The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  Really, was there nothing these idiots would not giggle helplessly at? Anyone would have thought that she had made a joke, and she could not stop herself glaring at them. But all at once, like deer who have heard a distant shot, they stopped, and looked, alarmed, to their right. Through the walls of the tent there came a tremendous noise, a tremendous, baffling, roar. It came from the tent of the King and his court, and it took Emily a moment to realize what it was. It was the noise of thirty men, laughing and laughing and laughing.

  TWELVE

  1.

  THE LONG DAY WAS OVER. Burnes was acutely conscious, from the ache which ran from his ankles all the way up his thighs, an ache which seemed more of a premonition than the result of a previous day’s busy diplomatic pursuits, that another long day was about to begin. In a few hours, in a very few hours. By him sat Mohan Lal. Burnes had succeeded in running him to earth by nightfall, having suffered the whole long day under the conviction that he must corner him and talk before another night had passed. Mohan Lal had seemed to present himself, waiting in the shadows as Burnes walked by, and it was the Englishman who had the feeling of being unearthed. They had walked for a while through the camp, but Burnes had become selfishly aware that the astonished gazes being cast at them by those still sitting about the fires were making it difficult to talk frankly. Making it difficult for him, that is; the Indian discoursed calmly, evenly, and might have been anywhere. It was Burnes who found himself stuttering, unsure of his ground, lowering his voice whenever they drew near a group of European soldiers. To do the camp justice, it was not often that it had the opportunity to see an officer and a native talking, however stiffly, with some appearance of equality, even, from time to time, laughing together, and after half an hour of this unfamiliar promenade-spectacular, Burnes took Mohan Lal’s arm and guided him firmly towards one of the tents of the sepoys. The two or three soldiers within got up and left silently, at a glance from Burnes, and the two of them settled down quite like old friends. They had not talked in such a way on their journeys; now, they conversed like two men who have shared considerable discomfort. Once, Burnes recalled with shame, Mohan Lal had been a supercilious ass: now – set against the Edens and the Macnaghtens – he appeared pleasant, calm and intelligent. It was a pleasure, all in all, to absent himself from the Governor’s entourage in this fashion. Discomfort, at the time, often raises barriers of privacy and awkwardness between men; afterwards, when time has passed, the memory of those same discomforts and dangers draws men together in an amusing shared tale to tell, even, it seems, the recall of a happy time of privation. Happy, of course, because it is now safely past. Burnes had, in London, told his tale so many times that the terrors and miseries of the long trek could not be awakened by one more retelling, however intimately acquainted his listener was with his story’s details. Looking now at Mohan Lal, happy and pleased to see his old companion, it occurred to him that the Indian, to whom he had given hardly a moment’s thought since his return from Kabul, must in his own way and in his own circle have been buffed and polished by the coarsely agreeable attentions of celebrity. They were as two men who have shared discomfort and suffered together – physically suffered, at every physical passage, surface and extremity – and now, to their mild surprise, had been brought together again by chance, and had found themselves made intimate by what they had largely chosen to forget.

  There was only one awkwardness between them, once they were seated and alone, and it was the subject of Gerard. In other circumstances the man might have become a pleasant shared joke; but now he was dead, and they did not mention him.

  Burnes had just finished telling the story of the ingenious fraud which the junior of the Misses Eden’s jemaudars had perpetrated on a pink-faced griffin, fresh off the boat. It was a long tale, involving a herd of goats and an outraged mullah in the Bombay hills, and rather an old one, since the jemaudar in question had been dismissed at least six months before. But Burnes judged it would be new to Mohan Lal, and pleasantly lost himself in the elaborate retelling – as he reached the raucous climax of the story, before his mind’s eye passed a herd of goats, heading purposefully towards the helpless Englishman, their black heads nodding like harebells in the wind. Whether the story was new to Mohan Lal or not, he was civil enough not to say anything, but assumed an expression of shining amusement.

  ‘Very good, Burnes-ji,’ Mohan Lal said affectionately. ‘The poor fellow! Well, we must not dwell on the discomfiture of others, and I dare say he will rise to be general before you and I are old.’

  ‘I think it most unlikely,’ Burnes said. ‘They say he apologizes to his body-servants as they dress him. That hardly promises anything very much.’

  ‘No,’ Mohan Lal conceded. Then he brightened and said, ‘Two emperors in one day, Burnes-ji! There is something to boast of!’

  ‘Yes,’ Burnes said. ‘I was awfully hungry, of course – I could almost have had a third.’

  Mohan Lal gazed back for a moment, before seeing that it was a joke Burnes was making and breaking into a broad smile.

  ‘But I have to tell you,’ Burnes went on, not quite convinced that the Indian had really understood the joke, ‘that it will be much more impressive once retold. All those emperors, I mean. Actually to be in the presence of these men – well, you are somewhat ashamed to be caught out by such an easy, obvious trick. You feel like turning to the court nazir who has shown you into the Presence, and saying, well, sir, is that the best you can do for me in this line? You feel tricked, deluded, but, after all, these little men, scratching themselves, picking their teeth, bored, human, sleepy – they are emperors, after all, or so it would seem. I wonder. Yes, on the whole it is very much more impressive an experience when you come to retell it, and can conveniently leave out the unheroic facts, the member of the retinue who caught the hiccoughs, the King of Kabul losing his place in the opening speeches and having to start all over again.’

  ‘So tell it to me,’ Mohan Lal said, surprisingly. Burnes looked at him. Mohan Lal shrugged. He reached into his tunic and extracted a box of the small beedees which he had always smoked. Burnes had quite forgotten this habit of Mohan Lal’s, or thought that he had; but as the first whiff of the heavy tarry smoke reached him, he was taken with a small but penetrating pleasure. He was pleased, after a fashion, by the reassurance that his body, as it were, had held the memory, patiently, for him. ‘Why not? I, too, would like to hear of Shah Shujah and Runjeet Singh, to know how they strike the onlooker, and I am not likely to have the chance to see them closely.’

  ‘You have never seen them? Why not?’ Burnes said. ‘You saw Dost Mohammed, did you not?’

  ‘That was there,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘Here, in India – are there not so many hundreds of people with a better claim than mine to talk sense to these kings? Oh, very well, Burnes, I confess – my eyes have indeed fallen on Runjeet Singh. Once, once. I have travelled since we last met, and have seen that great king. But Shah Shujah-ul-mulk – never. He is a mythological figure, a king from lost ages, not forgotten, but an emperor veiled in rumour and lies. Of him, I have heard nothing that I know certainly to be true. I know he is still alive, and I know what everyone knows, of the base conduct of his reign. But to see the beast now – that, I had never conceived of, and am as glad to talk to one who has talked with him as I would be to talk with a man who had milked a manticore. So talk, Burnes, tell; and make it impressive in the retelling.’

  2.

  Where to begin? Shah Shujah had not made his presence known, and only the reports of the Governor’s own attendants announced his arrival. By the time Burnes had grown too impatient to wait any longer, and went on his horse to the far side of the camp to see Shujah-ul-mulk’s arrival for himself, the party had withdrawn into their tents. Shah Shujah’s encampment was as glittering and expensive as that of the King of the Punjab’s, on the other side of the camp. It presented an expanse of brilliant white canvas no dust had ever soiled, but unlike his rival’s, it was quite silent an
d deserted. At some distance, the horses grazed peacefully with their silent attendants; here, the tents were firmly sealed and silent as tombs. Burnes stood at the edge of the greater camp. Behind him was the usual uproar of the camp being erected or dismantled, the barks of animals in pain or hunger, the cries of hawkers, the howls of dogs and sepoys, the kitchen clank and hiss, the snatches of song both alien and familiar, and an English soldier, somewhere nearby, whistling an old English song. The tumult struck him now as brave, a bravery exerted in the face of a vast hostile emptiness. Before him was that white woven city, and it might have dropped from the dark sky onto the plain in silence. He found himself fingering the buttons on his tunic. It was not exactly fear that he felt, nor concern; he felt almost reassured by the inexplicable certainty that something would flow out of this innocent encampment, that, starting from its innocent candour, things would start to change and go wrong.

  The Governor General was still immured in his tent, which was as silent as Shah Shujah’s. Burnes, at a loss, took himself off to the officers’ tiffin. There, the talk was that the Governor could not possibly see his newest visitor until sunset.

  ‘First, you see,’ Frampton insisted, ‘there is the dinner with that fwightful ass the King of the Punjab, and I doubt – I sewiously doubt – that Auckland will have got things quite at order – d’ye see – quite stwaight in his own head before then …’

  Frampton was generally an amusing fellow, but, like the rest of the party, he was quite thrown by Runjeet Singh’s casual assumption that he was to be offered the Afghan throne. Like the rest of them, too, he took refuge in enumerating the Governor’s commitments for the day and setting out what there could be no debate over, the Governor’s unalterable timetable. They all drew back swiftly from the appalling events of the morning.

  ‘And he’s been enclosed for quite an hour now, an hour and a half,’ Frampton went on, taking a swift dog-like bite of flat bread as the gesticulation of his left hand opportunely passed his mouth. ‘An hour and a half – and what can he find to – well, there you have it. Thwee the old fool dines in camp …’ Frampton had a means all his own of pronouncing the word three, much more resembling the cough of a horse than any recognizable word, ‘… thwee hours at least, and then I suppose the other damned old fool can hardly be delayed until tomo’ow – hi, you, sir, more cuwwy, yes, you, cuwwy, now …’

  A terrified bearer ran out backwards, bowing and muttering all the while.

  ‘… and I don’t suppose we’ll see him again. Damn those potentates. Anyone would think that we were heah at their—’

  Frampton broke off, and those who were not already standing did so. The Governor General entered the tent in his usual apologetic way. He looked refreshed and calm, though he could not have been able to sleep …

  Burnes looked at Mohan Lal, nodding as if he were being told what he already knew.

  ‘I see,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘He had come to the conclusion that the offer of Kabul to Runjeet Singh need not be mentioned again.’

  Burnes was startled. ‘Perhaps so,’ he said. ‘Frankly, I don’t know that to be the case.’

  ‘But it must be so,’ Mohan Lal said, ‘since he could not offer it and could not withdraw his apparent offer. It is not his to offer, and he cannot contemplate breaking off good relations by what must appear the act of a blunt withdrawal of generosity to so very highly valued an ally. So the third possibility remains, that of saying nothing, which always, I find, acts as a reassurance in the short term in such cases.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Burnes said. ‘He certainly said nothing to me. But it seems rather a dangerous decision to me, to send Runjeet Singh away in the belief that we have made him a promise which cannot possibly be kept. Not withdrawing the offer of the Afghan lands must seem very much like repeating the offer.’

  Mohan Lal lit another beedee; his shoulders were shaking with mirth. ‘Burnes-ji,’ he said eventually through the black clouds of tobacco smoke. ‘Burnes, Burnes. Come now. Do you suppose Runjeet Singh so big a fool as not to know that? I have no doubt that he was trifling with you in the most deplorable manner. He was amusing himself with your Queen’s emissary, to see what mettle this Akh-Lam is made of. He looks harmless, I know, like one of your English white mice with one eye put out. But it is not for nothing that he wears the Mountain of Light on his arm. Depend on it – he was trifling with you, as a beautiful girl flirts with a bachelor duke, and fancies, for the moment, that the power all lies in her hands. And in some ways, he is powerful, and he knows the world. He knows how it works, and what lies are told in it, and he knows what lies to tell, when he chooses. And he knows – he knows this above all – he knows how to lie, which is a gift not given to everyone. He has a thousand ways of lying, a thousand and one. He could tell you a different lie every night, like Scheherazade, and in a thousand nights and one night, like Scheherazade, he would have his will, and you, who have listened to them all, would be helpless before his lying will. He knows Kabul is not yours to give, and he knows that, were it to become so, you could not give it away lightly, to a man like him. He knows that you would prefer a real white mouse as a monarch in Kabul, and knows that he does not present a very convincing portrait of a weak leader, willing to do your will over the Afghans. He looks like a white mouse, I know; he is called the Lion by his flatterers; but there is no beast on earth like him, and no man, either. No, he knows you did not mean to offer him Kabul, and was not accepting the offer you did not make. In some ways, Burnes, you have not spent long enough in the East. So what does he want? Well, my dear fellow, he wants you, above all, to know that you cannot trust him, and cannot rely on him. He does not want to be relied upon, nor, at any point in the future, to be called upon. It is easier, all things considered. So I presume the matter was not raised over dinner.’

  ‘No, indeed not …’

  3.

  Three o’clock came, and the Governor’s party, assembled in the Governor’s tent, was startled by the absolute promptness of the Punjabi party. Nothing, indeed, was said, and Runjeet Singh, tiny and resplendent, refrained from demanding any more major tracts of Asia.

  ‘So tah-some, this perennial dining en garçon,’ Frampton muttered to Burnes as they sorted themselves out and sat down, but in truth no occidental drawing room could have produced so opulently feminine a spectacle as the massed nobles of the Punjab with their hooded eyes and limp manners, their obscenely long eyelashes, from whose faces and breasts carelessly-arranged pearls fell like battle honours. The Governor’s more upright entourage watched the Sikhs eagerly, to see if they would repeat their breakfast debauchery, but so far from attacking the food, they picked at the roasted quails coyly with their little yellow hands, extracted half-chewed morsels from their mouths and examined them sceptically, picked at their pointed little teeth with their pointed long nails. It was a great disappointment to the English, who hid it under a brave display of gourmandism. And nothing was said, and the two courts parted in two hours with all the final expressions of mutual esteem the occasion demanded …

  ‘And Shah Shujah?’ Mohan Lal gently inquired.

  ‘Yes, then to Shah Shujah, beastly old man,’ Burnes said. ‘You have really never seen him?’

  ‘Never,’ Mohan Lal repeated.

  Burnes hardly knew what to say. ‘An odd old fellow,’ he said.

  ‘But beastly.’

  ‘Beastly. In the ordinary sense, not in the white-mouse-or-lion sense. Beastly.’

  ‘I see, I see entirely. Go on.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say very much. It was a bare hour he granted us. He granted us – yes, that is the word, the right way round. He granted us the honour, and meant us to feel that. No, I am wrong. Sometimes an emperor is truly imperial. Perhaps those without an empire most of all. Yes, he is an emperor to his fingernails. You felt that if you lived a hundred years, and saw every man with any claim to be considered as royalty, every king from one end of the earth to the other, never again would you lay eyes on so comp
letely regal a king. It seems absurd, I know – he is no king, after all, and he has nothing to rule over. He struck me as a man with no power but what his manner can express and imply, and if he is less congenial than other monarchs you and I have known—’

  ‘You have, of course, known rather more than I can hope to, Burnes-ji,’ Mohan Lal chipped in, smiling drily.

  ‘True – perhaps one or two more,’ Burnes said, reminding himself that the Indian was not susceptible to being teased. ‘In any case, I claim no exhaustive theory of the behaviour of monarchs, so very small and remote a class of men are they. A man with a kingdom and a succession ensured may descend to affability; a king with nothing but a pension afforded him by a European power he knows nothing of except that it is despicable, cannot refrain from reminding you of the king he still is in his mind. He kept us waiting – he would not deign to look at us, even as he spoke to us – he offered us no refreshment, nor invited us to sit, and dismissed us as if he had a hundred envoys to see that afternoon. The Governor General was in a rare passion.’

  ‘Burnes-ji, you are telling everything too fast, too fast. So he kept you waiting …’

  ‘A full twenty minutes outside. The bearers all came to stare, and I doubt they will ever talk civilly to us again, now that they have seen we are men whom a native prince can treat in such a way. And then we were admitted to a tent, an empty tent, an antechamber to the Presence, where we were kept another half-hour. And only then—’

  Burnes stopped. The wind was getting up, and the sides of the tent they were sitting in slapped furiously around the guy ropes. He did not know how to convey what he had seen, that Shah Shujah was a bad man, filled with cruelty and rage. Fine as other princes of the East had always seemed to him, he had never before seen one who, if offered, however silently, the return of his lost country, treated the messengers with such disdain and dislike. Perhaps it was the look in his eyes, a strange desperate weak look; perhaps it was the unmistakable way the ex-King’s court edged away from him. They were paid to stand by him, his attendants, and they could not stop themselves looking at him nervously. And that told you something about Shah Shujah. They knew him, and would not trust him. He was a man undeserving of support, and those who knew him would not, in the end, support him.