by John Wilcox
‘Of course. Oh, Simon. Thank you so much.’
‘Wait and see if there is reason to thank us. Give me two hours.’
Alice was back at Sherpur early, of course, so she forced herself to walk around the compound for a while to pass the time, before returning to Simon’s room exactly two hours later. She found the three men waiting for her, and to her joy, it was clear from their faces that they all intended to help.
‘Now.’ Simon put Alice firmly in the chair while the others squatted on their mattresses. ‘We have a plan, of sorts, but there is no guarantee that it will work. Alice, I seem to remember that you are a good horsewoman. Is that so?’
‘Yes. I used to hunt back home and I have ridden everywhere in South Africa, India and here. I am at home on a horse.’
‘There’s splendid, then,’ murmured Jenkins. ‘That makes three of us.’
Simon ignored the interruption. ‘Good. We will need to ride hard and fast over very difficult terrain. Look at this.’ He pulled forward a hand-sketched map of southern Afghanistan. ‘Here we are at Kabul. Here,’ he pointed to the south-west, near the border with India, ‘is Kandahar, about three hundred miles or more from Kabul. My bet is that Roberts will march directly there. There is a reasonable enough road for the first fifty miles to Ghazni, here, but after that it will be rough tracks and tough mountain country. He will have to cross the Zamburak Kotal, about here, which is more than eight thousand feet high. All the while, he will be vulnerable to attack. But he will go for it as the shortest route. However, my guess, and,’ he nodded to the Sikh, ‘that of W.G. here, who knows the country, is that he will be harassed by snipers and so on but it is unlikely that he will be confronted by Ayub Khan in a full-pitched battle until the two armies meet at Kandahar. There’s a sort of plain in front of the walled city.’
‘Yes,’ breathed Alice, her eyes wide, ‘I must be there, then.’ She looked up. ‘Can we follow behind the army, keeping in touch with it, so to speak?’
Simon shook his head. ‘No. We all think that would be impossible. Local tribesmen will be trailing the column all the way, reporting on its progress and seeking to cut off stragglers. They would descend on us in a flash.’
Alice nodded slowly. ‘Then can we shadow it, from up in the hills?’
‘Sorry, no again. It would be awfully difficult for us to ride from peak to peak, and even if we could, we would be picked up again by the Afghans.’
‘But I must be with the army, to report on its march.’
‘Can’t be done, Alice. You must reconcile yourself to that. But if we are right, you will not be missing much by not riding with or near the army. There will be no question of Roberts allowing his precious telegraph facility to be used by journalists while on the march - even if it remained unbroken - so it would not be possible for you to send stories back until you reached Kandahar anyway. And we believe there will be no battles on the way, only hard slog.’
Alice saw the point and slowly nodded her head. ‘What do you propose, then?’
Simon took a deep breath and looked at the others. ‘Well, it is a hell of a risk, but we propose that the four of us ride to Kandahar as fast as we can by a different route to Roberts. Look.’ He pulled the map round so that she could see better. ‘W.G. believes that we can take a more northerly loop, here,’ he traced with his finger, ‘through the Hazarajat region and down round the back of Ghazni, and come down to Kandahar, via Baba Wali, here from the north. It will be very tough going indeed, and we may have to lead the horses for much of the way, but it will be safer than trying to shadow the army.’
‘But won’t we arrive too late? As we have to go so far north, won’t Roberts get to Kandahar before us?’
Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘That is quite possible. It is a risk we will have to take. But I hear that the force, although stripped down to the essentials, will still consist of about ten thousand fighting men, some eight thousand followers - baggage carriers, animal handlers and so on - and eighteen guns. Now, Alice, that is a small enough army with which to fight Ayub Khan, but it is a hell of a force to take three hundred miles over mountains. We are riding further but we can travel faster. It all depends when Roberts sets off - and if we can stay out of trouble on the way.’
Alice looked at Jenkins and W.G., who had been listening with silent attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘I am very much aware that I am taking you into great danger and I shall quite understand if you feel that this is all too much. After all, you owe me nothing.’
W.G. inclined his head. ‘Don’t mention it, memsahib. Let us consider it a great adventure, don’t you think?’
Jenkins’s teeth showed white beneath his moustache. ‘Any friend of the Captain’s is a friend of ours, miss. Don’t worry your head about it. We will get you there . . . or, at least, W.G. will. I’m not too sure of the way, see.’
‘Now, Alice,’ resumed Simon. ‘We three are already natives in appearance, as you see, although,’ he rubbed his cheek ruefully, ‘I have a feeling that this dye is beginning to lighten by the day. But you will have to black up, I’m afraid. We must join the homeward party the day after tomorrow. As soon as darkness falls on the first day, we will fit you out and colour you up. Then we will slip out of camp and double back. You will ride as a young Pathan boy.’ He grinned. ‘Though you may have to stay quiet, I’m afraid.’
‘But what if we meet tribesmen in the hills on the way?’
‘This is where, as ever, we rely on dear old W.G. Don’t worry. We’ve got used to that. When we are near Kabul, we shall be Afghans from the Persian border far to the west, returning to Kandahar from India, where we have been trading, to take part in the attack on the infidels holed up in the city. The lingo is different, you see, in these parts of the country. But W.G. knows most of them and will translate for us. The reverse applies when we near Kandahar. There, we shall be Afridis coming from the North West Frontier. If all else fails, we shoot and ride our way through. Do you . . . er . . . possess a firearm, Alice?’
‘Yes, I have a Navy Colt revolver and I have practised with it. I shall have no hesitation in using it, if I must.’
‘I don’t doubt that, miss,’ said Jenkins.
‘Good. One more thing, Alice. No one must guess your intentions.’
‘Of course not. Except there is one person I must tell, for I shall need him, for certain. Johnny Campbell, of the Standard, must know, so that he can take notes for me of the march. Please, Simon. I would trust him - as I am trusting you - with my life.’
Simon sighed. ‘Well, if you really insist. But he must keep your secret. No more arguments with authority, now. They must presume that you have accepted your lot and will ride obediently back to India.’
‘Of course, Simon. Although I will spend much of my last day tomorrow writing and sending my final dispatch back to London about the preparations for the march. Even Roberts can’t stop me doing that.’
‘Very well. But don’t offend him.’
‘I promise.’
Alice devoted the next day to gathering whatever facts she could about Roberts’s preparations for his epic march. In fact, there were few security precautions evident in the hectic toings and froings which now consumed Sherpur. There was little Roberts could do, in any event, to conceal the detail of his arrangements from the many sharp eyes which followed them from under heavily swathed turbans.
Alice learned that Roberts planned to set out in three days’ time, which meant that, in theory at least, she would have one day’s march advantage over the army, although this would count for little once she and her escort took their circuitous route north.
The General was making his preparations with typical speed and thoroughness. He was calculating that he could complete his forced march quickly enough to take Ayub Khan if not by surprise, at least before he had been able either to take the city of Kandahar or begin his own march on Kabul. Accordingly, Roberts was ruthlessly engaged in weeding out every man whom he felt would be incapab
le of standing the strain of a series of forced marches and in stripping down his artillery and reducing it only to lightweight mountain batteries, so that there would be no wheeled guns to delay the march.
More controversially, he reduced the scale of baggage, tents and what he called ‘impedimenta’ to a minimum. No champagne or other mess luxuries accompanied the officers this time, and each British soldier was allowed only thirty pounds weight for kit and camp equipage, including his greatcoat and waterproof sheet, reduced to twenty pounds for each native soldier. In all, Roberts gathered together a force consisting of just under ten thousand fighting men, divided into three brigades of infantry, one of cavalry and three batteries of mountain guns. He also took eight thousand native camp workers and two thousand, three hundred horses and gun-mules, plus some eight thousand other pack animals and ponies.
Speed was to be the essence of the whole enterprise. Roberts planned to start each day with the ‘rouse’, sounded at two forty-five a.m., with tents struck and baggage loaded up for a four a.m. start. A halt of ten minutes was to be allowed at the end of each hour which, at eight o’clock, was to be prolonged to twenty minutes to allow for a hasty breakfast. Where the terrain allowed it, the cavalry was to cover the march at a distance of about five miles, with two of the four regiments in the van and the other two on the flanks. The third infantry brigade, with its mountain battery and one or two troops of cavalry, was to form the rearguard.
All of this Alice noted with care before sitting down and writing an article which, she hoped, captured the bustle and urgency of the preparations and the excitement which pervaded Sherpur at what everyone felt would be the last and, whatever the outcome, most decisive encounter with the Afghan army. Somewhat to her surprise, her copy was accepted for censorship without demur and returned shortly afterwards with the initials of the General’s ADC on each sheet. Obviously, Roberts was too busy to vet copy at this late stage. Alice took advantage by adding a note to her editor at the end of her story, ‘More to follow from Kandahar’, before handing it to the telegraph clerk. As she did so, she offered up an inward prayer that the promise would be fulfilled.
The India-bound column was to start before dawn the next day, so, before retiring that evening, Alice sought out John Campbell. The young man was packing the few clothes that he was allowed to take, and Alice’s arrival made him embarrassed - a reminder that he was journeying to cover the most important story of his life, while she was being sent out of the country in disgrace.
She quickly told him of what was planned. At first he snorted with derision at the wild ambition of the scheme, then, seeing that she was determined, he pleaded to be allowed to join the party. But Alice remained adamant and extracted a promise that he would keep her secret and, when they met at Kandahar, give her colour details of the march to include in her story. He sighed, kissed her and, with troubled eyes, watched her go.
The promise of the sun was just a glow behind the peaks to the east as Alice joined the Indian contingent the next morning. Covington, erect and stern, although his pillbox hat was set at a jaunty angle, escorted her to the column. He paid no attention to Simon, Jenkins and W.G., who rode up and joined the line towards the rear. Neither did Alice.
Covington cupped his hands to help her mount. ‘I am sorry it had to end like this, Alice,’ he said. ‘Once the General has had his victory, perhaps I can persuade him to be lenient and let you return to Kandahar, by the southern route from India. It might be worth waiting at ’Pindi for that, you know.’
Alice smiled down on him. ‘Thank you, Ralph. I appreciate what you have tried to do for me. By all means see if you can wring a concession or two from the old scoundrel. But by then I will probably have been summoned home.’
The tall man’s eyes clouded. ‘My dear, I shall miss you terribly, you know. Are you . . . are you . . . sure that you won’t reconsider my offer? It still stands, you know.’
‘Thank you, Ralph. But no. Perhaps one day - who knows, if we are both then still free - but not now.’
She leaned down and gave him her hand, which he brought to his lips. Then he looked up. ‘Ah, forgot to tell you. Some good news for you, at least, to send you on your way. Your man has got in. Gladstone, the old windbag, has won the election and Disraeli has gone. Bad news for the army, I fear, but I know you will be pleased.’
Alice looked down at the Colonel with real affection. ‘Ah, Ralph. Thank you so much for telling me. You knew how much it would mean to me.’
Her heart sang. It was a good omen. Liberal politics at home again at last! She would get to Kandahar. She would!
Somewhere far ahead a bugle sounded and, slowly, the column began to move. She dug in her heels, turned and waved to Covington, noticing as she did so that from fifty paces away Simon’s eyes were upon her. Then she began the journey she prayed would take her to Kandahar.
Chapter 12
It was summer in Afghanistan, but as soon as the sun touched the edge of the peaks to the west, the temperature dropped by twenty degrees and continued to fall with the dusk, so that by the time the little party of four, high in the mountains, had crawled under their blankets, it was at about zero. The unfortunates who drew the middle and late watches of the night had to be swathed in sheepskins so as not to give away their location by the chattering of their teeth. It was Simon’s turn for the latter duty, and he pulled a blanket over his head and tried to wriggle further into the rock crevice that overlooked their camping site as he waited for the dawn. Below him, the inert forms of Alice, Jenkins and W.G. radiated like the spokes of a wheel from the remnants of the fire on which they had cooked a meal of kid and rice. They slept like dogs, worn out by nineteen days of riding and scrambling along a series of goat tracks that climbed and fell relentlessly, shouldering the peaks that loomed over them to the north.
Their escape from the column had been easier than expected. Simon had gambled that, if they chose their moment correctly, they could easily evade the column’s flanking cavalry. The problem would be the Pathans who would be watching the troops from the hills. Accordingly, they had decided to go not after dark, when the jackals with their jezails would be lurking behind the rocks, but just before dusk, when all was hustle and bustle: the mounted pickets were in and everyone was busy with unlimbering horses, pitching tents and preparing the evening meal. Under cover of the activity, they had slipped, one by one, into a copse of trees that came down low to border the road. It climbed high enough to give them cover for about two hundred feet, after which they could scramble upwards, leading their horses, undetected. Simon knew that Jenkins, W.G. and he would not be missed. They were on no roll-call and were no one’s responsibility. But Alice was another matter. She had been invited to dine with the lieutenant colonel commanding the column that evening, and although she had declined, pleading tiredness from the march, her absence would soon be revealed the next morning. The question was: would the column commander send out a search party to look for her? Simon decided that it would be unlikely, but they pressed on in the darkness for four hours anyway before they camped. As important as leaving search parties behind was to get away from the road and the inevitable screen of Afghans who would be shadowing the column. But their luck had held and they seemed to have been undetected. Simon estimated that they had put about ten miles between them and the soldiers by the time they rose at dawn after snatching a brief rest.
Simon and W.G. had decided that their best hope of getting through the hills without running into trouble was to go into the barren heights, away from the settlements that huddled in the valleys. The strategy had been successful in that they had only encountered one goatherd with his flock and ridden through two hamlets of mud and earth huts, from where they had been able to purchase goat’s milk and eggs. They excited a sullen curiosity from the old women who seemed the only occupants, but the crones seemed to accept W.G.’s story that they had become lost on their way from the north to fight for Ayub Khan at Kandahar.
Most days, they
rode above the bold birches whose edges signalled, as though with a ruler, the end of the flora and fauna that stretched down to form indistinct purple valleys far below them. Grey eagles sometimes wheeled high above them, and once, they saw a bear, distantly grubbing and rooting at the hillside. Most of the time, however, they could have been the only living things on the planet. Usually they were able to follow a distinct track, sometimes as wide as six feet across, which led roughly in the direction they wished to follow. At other times, however, they had to dismount and lead their horses across rocks and through glissading streams that delayed their progress and induced aching weariness. It was hard, very hard work.
By the light of the moon that half illuminated the flat clearing amidst the rocks where they had made camp, Simon could just make out Alice’s fair hair peeping out from beneath her blanket. Despite their protests, she had refused to have it dyed and had promised to keep it coiled at all times within the loose cap she wore. In fact, with her slim form and lithe grace, she made a good-looking Afghan boy - as long as she remembered to keep her glance lowered to hide her grey eyes. She rode like a trooper, even though W.G. had insisted on changing her fine Punjab mount in the bazaar for a sturdy Afghan pony. Cupping his chin on his hand, Simon could trace the sensuous curve of Alice’s body beneath the Afghan sheepskin cover. He tingled as he remembered its warmth as she had pressed close to him that night in Kabul and recalled again, as he had a hundred times, the delicious roughness of her tongue and the softness of her lips. Hell and damnation! Why hadn’t she left him alone to forget her in India!
She had, of course, been a cheerful, uncomplaining companion to them all on the journey, taking her turn at cooking, strapping Jenkins’s ankle when he had turned it in a crevasse and insisting she should stand night guard - although here she had been over-ruled. As she rode, she attempted to make notes of the geography and conditions of the trail, for use, she explained, as background colour when she came to write her articles.
