The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “Pardon me. Stop.” Akbar stepped closer to his counterpart. “Do you dare to speak to me of terms, Lord Macnaghten? Let us first settle the question of honesty. To me, trust is not merely a word. In letters exchanged between you and this council of chieftains, you have declared that you will take your puppet Shah Shuja back to India when you leave. You have given us to understand that you will leave hostages to guarantee your promises. You have agreed to restore my father Dost Mohammed Khan to his throne. This has been your public position, as every chieftain here assembled knows quite well.”

  “It’s still our position, and it is just what we … what we mean to do,” Macnaghten assured him smoothly, glancing from side to side at his fellow Englishmen. “However, no agreement can be … one-sided. We also have … needed things. We demand certain … guarantees. Now, then, as I started to say—”

  “Just a moment, sahib,” Akbar cut in dangerously. “This is still one of your positions? How many positions do you have?”

  “One, of course. Only one. Do you try to … insult me, sir? I place this proposition to you in good faith. I have approval from my Lord Governor in India. His … authority, comes directly from the Queen. If you chieftains will just sign your names to these terms in one voice—”

  “Do you mean to tell me you have not negotiated separately with any chiefs?” Akbar frowned.

  “Separately?” Macnaghten giggled, but goggled at his counterpart. “Of course not! Well—as you know, sir!”

  “Mister Macnaghten! Did you not summon me to a private meeting just last week in a building near the Lion’s Doorway?” Akbar Khan demanded sternly. “My scribe was there, he will attest to it. Scribe Ibrahim! Step forward and tell the chieftains. Did this Engrayzee meet with me and dangle secret offers before me, thinking to tempt my loyalty away from the Afghan cause?”

  All eyes turned to Ibrahim, who cleared his throat. No one had warned him the meeting might take this turn. In the heat of the moment, he could not puzzle out what he was supposed to do, other than to answer truthfully. His throat was parched. He nodded and then found his voice. “It is just as Wazir-sahib says.”

  “There!” Akbar turned back on the Englishman triumphantly. “My scribe testifies that you offered me—”

  “For God’s sake,” Macnaghten hissed. “What are you playing at, Akbar? Think, man! What are you doing? Do not do this … thing!”

  The prince pulled a sheet of paper from a pocket under his cloak and waved it above his head for all the Afghans to see. “Here is the bargain this treacherous snake thought to strike with me. I made him put it in writing so I could show it to this assembly. Here is proof of my good faith with the Afghan cause. Proof that these Engrayzees can never drive a wedge between my countrymen and me. I want nothing they can give me, I want none of their secret bargains. They offer me gold, they offer me a throne—I spit on their gold, I spit on their throne!” Akbar thrust the offending document at Lord Abdullah, standing next him. “I want nothing but the good of Afghanistan! Unite under my standard, chieftains. Let us be one mighty nation! This man Macnaghten offers to make me Shah Shuja’s prime minister—read it out loud, Abdullah-sahib!”

  “Well it’s true!” Abdullah Khan declared, staring in amazement at the document Akbar had given him. “It’s right here with Macnaghten’s signature, just as he says.”

  “You treacherous bastard!” Macnaghten swore. A clamor rose from all his compatriots on the British side.

  “They promise him a yearly stipend,” Abdullah announced, paraphrasing from the document, “a yearly stipend to betray his people—a fat stipend—”

  “But I will never betray you, my chieftains,” Akbar shouted. “I spit on their stipend. We are one nation! Do I speak for you? Tell me now, khans! Let your voices speak through mine, let me answer this invader with the thunder of all Afghanistan. Do I speak for the nation?”

  Shouts erupted: “Yes! Long live Akbar Khan! Long live the lion!”

  But Sardar Amanullah broke into the din, “Who else has he spoken to? Who else has the Engrayzee tried to tempt? Young Akbar is one—I’m another! Yes! He came to me as well, my lords, and I spait in his face right then and there! You can never split me from my brethren with gold, I said. Never!”

  At this, scattered cries of “Long live Amanullah Khan” mingled with those in praise of Akbar. The prince frowned at the lord of Logar, but Amanullah seized this moment to shout, “I will bear your standard, Khans! As your leader, I will smite these infidels. I hereby appoint Akbar as my sword and my second-in command.” The cries of “Long live Amanullah!” surged.

  But Osman Khan’s hand shot up. “I had no intention of taking anything the man offered, but yes, he wrote to me as well. I agreed to meet with him just to check the extent of his treachery. My fellow Afghans! I was offered Shah Shuja’s very throne, but I turned it down. This throne, I said, is not yours to give! I slapped his very face!”

  Macnaghten was trying to still the noise, moving his hands up and down in front of him as if stroking an invisible horse. “Quiet now. Calm yourselves. This is wrong. You’re mistaken. Let us talk as … reasonable men.”

  “We are one people,” Akbar roared. “Fellow chieftains, will you let me set new terms for this groveling dog? Do I speak for all of us?”

  But the Afghan clamor had grown incoherent, some roaring the name Amanullah, others Akbar, and still others Osman. The whole crowd was gathering toward the center and they virtually encircled the English delegation now.

  “Mister Macnaghten, in light of your treachery, we will have to set stricter terms,” Amanullah declared. “Much gold! Much gold you will pay into our treasury—and we’ll decide who replaces Shah Shuja, we Afghans will decide.”

  “In light of your treachery, sir, I can see no point in continuing this discussion,” Macnaghten huffed, his face shining with sweat. With sharp elbows he tried to poke the Afghans back and keep a space open around himself.

  “The Engrayzee is right for once,” Osman cried. “We cannot make treaties with men like these. Lying is like breathing to them. My men intercepted a letter recently—written in Farsi—addressed to Mohan Lal, who served the late Alexander Burnes, may Allah forgive him. Akbar Khan, your scribe has a good loud voice. Ask him to read this letter. Step forward, Scribe. Read this letter to the gentlemen. Loudly.”

  Ibrahim glanced at his patron, who looked lost. He knew nothing about this latest letter. In the absence of any signal from the prince, Ibrahim accepted the document. He scanned it quickly and his brain locked down. These were the most dangerous words he had seen yet. He must not read them to this crowd; but how could he refuse? If he didn’t read it, someone else would. All attention was riveted on him. Mechanically he began to read: “As previously agreed, you will receive no less than 10,000 rupias for the head of each rebel chieftain delivered to me at the British cantonment. For the head of the chief rebel Akbar, son of the Dost, former Amir of Kabul, the payment will be double—”

  The outcry drowned out Ibrahim’s voice. Macnaghten was spluttering, “That’s not—I never saw—who wrote that letter? Not official! It’s unofficial. Sahib—I never—”

  “It is signed,” Osman Khan shouted. “Read the signature, Scribe!”

  Ibrahim squinted at the unfamiliar name. “Jawn Connolly.” Then he handed the paper back to sturdy Osman Khan. By this time the Afghan delegation had compressed the Engrayzees into a frightened clump.

  “Who is John Connolly?” Akbar demanded.

  “Macnaghten knows. Look at his face,” said Osman. “You know all about this letter, don’t you? As for offering double payment for Wazir Akbar’s head—that’s an insult, Mr. Macnaghten. Every chieftain standing before you has a head worth as much as young Akbar’s. Nawab Shah Zaman? The people of Kabul have named him as their interim king! How can you offer a mere 10,000 rupias for the head of such a man? Amanullah Khan? Hamza Khan? You have insulted all these men! And me as well! But let’s talk about another letter, written in Engrayzee. You
think that’s secret code? I have men who read Engrayzee as easily as water flows downhill. This one bears your signature, Mr. Macnaghten. You write to General Nott—”

  “I never! Where did you get that?”

  “—in Kandahar to say that you will keep the Afghans talking until he gets here with his troops. Keep us bargaining, you write, with false offers to withdraw from the country. When your General Nott gets his forces here—”

  “This is an outrage! A lie!”

  “—you’ll be strong enough to burn our city to the ground. Burn it to the ground, Afghans! This is what Macnaghten has decided to do. Burn our great city to the ground!”

  The Afghans were all screaming now. Macnaghten flushed redder than ever, picked at his buttons, kicked at the snow under his feet, shoved the Afghans crowding him. His own men kept trying to wedge between Macnaghten and the Afghans to form a wall of security around their chief, but the pressure had grown intense.

  “Your spies have lied to you, Akbar.” Macnaghten invested effort in keeping his voice unhurried, but his chest heaved with anxious breath. “These letters … these forgeries. Troublemakers who don’t want peace between our people—do anything to spread … slander—just to keep us – spilling blood. Can’t you see? This is work of … evil men—I can’t listen to such lies—I will leave—”

  He turned his back on Akbar but bumped into Sultan Jan, who took him by the arm. One of the other farangis tried to wrench his leader out of the young Afghan’s grasp, but Akbar himself took the Envoy’s other arm. “He’s trying to signal his soldiers,” he warned. “Hold his arms down. Hold them down. He wants to betray us!”

  Akbar and Sultan dragged the Englishman into the Afghan ranks. Sultan Jan had one hand over Macnaghten’s mouth to keep him from screaming out orders. He and Akbar clamped the wriggling Englishman between them. Even though they were young men in the prime of their strength, they had trouble keeping that desperate animal still.

  Macnaghten’s friends were struggling toward him. One flung his coat open, revealing a pistol in his belt. “No weapons!” Akbar shouted. “We all agreed, and now look!” He pointed at the pistol. His arm was wrapped around Macnaghten’s neck to stop him from breaking loose, but when he saw the pistol, he scrambled backward wildly, dragging Macnaghten along.

  “Bastards! Nothing you say can be trusted,” one Afghan cursed, and he pulled out a knife he had been hiding under his cloak. Within seconds, weapons had appeared in at least a dozen hands. Shots rang out and a man fell. The armed foreigners at the far end of the field began to pour across the open plain. Akbar let go of Macnaghten, who dropped to the ground like a sack of wheat. His head flopped on the end of an obviously broken neck. “Don’t leave him there,” Akbar shouted to Sultan Jan. “Drag him along.”

  Two Afghans swooped in to help Sultan. Gasping at the effort, they hauled the English leader’s corpse along the ground, leaving a ragged rut in the snow as they retreated toward the river. The English troops were firing now, but so were the Afghans. A crowd of city folk had amassed along the field on the side near the river, and they began edging onto the field too. Some had sticks; others pawed through the snow searching for rocks to throw. The Afghan khans and their men reached the safety of the stone walls that edged the river bank. They jumped on the horses tethered there and galloped away, leaving Macnaghten’s body to the crowd. Ibrahim looked back just once and saw men bent over the poor man’s corpse, hacking at his neck with knives.

  43

  Rupert Oxley raked his spurs across the horse’s flanks and bent low to its neck. One glimpse of the slaughter and he knew he must get back to headquarters, but others had preceded him. Approaching the garrison, he heard an what sounded like the animal pit of some terrible circus. Inside, officers and enlisted men were scurrying every which way without purpose, everyone yelling questions.

  Colonel Baldwin came tottering through the chaos like a drunkard. Rupert snapped to attention gratefully. “Lieutenant Oxley, sir. What are my orders?”

  But the aging colonel just shook his head. “I don’t know … What do you think?”

  What did Rupert think? It wasn’t his place to think! “Excuse me, sir!” He backed away from the colonel, feeling really frightened. He must go directly to Elphinstone then, get orders from the top. He elbowed his way up a crowded stairwell and along a corridor to the command center. No one was guarding the door. Anyone could bull his way in. Rupert did. The room was jammed wall to wall, but Rupert pushed to the front, where Elphinstone and his officers were sitting in council around a walnut table. The officers, however, were a random assortment of just anybody. Some of the usual high command were there to be sure: Shelton, Chambers, Anquetil; but also the likes of Captain Whitman and Sergeant Flannigan—men whose rank entitled them to no share in strategy, yet here they were shouting opinions as lustily as their betters.

  General Elphinstone gestured in vain for silence. “All right,” he rumbled. “Quiet now. Go muster the others. Tell everyone we must prepare to leave Kabul at once. No time to waste, no time. Let us put our backs into it.”

  Rupert stared. At once? What could he possibly mean? Talk of leaving Kabul had been buzzing about the city for weeks…but—leave at once?

  Major Leech shouted over the din. Standing on tiptoe in the middle of the crowd, his face oily from effort and exhaustion, he waved a sheet of paper. “At once would be folly, sir—look at this letter from Akbar—I spoke to him. He promises an escort if we’ll wait till spring. He won’t guarantee our safety now. Read it, General.”

  Many voices shouted him down. “Akbar of all people!” “Good lord—” “Stake our lives on his guarantee?”

  Elphinstone ran agitated fingers over his balding pate. His voice cracked as he tried to make himself heard. “You know, men, Wellington once told me—”

  But Captain Whitman cut him off. “No more Wellington stories! No more lessons drawn from fifty years ago. Akbar is not Napoleon. For God’s sake, you swing from side to side, General. After Burnes was killed you said ‘wait and see, let us wait and see,’ that was your whole plan. Now it’s clear-out-by-New-Years-Day’! Get a hold of yourself.”

  “Well, well! Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re right,” Elphinstone allowed, fumbling with a sheaf of documents. “We must consider all the circumstances, as you say.” He squinted to see who had been so rude. “Best we disperse to quarters now, men. Let us sleep on this and see what the morning brings. Mustn’t act in haste.”

  “Mustn’t act in haste?” The words simply burst from Rupert. “Of course we must! Burnes is dead—Macnaghten—Trevor—murdered! The chiefs swarm all over Kabul, the natives hold the hills. Do you seriously say we should deal with this by sleeping? Sir?”

  Rough hands jerked him sideways, someone rasped, “You’re still a military man! Do you beg to be shot?”

  “No, Shelton. No, no. Let him speak his mind,” Elphinstone protested. “All sides, all sides. I must have good advice—what exactly are you suggesting, my boy?”

  But Oxley had no suggestion. The commander-in-chief of all the British forces in Afghanistan should not be wanting “suggestions” from mere captains. He felt stifled by the crowd, though gusts of winter were blowing through the door. Somewhere a chair scraped as Tommy Flannigan climbed upon it to wave some new sheet of paper soiled with mud and blood. “From General Nott,” he grunted through bandages binding his wounded face. “He’ll be here from Kandahar in days! If we can just hold out … Why not move into Bala Hissar until he comes? Behind those walls we could defend—”

  “We should never have left Bala Hissar in the first place!” someone yelled.

  “Too late for that, but we can go back, it’s not too late.”

  “What!” came from some nobody in the crowd. , “—and transport our women and children across the entire city? Through streets full of Afghans armed to the teeth—”

  “Is that worse than making for Jalalabad?” Whitman snorted. “Over the mountains? In dead of wint
er? Damn it, listen to Tommy. We must try for the palace. We’ll lose a few on the way, but the bulk of us should get through. We’ll form a column of wagons—women and children in the center, sepoys on the outside—no, hear me! The fire will be deadly, but many of us should survive to the palace gates—”

  At this, Elphinstone bestirred himself. “Bala Hissar? No, no, the Shah doesn’t want us up there, he’s been quite particular on that point.”

  “Who the devil is the Shah to keep us out? Who put that little man on his throne? Do we take orders from him now? By God, if we need his fortress, I say we take it! Shah Shuja!” Whitman leaned and loomed over Elphinstone, and the five ranking officers at the same table rose out of their chairs to restrain him if need be.

  “You miss his lordship’s point,” Brigadier Shelton cut in. He was a handsome man with bushy, silver eyebrows and a considerable moustache. His voice carried to the furthest corners. “If the Shah shuts his gates on us, we’ll be trapped against the walls—with cannon firing down from the ramparts—Akbar’s men coming at us from below—it will be a slaughter. We can’t make for the palace. It’s too late for that. We must heed General Elphinstone. He’s still our commanding officer, gentlemen.”

  Several of the younger men let out audible snorts, but Shelton frowned them down. “Still our commanding officer,” he insisted. “We must gather what stores we need. Jalalabad is only ninety miles away. We’ll spike what cannons we must leave behind. While we muster, we’ll bargain with Akbar—he’s a lying bastard, but whatever he will sign his name to, let’s secure it.”

  “We’re in this fix because you trusted Akbar in the first place.”

  “I never trusted him,” snapped Shelton. “Damnable slander! I don’t trust him now. I only say let’s treat with him to buy time—so that we may leave Kabul when we’re ready and not helter-skelter as the chiefs would have it.” The din began to wane, people began to listen, lulled by his sonorous voice into hearing sense. “This city is a house of horrors now,” he pressed on, “but the road to Khurd Kabul Pass is clear. Most of us will have to walk, but once we’re in the pass, it’s only ninety miles to Jalalabad. Sale will have fresh mounts for us there. He’ll have food, carriage…” Every face in the room was pointed toward Shelton now. “The first few passes are daunting, but we shall wear our woolens. We shall bring English grit to the march. We’ll survive, by heaven. I tell you, gentlemen, I do not mean to end my days in this accursed country, but if I must, I will sell my life dear.”