The Lion's Den

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Morning Ogilvie.’

  Ogilvie looked round; the adjutant, Captain Scrutton, had come into the Mess, looking preoccupied rather than eager to march. ‘Good morning, Scrutton,’ Ogilvie said.

  ‘How’s your company?’

  ‘Oh, in good form, I’d say.’

  ‘You’ve been along to them this morning, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Keenness, that’s what I like to see!’ Captain Scrutton smiled thinly, managing to look not in the least keen. Ogilvie was beginning to see what the old hands meant by saying, as they had said — R.S.M. Cunningham had virtually said it about the 114th—that a few actionless months played havoc with morale. Without further speech, the adjutant sat down at the table and called for strong coffee and no food.

  *

  They moved out in column of route to the accompaniment of the drums and fifes of the battalion and a few cheers from the neighbouring lines. As he led his company past the quarters of the 114th Highlanders Ogilvie saw the Regimental Sergeant-Major standing at the salute with his pace-stick held rigid beneath his left arm. Beside him a solitary piper played ‘Cock o’ the North’, the tune that always played the Royal Strathspeys into action. It was a nice gesture and one which Ogilvie much appreciated. He returned Cunningham’s salute and as he did so he felt a lump come into his throat; it was strange to be marching towards action and leaving the regiment behind — strange and unwelcome, a feeling of alienation. For one thing, quite apart from the comradeship of his own kind, he would miss the robust singing of the British Army songs along the route to Kunarja.

  *

  Colonel Rigby-Smith rested the battalion by the old Sikh fort of Jamrud, eight miles to the west of Peshawar, with four more miles to go for the eastern entry to the terrible Khyber Pass. As they fell out, Taggart-Blane said this was the nearest he had yet come to the Khyber; as he said this, he gazed westwards, shivering, his face looking drawn and anxious.

  ‘Well, don’t worry too much,’ Ogilvie told him, noting his expression. ‘Plenty of people have been through before, and come back again. Me, for one!’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Taggart-Blane’s inward eye was seeing, more sharply now that they were so close to the pass, the numberless British dead, the officers and men who had made the entry and had not come back again to Jamrud. So many had died through the bitter years of Frontier fighting, died that the British Raj might live. This was a very different form of soldiering from the routine occupations of gentlemen in garrison at Portsmouth and Colchester, Edinburgh and Chatham and the Curragh. With sympathetic insight, Ogilvie knew that all this was passing through Taggart-Blane’s mind.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ he said again. ‘I’ll be surprised if Jarar Mahommed mounts any attack in the Khyber, Alan—’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think he’ll wait and see what the Colonel brings with him—apart from the battalion, I mean! After all, he could be bringing terms of some sort, couldn’t he, some kind of offer from Fettleworth? Jarar’s bound to have the possibility in mind, anyhow.’

  Taggart-Blane stared up at him dolefully. ‘D’you really think so?’

  ‘Yes, certainly I do. And you don’t kill the goose, do you — not till you’re quite certain it’s not going to lay any more golden eggs!’

  Taggart-Blane nodded but seemed no happier. ‘Well, yes, I suppose that’s true, but all it means is, if we don’t get attacked going in, we’ll surely be attacked coming out, that is if they ever let us get away from Kunarja, after we’ve failed to produce any of those eggs of yours! ‘

  Ogilvie laughed, but there was a touch of irritation in his laughter. ‘Oh, damn it all, we’re a regiment of the Indian Army, going in to cut out the British Resident from under the noses of a bunch of rebels. There’s bound to be some element of risk, isn’t there? You don’t succeed in any mission if you insist on counting the cost all the way through—’

  ‘You don’t seem to take any account of the possibility we mightn’t succeed at all, do you?’

  Ogilvie said with vigour, ‘No, I damn well don’t! Of course we’re going to succeed. And don’t you think any different — the Raj wasn’t built up on thoughts of failure and the sooner you realise that, the better!’

  ‘You’re a bit of a jingoist, aren’t you, James?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  Taggart-Blane grinned. ‘Oh, nothing, I suppose. But what’s it all going to matter in the end...when you’re sitting in some ghastly hotel lounge in Cheltenham?’

  ‘No Cheltenham for me, thank God.’ Ogilvie was thinking again of Corriecraig. ‘But for those of us who do one day foregather there, it’s going to be mighty important that they’ve done their duty!’

  Soon after this, word came down the line from Colonel Rigby-Smith to resume the march. Men, as yet untired, got once again to their feet and, with the camp followers, some two hundred of them straggling along with their bundles and the commissariat carts and mule-trains in rear, covered the remaining four miles to the Khyber in good time. The distance from Jamrud to Torkham at the Khyber’s Afghanistan end was no less than fifty miles: from now on there would be much forced marching, and an increasing weariness, and, despite James Ogilvie’s encouragements to Taggart-Blane, and despite the irregulars of the Khyber Rifles garrisoning Landi Khotal, there would be a continual apprehension of sniping from the crags and of sudden ambush along the steep sheer drops where the track, beneath its snow and its slippery ice-covering, ran above the deep, rock-strewn valleys of a basically very hostile terrain.

  FIVE

  There was a general mêlée outside the Residency in Kunarja, with the crowd shouting insults and imprecations and waving fists and knives as they were held back by Jarar Mahommed’s ragged, wild-looking soldiery. A heavy chunk of hard-packed earth broke against a shuttered window. Major Gilmour put an arm about his wife’s shoulder, holding her close.

  ‘It can’t go on, my dear. It can’t last.’

  Shaking violently she said, ‘It’s only a matter of time, that I know! What will happen to us?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant only that the troops will come in soon now,’ he told her gently. ‘Fettleworth’ll not leave us to face this, you may be sure!’ Releasing her, he went across to the window, listening through the slats of the shutter, his hand on the revolver-butt in its holster. The sounds were menacing enough — were, frankly, terrifying when one had women to consider. If Fettleworth didn’t come, if, perhaps, the message had never reached Peshawar at all, their future was indeed a mere matter of time and its content didn’t need to be spelled out to anyone familiar with Afghanistan. The usual routine would be followed: the break-in by the mob, the overwhelming of his personal guard, now for some while withdrawn inside the Residency itself; the pillage and the plunder, the rape of his wife and daughter, and then a terrible death in view of the ravening tribesmen. So far, Jarar Mahommed’s soldiers, though as wild as the tribesmen, the Pathan’s and Afridis from whom they came, had kept the mob strictly outside the Residency garden; but of course the moment Jarar gave the word this situation would change dramatically and the building would be stormed. A matter of time? And when, and if, that time should come...Gilmour’s hand felt the hardness of the revolver-butt once again. Death, for all of them, would come more quickly and more easily at his own hand. If it should come to that...

  In point of fact, the outcome was now entirely in Fettleworth’s not-very-capable hands.

  The reason for Jarar Mahommed’s holding off the killing mob was, of course, perfectly clear and none of the Gilmours had any doubts at all that they were being used as hostages, pawns to be used in the forcing of Jarar’s financial demands on Lieutenant-General Fettleworth. Naturally, Jarar must know he faced the danger of an expeditionary force being sent in to rescue the Britons; but he would know equally well that a dead Resident and family would of a certainty bring a punitive expedition, while the dead could scarcely have any hostage-value. The current real danger to the Gilm
ours, which they also recognised quite clearly, was that very soon Jarar might lose control of his hysterical, death-demanding mob. Judging from the sounds outside, this might well happen before a relieving force could arrive.

  Gilmour, a small and perky man with bird-bright eyes, turned away from the shuttered window, his face grim but at the same time desperately sad. Here in Kunarja lay much of his life’s work; his ambitions — ambitions for harmony between the tribes and the British Raj, ambitions to improve the lot of the natives — had been large ones, possibly too large for fulfilment in any man’s lifetime. But progress had been made, and now the clock was moving backwards into pillage and death and all he had striven for was about to be destroyed. As he strode across the darkened room in a bitter frame of mind, a new sound came: a trumpet call, a tinny sound from the distance that was accompanied by a sudden diminution of the shouts and insults of the mob. Then there came the sound of drums — not British, but native.

  ‘It’s Jarar himself,’ Gilmour said wonderingly. ‘Now, what the devil does he want?’

  ‘Do you think he’s coming here?’ his wife asked.

  He gave a short, humourless laugh, his nerves on edge. ‘Where else?’ His hand closed over hers, gripping it tight. He looked at her face, worn and yellowed and lined far beyond her age by Indian service — service, as his had been, for the Raj. With his other hand he reached out to his daughter, Katharine. Together they waited. The drums and the trumpets drew closer, and they heard the beat of horses’ hooves on the hard ground beyond the Residency garden. There was a lump in Gilmour’s throat as he looked again at the two women. Life had been hard for them. In this wild outpost, surrounded by mostly hostile, or at least semi-hostile, faces life had not been the customary round of pleasure that was the memsahibs’ lot in British India, in the garrisons of Nowshera and Peshawar and Rawalpindi, of Murree and Ootacamund, or in the Simla hills. If this was to be the end, they could scarcely be blamed if they were to hold him responsible for bringing them to a life of hardship and one without apparent point, and then to a lonely and violent death. A moment later they heard horsemen moving up the short drive, and soon after this, there came a heavy and peremptory banging at the locked and bolted main door of the Residency.

  *

  ‘Damme,’ Colonel Rigby-Smith said disconsolately. ‘I don’t understand it. Don’t understand it at all! There’s been neither sight nor sound of anyone. I don’t like it. What d’you think, Fry, what d’you make of it?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s disquieting, I’ll not deny. Most disquieting.’ Major Fry put up his field-glasses once again, and stared around the high peaks rearing above the track. A few vultures wheeled and cried, and that was all. The pass appeared totally uninhabited except for the regiment itself and its camp followers. All along it had been the same; even as they had come below the fort at Ali Masjid, and again at Landi Khotal — even as they had straggled, chilled and weary now, beneath the fortress guns — they had seen no humankind at all. It was eerie, and it was menacing, for it was utterly unlike the Khyber not to be under the obvious surveillance of native scouts, unlike the Khyber for not even a solitary sniper to send a bullet hurrying down on passing British troops.

  ‘Where’s the Subedar-Major?’ Rigby-Smith demanded for the hundredth time since entering the Khyber. ‘Have him sent for, Major Fry, and quickly.’

  Turning in his saddle, the second-in-command gestured for a runner. When the elderly Indian officer came up, Rigby-Smith catechised him as to his thoughts, but he could offer no help other than to suggest, as he had suggested so often already, some deeper purpose behind the apparent peace and quiet.

  ‘Yes, but what purpose, Subedar-Major?’

  ‘Colonel Sahib, I cannot say. I cannot read the mind of Jarar Mahommed.’

  ‘Ambush — some trap in Kunarja — or a desire to placate the Raj? No, you cannot say, Subedar-Major, and no more can I. We must hope for the best, and at the same time prepare for the worst.’ Colonel Rigby-Smith gnawed worriedly at the ends of his moustache. ‘You cannot, perhaps, see just a little way into the mind of the Ghilzai, Subedar-Major? Think you it could be a trap in Kunarja? If you were in Jarar Mahommed’s place, would not such a trap appeal to you?’

  The Indian inclined his head. ‘Yes, Colonel Sahib, I think it would.’

  ‘The General must surely have had such a possibility in mind, don’t you suppose, Major Fry?’

  ‘Most probably, sir, most probably.’

  ‘I trust he will be ready with a reinforcing column if necessary.’ The regiment, halted for a brief rest, was moved on again, to stumble wearily past the jags of rock, along the bitterly cold track over which a keen wind funnelled, sighing like all the devils of hell released in fury on the British interlopers, though no fresh snow had fallen. They were allowed all the rest of the way through the Khyber without incident; when they emerged at last into a prospect of the plains of Ningrahar their only casualties had been four native soldiers, some mules and stores and camp followers, lost in death falls into the deep, rock-strewn valleys that had lain below the slippery ledges.

  Much more seriously, the tents brought for the officers had all been lost in one of the drops into a gorge.

  After leaving the Khyber itself the going was a little easier and there was still no snow. Two days after entering Afghanistan the Rawalpindi Light Infantry approached the gates of Kunarja, marching without hindrance towards the town behind their drums and fifes, an earnest of the intention of the Raj to maintain under all circumstances the safety and well-being of its emissaries. Once again the officers were puzzled; they marched, so bravely and so ostentatiously, into a total lack of opposition. Mobs there were — hostile, imprecatory ones, with the natives leaning forward to shake fists and wave long knives and jezails; yet even so it was anticlimax. This could, of course, be the trap, but if so, it was not to be sprung yet. Passing through the gateway into the old walled town, Colonel Rigby-Smith was met by Jarar Mahommed in person — an imposing figure, tall and well-built, with a hooked beak of a nose, and black eyes glittering with sardonic humour beneath a turban of peacock-blue. He was mounted and surrounded by his fighting men—but with an apparently peaceful intent. The jezails — the old-fashioned long-barrelled muskets —were not carried in war, were not pointed at the Feringhees. Jarar Mahommed’s right hand was lifted in salute, and he was smiling.

  He called out, ‘Welcome, Colonel. Welcome to Kunarja, if you come in peace.’

  ‘You are Jarar Mahommed, leader of the Ghilzais?’

  ‘That is so, Colonel Sahib.’

  ‘Very well.’ Colonel Rigby-Smith’s fingers tightened on his horse’s rein; he cleared his throat noisily as he looked around him, at the silent but threatening mob, at the motionless figures of Jarar Mahommed and his personal mounted guard. ‘I am Colonel Rigby-Smith, commanding the 99th Rawalpindi Native Light Infantry, in the name of the Queen-Empress, Her Majesty Queen Victoria.’

  ‘And you come in peace, Colonel Sahib?’

  ‘I come in peace,’ Rigby-Smith said in a faintly hectoring tone, ‘so long as I am met in peace, and so long as the accredited representative of the Empress of India has not been. harmed. I refer, of course, to Major Gilmour Sahib, the British Resident. And to his wife and daughter.’

  ‘Who are all well, and unharmed.’

  ‘I may see them, Jarar Mahommed?’

  ‘But of course, most certainly.’ The Ghilzai spread his hands wide.

  ‘Then I may be allowed to pass with my regiment, to the Residency—’

  ‘Gilmour Sahib is at the Residency no longer. He is my guest, in my palace. I have offered, and he has been pleased to accept, my protection.’

  ‘Protection against whom, Jarar Mahommed?’

  ‘Against my people, justly angry with the British Raj, Colonel Sahib, because of the poverty which they now endure. I, of course,’ Jarar Mohommed went on blandly, ‘know in my heart that the British Raj is generosity itself, that its wishes have been misunderstood,
and that you, Colonel Sahib, have come to Kunarja to talk, to make an offer, to relieve our terrible distress! Is this not so?’

  Rigby-Smith’s mouth opened and shut again, closing hastily on a flat denial, a simple statement of the truth: no offer had ever once been discussed and he had come in war to extract Major Gilmour and his family. But now he had a feeling that the time for the truth had not yet come; the mob was close on all sides, and its members looked pretty ugly, and very greatly outnumbered the sepoys of the Rawalpindi Native Light Infantry. Instead of committing himself to speech, therefore, he made a vague gesture with his hand.

  Jarar Mahommed, who was still smiling, said, ‘It is not always possible to make one’s more fanatical elements understand the facts, Colonel Sahib, as you will naturally appreciate and I regret that because of this the British Residency has been attacked—’

  ‘Attacked, Jarar Mahommed? Attacked? To what extent, may I ask?’ Rigby-Smith was safe, at this point, in putting on a show of anger and dismay.

  ‘It has been razed to the ground, Colonel Sahib—’

  ‘Good gracious—’

  ‘A pity, for it was a magnificent building and the cost of replacement will be immense. My personal intervention saved Gilmour Sahib and his wife and daughter, who have not been harmed. Have not as yet been harmed, Colonel Sahib.’

  There was a heavy silence; Rigby-Smith broke it by asking, ‘Pray what do you mean by that, Jarar Mahommed?’

  ‘I mean that it will be in the interests of everyone, Colonel Sahib, if terms are quickly discussed — and then quickly agreed. Do you understand?’