Part 24 (2/2)

Mariana's uncle let out a bitter sigh. ”I have it on good authority,” he said evenly, ”that the noise we are hearing is in preparation for an expected attack by us us on on them. them.”

The general coughed weakly.

The brigadier hunched his bony shoulders. ”May I ask, Lamb, who gave you you, a mere intelligence man, the right to come into this room and criticize the chief military officers of this cantonment?”

”No one gave gave me the right, Brigadier,” Adrian Lamb said grimly. ”It was there for the taking.” me the right, Brigadier,” Adrian Lamb said grimly. ”It was there for the taking.”

IT WAS Christmas.

Mariana tried not to fidget as she sat beside her aunt's bed. ”Of course you are getting better, Aunt Claire,” she insisted, for the third time that afternoon.

”I do not know, my dear,” her aunt replied faintly. ”Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever see England again.”

Unable to argue, Mariana could only reach out and pat her wrinkled hand.

Since her frightening but safe return to the cantonment, she had paid three condolence visits to Lady Sale's house, but had not yet seen the newly widowed Lady Macnaghten, who was still secluded in her bedroom. That morning, while sounds of painful grief emanated from the far end of the house, Mariana had sat in the icy drawing room with Lady Sale and a few other officers' wives, helpless to offer comfort, wondering about her own future.

Swathed in shawls and straight of back, Lady Sale had talked of the weather, her voice raised over Lady Macnaghten's m.u.f.fled sobbing, as if she could drive the shock and sorrow from the house by simple force of personality.

With Sir William dead, Eldred Pottinger, the most sensible of the civil officers, had been made temporary Envoy, but as everyone remarked, his appointment would do no good as long as the senior army officers were unable to act.

If only General Sale were here with his 1st Brigade, and not ninety miles away in Jalalabad, everything would be different. Mariana ran a hand over her face. Against her pillows, Aunt Claire yawned and closed her eyes.

Their own household was also suffering. Besides Aunt Claire, who seemed to have collapsed from cold and anxiety, several of the servants, including Uncle Adrian's old Adil, had ugly-sounding coughs. They had enough food in the house, thanks to Nur Rahman's forays to the city bazaars, but there was barely any water, and it was difficult, even with a roaring fire, to bring the temperature more than eight degrees above freezing in any of the rooms.

None of Mariana's clothes had been washed for weeks. She could not remember when she had last bathed.

While Aunt Claire snored gently, Mariana stared into s.p.a.ce, her thoughts racing.

If Ha.s.san had come to Kabul instead of divorcing or abandoning her, she and her family would be in Lah.o.r.e by now. If Harry Fitzgerald were not exhausted from doing his duty while wounded, he would at least try to save them. He had said as much himself.

But the harsh truth was that no help was on the way, and time was running out.

If they were to escape from here, they must rely upon themselves.

Excluding Uncle Adrian, who would certainly insist upon remaining at his post, the household with all its servants numbered twenty-two souls. How could such a large group of foreigners slip past the Ghilzai tribesmen who now dominated the roads, the hills, and all the surrounding forts?

Except for the sweepers who hastily threw the picked bones of the dead animals outside, no one dared venture beyond the cantonment gates. Anyone in uniform who stepped more than a few yards from the gate was brought down instantly by a well-aimed musket shot.

Even the unarmed and scarecrow-thin camp followers who wandered unwisely outside the walls were robbed, beaten, and left to die.

Akbar Khan's sharp-shooting allies, it seemed, were watching them day and night.

Besides Charles Mott's mad proposal that she ask an enemy chief for asylum, she could think of only one plan. Undisturbed by the fighting around the cantonment, the kafilas of the nomadic Pashtoon tribes were still pa.s.sing by on their way to Butkhak and the pa.s.ses to India, bringing their trading goods, their herds, and their camels.

According to Nur Rahman, many were traveling by the Lataband Pa.s.s, where people made wishes and tied rags to the bushes for luck.

Not all of those nomads would be Ghilzais.

If Mariana could manage disguises for everyone in the household, including the toothless sweeperess and the cross-eyed woman who polished Aunt Claire's silver, it might be possible to persuade a family of nomads to carry them to the Punjab.

But could she really wave down a moving caravan in full view of pa.s.sing travelers, then bargain with its leader through the hole in her chaderi, revealing her ident.i.ty as she did so? And even if she did persuade a kafila of non-Ghilzais to take them, how could she buy a safe pa.s.sage for so many people, with all her money spent on Nur Rahman's forays to the city?

Uncle Adrian kept no h.o.a.rd of gold coins. Aunt Claire's pearls would scarcely be enough.

Mariana bent and laid her forehead on the edge of her aunt's bed. Perhaps Charles's plan was not as mad as she had thought. After all, she herself had given asylum to Nur Rahman. But to throw her family on the mercy of an enemy seemed far too desperate a gamble.

Every morning for weeks she had awoken with the same tightening in her middle, the same heavy feeling in her temples. Fear and loss surrounded her, draining her strength. She could not remember feeling so tired.

Three years ago, she had relished danger. She had embarked on one adventure after another, full of hope-that she was doing the right thing, that she would be seen as a hero. Each of her actions- her rescue of Saboor from the neglectful old Maharajah, her mistaken marriage to Ha.s.san, even that mad mission to fetch Ha.s.san home, wounded, from the house with the yellow door-had all begun in the hope of recognition and a bright future.

But even her most daring and successful adventures had been marred by complications and bad results-pursuit by soldiers, courtiers, and child thieves; ostracism by her own people; fear and mistrust; and, in the end, her loss of Ha.s.san.

Now, after so many failures, how could she face this new, elemental danger? Exhausted, dirty, and cold, with a houseful of unhealthy people, how could she trust herself? How could she even imagine success?

All she wanted was rest, and someone to tell her what to do.

There was no s.p.a.ce in her whirling head for the question that had tugged at her in Haji Khan's house. All that now remained of those visits to the city were a little roll of paper and a single lovely vision of an unknown desert and a full, beckoning moon.

She pushed herself to her feet, and bent down to kiss Aunt Claire's wrinkled cheek. It was nearly time for dinner, but there was something she must do first.

She had not seen Fitzgerald since her visit to the hospital. In the five days since his release, he had used every ounce of his energy to sh.o.r.e up the cantonment defenses. There had been no time for social calls.

Of course she had sent him a regular share of Nur Rahman's bounty, but all the same, she felt she had neglected him.

Now it was Christmas Day.

There was just enough time before dinner to deliver a few nuts and raisins to his quarters. If she dropped them off herself, that might pa.s.s for attentiveness A short while later she made her way through the snowy darkness to the long building that housed the surviving junior officers, then stood waiting, her breath white in the moonlight, for Fitzgerald's orderly to answer her knock.

Instead, his own voice came from within.

”It is Mariana Givens,” she said through the door.

The bolt moved.

”Come in, Miss Givens.” Fitzgerald bowed a little stiffly, and stood aside to let her in, as an Indian manservant slipped past her and out of the room.

For a lady to enter an officer's private quarters without another lady's chaperoning presence would be a grave breach of proper behavior, and an unnecessary encouragement to the officer in question.

Mariana stepped inside. ”I have brought you something,” she began, then stopped short inside the doorway.

Well aware that her own unwashed appearance left much to be desired, she still had not expected what she saw.

Fitzgerald had become a shadow in the days since she had last seen him, a shuffling caricature of himself. His handsome gunner's uniform now hung in loose folds on his frame. His hair fell, ragged and uncut, below his ears. The bones stood out in his face.

<script>