Part 2 (1/2)

Lady Macnaghten yawned delicately behind her fan. ”I suppose-” she began.

Whatever she supposed was interrupted by a fresh wave of sound from the plain below. The drummers were at work again, in greater numbers than before.

Pounding their double-ended drums, dancing to their own rhythms, they were certainly celebrating something, but what was it?

The crowd below was craning toward the far end of the course.

”What is this?” shouted an officer, as a line of hors.e.m.e.n appeared in the dusty distance. ”The races are over. No one else is supposed to-”

Long lances at the ready, twelve hors.e.m.e.n galloped in single file toward the four small tents that had appeared so mysteriously, their guylines pegged out in a vulnerable line along the margin of the track.

One by one, the horses jumped. One by one, their pegs removed, the little tents trembled, then collapsed.

The riders pulled up dramatically, their horses rearing, in front of the royal enclosure. As the drums continued their din, their leader, a burly man with a thick black beard, wrenched the peg from his lance, hurled it toward the fallen tents, then galloped away, his henchmen behind him.

”Those tribesmen did not not seem friendly to our cause,” observed Lady Sale, when the drumming had ceased. ”If I were Envoy,” she glanced pointedly at Lady Macnaghten, ”I would make sure they were brought round, whoever they are.” seem friendly to our cause,” observed Lady Sale, when the drumming had ceased. ”If I were Envoy,” she glanced pointedly at Lady Macnaghten, ”I would make sure they were brought round, whoever they are.”

”Who were those hors.e.m.e.n?” Mariana murmured to her uncle's a.s.sistant, as they waited for the palanquins to arrive. ”Did you and Uncle Adrian know of them?”

”No, Miss Givens.” He flicked dust from his sleeve with nervous fingers. ”No one has said a word. Miss Givens,” he added, ”would it be-”

”Charles! Charles Mott,” Lady Macnaghten called out petulantly. ”Stop talking to Miss Givens, and help me into my palanquin.”

Mariana watched with relief as he rushed away. During the long journey from Calcutta, she had seen enough of her uncle's damp-faced a.s.sistant to last a lifetime.

A knot of officers had been standing a short distance away. One of them detached himself from the group and approached her, a black dragoon helmet beneath his arm.

It was Fitzgerald.

Mariana stiffened.

He bowed smartly. ”Miss Givens,” he said, ”how delightful to see you here in Kabul.”

He looked heavier than Mariana remembered. His straight, fair hair gleamed in the sun. He offered her a careful smile.

Mariana touched her aunt's arm. ”Aunt Claire, may I present Lieutenant Fitzgerald?” she said, equally carefully.

”Oh,” exclaimed her aunt. ”Oh!”

”He is so much handsomer when seen face-to-face!” Aunt Claire burbled ten minutes later, as they got out of their palanquins. ”Did you see his smile, so gentlemanly, so restrained? I cannot wait for him to call on us!”

Mariana did not reply. As she had stepped into her palanquin, Fitzgerald had offered her a second, different smile, a crooked, knowing one that she had nearly forgotten.

He was a living, breathing person. Until this moment, she had not even considered that fact.

March 26, 1841 The following morning, the sound of someone scuffing off his shoes outside her door announced the arrival of Mariana's manservant with her coffee.

Dittoo was a champion talker, whose many opinions were best heard when one was properly awake. As usual, as he pushed his way inside, the tray rattling in his hands, Mariana closed her eyes and feigned deep sleep.

He dropped the tray noisily onto her bedside table. ”This house,” he announced, ignoring her subterfuge, ”is not good enough for you and your family, Bibi. The dining room is too small. Only five servants can fit inside while you are eating. Ghulam Ali says that open verandah will fill up with snow in the winter, and there are only these two bedrooms.

”As to the servants' quarters,” he went on. ”They have given only six rooms for forty servants, including the sweepers! I do not know where Ghulam Ali and Yar Mohammad will sleep, since they are Muslims, and-”

”Enough, Dittoo,” she snapped. ”We will build more quarters. Now go,” she added firmly.

He leaned closer. ”This is a dangerous place, Bibi,” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

She opened her eyes.

Her servant's ill-shaven face was bunched with anxiety. His shoulders drooped beneath his shabby uniform. He glanced over his shoulder. ”Everyone is talking,” he went on, ”about the Afghan chief who came to the races yesterday, and swore his revenge against the British and their new king. These Afghans do terrible, cruel things. Your British people should never have come here, and thrown out their real ruler.”

She sat up, the quilts to her chin, and swept the hair from her eyes. ”That chief did not swear to anything,” she declared. ”And even if he had, we have an enormous fort, and a great army. With such protection, why should we fear one Afghan, even if he is a chief?”

She frowned as he hunched his way out of her room without replying.

”I thought they wanted wanted us to come here, Uncle Adrian,” she said later that morning. ”I thought the Afghans had invited Shah Shuja to be king.” us to come here, Uncle Adrian,” she said later that morning. ”I thought the Afghans had invited Shah Shuja to be king.”

”Some of them had.” Her uncle shrugged. ”But some had not. In any case, we only invaded Afghanistan to prevent the Russians from taking the country over for themselves. No one wanted them threatening our possessions in India.”

”And were the Russians really coming to India?”

He ran a hand through his fringe of hair. ”It was never certain that they would. I understand,” he added, ”that yesterday's tribesmen were Achakzais from the Pis.h.i.+n valley, and their leader is the chief there, but he is not Shah Shuja's only enemy. Aminullah Khan from the Logar valley is another. Aminullah was one of Shuja's greatest allies at first, but he now has left in a huff, and we fear he has changed sides. People say he is old, palsied, and very deaf, but they also say he has ten thousand fighting men at his command, and is well-known for his cruelty.”

Remembering Dittoo's fears, Mariana glanced toward the window. Outside, newly sown gra.s.s had begun to sprout in front of the verandah. Past the nearby houses, the high walls of the Residence rose protectively around Sir William Macnaghten's vast garden. It all seemed so peaceful.

”Macnaghten and Burnes do not seem to understand the locals,” her uncle continued, ”not even the previous royal family. I discovered only yesterday that Dost Mohammad's eldest son has not gone into exile in India with his father, but has vanished instead into the mountains north of here. No one seems to know, or care, where he is. If he is like other Afghans, he will not forget the injury we have done his father. I fear,” he added thoughtfully, ”we may have failed to understand the depth of these people's pride.”

Pride. Mariana's muns.h.i.+ had told her that pride meant everything to an Afghan. Any one of them, especially a Pashtun tribesman, would willingly throw away his life to prove a point or defend a principle. He would never forget a service, would defend a guest to the death, and would offer asylum to anyone who asked properly, even someone who had murdered a member of his own family. Mariana's muns.h.i.+ had told her that pride meant everything to an Afghan. Any one of them, especially a Pashtun tribesman, would willingly throw away his life to prove a point or defend a principle. He would never forget a service, would defend a guest to the death, and would offer asylum to anyone who asked properly, even someone who had murdered a member of his own family.

”If an Afghan's honor requires revenge,” her old teacher had told her, ”he will exact it, whatever the price. We have a saying in India: May G.o.d save me from the fangs of the snake, the claws of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan. May G.o.d save me from the fangs of the snake, the claws of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan. ” ”

If all this were true, she thought, Afghanistan would be no easy country to control.

FOR SIXTEEN hundred years, through the coming and going of kings great and small, through endless destruction and rebuilding, the Bala Hisar had stood upon a high spur of the Sher Darwaza heights, overlooking the Kabul plain.

Its mud brick walls and heavy corner bastions had suffered considerable neglect in Dost Mohammad's time, but even in its dilapidated condition, the old citadel still cast a formidable shadow over the city at its feet.

Inside its walls, the Bala Hisar was crowded with buildings. Palaces, barracks, courtyards, stables, gardens, and munic.i.p.al buildings crammed its lower reaches, while above them, the fort, with its armory and its fearful dungeon, looked out upon its long, crumbling, fortified walls that even now climbed up and down the distant hills, protecting the Kabul plain from the ghosts of long-forgotten marauders.

On the morning after the horse races, Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, King of the Afghans, sat on a raised platform in the frescoed audience hall of his largest palace, his ministers ranged behind him. Sunlight entered the breezy clerestory windows above the king's head, glanced off his great striped turban, fell onto the shoulders of his embroidered coat and the silk bolster he leaned against, and bathed the rug where he sat, turning its tribal dyes to the color of precious stones.

Two black-coated Englishmen sat on chairs before the king's platform, their own retinue of officers behind them.

Shah Shuja regarded his guests with unhappy eyes. ”Victory,” he announced in high-pitched Persian, ”has become dust in my mouth.”

The British Resident and the British Envoy glanced at each other. ”Dust, Sire?” the Envoy repeated.