he left, with their cotton umbrellas and hampers of food... Ghulam Ali's mind reeled. How could this be? Why, the English lady and her family had gone picnicking in the hills only the day before he left, with their cotton umbrellas and hampers of food...

Shah Gul spoke at length, his raptor's face expressionless.

"You are fortunate to have come through when you did," Qadeer explained. "My people killed thirty-five British soldiers at Butkhak a few days ago. We plundered a rich caravan from India at Tezeen a few days ago, and killed everyone in it." He spat into the fire. "It was carrying goods for the British, their cursed sharab sharab and other things. No one will dare to use the pa.s.ses near Kabul now. When it is time, we will be ready-here in the east, to the west, to the north, and the south. As soon as we settle our flocks we are going back." Smiling, he patted the knives whose handles protruded from his sash. and other things. No one will dare to use the pa.s.ses near Kabul now. When it is time, we will be ready-here in the east, to the west, to the north, and the south. As soon as we settle our flocks we are going back." Smiling, he patted the knives whose handles protruded from his sash.

He gestured with a long arm at the plain with its other camps, flocks, and black tents. "All our warriors are gathering."

Ghulam Ali was unable to think of a suitable reply.

Later, his stomach full of flat bread and yoghurt, pomegranates and tea, he stretched out on the ground, needing sleep, his small bundle of belongings beneath his head, his shawl spread over him for warmth, but his eyes did not close. The long-bladed Khyber knife he had carried since he was a child had seemed weapon enough when he embarked upon this journey, but it would be useless if the tribesmen attacked him together. He would be dead, or worse, dying slowly of many cuts, before he had time to draw it from its sheath.

As he listened to the stirring of the flock and the quiet voices of the men who guarded them, he reached into his clothes and touched the Englishwoman's letter with careful fingers.