Part 16 (1/2)
”Panah?” she interrupted. ”You want me to ask for panah?”
He nodded. ”You have heard of it. I should have known. Please do it, Miss Givens. It is your only hope. I could not,” he added, his face filled with painful longing, ”bear it, if anything were to happen to-”
”Thank you for your advice, Mr. Mott,” Mariana said hastily. ”I shall keep it in mind.”
He must be mad, she thought, as she prepared for sleep. No circ.u.mstances, no matter how dire, would force her to seek protection from her enemies.
SHE WAS startled awake at dawn by the thudding of artillery. As she sat up on Lieutenant Cowperthwaite's string bed, her quilt to her chin, Dittoo appeared with her coffee tray. ”The tents are very cold, Bibi,” he offered from between chattering teeth, ”and there is only enough coffee for one more day.”
Hoping the sound of the guns indicated some positive action, she gulped her cooling coffee, b.u.t.toned herself into her warmest gown, pushed her curls into the first bonnet she found, and opened her door.
There was no one in the corridor. She pushed open the heavy outer door and stepped onto the beaten earth outside.
Between rows of tents, fires crackled and smoked, each one surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of native soldiers with shawls thrown over their uniforms. Hollow coughing echoed from row to row.
No Europeans were visible save Lady Sale, who had emerged, booted and bonneted, from her compound across from the officers' quarters, a riding crop in her hand.
”What are you you doing here?” she inquired coldly, when Mariana went up to greet her. ”You should be attending to your aunt.” doing here?” she inquired coldly, when Mariana went up to greet her. ”You should be attending to your aunt.”
Mariana raised her chin. ”I wish to know what is going on. I want to see the fighting.”
”You cannot see it from here.” Lady Sale pointed upward. ”I have already tried to get a view from my rooftop, with no success. I can hear the artillery plainly enough from there, but the battle itself is out of sight.”
She raked Mariana up and down with narrowed eyes. ”Yesterday, with great authority, you announced that Sir Alexander Burnes had been murdered four days before. You must tell me where you got that information. Do not attempt to lie to me. If you do, I shall know it at once.”
Mariana stiffened. ”I cannot say.”
”I do not like you,” Lady Sale said flatly, ”but I can see that you are an unusual young woman. I will not repeat what you tell me.”
She was imperious and rude, but she did not look like a gossip.
”Very well,” Mariana replied. ”I was in Kabul when Burnes was killed. The mob rushed past us, shouting that Aminullah Khan had ordered an attack on his house. It was clear to me, and everyone else, that he would be dead within the hour.”
Lady Sale raised an impatient hand. ”What an utterly preposterous-”
”I was dressed,” Mariana added evenly, ”as an Afghan woman.”
Lady Sale's hand froze in mid-gesture.
”And that,” Mariana concluded, ”is all I am willing to say.”
Refusing to drop her eyes, she returned Lady Sale's stare.
In the end, it was Lady Sale who looked away.
”Well, then,” she said briskly, after a moment's pause, ”since you are standing here, you may as well come with me.”
Without another word, she strode off at a rapid pace, past rows of tents, barracks, and horse lines, toward the south-facing side of the cantonment, home now to the shabby tents of thousands of former occupants of the Indian bazaar, who, like the soldiers, now squatted in groups, warming their hands over smoky cooking fires, babies on their laps.
After pus.h.i.+ng her way by heaps of baggage and tethered animals and driving off a pursuing crowd of barefoot Indian children with menacing pokes of her riding crop, she pointed to the cantonment's outer rampart wall.
”We can see the native bazaar from here,” she announced.
Beside the southwest corner bastion, a substantial crack in the wall afforded a clear view of a crooked lane in the now-deserted bazaar. Lady Sale put her eye to it. A moment later, she drew back, grim satisfaction on her face.
”As I suspected,” she said, drawing back to let Mariana look, ”it is full of the enemy. They have reached the very foot of our outer wall.”
Mariana peered out. On either side of the lane, double-storied buildings had been thrown together to provide shops and housing for the blacksmiths, musicians, tailors, merchants, and other camp followers who had accompanied the army from India.
At first she saw nothing, but then a white-clad figure emerged from a low door, carrying something in its arms. The figure, that of a heavily armed man, flitted across the lane and out of sight behind another door, as a musket ball from the parapet above raised a little puff of dust by his flying feet.
”Since it cannot be seen from here,” Lady Sale said matter-of-factly, ”the present fighting must be taking place at the commissariat fort, which is out of sight through the trees. If they had taken the elementary step of keeping our food and medical stores inside the cantonment, none of this would have happened.” She sighed. ”All the wine and beer are there as well.”
Drums beat the call to arms. A short while later, a body of red-coated European infantrymen, accompanied by a gun and six gunners, quick-marched past them on their way to the main gate.
How many of those men would return alive? Mariana shuddered.
As if in response to her question, a cart pulled in through the same gate. A score of wounded native soldiers had been flung into it, as if in the midst of battle. One of them sat against the side of the cart, sobbing hoa.r.s.ely. s.h.i.+ny blood covered one side of his uniform, staining his white cross belt.
When the cart turned, she saw that his left arm had been nearly severed at the shoulder.
”That reminds me,” Lady Sale said briskly, ”we shall be needing bandages. I shall expect you tomorrow morning. Bring every sheet and towel you can spare. We shall need all our strength to hold out until my husband returns.”
As much as she disliked General Sale, Mariana could not wait to see that old, scar-faced veteran lead his reinforcements in through the cantonment gate.
”I KNOW everything!” Nur Rahman cried that afternoon, as Muns.h.i.+ Sahib removed his shoes outside Mariana's door. ”There was a battle at a fort near the main road. I heard the story from a man who was there.”
”But where?” Mariana demanded. ”At which fort?”
Please, let it not be the commissariat fort ”The one where the food stores are kept.” He pointed toward the southwest. ”Thousands of people have come, hungry for the wheat and beans and rice, and the tea and oil and sugar. They are carrying it all away.”
Mariana dropped into her chair and ran a hand over her face. What would they do now? How would the babies from the bazaar or the small children from last evening survive a siege in freezing weather?
Her teacher entered and gestured for silence, but Nur Rahman was unstoppable. ”All the nearby forts are full of gunmen,” he went on excitedly, ”and so is the King's Garden. They have blocked the road to-”
”Enough!” Muns.h.i.+ Sahib flapped an authoritative hand toward the doorway, and turned to Mariana. ”With your kind permission, Bibi,” he said gently, ”Nur Rahman and I will take our leave. This is not a good day for a lesson.”
”No.” She reached out a pleading hand. ”Please, stay with me.”
He looked into her face, then nodded serenely, his qaraquli hat elegant on his narrow head. ”I shall stay if you wish, Bibi,” he agreed, ”but today will be a holiday from the poetry of Sa'adi and Hafiz. Instead, I shall tell you a story, or rather the first part of a story, for it is too long to be told all at once.”
Wondering what lesson he wanted to impart, Mariana moved to sit on her string bed. She gestured toward her single, straight-backed chair, but her teacher remained standing as he always did, rocking a little on his stocking feet, his hands folded together behind his back. With his plain shawl draped about his shoulders in the regal way of his people, he belonged to a different world from hers.
Suddenly Mariana envied him.
”In a kingdom very far from here,” he began, his eyes roaming her small room as he spoke, as if he could see beyond its walls and into the far distance, ”a king sat on the roof of his palace, and looked out over his country. He gazed over the rolling hills, the sparkling rivers, and the lush fruit gardens of his rich and varied land with joy and humility, for nowhere was there a happier or more prosperous kingdom.”
A noisy sigh issued from the corridor. Looking out, Mariana saw that Nur Rahman was listening intently.