Part 22 (1/2)
”It is already winter,” Ha.s.san pointed out. ”Hards.h.i.+p will be our companion whatever the weather. As for your Hindu caravan, Zulmai,” he added with a sour smile, ”it is either too late to be of use, or else it does not exist.”
Ghulam Ali raised his chin. ”And what of thieves on the way?” he asked, roughly, to conceal his fears.
Zulmai smiled, then recited something in Persian, a hand waving for emphasis.
”The greatness of the wayfarer's goal,” he translated for Ghulam Ali, he translated for Ghulam Ali, ”can be seen in the steep windings of the track, and the high pa.s.ses, and the bandits lying in wait. ”can be seen in the steep windings of the track, and the high pa.s.ses, and the bandits lying in wait.
”That is from Rumi,” he added.
The greatness of the goal. Ghulam Ali glanced at Ha.s.san, and saw him look quickly away. Ghulam Ali glanced at Ha.s.san, and saw him look quickly away.
”Do not fret,” Zulmai added. ”The people here are all Bangashes. They have no quarrel with us, or the British. The Ghilzais are on the other side of the Paiwar Kotal.”
The next morning they set off on the narrow caravan track leading southwest to Thal where they would turn again, this time to the northwest, and follow the Kurram River valley past the Safed Koh mountain range and into the heart of Ghilzai country.
Ha.s.san and Zulmai rode in front, Ha.s.san in a new, embroidered poshteen, with a musket at his side, talking quietly to his lovely Ghyr Khush, and Zulmai, heavily armed, a thin shawl flung over his shoulders and his feet bare inside heavy shoes with upward pointing toes. Behind them followed the laden animals with their drivers, Ghulam Ali, two dozen coolies, and a crowd of servants, all in sheepskin and leather boots, while the hungry-looking Bangash guards, some too young for beards, strode alongside, jezails hanging from their shoulders, their black eyes rimmed with kohl beneath turbans or tight-fitting skullcaps.
”A turban is an Afghan's honor,” Ghulam Ali had been told on the road to Jalalabad, ”and his weapons are his jewelry.”
THREE DAYS later, Lady Sale stopped Mariana as they pa.s.sed each other in the parade ground.
”Dr. Brydon tells me you may as well visit Fitzgerald,” she said abruptly. ”If you promise not to faint, I shall take you to see him. Come for tea this afternoon.”
When she heard the news, Mariana's aunt let out a little cry of delight from within her m.u.f.fling shawls. ”Ah, my dear,” she cooed hoa.r.s.ely, ”you must must go to him at once.” go to him at once.”
Tea at Lady Sale's was a curious affair. Lady Sale was now a guest in her own spa.r.s.ely furnished drawing room, having gone to stay in her daughter's house when the Macnaghtens arrived from the Residence compound. The tea the ladies drank, and the sugar they stirred into it, were both courtesy of Nur Rahman.
Mariana wrapped her fingers around the warm cup, appreciating the fleeting comfort it offered her.
Since the battle of Bibi Mahro, the weather, and everyone's condition, had grown worse. While the temperature dropped and snow blanketed the ground, soldiers in ragged uniforms s.h.i.+vered weakly on the ramparts, knowing they would remain cold after they came off duty because General Elphinstone, inexplicably, had forbidden the lighting of fires.
Seven hundred of the men were already ill.
The bark and all the twigs from the cantonment's trees had gone to feed the animals. Horses and mules gnawed desperately on tent pegs. Camels lamented as camels do, then lay down and died.
By now, the newly dead pack animals were being used for food. The cantonment butchers gave the best of their meat to the British officers and their families, and the remainder to those native troops whose religion allowed them to eat it.
Only the picked bones of the starved donkeys and camels now found their way onto the rotting pile outside the gate, whose stink permeated every corner of the cantonment.
Lady Sale finished her tea and laid down her cup. ”We must pay our hospital visit before dark,” she decreed.
”I shall join you.” Lady Macnaghten adjusted several embroidered shawls about her shoulders as she spoke.
Her appearance had changed in the weeks since Vijaya's illness. A hint of gray had appeared at her temples. Her dewy skin had become chapped, and her frilly gown looked as if she had slept in it.
She drew herself up, as if expecting refusal. ”It is my wish,” she added soulfully, ”to succor the poor, wounded officers in any way I can. I have thought of offering them each a daily cup of tea. I am sure your Afghan boy will provide enough for that purpose, Miss Givens.”
”If that is what you wish, I shall be glad to escort you.” Lady Sale's plain face filled with disapproval. ”But I must warn you that this will not be a social call. I do not know that tea will do the officers much good.”
”Of course it will.” Lady Macnaghten stood, her skirts rustling. ”Everyone likes a nice cup of tea,” she said plaintively.
”If you do not mind,” Aunt Claire quavered from her chair, ”I believe I shall return to our quarters.”
Mariana looked up at the sound of male throat-clearing to see Sir William Macnaghten standing in the drawing room doorway.
He, too, had changed. His hair, a glossy black when she first arrived in Kabul, was now entirely gray, as were his imposing eyebrows. Behind wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes seemed large and dark as if he were terribly afraid of something.
They all must look different now.
He glanced at his wife. ”I shall be working in the dining room this afternoon,” he said. ”I hope it will not inconvenience-”
”Not at all, dear William!” Lady Macnaghten offered him a loving smile. ”We are on our way to call upon the wounded officers.”
He did not reply, but his bleak look told Mariana more than she wished to know.
”Do not say anything to excite Fitzgerald,” Lady Sale warned her a little while later, as they crossed the frozen ground to the cavalry officers' mess, now the officers' hospital. ”You must simply let him know you are there. As for the other officers,” she added, ”try not to look at them too closely. Some have been very badly injured.”
As she stood in the hospital doorway, Mariana understood Lady Sale's warning.
What had made her think it would boast an orderly row of occupied beds? Why had she imagined the patients dressed in night-clothes and propped up on pillows, like every sick person she had seen before?
Wrapped in b.l.o.o.d.y bandages and heaped with quilts, thirty-two officers lay crowded haphazardly into the dining room and its adjacent sitting room. They occupied string beds, sideboards, even the long mess table that now stood out of the way, beneath the windows. Some of the wounded even sat slumped on chairs, apparently due to a shortage of places to lie down.
A dozen native sepoys squatted on the floor between the beds, attending to the injured. One of them held an uneaten plate of mushy lentils hopefully in front of a wan-looking officer with a bandaged head, who stared into s.p.a.ce, drool running from the corner of his mouth.
Covered chamber pots stood in corners and beneath the beds. The reek of stale, urine-soaked clothing and blood added itself to the pervasive stink of rotting carca.s.ses from outside the gate.
Realizing she was being watched, Mariana forced herself to take her hand from her nose.
Some of the wounded turned and stared at the ladies in the doorway, but most seemed too preoccupied to notice them. One young man lay, snoring loudly, near the door, his mouth wide open, his eyes shut. Another sat up, gazing into s.p.a.ce, a cus.h.i.+on beneath his chin propping up his heavily bandaged head and neck.
”That is Lieutenant Haughton,” whispered Lady Sale. ”He has lost a hand, and the muscles on one side of his neck have been severed, so that he cannot hold up his head. He is not expected to survive.”
A man in a filthy army uniform with a stubble of beard bent over a boyish officer, whose face seemed to be wet with tears. He looked up, nodded briefly, and went back to his work.
”That is Dr. Brydon,” murmured Lady Sale.
Mariana swallowed. If this was the condition of wounded British officers, what must be the fate of the native soldiers, who had no servants and no doctor?
Fighting a desire to run from the scene, she took hold of Lady Macnaghten's trembling elbow and followed Lady Sale over the threshold.
Heavy, labored breathing filled the room. The terrible sighs of the injured added themselves to the stench, giving the room a h.e.l.lish atmosphere.
A red-headed man twisted from side to side on a pair of rough planks that had been stretched between two chairs, his breath hissing between clenched teeth. He had no pillow. One of his legs protruded from his quilts, revealing a shot to the upper leg, covered with a blackened bandage.
Ha.s.san's wound had been almost the same as this man's, but when Mariana had last seen him, he had been lying in his own house, cared for by his family, including Safiya Sultana, who had fed him opium for his pain.
These brave souls had no such luxury. All the medicines for the entire cantonment had been stored in the lost and looted commissariat fort.
Where was Fitzgerald?