Soldier of the Raj

by Philip McCutchan

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maizar at last, Maizar in the late evening after a weary journey, and a hungry one during which Ogilvie had existed largely on such fruit and berries and nuts as he could pick; and had supplemented his water-bottles, with a certain degree of risk, by drinking direct from the water-holes along the way.

  He walked his horse through the gateway and past the meanly-built dwellings inside the walls, heading towards the bazaar, central place of Maizar. Men and women looked at him curiously and children scattered from his path. Even the chickens ran, fluttering confused feathers at the stranger on horse-back, the man from another world. Few British people, Ogilvie guessed, had ever come to Maizar; probably none except for the occasional official, ordered out into the wilds from Calcutta to supervise some Government survey or census. He himself would, and did, stand out.

  The crowd surged along the roadsides, filling the road itself, impeding his horse. There was an unfriendly sound, a kind of low but rising murmur of suspicion; the horse grew restive. Ogilvie had a strong feeling that he was about to be dragged down and beaten, even kicked to death, or stoned beyond the walls. But he struggled through and reached the, bazaar, past the beggars with their importunate dishes, their outflung pleading arms, past hungry-looking men with heavy bandoliers slung across their chests, dark men and light, almost gingery men. Here and there, treated with respect by the milling crowd, a holy man sat contemplating infinity and the hereafter. Ogilvie wondered, not for the first time, how he was ever to find one particular holy man in a land abounding with holy men, largely nameless — but the first task was to find Nashkar Ali Khan, who was not nameless.

  He approached an old white-bearded man, a soothsayer by the look of him, seated cross-legged in a booth, a man staring into space like the holy men. ‘Old man,’ he said, cutting sharply into the reverie. ‘I seek your help. Do you know where I can find Nashkar Ali Khan, with whom I have business?’

  The eyes stared back dully. ‘I cannot help you, Sahib.’

  ‘You do not know of Nashkar Ali Khan?’

  ‘I do not know of him.’

  Ogilvie had no doubts that this was a lie, but knew he would not be able to shake the soothsayer. Once again the crowd was showing its displeasure at the stranger in its midst. Ogilvie shrugged and pushed on, slowly, carefully through the throng. He stopped at other stalls, at the snake charmer’s pitches, at gymnastic displays, and repeated his inquiry. Always he was given a similar answer: Nashkar Ali Khan was not known in Maizar. But after a while Ogilvie became aware that he himself was an already marked man. Shortly after passing on from the booth of the soothsayer, he had noticed an ungainly man, tall, thin and completely bald, with no ears, and with a nose almost entirely eaten away by some revolting disease.

  This man was keeping close to him.

  His interest in the stranger was quite obvious; even though he was giving no overt sign that he wished to speak, Ogilvie began to feel that this was what he wanted. He made his way, with the ungainly man keeping his station, right through the bazaar until he began to come out on the farther side of the town. Here the crowd thinned, though Ogilvie still had his group of hostile attendants. He saw that he was approaching a gateway, another exit from the town, and it was as though he was being herded towards it. But just before he reached it, he turned and saw that the crowd had fallen back and that the ungainly earless man was standing between his horse and the crowd, which was now silent, and that this man was standing straight and tall and, somehow, dominating; and that he appeared to have cowed the townspeople by his very glance.

  Ogilvie reined in his horse.

  As the crowd dispersed, moving away, with an occasional backward look, into the teeming bazaar, the earless man turned and walked towards Ogilvie. He walked with a curiously measured tread, halting close by Ogilvie and looking up into his face. In English said, ‘You are Wilshaw Sahib, the arms seller?’

  Ogilvie was beyond feeling any surprise. He answered, ‘Yes, I am. No doubt word came ahead of me?’

  ‘Many words have come ahead, Wilshaw Sahib, one of them being a message for you from a friend.’

  ‘Jones Sahib?’

  The earless man bowed his head a fraction. Ogilvie looked in fascination at the naked ear-holes. The wounds of removal looked fairly recent. The man said, ‘Even so. He has left Waziristan in safety.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ Ogilvie was indeed sincerely pleased; in spite of Mr. Jones’s profession and lack of ethics, there had been something open and decent about him from time to time and he had been a cheerful, friendly companion.

  ‘Rumour has it,’ the earless man went on, ‘that you wish to do business with Nashkar Ali Khan.’

  ‘Bazaar rumour, from here in Maizar?’

  ‘That, and rumours from farther away, Wilshaw Sahib.’

  ‘And you know of Nashkar Ali Khan — and where he is to be found?’ Ogilvie swatted at the viciously buzzing flies rising from the heaps of refuse that gave pungency to the air. ‘You will tell me?’

  ‘Nashkar Ali Khan is no longer in Maizar, Wilshaw Sahib.’

  ‘No longer —?’ Ogilvie’s sense of frustration returned; already, he felt, he had been for too many unproductive days in Waziristan — yet he knew that in India it was always senseless to talk of speed. ‘Then where is he? Will you tell me?’ He hesitated. ‘If you seek payment, I can pay.’

  ‘I seek no payment, Wilshaw Sahib,’ the earless man said, looking hard into his face. ‘From the talk that has reached me, I think Nashkar Ali Khan will wish to meet you, and for facilitating this, my reward will reach me from Nashkar Ali Khan himself.’

  ‘Then you’ll take me?’

  ‘I will take you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Nashkar Ali Khan has gone into the hills, not far from Maizar, Wilshaw Sahib.’ The earless man lifted long, thin brown arms from an enveloping white garment, and pointed with both outstretched hands towards the west, away beyond the Maizar walls to where the high peaks of Afghanistan reared majestically, their light brown ranges thrusting into the shimmering but now darkening blue of a cloudless sky. Ogilvie thought of the nub of Major O’Kelly’s briefing: ‘I’ve heard talk of a holy man, up in the hills,’ O’Kelly had said that day in Peshawar. The Political Officer’s holy man had apparently been then in the vicinity of Gumarshah near the Waziristan-Kohat border — but O’Kelly had added that he couldn’t pinpoint him and he was believed to shift around quite a lot —moving about, spreading the gospel of Kaspaturos, the supreme Pathan city, rousing the tribes — and having talks with Nashkar Ali Khan.

  This earless man could unwittingly lead him to the heart of what he had come to find. Ogilvie asked an innocent question: Why has Nashkar Ali Khan gone into the hills?’

  ‘This I cannot tell you. I can say no more than I have said, Wilshaw Sahib. If you wish to speak with Nashkar Ali Khan about your trade in arms, you must put your trust in me to lead you to him, and plague me with no questions. This is agreed?’

  ‘This is agreed,’ Ogilvie said. ‘Are you going to tell me your name?’

  ‘I am known as the Earless One.’

  ‘Very well, Earless One, when shall we start for the hills?’

  ‘At once. You will ride out from the gateway now, Wilshaw Sahib, and in a little while I shall join you as you ride slowly along the westward track. I go now to obtain a horse, and will be very quick, I promise you.’

  He turned away, the setting sun striking fire from the shining baldness of his head, and stalked off, making his way back into the bazaar. Soon only the bald head was visible, moving purposefully through the crowd, and then this too vanished from sight. Ogilvie urged his horse into movement, turning for the gate, and a few moments later rode under the stone archway, past more beggars and swarthy armed tribesmen, out into the open country along the track descending in twists around the hillside, down into the valley. He rode slowly as instructed by the earless man, feeling that at least he had made a little progress, or at any rate was abou
t to make some, but feeling frankly sick at the thought of more interminable miles of jogging through passes and valleys, tired, hungry and thirsty, nagged at by flies and insects and the appalling bite of the sun by day and the sharp cold by night.

  It was a full hour later, and dark, when he heard the sound of a horse’s hoofbeats behind him and, looking round, saw the earless man coming to join him with his long white garment flying out along the breeze made by his own speed. Ogilvie halted to await the man’s approach, moved on again as soon as contact had been made, and inquired about the direction they were to take. ‘We follow the track, Wilshaw Sahib,’ the earless man said. ‘Now let us ride and not talk.’

  ‘As you wish, then.’

  Ogilvie shrugged, and urged his horse on a little faster. This was going to be a gloomy ride, he thought, if they were not to talk — and he would have welcomed talk for other reasons than to break the solitude of the hills. No doubt the earless man was, from his own viewpoint at this stage, wise enough to take no chances with his tongue!

  They jogged on, not hurrying, scarcely exchanging a word; the earless man seemed unaccountably on edge after a while, casting glances at Ogilvie continually, sometimes furtive, sometimes open and challenging and filled, Ogilvie could have sworn, with sheer hate. He was a most uncomfortable companion for a lonely journey. Ogilvie wondered what could possibly have turned him like this, whether, after all, he had begun to suspect something amiss. This was highly unlikely, and even if such was the case, then the earless man could scarcely have much to worry about since he was escorting the stranger, not out of the country to make his report, but to the very eyrie of Nashkar Ali Khan.

  So Ogilvie believed.

  They came out from a long pass, a narrow defile whose high sides would mercifully cut out the sun in daytime, and emerged in the first of the moonlight on to a wide, flat plain, a barren plain that appeared devoid of any habitation or any human kind; and a little after this, as the moon grew stronger, the earless man dropped behind and a few seconds later said, ‘This is far enough, Wilshaw.’

  There was no ‘sahib’ and the tone of the voice was utterly changed. At first Ogilvie quite failed to take in the meaning of this change. Startled, however, by it, he halted his horse and turned in the saddle to find the earless man holding a British Army revolver pointing at his chest.

  ‘What does this mean?’ he asked. ‘You promised to lead me to Nashkar Ali Khan. I expected to be able to trust the word of a Pathan warrior, Earless One!’

  The man grinned. ‘Did you, indeed! Damn you to hell, I’d have shot you earlier if it hadn’t been necessary to make sure there were no witnesses. You’d better say a prayer — if you have any God at all, you renegade bastard.’

  The voice was now unmistakably English and Ogilvie broke out into a drenching sweat. He said, ‘You’re making a great mistake —’

  ‘Cut it out, Wilshaw. The bush telegraph doesn’t go too wrong, you know! You don’t deny — you can’t possibly deny —that you’ve come in to sell arms against British troops?’

  ‘I don’t deny the obvious part of what appear to be the facts, no.’ Ogilvie was in a terrible dilemma. A glimmering of an explanation was coming through to him — a belief that this man was in fact a British agent, probably sent in by the Civilian side on some mission or other — but he couldn’t possibly take this for granted. The carless man, who indeed looked every inch a Pathan, could so easily be a genuine follower of Nashkar Ali Khan who was putting mere suspicion to the test; or carrying out what would be a perfectly sensible probe of Wilshaw Sahib’s credentials even if he had no actual suspicions at all. But what to do? For one thing — if the man was a British agent — he, Ogilvie, was still under absolute orders not to reveal his mission to anyone whatever the circumstances; though he doubted if O’Kelly had ever envisaged these particular circumstances.

  ‘You’d better tell me the whole truth,’ the man said. ‘All of it. I want to know who else is making a profit out of the deaths of our soldiers.’ He moved closer, holding the revolver very steady. ‘Talk, Wilshaw, or you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I won’t talk if I’m dead.’

  ‘No. But you’ll talk before that point is reached, my dear traitor! See my ears — or lack of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Pathans did that to me — to satisfy themselves I was trustworthy enough for Nashkar Ali Khan’s purposes. I learned how painful it was — and I learned how to do it, with the highest degree of pain, to other people! My nose too. It looks like disease, doesn’t it, but it isn’t, Wilshaw. It was done with a red-hot iron.’

  ‘Who are you? Tell me that, and I may answer your questions. I like to know who I’m talking to.’

  ‘All right. It doesn’t really matter now. My name’s Healey. Captain Edward Healey, late the Bengal Lancers, attached as a Political Officer to Southern Army Command at Ootacamund. I can offer no proof of this — it’s not the custom of Political Officers to enter native territory bearing evidence of their identities. But I assure you it’s all very official! No one’s going to question my decision to wipe out a dirty little rat like you, Wilshaw.’

  Ogilvie gasped in astonishment but made a fast recovery as the hammer of Healey’s revolver clicked back. This time, he thought, military compartmentized secrecy had surpassed itself. With admirable coolness he said, ‘Really? Don’t you think you’re a little off your beat, Healey, old man? This part of the world is Murree’s pigeon, surely?’

  Healey lifted an eyebrow. ‘Well, well! Do go on.’

  Reaching what in fact was the inevitable decision to disregard his orders this time, Ogilvie, who no longer doubted Healey’s identity, grinned into his face and said, ‘Captain James Ogilvie, 114th Highlanders, on temporary attachment to the Political Department of the First Division at Nowshera and Peshawar. Let me add to this by way of establishing my bona fides. My Colonel is the Earl of Dornoch, my Divisional Commander is...’ he was going to give the latter’s full rank but thought of a better way, ‘..is Bloody Francis Fettleworth, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard. My father commands the Northern Army at Murree.’ He stopped.

  Captain Healey stared hard into his face for a moment, then rode forward, pushing his revolver into his robes. ‘How d’you do,’ he said solemnly. ‘I must admit I had an idea you were a gentleman, which a damned tradesman wouldn’t have been. We’ve not really been properly introduced, but I dare say you won’t mind stretching a point?’

  He held out his hand and Ogilvie shook it.

  Then they burst into laughter.

  ‘What now?’ Ogilvie asked when the laughter had subsided. ‘Where do we go? Do you really know where Nashkar Ali Khan is?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Healey said. ‘I told you — I’m trusted now! The baldness, by the way, was there before I came in. Some sort of hair disease — but never mind, the women seem to find it attractive, rather to my own surprise. But Nashkar Ali Khan. What I told you, Ogilvie, happens to be true. He’s in the hills on the Afghan border —’

  ‘With a holy man?’

  ‘Oh, so you know about that?’

  ‘A man called O’Kelly told me. I gather he’s of pretty vital importance.’

  ‘Correct, he is. Filthy, no doubt, like all sadhus, but vital. More so than O’Kelly! We were at Wellington together, incidentally, O’Kelly and I. Bit of a squirt, but he’s done well enough, I suppose. We’d better be moving on, Ogilvie.’

  ‘Right.’ They moved on together, towards the next range of hills, into the sunset spreading its many colours over the grim, harsh outlines of the land. As they went, they exchanged mutual information. Edward Healey had been sent in some months earlier, on a slightly different mission — a mission to make inquiries into the fate of some men from a Southern Army division who had been captured on a patrol and taken, it was believed, all the way north into Waziristan. Being a fluent speaker of Pushtu and a man of much greater than normal knowledge of the country, he had gone in as a native and had fairly quickly wor
ked his way into the confidence of some of the khel leaders, and had gone on from there to establish himself with Nashkar Ali Khan’s hangers-on as a fanatic who could be useful to the cause. He had successfully completed his mission in so far as he had been shown the bodies of the British patrol, tortured and mangled before death in an effort to make them talk about the strength and disposition and intentions of the Imperial forces in the south, and their potentialities as reinforcements for Northern Command. ‘I spat on those bodies, Ogilvie,’ he said in an almost toneless voice. ‘It was a difficult thing to do, but it helped.’