Companions of Paradise

by Thalassa Ali

  Lovely? Before Mariana could collect herself to reply, Lady Macnaghten plunged on. “So many horrible things are happening all around us. In the past three days Captain MacCrea, Colonel Mackrell, and Captain Westmacott have all been cut to pieces by the Afghans. So many others have been wounded—their poor hands and feet, their arms and legs cut off with those terrible Afghan swords and knives. I saw Mr. Haughton yesterday, such a handsome man, with no right hand.

  “It breaks my heart to see how our brave officers are suffering,” she wailed. “Each day they fall, trying to protect us. I want to do something useful, but I cannot even pin up my own hair.”

  She tore off her pretty lace cap, freeing two black braids to drop down her back. “Look at me!” she cried. “I cannot even leave this house.”

  Something useful. Mariana stood silently in the drawing room doorway. Beyond rolling a few bandages, she herself had done nothing.

  It had been up to vain, selfish Lady Macnaghten to point out this shameful fact.

  But for all Mariana's remorse, she had no more idea what to do than the beautiful woman who sat before her, painful tears coursing down her cheeks.

  “MOVE THE entire force to the Bala Hisar?” That same afternoon, General Elphinstone blew out a breath through puckered lips as he sat, hunched over the dining table in his house. “I cannot see that as a solution.”

  “Sir, such a move will offer us great advantages.” General Sale's son-in-law leaned forward, the stab wounds to his face still raw and disfiguring. “Our troops will be free to attack the city and nearby forts, instead of constantly standing guard on our ramparts in this freezing weather. Food will be easy to procure from the city, and the insurgents will be unable to drive us out, for the fortress itself commands the entire surrounding area.”

  “Hear, hear,” put in Harry Fitzgerald and half a dozen young officers.

  “Hah!” Brigadier Shelton barked from where he lay on the carpet.

  “Have either of you considered the difficulty of removing our sick and wounded to the Bala Hisar?”

  He threw back his rezai and raised himself onto his one elbow. “Have you thought for a moment of the livestock we should have to leave behind us, or the disastrous fighting we should face on our way?”

  “Yes, yes,” General Elphinstone put in eagerly, his elderly face flushing at this unexpected agreement by his hated second-in-command. “Have you?”

  Sturt's ruined face hardened. “It is no more than two miles to the Bala Hisar,” he replied evenly. “We can cover our march by placing guns on the Sia Sang hills to sweep the plain. The sick and wounded will travel on camels or in covered litters.”

  “As for our livestock,” Fitzgerald put in, “since there is no forage to be had, they will have to be shot in any case. The horse artillery will suffer and the cavalry will lose their mounts, but neither of them will be needed once we are at the Bala Hisar.”

  “Quite right,” chorused several other voices.

  The general coughed heavily as he lifted a bandaged leg to an empty chair. “But what of the sacrifice of valuable government property? What of the houses? And what of the enemy's triumph, seeing us march from our own cantonment?”

  “There will be no triumph, sir,” put in a young man with wildly curling hair. “With our horses shot and our guns spiked, there will be nothing remaining of value to them. Of course, with all the camp followers and baggage, there are bound to be deaths, but the long-run military advantage is too great to dismiss.”

  The old general shook his head, his jowls wobbling. “I do not know.”

  “We shall do nothing of the kind,” Shelton snapped from his pillows. “We shall stay exactly where we are.”

  As they left General Elphinstone's house together, Fitzgerald turned to Sturt. “All this reminds me of the fate of the Athenians at Syracuse,” he murmured.

  “Like them,” he went on, when Sturt grunted his agreement, “we embarked on a military folly, believing we had every advantage over our enemies. Now we, too, are far from home, cut off, and fighting for our lives.”

  “The Athenians, at least, had great generals,” Sturt said bitterly.

  “But even so, they died to a man. Let us pray we do not suffer their fate.” He frowned. “Have you any idea what is wrong with our senior officers? Can you fathom their inability to act?”

  Sturt shrugged. “They are cowards,” he replied. “That is all there is to it.”

  “I CANNOT bear,” Aunt Claire announced from her bed two days later, “to hear of any more battles lost to the Afghans.”

  As her aunt sighed over her tea tray, Mariana sat beside her in thoughtful silence. Harry Fitzgerald had sent a note saying he would call before dinner. What fresh bad news, she wondered, would he have to tell them?

  At six o'clock, Dittoo knocked on Mariana's door. “The big British officer is here,” he said breathlessly. “He is asking only for you, Bibi. There is new wood on the fire.”

  Without bothering to splash water onto her face, Mariana rushed to the sitting room, where she found Fitzgerald striding up and down among the furniture, unshaven, his forage cap in a callused hand, looking as if he had come directly from his troops.

  The musty smell of his uniform filled the little room.

  “You must know by now,” he said, before she had sat down, “that General Sale is not returning from Jalalabad. I have been told today that General Nott is not coming, either. He says he cannot risk the long, dangerous road from Kandahar.”

  His hair stood up on his head, and his boots were stained with mud, but he did not seem to notice. “This morning,” he added, “the village of Bibi Mahro came under attack by a large body of men from Kabul. They have positioned themselves on the hill above it, and are firing down into it. It will only be a matter of time before they get inside.”

  “And it is our only remaining source of food.”

  “Exactly,” he agreed.

  “Then,” she offered, “surely there is nothing for us to do but go to the Bala—”

  “We cannot,” he interrupted. “General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton have both refused to let us move from here.”

  “But how are we to feed ourselves?”

  With money enough, or with goods to barter, Nur Rahman could supply twenty, perhaps thirty people with his ruse and his donkey, but what of the thousands of others, British and native, grown-ups and babies?

  He turned to face her, his back to the window. “One quarter of the British force is to attack Bibi Mahro before dawn tomorrow, under Brigadier Shelton.”

  “And you are to fight?” she asked carefully.

  “I am,” he said. “The plan is to take one gun of the horse artillery.”

  “Only one gun? But why, when we have seven guns in the cantonment? Everyone knows an overused gun becomes too hot to fire. Without artillery, you might easily lose the—”

  She pressed her lips together, afraid to say more.

  His heavy shoulders moved up and down against the light. “General Elphinstone is convinced that we have insufficient powder for the guns, although gunpowder is the one thing we do have.”

  Fitzgerald had gone into battle many times before. So far, he had not even been wounded. Why, then, did a sudden wave of fear rush down her back? As he moved toward her and stood over her chair, she vowed not to flinch from what he had to say.

  “Miss Givens,” he leaned toward her, his face earnest, “I have no reason to believe I will not return after tomorrow's battle, but if I do not, I should like to die happy. This is not the best time to ask, but before I leave tomorrow, there is something I must know.”

  In spite of her vow, she jerked back in her chair. Not now, she wanted to cry out. You must not ask me now, before I know the truth about Hassan, before I have finished Haji Khan's durood….

  “I want your promise that you will marry me.”

  Unable to escape his exhausted presence, she forced herself to offer him a smile, not her broad, genuine one, but anoth
er, smaller, feebler, and without joy.

  “This is quite unexpected, Lieutenant,” she said formally. “I must have a little time to make up my mind. You shall have my reply after the battle is over.

  “But whatever happens tomorrow,” she added hastily, horrified by the terrible disappointment on his face, “please know that you will be foremost in my thoughts.”

  He controlled his face, and bowed. “Very well, Miss Givens,” he replied curtly. “I shall wait for your answer.”

  Without another word, he turned his back, and left her.

  That evening, as she and her uncle sat at the small table in the cramped sitting room, Mariana could barely touch Nur Rahman's mutton and quince stew.

  The time she had banked on had suddenly fled. Without knowing the truth, she must make her choice.

  Whatever she did would cause damage.

  She glared across the table at her oblivious uncle. Why had he and Aunt Claire made her pretend she was divorced?

  She dropped her eyes. Worse, why had she lied to them about the night she had spent with Hassan, breathing in his perfume and the burnt scent of his skin?

  I allowed nothing, she had told them, but she had allowed everything. How many thousand times had she relived that long, transforming night?

  None of this was Fitzgerald's fault. How could she blame him for needing her answer before he went off, perhaps to die on the Bibi Mahro hills?

  He could not have approached her before. After all, she had hurt him two years earlier, when she had announced her engagement to Hassan in front of him and scores of his fellow officers, all of whom knew how much he wanted to marry her.

  She should be grateful. She was grateful. In spite of the pain she had caused him, and in spite of the disgrace and ostracism her native liaison had caused, he had still found it in his heart to forgive her.

  He must have thought all along that she had come to Kabul to marry him.

  He had made her a generous offer, and she had treated him like a merchant selling a bolt of cotton.

  But he had given her no warning. Had she been prepared, she might have offered him a less hurtful reply, or at least a more truthful one.

  And what of his own feelings? He had not said he loved her. Perhaps he did not. Perhaps, like her, he only wanted to imagine a peaceful future far from this cold, mountainous land, in a house with a garden, and fair-haired children playing at his feet.

  She had sent him into battle without the one thing that would have given him hope

  “You must eat something, my dear,” Uncle Adrian said kindly. “We must all preserve our strength.”

  She looked up at her kind, unperceiving uncle. “I will try, Uncle Adrian,” she murmured, raising a forkful of rice and meat to her mouth. “I will try.”

  Later, after reciting the durood, she lay listening to the night sounds of the cantonment. Over the coughing of the troops, someone was singing a mysterious, rhythmic Indian air, full of trills and mournful wobbling sounds.

  It was, Mariana thought, the song of a broken heart.

  November 23, 1841

  Since that young man of yours is in charge of the gun,” Lady Sale announced, as she steered Mariana past her now defunct vegetable garden, “you had better come to the roof with me and have a look at the fighting.”

  Sorely regretting her shortcut past Lady Sale's house on her way to ask Nur Rahman for raisins, Mariana trailed reluctantly along a narrow space between the house and its outer wall.

  The last thing she wanted to see from Lady Sale's flat roof, with its perfect view of the Bibi Mahro hills and the village below, was Harry Fitzgerald being killed or wounded.

  Lady Sale stepped past the bloody feathers of a recently killed chicken, negotiated a pile of loose stones beneath her kitchen window, and took hold of a bamboo ladder that leaned conveniently against the wall. Without hesitating, she gripped the uprights with gloved hands, and began to climb.

  Halfway up, she looked down, her field glasses swinging from her neck. “Stop dawdling, child,” she snapped. “They've been up there since three in the morning. For all we know, the battle is nearly over.”

  Escape was impossible. Mariana stiffened her spine, and stepped onto the ladder.

  They had sent a little over a thousand British and Indian fighting men to face a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Afghan fighters with better knowledge of the terrain.

  She would not think of Fitzgerald and his gun, she decided, as she scrambled onto the roof. She did not know how she would bear her remorse if he died

  “Take shelter behind one of the chimneys,” Lady Sale ordered. “Stray balls come whizzing past.”

  It was just after dawn, and the snow on the mountains had turned from purple to pink and gold. Mariana crouched behind her brick fortification, straining to see what was happening.

  “Shelton took seventeen companies, a hundred sappers, a few troops of cavalry, and your young man's gun at two o'clock this morning,” Lady Sale announced, her field glasses to her eyes. “He has set himself up on the hill immediately over the village, but he has already made his first mistake. He should have surprised the enemy while it was still dark, instead of wasting all this time.”

  “I should have thought,” Mariana offered, “that the brigadier's first mistake was to bring only one gun. Surely he knows there is a standing order forbidding—”

  “That, missy,” Lady Sale barked from her post, “is no concern of yours. I, who am a general's wife, may comment upon our military operations. You, an unmarried woman with designs on an officer too low in rank to marry, may not.”

  Mariana felt her face color. “I have read the rules,” she insisted stubbornly. “It is true about the guns.”

  “Of course it is true,” replied Lady Sale, “but it is for me, not you, to say so! Where,” she asked after a pause, “have you learned about standing orders?”

  “My father is interested in military history. I have read it since I was a child.”

  Lady Sale sniffed. “All well and good, but you should learn to behave yourself. Ah,” she added, the field glasses once more to her eyes. “A party has started down from the top of the hill, no doubt to storm the village. Perhaps they will at last do something—but wait, they have missed the main gate, and gone past it, to one side. What fools! They are right in the line of fire from inside the walls. There,” she cried, “several have already fallen!”

  Where was Fitzgerald? “Lady Sale,” Mariana began. “Can you tell me—”

  Lady Sale took the glasses from her eyes and glared toward the hills. “What a stupid, senseless thing to do. They have missed their opportunity to take possession of the village! What is the matter with them all?”

  A whistling sound came from nearby. “Musketry,” she shouted, retreating behind her chimney. “By the way,” she added, after the ball thudded into the edge of the roof, “your young man is doing quite well with his gun. He has managed to get it onto the very top of the hill and now he is firing down into the village. I can make out the smoke.”

  Your young man. Please, please, Mariana prayed, let Fitzgerald live until she could think of the right thing to say….

  At nine o'clock they were still at their posts. The sun beat down on the flat roof, warming Mariana in spite of the cold wind.

  Her throat felt dry. “Should we not go down,” she suggested, “and have some water?”

  “What for?” Lady Sale waved a gloved hand toward the battle. “Those men up there have had no water all morning. We, at least,” she added, as a second musket ball thudded into the bricks, “are safe.”

  No more than a mile from Mariana's vantage point, the two Bibi Mahro hills stood side by side, separated by a deep gorge leading to a valley beyond. On top of the right-hand hill, plainly visible above the collection of flat-roofed houses that climbed its lower slope, two groups of red-coated infantry had formed their usual dense squares. Nearby, Mariana could make out a troop of irregular Indian cavalry, distinguished by their f
lowing, native dress. Puffs of smoke issued from nearby, presumably from the gun.

  Someone sat astride a horse on the summit of the hill, his jacket a tiny smudge of color against the distant mountains. Was it Fitzgerald?

  “I understand you blotted your copybook in Lahore, two years ago,” Lady Sale said bluntly.

  Mariana did not reply.

  “A serious mistake,” Lady Sale decreed. “One never recovers from a scandal like that. How on earth did you allow yourself to be duped into marrying a native?

  “I should think you would have had more sense,” she added, before Mariana could think of a reply. “Moreover, it is very unwise of you to pin your hopes on a lieutenant, who is much too young for you. With all your knowledge of military matters, you must know that a lieutenant may not marry, a captain may marry, and a colonel must marry.

  “Have you seen those horsemen on the plain?” she asked, mercifully changing the subject.

  A distant swarm of Afghan riders appeared below the hills and milled about as if waiting for a signal.

  “Look,” Mariana cried, pointing to the slope. “I think men are leaving the village!”

  “They are indeed,” Lady Sale agreed, her glasses trained upon the hill. “They are running away, while our storming party is pinned down and unable to enter and secure it. Fools! But at least the Irregular Horse has ridden downhill to intercept the deserters.”

  To Mariana's left, on the Kohistan Road, a thick stream of men on foot and horseback made its way toward them. “More armed men are coming from the city,” Mariana cried. “They are heading toward the second hill! Why have we not sent a sortie from here to cut them off?”

  The men from the city numbered several thousand. Moving rapidly for men on foot, they traveled in groups toward the hills, triangular pennants aloft. They had no artillery, and save for a single, gesticulating figure at their head, they appeared to be leaderless. Nonetheless they made a terrifying sight.