Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  After his dance, Nur Rahman had slipped outside and vomited.

  They had returned from Istalif the following night. After the older man fell asleep, Nur Rahman had crept through the darkness to the hook where Painda Gul's long-bladed Khyber knife hung in its scabbard. He had never killed before, but his Pashtun blood had told him what to do. Grasping a handful of greased hair in one hand, Nur Rahman had jerked Painda Gul's head back, then drawn the fierce Khyber blade across his knobby throat, slicing through the great blood vessels connecting head and body. Painda Gul had opened his eyes too late.

  Now, Nur Rahman shuffled his feet. “I cannot say more,” he murmured.

  “There is nothing more to say,” the old gentleman replied.

  “What is he talking about, Munshi Sahib?” inquired the lady from her saddle. “What does he want?”

  “This boy,” the old gentleman replied, glancing at Nur Rahman to make sure he understood, “is a Pashtun. Pashtuns live by a code of honor. A provision of their code is that protective asylum must be offered for three days to someone who asks for it, even if that person has committed a crime, provided that the person tells the truth about his circumstances. The boy has told us enough.”

  Enough. Relief flooded over Nur Rahman.

  “Now he wants us to keep him safe from his pursuers for three days.”

  Three days. What a princely time that would be…

  When he had arrived at the gate, Nur Rahman's sole concern had been the saving of his skin. But now that his dancing boy's heart had gone out to this peaceful old stranger, a new need thrust itself upon him, blocking out even his desire to survive.

  Oh, Allah, he prayed, do not take this old man from me!

  “And what,” the lady replied, also in Farsi, “do you recommend that we do?”

  The old gentleman joined his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “I leave the decision to you, Bibi,” he said gently. “My only duty is to explain what he wants.”

  The lady's mare pawed impatiently at the dust. The tall groom spoke quietly to her. A cold breeze blew through Nur Rahman's thin clothes. He waited, holding his breath, refusing to shiver.

  “He may come inside, but only for three days.”

  The lady addressed herself not to Nur Rahman but to the old man, but the dancing boy did not mind. He lowered his head to conceal his joy, imagining himself sitting at the feet of the old man, serving him

  “He may stay for three days,” she repeated, “and not a moment longer. He will sleep in the storeroom at the end of the servants’ quarters, but he is not to mix with the servants. He should understand that if my aunt discovers he is here, he will have to leave immediately.”

  The old gentleman turned to Nur Rahman. “You have understood the lady's instructions?”

  Unsure of his voice, Nur Rahman cleared his throat. “I have, dear Father,” he croaked, before following them inside.

  As she rode into the cantonment, Mariana glanced behind her in time to see her odd new guest hurrying to join her munshi. They made a curious pair, walking through the rain together, her irreproachable elderly teacher and this young Afghan with his fluent Farsi, whose dissolute face she could scarcely bear to look upon.

  The boy must have been beautiful once, with those great, soulful eyes and that perfectly carved mouth. What could have happened to him, she wondered. What poison had he absorbed to make him so curiously repellent?

  And what would happen, now that he had been granted his three-day asylum? Would he make impossible demands of her, or somehow contaminate the other inhabitants of the servants’ quarters?

  Both her servants had stiffened visibly when she agreed to let the boy inside. As he walked behind her mare, Yar Mohammad kept his eyes averted from the boy, and Ghulam Ali scowled with disapproval.

  Only Munshi Sahib had seemed unperturbed by his presence. Indeed, something about the old man's manner had encouraged her decision. Even now her teacher seemed to have no difficulty allowing the boy to take his arm and help him past a muddy hole in the road.

  Since that was the case, she would leave the boy and his troubles, whatever they were, to Munshi Sahib.

  A moment later, she passed through an opening in the thick rampart wall that divided the cantonment from the walled Residence compound.

  As her mare splashed along a broad path leading past Sir William Macnaghten's walled garden, Mariana wondered for the hundredth time why the British civil officers had been housed outside the sheltering fortifications of the military area. In contrast to the cantonment, whose ramparts were surmounted by a stone parapet, the Residence compound was furnished with no more than a plain six-foot wall on its three exposed sides.

  There must have been a good reason for such an optimistic plan, although Mariana could not fathom what it was.

  A broad avenue ran parallel to the rampart wall, dividing the Residence compound into two parts. Sir William's grand house and spacious gardens with their concealing compound wall took up the area next to the cantonment, while the seventeen hastily built offices and houses of the civil staff, including Mariana's uncle, took up the other. Farthest away, against the useless outer wall, a series of shambling buildings housed the many hundreds of servants who staffed the Residence compound.

  But it was not the geography of the compound that occupied her thoughts as she rode, followed by her two servants, past the offices and houses of various secretaries and doctors. Since their brief encounter at the race meeting, she had received no word from Harry Fitzgerald.

  According to Aunt Claire, who had managed to keep track of his movements, he had left the next day with his horse artillery, to put down some fighting in the north.

  He could have written from there, but he had clearly chosen not to. So much, therefore, for Aunt Claire's dream that he had been waiting, lovelorn, for the past two years.

  But Fitzgerald had good reason to dislike Mariana.

  Soon after gossip about him had forced their separation, she had snatched little Saboor to safety from Maharajah Ranjit Singh's neglectful grip, then become entangled with his mystical family. Later, believing she was aiding the British invasion of Afghanistan, she had announced in front of a large crowd, including Fitzgerald, that she was engaged to Saboor's father. That sensational disclosure had made Fitzgerald's humiliation even worse. Unsurprisingly, he had soon afterward sent her a bitter, reproachful letter.

  In spite of Fitzgerald's anger then, and his failure to write to her now, he had seemed genuinely pleased to see her at the race meeting.

  Unlike Lady Macnaghten's nephew, the groping, pallid Charles Mott, whose aunt would have fainted dead away at the thought of his marrying Mariana, Fitzgerald had been both attractive and intelligent. He had laughed with her, and told her of his dreams. Before their hopes of marriage were dashed, they had spent hours together, arguing happily over the great battles of history—Marathon, Tours, the defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse—as she and her father had done in his vicarage study from the time she was twelve. Those conversations, and Fitzgerald's hot, hasty kisses, had provided her with some of her best moments in India.

  Harry Fitzgerald could explain the British defenses to her. He could give her vivid battle descriptions to send to her father.

  She lifted the rain-dampened riding veil from her face, and turned her mare into the lane where her uncle's small bungalow stood in its garden.

  If Hassan still loved her, nothing else would matter. If he had divorced her, she must find a way to love Fitzgerald again, and to make him love her.

  If only Hassan would write…

  The rain had stopped. An Indian dhobi saluted as he passed Mariana in the lane, bent over beneath a great bundle of washing, his bare feet covered to the ankles in mud. Someone coughed hollowly behind a mud wall.

  Uncle Adrian sat on a chair in the sun, deep in conversation with two ragged Afghans who stood in front of him. A pair of carved jezail s had been propped against a verandah pillar. All three men glanced up as
she approached. The Afghans turned their heads away immediately.

  As she handed her reins to Yar Mohammad, the drawing room shutters banged apart, and Aunt Claire appeared, red-faced, in the open window.

  “He was here!” she exclaimed, a plump hand fluttering at her breast, ignoring her husband's furious glare. “Lieutenant Fitzgerald came to call not half an hour ago. I tried to make him wait for you, but he said he was expected elsewhere. He is to leave again tomorrow.” She turned from the window as Mariana entered the house. “Where were you? Why did you take so long?”

  A few hours later, she knocked at Mariana's bedroom door. “You must hurry, my dear,” she called. “We are to be at the Residence at six o'clock sharp.”

  “M-m-m!” replied Mariana through a mouthful of pins as she hastened to fix her curls to the top of her head.

  A liveried servant had come at the very last moment, bearing the heavy, cream-colored invitation on a tray. Uncle Adrian was not a senior officer, so it had been clear that it was his family, more than himself, that was wanted at Sir William's table. This was no surprise, since Uncle Adrian's household boasted two of the eleven Englishwomen residents in Kabul.

  Fitzgerald was to be there. This Mariana had learned when another of Lady Macnaghten's servants had arrived on the heels of the liveried man, a private note in his hand.

  Look your prettiest, the note had instructed. Lieutenant Fitzgerald has accepted our invitation.

  “It doesn't matter if there are creases at the back,” Aunt Claire snapped, just before six o'clock, as Mariana turned obediently in front of her. “They'll think you have been sitting down in it. Oh, I wonder what he will say, when he sees you are there!

  “Ah,” she added rapturously, “how thrilling to dine at the Envoy's table!”

  In her palanquin, Mariana breathed in slowly to quell the tightening in her stomach. She was a fool to bank on a future with Hassan. Silence was all she had received from him since he sent her the delicately carved gold medallion that even now lay hidden next to her skin, suspended from its simple gold chain.

  How silly she had been to send such a gushing response to his gift! How foolish to copy that old Persian poem into her letter, so full of references to the pain of separation and the soul's longing for union! How idiotic she had been to dream of him on the stony road to Kabul, waiting fruitlessly for a sign of the love she had once seen on his face

  Had he already divorced her as he had said he would, on the day she had run away from his house? And if he had, why had no one told her? Had his family somehow failed to inform her, or had their messenger died or been killed on the dangerous roads between the Punjab and Kabul?

  If she were already divorced, she had only herself to blame. Again and again, she had catalogued the blunders she had made in Lahore, beginning with the ill-fated announcement of her coming marriage. That revelation had done more than hurt Harry Fitzgerald—it had humiliated Hassan as well. She clearly remembered the rustle of silks, as Maharajah Ranjit Singh's bejeweled courtiers had turned in the crowd to stare at one of their own.

  And what of her own attempt to divorce him without cause? What of the furious accusations she had made after leaping to the conclusion that he planned to kill her family? What of her needless escape from his walled city house, when there had been nothing to fear?

  And finally, what of the clumsy, unseemly part she had played in his rescue on the night after he was wounded in the Hazuri Bagh? Looking back on that event, she saw clearly that she should have told someone in the Waliullah household that she knew where Hassan lay wounded, instead of rushing out into the dangerous streets of Lahore on that bloody night, and fainting dead away in front of two dozen heavily armed Afghans.

  If she had curbed her impulses, if she had thought before she acted, everything would have turned out differently. Now, no amount of painful longing or regret could alter the sad truth that Hassan had no reason to take her back.

  What would become of her then? A woman alone with no money, she must depend upon her uncle and her father until they died. After that, without a protecting husband, she would disappear into isolation and poverty.

  She stared into her looking glass, at her uselessly dewy skin and glossy curls. She knew what her family would say: that she would not be young for long, that she should think of her future.

  Life with Fitzgerald, however dull, would be far better than traveling from house to house among her relatives, getting older and older, a pathetic spinster aunt who earned her keep by caring for the aged and the sick.

  If she had fair-haired babies, perhaps they would be enough to make her forget her darling, round-eyed Saboor, who must miss her even now.

  How she longed to wrap her arms about his energetic little body….

  Her huffing bearers stopped. She sighed, pinched her cheeks until they were rosy, gathered her yards of striped taffeta skirts, and stepped out of her palanquin in front of Sir William Macnaghten's handsome portico.

  “I believe our new Commander in Chief will be present,” Aunt Claire said in a stage whisper.

  “If General Elphinstone is dining with us,” Uncle Adrian replied, “then the only other senior officer at dinner will be General Sale.”

  The Commander in Chief and the Hero of Ghazni! Mariana brightened.

  “That is,” her uncle added, “because Elphinstone's second-in-command, Brigadier Shelton, despises him for a fool.”

  Mariana frowned. “Brigadier Shelton despises General Elphinstone? But why?”

  “They loathe each other. In fact, they—”

  “Be quiet, you two!” whispered Aunt Claire, as the Residence door swung open, and turbaned servants stood aside to let them in.

  All the senior-most English people in Kabul were here, in one room! Mariana looked eagerly about her, taking them in—Sir William Macnaghten, smiling at his guests from beneath beetle brows; Lady Macnaghten, radiantly pretty in rose satin and pearls, fluttering a peacock feather fan; General Sale, the scar-faced Hero of Ghazni and his formidable wife; and General Elphinstone, the frail new Commander in Chief with his pained expression and heavy limp.

  The presence of these luminaries would have been exciting enough, but across the drawing room, deep in conversation with her uncle and Charles Mott, stood the only Englishman in Kabul who had lived in Afghanistan before, and who spoke both Farsi and Pushto—the rotund, voluble British Resident, Alexander Burnes.

  Others were there, as well. Mrs. Sturt, the Sales’ sour-faced daughter, and her husband, Captain Sturt, stood in a corner, talking to Alexander Burnes's lanky friend, Captain Johnson, who lived near Burnes in the walled city, and managed the funds for Shah Shuja's court and army.

  And then there was Harry Fitzgerald.

  Mariana sensed Fitzgerald's presence before she saw him. He waited behind the others, then stepped forward and bowed, unsmiling, in her direction.

  “And you, Lieutenant,” Lady Macnaghten trilled, fluttering her fan for emphasis, “are to take Miss Givens in to dinner.”

  “I should never have allowed you to do your own hair,” she added fiercely, into Mariana's ear. “It's all lopsided. Let us hope he does not notice. Other than that, you look lovely. I'm sure he is as good as won!”

  The business of lining up for dinner seemed to take forever. As Lady Macnaghten fussed over the pairing of her remaining guests, Mariana stood self-consciously at the back of the group, a wary hand on Fitzgerald's blue-clad arm. She risked a sideways glance, and saw that his Roman profile was as perfect as before, but his body had thickened in the past two years. No longer an eager young officer, he now gave off a heavy, male assuredness.

  In the dining room, a lovely pair of Bohemian candelabra dominated the damask-covered table. Around and between them, a flock of silver birds gleamed in the candlelight. Crystal and bone china glowed at each place. At a signal, a dozen Indian servants stepped forward and pulled back the dining chairs.

  Mariana arranged her skirts, patted her hair experimentally, a
nd turned her attention to the conversation around her.

  “You must have no fear, General Elphinstone,” Sir William Macnaghten announced from the head of the table as he unfolded his napkin. “We all understand your hesitation in taking up this post after so long an absence from combat, but you have nothing to fear here in Afghanistan.”

  Absence from combat? How long had it been since General Elphinstone had fought a battle? Remembering their shared fascination with military history, Mariana caught Fitzgerald's eye.

  After a tiny hesitation, he bent his head toward her. “The Envoy means to say,” he murmured, “that General Elphinstone has not seen active service since Waterloo.”

  “Waterloo?” she whispered. “But that was twenty-six years ago!”

  She would have said more, but the Hero of Ghazni cleared his throat beside her. “And why,” he asked gruffly, “is there nothing to fear?”

  “All is at peace in Afghanistan.” Sir William perched his spectacles upon his nose and surveyed his guests. “Seeing the vast superiority of our force, Amir Dost Mohammad has surrendered his throne and departed Afghanistan for India with most of his family. We have persuaded Shah Shuja not to secure his sovereignty by killing or blinding his enemies. He has shown magnanimity toward all. As a consequence, the whole country is as quiet as one of our Indian possessions—and more so.”

  “That is not quite the case,” Fitzgerald murmured. “On his first day in Kabul, Shah Shuja had fifty Ghazis hacked to death behind his tent, young men and old. I saw it happen.”

  Mariana caught her uncle and Charles Mott exchanging glances across the table.

  Sir William smiled expansively. “Our work in Afghanistan,” he said, “is nothing more than a grand military promenade. Just imagine—we have lost only thirty-four of our officers to date, and only five of them in battle!”

  “Exactly. Yes, indeed.” Alexander Burnes nodded vigorously over the rim of his wineglass, his round face already flushing. “The Afghans, with a very few spoilsport exceptions, have fully recognized the advantages of having Shah Shuja for their Amir, and us for their allies.”