The Damascened Blade

by Barbara Cleverly

  ‘No. No,’ said Halima hurriedly. ‘I am pleased that child come. But now since news this morning . . . since Zeman dead . . . most important that son – another son come!’

  ‘You know that Zeman is dead?’ said Lily in surprise. ‘Did Iskander tell you? I didn’t hear him mention Zeman’s name?’

  ‘Letter come from fort. Gor Khatri. Since three hours. Letter for Iskander. Ramazad read it. He tell me but no one else. It say Zeman his son is dead. Ramazad say fort commander with red hair kill Zeman. Ramazad say he put head of soldier with red hair on gate of Mahdan Khotal!’ Halima gave a vivid mime of the impaling of a head on a spike.

  Lily was silent for a moment working out the significance of the information. If James had sent a letter to Iskander care of the fort that meant he knew where she was, didn’t it? Clever old James! Or was it clever old Joe? They’d thought their way around all Iskander’s meanderings in the hills! A spurt of hope was soon extinguished as she recalled the impregnable position and defences of Mahdan Khotal. No, the only way out of here was by diplomacy or trickery, she decided. Either way she was going to need help.

  ‘The red-haired soldier,’ she said, ‘is called James Lindsay and he didn’t kill Zeman. I’ll tell you what happened . . .’

  Lily stuck closely to the official Grace Holbrook version of the death and to her relief Halima seemed to follow what she was saying with ease. ‘. . . so you see, if Iskander hadn’t taken it into his head to run off into the wilderness with Lord Rathmore – and me incidentally – there wouldn’t be a problem.’

  She had obviously said the wrong thing. Halima frowned and stuck her chin out in disagreement. ‘Iskander very clever man! Very good man. He always Zeman’s friend. He take badal for Zeman. If he take this Rathmore, then this Rathmore kill Zeman! Rathmore die,’ said Halima flatly.

  Lily remembered the warmth of the greeting between these two and wondered if she had stumbled on a Queen Guinevere-Sir Lancelot situation. ‘I think you are very fond of Iskander?’ she asked tentatively.

  The reply was decisive. ‘Of course! My brother is the best man of the tribe after Ramazad. He teach me English. He learn English at school in Peshawar. Strong man. Never tell lies.’

  A fluttering and an intensification of noise at the fretted window above the courtyard drew their attention. ‘Jirga start,’ Halima announced. ‘Jirga is village meeting.’ Women made way at the window for them and they stood to look down at the men gathering below. With excited squeals the older children pulled cushions to the window, piling them up to stand on for a better view.

  Lily saw about two hundred men, talking and gesticulating, arrive and settle themselves on the ground around the spreading tree in the centre of the square. Iskander approached and stationed himself, standing, arms folded, on one side of the gathering. With a pang, Lily saw Rathmore escorted on to the scene and told to sit, exhibit A, at centre stage. Someone seemed to have tidied him up a bit. His clothes were brushed, his hair likewise and he walked with his usual jaunty step. ‘Good old Rathmore!’ she couldn’t help thinking. ‘He’s keeping his pecker up at least!’ She found herself admiring the way he settled to scan the assembly as though he were taking a board meeting, nodding and smiling and confident. ‘That’s the style, Dermot old boy! You show ’em!’ she muttered.

  The Malik then entered to a roar of greeting and stood opposite Iskander. Imposing and noble, he dominated the crowd merely by his presence. He held his hand up and, taking a letter from his bosom, began slowly to read. All listened with breathless and unwavering attention, Halima amongst them.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ said Lily but she was waved to silence and the account wore on accompanied by sharp exclamations and intakes of breath from the listeners until at last Ramazad closed the letter, folded it and put it away. At once there was a howl of dismay, of horror, of anger. He had obviously just announced the death of Zeman to the crowd and Halima confirmed this. The howls from below turned to raucous and angry shouts. Men stood up and waved their fists, some brandished their rifles. Lily needed no translation. This was a call for revenge, for badal.

  Iskander waved his arms to silence the crowd but it was not until the Malik had intervened that he could make himself heard. In a voice free of emotion Iskander appeared to be telling it as it was, Lily thought, and again Halima’s translation bore this out. ‘He is saying that soldier from fort kill Zeman. Red-haired soldier. Iskander has demanded this man’s death and if this is not granted then the hostage Rathmore die instead. In five days’ time.’

  There were mutterings from the floor and one or two men stood up, pointing at Rathmore and calling out with savage gestures what appeared to be suggestions for making his death more interesting. As Halima did not translate these, Lily assumed her guess was right. The Malik began to speak again and all fell silent. He spoke for a very long time. The children standing around them began to get bored and drifted away but the women were riveted by the speech. Halima’s face was tense and she began to bite her lip, her gaze running constantly from Ramazad to her brother. Her commentary had dried up and Lily was going mad with suspense. The old devil, she was convinced, was up to something. His tone conveyed a blend of blatant honesty, charm and conviction. Lily had heard much the same delivery from a snake-oil salesman in Sioux City.

  She looked closely at Iskander. He too appeared to be uneasy with the Malik’s delivery and attempted to interrupt. He was at once called to order in very cold tones by Ramazad. Lily began to recognize that what she was witnessing was a power struggle within the tribe. She’d sat in on board meetings where her father had set out to fillet the opposition but this time she suspected she was rooting for the losing side. The old stag, heavy with antlers, was lowering them to ward off the challenge from the younger blood. And with the death of Zeman perhaps the way had become clear for Iskander. And perhaps this was resented by Ramazad?

  The Malik began to gesture to the sky and his voice took on an edge of barely suppressed rage. ‘Ramazad say ferenghi have planes to bomb us. No soldier can take Mahdan Khotal – no soldier on the ground – but the soldiers who fly can destroy our fort. He say that Iskander bring the bombs on our heads. Rathmore who is Iskander’s hostage is big Khan in his country . . .’ The Malik indicated Rathmore with a courteous gesture at which Rathmore rose and presented himself to the crowd with a small bow and the modest smile of an Englishman who has just hit a six.

  Unconsciously, Lily seized Halima’s hand and the two women shared their anxiety and powerlessness in the clutch of cold, tense fingers. ‘Iskander wrong to bring death on the tribe. Ferenghi soldiers know hostages are here and attack from sky then, when walls are dust, attack from ground and finish us off. Remember what ferenghi do against Mahsud villages last year. And one of these hostages is a memsahib. This brings great shame on the tribe and great danger. Ferenghi fight more strong to get her back.’

  A derisive shout went up from the crowd. ‘Our Malik is getting old! These are the fears of an old woman!’

  ‘Who’s afraid of the ferenghi? We’re not!’

  ‘How many sons must Ramazad lose before he takes badal?’

  With a face of thunder Ramazad called for silence. ‘Whose sons are killed by ferenghi devil? Whose sons? Yours, Mahmood? Yours, Asnil? No! The sons of Ramazad!’ He beat his breast for emphasis. ‘My son Zeman is dead and I, Ramazad Khan, will avenge him. I know who kill him. Soldier with red hair who kill my two eldest sons now kill my third and last son. I will nail his . . . skin? . . .’ Halima hesitated.

  ‘Hide,’ Lily whispered.

  ‘. . . to the gate of Mahdan Khotal. Red hair soldier and all ferenghi soldier from fort. But this is my badal and I do not bring it on the tribe. Leave Ramazad’s badal to Ramazad! Iskander does not think. He has done great wrong to the tribe. We are all now in danger.’

  This last pronouncement of the Malik’s was accompanied by the casting upwards to the sky of a fearful eye. ‘Jeez!’ thought Lily. ‘Can this guy ever ham it up! And now
he’s got them eating out of his hand. By promising to take the load of retribution on his own shoulders – spiking poor old James, I guess I mean – he leaves the tribe free to look after their own concerns without losing face and avoid a showdown with the British Army and Air Force. But this isn’t looking good for Iskander. The orphan with no close relation to speak up for him. No one but his sister and she can say nothing! He’s going to make him carry the can!’

  Halima seemed to have come to the same conclusion. When Iskander attempted to speak he was hooted down and fists were shaken. Icily proud, he fell silent and shrugged a shoulder. An outbreak of shouting and argument followed and finally the Malik intervened, the respected chairman bringing the meeting to order. He appeared to propose a motion and Lily looked enquiringly at Halima.

  ‘Jirga decide,’ she said, hardly able to get the words out, ‘if Iskander be sent away.’

  ‘What? Sent away? Outlawed, you mean?’ Lily was incredulous.

  She was never quite clear as to how the voting was conducted but after a very short time loud cries and yells broke out again and Iskander, with a face to freeze the blood, turned on his heel and stalked away. Lily didn’t quite like the congratulatory pat on the back Rathmore delivered to the Malik as he swaggered off.

  Halima gasped, murmuring her brother’s name, and turned from the window to run from the room. As she turned she caught her foot in a pile of cushions abandoned by the children and fell with a crash to the floor. The women gathered round her at once, making sounds of concern and encouragement. They tried to raise her but she cried out in pain. At once the woman Lily had decided was the Malik’s sister took charge. Servants were summoned and Halima, moaning pitifully and gasping out terse orders, was carried from the room and placed in a smaller room next door.

  For the rest of the day, Lily, unnoticed, could only sit anxiously in a corner of the common room watching the bustle as women hurried in and out with basins of hot and cold water, little chafing dishes in which burned strangely scented spices, piles of white linen cloths and trays of tea from which someone always remembered to hand her a cup. She tried once to sneak into the room where Halima was lying but was turned away in a polite but firm manner and she didn’t try again.

  Her own situation was not looking very healthy either, she thought. In a surprisingly short time the only two people in the fort she felt any affinity with had both been put out of action. Iskander outlawed. Had he left already? Did the sentence have immediate effect and was there something she could do about that? And Halima in the throes of what exactly she wasn’t sure but it could be anything from sprained ankle to childbirth. So she was left to the mercies of that manipulative old Malik. ‘If I ever get out of this,’ she thought, ‘the first thing I’ll do is warn James Lindsay that the Malik has got his number. And that he’s gunning for any English soldier who puts his head above the parapet. And what was all that about the red-haired soldier killing the old brute’s two older sons? James? Does that sound likely? Well, that’s what soldiers do, I suppose. Bad luck though to lose three sons to the British.’

  She flinched as Halima groaned again.

  The cries and moans went on at intervals for the rest of the day and seemed to be growing in intensity. Lily watched as the Malik’s sister took a piece of paper from a pile on a table and wrote a note. This was handed to one of the children, the largest boy, and he ran off outside carrying it in his hand. ‘Notifying the boss,’ thought Lily. ‘So that’s their system.’ She was intrigued to see a few minutes later the lone figure of the Malik appear below the window. He began to pace about in the square and after one or two circuits he settled under the tree, looking up from time to time at the shadows that passed in front of the fretted window.

  Lily eyed the pile of papers and the pencil on the table speculatively. It seemed this was the way the women communicated with the outside world. Not so very different from those little ‘chits’ the English women annoyed each other with in Simla. In the bustle no one noticed Lily sidle up to the table and help herself to a sheet of paper. She wrote a short note, folded it carefully and settled down to wait for the right moment. As two women attending Halima left – change of shift, Lily calculated – she went into Halima’s room. One girl still present and holding the hand of Halima who, eyes closed in agony, was sweating and writhing waved to her to go away. Lily played dumb for as long as she could and then slowly made her way back to the door. In the doorway she paused and called to the boy who was standing by and acting as messenger. She crooked a finger at him and, wide-eyed he approached.

  ‘Iskander,’ she said, tapping the folded letter. ‘Halima Begum . . . Iskander.’

  The boy nodded in understanding, took the letter and scurried off. Lily settled by the window on watch.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘At dawn.’

  The phrase has its melodramatic ring and, as he delivered it, Joe had been aware of this and wished he could take back the words. Confronted now with the reality of dawn in a forbidding landscape drained of colour and with a sharp wind blowing off the hills, he felt many things and gallantry and confidence were not among them.

  He looked at the two Scouts who had been told off to accompany this lunatic foray. Aslam and Yussuf were already standing by at the chiga gate, eager to start out.

  ‘How did you select them?’ Joe had asked James.

  ‘Not easy,’ had been the reply. ‘Every bloody man in the unit volunteered. No surprise to me! That always happens. And you’re faced with the alternatives of offending everybody you don’t select and inflating the consequence beyond measure of the two you do select. But still, they’re good men these two, you’ll find. Very reliable, very experienced. And they are not of the same tribe – don’t want any tribal combining, thanks! They’d serve you well even without the bonus of six months’ extra pay I’ve offered them to bring you both back out again safely. Six months’ pay! Enough to buy them a rifle or a bride. They’ll take good care of you!’ He paused. ‘And I had another reason for choosing this pair. They both have brothers in the unit.’

  ‘Hostages, do you mean to say?’ Joe had asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘More or less. More or less. That’s how they’ll see it anyway!’

  Joe looked the Scouts up and down. They wore nailed sandals, woollen hose-tops, baggy shorts and long shirts crossed by bandoliers each carrying fifty rounds. Their beaming faces were surmounted by a Pathan pagri, a length of khaki cloth wound around a dome-shaped, padded kullah, and the loose end of the pagri trailed behind in a shamleh, protecting the back of the neck from the sun. Joe thought they looked pretty good; they looked businesslike, spare and effective.

  He couldn’t, he thought, quite say the same of the third member of the party as Grace joined them. She looked swiftly round. ‘I was expecting two Scouts,’ she said. ‘Why do I see three?’ She stared and started. ‘Well, I’m damned! Not bad, Joe! Not bad at all! Nearly fooled me and that takes some doing.’

  Joe was not taken in but he was amused by Grace’s cheerful by-play. He thought he did look pretty convincing; a little kohl rubbed into his eyebrows and around his eyes and quite a lot of dirt massaged into his face had worked wonders. His tall athletic frame was very like that of the other two Scouts and the company barber had carefully given the three the same short regimental haircut the night before. He had wondered whether to pull his turban down slightly over one eye to cover his war wound but the Scouts had advised against this, pointing with pride to their own wounds, and he gathered it gave him authenticity and even prestige. They had scrutinized him carefully, made a few adjustments to his gear and finally were satisfied – ‘The sahib will pass as Pukhtun so long as he does not get off his horse,’ said Aslam mysteriously and explained further that ‘Ferenghi walk with ram-rod up their arse but Pukhtun walk like leopard.’ Joe’s not entirely serious practice attempts to walk like a leopard were greeted with stifled laughter. ‘Not camel, sahib – leopard!’

  ‘The questi
on is, Grace,’ said Joe, ‘will it fool anybody else?’

  ‘Oh, yes, certainly. If you keep your mouth shut, stay in the background and don’t take your trousers off.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of doing so,’ said Joe,’ but why particularly?’

  ‘I have to ask the question – circumcised? Uncircumcised?’

  ‘The latter,’ said Joe, ‘but I reckon that given time you could fix that as well!’

  ‘Certainly I could,’ said Grace. ‘But perhaps we haven’t got time today. You’d have to make an appointment and my book gets full! But, anyway, you’ve been warned. Be careful.’

  Her practical good humour lightened the grey morning and eased the tension coiling in his stomach. He looked with a smile at her outfit. She was wearing voluminous red trousers, a hat and a veil and a man’s loose white shirt belted at the waist.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I know I look ridiculous but this is my campaign gear. Pathan women wear red trousers when they’re out and about – it’s a signal to gunmen that they’re not a target. Like this I can be seen from far off. I take nobody by surprise and,’ she looked down at her billowing trousers, ‘I confess, I think they look extremely becoming! Don’t you?’

  Her horse was led out for her and a Scout – was it Aslam or Yussuf? – it was hard to tell them apart – came forward and cupped his hands for Grace’s foot and swung her into the saddle. The other Scout attached Grace’s medical case to the crupper and they were ready. Their exit from the fort was deliberately discreet and in minutes they had slipped through the chiga gate and headed west at a trot down the broad valley along the banks of the Bazar river. Joe noted the easy way Grace sat in the saddle, moving with all the economy of a cavalryman.

  ‘I suppose,’ he thought, ‘that, to the Pathan, Grace is a sort of honorary man and as such transcends all the normal rules. But then, I can’t think of any place where Grace wouldn’t feel at home from Viceregal Lodge through lecturing to medical students to worming children in the market place. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d brought half the hairy scoundrels who lie in wait ahead of us into this world! Such a reputation must be worth something!’