March came and the aftershocks continued. The Afghan guards, who were kind to the children and often gave small treats to the captives, began to pass on news. There had been fighting to the south around Jalalabad and their chief, Mohammed Shah, was involved in it. Perhaps that was why the uncomplaining Elphinstone had not been moved: the situation was too unsafe. The news seeping back to the fort was alarming. Akbar, feigning a retreat, had ambushed some of Sale’s men and then cut them to pieces.
‘Well, at least it proves that my husband is still alive and taking the fight to the Afghans,’ Florentia said bullishly.
But, by the middle of the month, the reports were turning Florentia’s thin face ashen. Sale had been defeated and the garrison at Jalalabad had fallen into Akbar’s hands. The prisoners began to argue about whether it could be true or not.
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Vernon declared.
‘But what about the coded message that General Pollock is on his way from Peshawar?’ asked Emily. ‘Won’t he be able to save Jalalabad?’
‘Maybe that’s why Akbar has attacked now,’ said Shelton, ‘before reinforcements come.’
‘We don’t know that he has attacked,’ Colin pointed out. ‘It’s all rumours and speculation. Best just to keep our counsel until things are clearer.’
But Vernon was spoiling for a fight. That night, fortified by local liquor, he baited their gaoler, Mirza.
‘Why aren’t you away fighting the good fight against the infidels, eh? Too scared? Rather hide behind the women’s skirts, would you?’
Mirza didn’t understand all his words but suspected he was being insulted. Colin and Sandy tried to pull Vernon away. Vernon struggled and continued to hurl abuse.
‘Put us in a fair fight on the battlefield and the British will win every time! All you savages can do is hide behind rocks and shoot us in the back like cowards.’
‘Shut up, Buckley!’ Colin ordered.
‘Don’t speak to your superior officer like that,’ Vernon growled. ‘I’ll have you whipped.’
There was a rapid exchange of words between Mirza and a guard who understood the gist of Vernon’s words. Suddenly Mirza drew a long knife and lurched at Vernon. Colin instinctively put himself between the attacker and Vernon. The knife sliced at his arm. Colin doubled up with a grimace of pain.
Quickly, the other officers intervened, manhandling Vernon out of the way and going to Colin’s aid. Mirza stood looking shocked. He gave a curt instruction to his guards to help the wounded officer and stormed off.
After that, Vernon was shunned by the other officers for putting all their lives at risk for no purpose. He sank into a morose state, drinking and smoking whatever he could lay his hands on.
A few days later, a trickle of Afghan fighters began to arrive at the fort – followers of Mohammed Shah. At first this seemed to confirm the captives’ fears that the British had once again been defeated at Afghan hands. But word leaked out from the guards that Jalalabad had not been taken back by Akbar at all and that Sale’s men were still in control.
Mirza came to them one day and asked them to sign a piece of paper.
‘It’s to say that you have been well-treated here,’ he said. ‘I have provided you with comforts and my men have looked after you, haven’t they?’
It left the British in a fever of sudden speculation. Did it mean that Sale had scored a victory over Akbar or that Pollock had finally moved out of Peshawar and crossed the border? Did Mirza’s conciliatory tone indicate that they would soon be handed over to Sale? Their hopes began to rise.
‘Told you so,’ Vernon said, his mood improving. ‘I bet Akbar’s on the run.’
A few days later, some more Afghans arrived and judging by their agitated state something momentous had happened. It was an outraged Mirza who broke the news, his previous solicitousness gone. Akbar had been badly wounded, shot by one of his own guards as he dismounted. The assailant had been instantly seized and burnt alive. Mirza was full of indignation at the attack.
‘They say it was ordered by the feringhi in Peshawar – an assassination. If this is so, there will be revenge. If our Sirdar dies,’ he said, drawing a finger across his throat in a cutting motion, ‘you will all die too.’
Alice, like the others, remained in a state of acute distress as the days dragged on without further news of Akbar. Their fate hung in the balance. What on earth was happening to John too? Alice was frantic with worry. The spectre of Akbar’s attacker being peremptorily murdered, all because of a whiff of suspicion that the British might have ordered the attack, left Alice in a torment as to what had happened to John.
Colin seemed to guess her fears for he tried to allay them. ‘If Akbar lives, John will be safe,’ he told her quietly. ‘The Sirdar trusts him – and if the rumours that Sale is getting the better of him are true then Akbar will need John more than ever to broker a truce.’
But by the end of the month there was still no news about Akbar’s fate.
‘We would have heard if he was dead,’ said Shelton. ‘The fact that we remain alive means that he does too. That can only be good news.’
Each day brought a different rumour: a huge British force had been cut to pieces in the Khyber Pass coming to help Sale and thousands had been killed; Akbar was victorious or Akbar was dead; their horses were to be sent to replenish those Akbar had lost in battle. The most alarming rumour of all was that the captives were to be sent further away into Kafiristan – a shadowy country known to be fiercely hostile to any strangers and from which they would probably never return.
On Easter Sunday, they tried to rally each other’s spirits with singing and prayers. Colin found some wild narcissi growing in the fort’s ditch and presented one to each of the women. Alice clung to hers like a talisman; it was surely a sign of hope? But that night the sunset was lurid and a clap of thunder made everyone run into the centre of the courtyard, fearing another earthquake had struck. Instead, heavy rain drummed through the night.
April came with mounting tension. They heard how Afghan women – wives and relations of Mohammed Shah and his extended family – were being moved out of the valley to safety. Wounded Afghans, fresh from battle, were brought in daily. Colin managed to extract more news from the guards. There had been a great battle on the plain outside Jalalabad, which the British had won. There was consternation among the tribesmen that their vaunted leader, Mohammed Shah, had been killed.
The prisoners’ elation was short-lived. The death – if true – of Akbar’s father-in-law could only be bad for those held captive at his fort.
This, more than anything, worried Colin. Alice overheard a whispered exchange with Sandy.
‘If their chief has died at British hands, they will take their revenge on us.’
‘And we’re utterly defenceless, thanks to Buckley’s rash letter,’ Sandy fumed.
Alice watched the guards for signs that they were plotting action. The Afghans gathered in groups and talked in hushed whispers, but was it more than usual? The next day the guard was increased; an extra thirteen men were placed around the fort. They spent the day polishing their weapons and making bullets. Mirza ordered the horses to be shoed.
‘Perhaps we are going to be moved after all?’ said Jamieson.
‘Or they’re preparing the horses for themselves,’ countered Shelton.
At midday, they were told the devastating news. One of the guards had heard they were all to be executed at sunset. He took no pleasure in telling them.
‘You are in the hands of Allah,’ he said, his eyes full of sadness as he watched the children jumping over stones in an improvised game.
Frances had hysterics. ‘Why?’ she bawled. ‘What have we done to deserve this?’
No one could answer her. All they could do was to wait and pray that it wouldn’t happen. Alice took herself off to a tumbledown corner and wrote a letter to John on a blank page torn out of a book sent up by Sale when Sultan Jan had been in charge. She thought of all the ende
arments she wanted to say to him and the list of regrets that tugged at her heart – their misunderstandings and missed opportunities. In the end, she wrote what was of most importance.
My dearest heart,
You know how deeply I love you – have always loved you from the moment I saw you. I was meant to save your life that night because we were meant to be together forever, you and I. If I am never to see you again then I will die knowing that you loved me too and that will bring me the greatest comfort in my final hours. Darling John, if you should survive this terrible ordeal and I do not, can I beg of you one final act of kindness? Will you do everything in your power to find and save my Lotty? It is the one pain that I cannot bear – to think of her in the world without her mother to love and protect her. Keep her safe. Is it too much to ask that you give her into the care of your people on Skye who have been so kind and loving to you? I would much rather that than my beloved child be sent to the Buckleys, who do not know her and have no interest in her.
May God protect you, my dearest love. I will continue to adore you until I take my last breath on this earth.
Adieu,
Your loving Alice
Alice folded the letter, wrote John’s name on it and tucked it into her tunic next to the Spanish coin that she always kept on her person. She felt a sense of calm descend on her as she watched the sun dip below the western peaks. Somewhere in that direction was John – and possibly Lotty. Her aching heart was soothed by the thought that John might find her daughter and that they would be of comfort to each other in the years to come. John would love her daughter far more than Vernon would ever be capable of doing.
A shout of alarm from Jamieson jolted her from her reverie.
‘Afghan troops are coming! Lots of them.’
The prisoners gathered together in the courtyard, holding onto each other for courage. Some of the children were crying. Their parents both soothed and scolded them, their nerves at breaking point. Others began to pray out loud. Someone started whistling to keep up his spirits.
There was noise in the gateway, shouting and someone firing off a musket. A wail went up from the terrified British. Short moments later, tribesmen spilled into the square, brandishing guns. Mohammed Shah pushed through the excited throng and stood before them.
Alice’s first thought was relief that the man was alive. Perhaps he could be appealed to for mercy? He advanced towards Shelton and held out his hand. The baffled general hesitated and then shook the offered hand. Mohammed Shah moved about shaking the hands of other officers: Sandy, Pottinger, Colin and Jamieson. Was this some final gesture of respect before he executed them all? Alice felt faint with the waiting.
Then the chief spread out his hands and invited them all to sit down. He squatted down on a blanket spread out for him by one of his henchmen and watched his captors struggle to sit comfortably on the ground.
‘In the morning you shall be leaving Budeeabad,’ he said, addressing his comments to Colin in Pashto.
‘Leaving?’ Colin queried.
The chief nodded. ‘You are no longer safe here.’
‘Where are we being taken to?’ asked Colin.
‘That is to be decided by the Sirdar.’
‘So the Sirdar lives?’
‘Luckily for you, yes.’
‘What is he saying?’ broke in Shelton.
Colin told him. Cries of relief went around. Mohammed Shah got to his feet in one swift movement.
‘You must be ready to go at first light,’ he said, ‘and travel without your baggage. I am short of horses and cannot supply mules to carry your things. Your possessions will be kept safe and given to you later.’
He summoned one of his guards. Taking a sword from him, he walked over to Dinah and, with a touch to his heart with one hand, he handed her the sword with the other.
‘The Sirdar wishes to return this to you.’ With a slight nod at an astonished Dinah, he turned and left.
At the sight of it, the young woman clutched the sword to her breast and burst into tears.
With the chief gone, Colin explained about their personal belongings; there was indignation at having to leave their few valuables behind. The most distressed was the hapless Lady MacNaughten, who wept all night over the abandoning of her many beautiful shawls and chest of jewellery.
But Alice felt only a wave of gratitude that they were being spared and were finally leaving their crumbling mountain prison. That night she lay restless, impatient for the day ahead and yet anxious at not knowing where they were being taken next. For comfort, she touched the love letter to John that lay next to her heart, warmed by her skin. Her hopes soared to think she was being given another chance to live and find her daughter.
CHAPTER 38
A fort near Kabul, late July 1842
The wailing of Dinah’s newborn baby filled the stifling room and competed with the feverish babbling of the ill in the hot night. The sound of a baby’s cry cut at Alice’s sore heart, reminding her of the happy days of Lotty’s babyhood in Simla. Would that she had never left the safety of that paradise!
‘Another female captive,’ was Florentia’s jaded response to the arrival of her granddaughter Julia two days before.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Alice had said tearfully, having helped at the birth, ‘and Julia is such a pretty name.’
Dinah had been grateful but exhaustion had soon overcome her and she was finding feeding her demanding baby difficult. They were all weakened by meagre rations and sickness, and dispirited by this captivity, which seemed without end. Despite rumours that General Pollock’s army was in Jalalabad they seemed no nearer to being rescued.
‘Can’t you do anything to stop her crying?’ Frances fretted. ‘It’s making my head pound, don’t you know?’
Alice expected Florentia to jump to her daughter’s defence but all she did was let out a pained sigh. Both Frances and Florentia were debilitated by the summer fever that was sweeping through the fort. Mrs Trevor and one of her children were also suffering – and a wet nurse had been found among the servants to feed the new Trevor infant also born since they had arrived at Noor Fort two months ago.
Colin was fighting with delirium in an adjoining room and Vernon too was ill. Alice thought her husband was liverish rather than feverish – his skin was a yellow hue – and his old leg wound was once more giving him pain and sleepless nights. That at least was his excuse for drinking most of the wine that was sent in to the prisoners from their old friend Zemaun in Kabul.
Alice thought bleakly how they were back within sight of the city and the destroyed cantonment that they had left in the depths of winter. Now it was so hot and the mosquitoes so maddening that she almost hankered after the snow and bitter winds of Budeeabad.
She got up and went to the window, where the shutters had been thrown open to try to catch a wisp of night breeze. Alice gazed out at the garden below – the one good thing about the fly-ridden fort was its garden of fruit trees – and beyond to the murmur of the river where occasionally they were allowed to wash themselves. She bowed her head under a familiar weight of despair. What had it all been for?
After two months of being marched among the barren hills – which had proved too much for dear, ailing Elphinstone, who had died en route – their hopes of being taken to Jalalabad and exchanged for Akbar’s family had been finally crushed. They were back near Kabul at the mercy of different factions among the warring Afghans. Arriving at Noor they had been told of the murder of Shah Shuja and the proclamation of Shuja’s son Futteh Jung as amir.
But the servants brought news of infighting between the chiefs in Kabul and Akbar’s increasingly desperate attempts to hold them together in alliance. The rumours about what would happen to the prisoners swept about them like a poisonous miasma. Zemaun wanted them sent to Jalalabad and used in negotiations with the British army. The Ghilzais declared they would kill all the hostages if anyone attempted to move them. Akbar alternately promised them leniency and then threatened t
hem with banishment to Bokhara or Turkestan.
Even Colin and Vernon had been demoralised by this; word had leaked out that the sadistic ruler of Bokhara had incarcerated two British envoys in a vermin-infested dungeon for months. No one knew if they were still alive. Lately the news had become even more alarming; to save the British forces still in Jalalabad and Kandahar, the troops were pulling out of these garrison towns and heading back to India.
‘They can’t do that,’ Emily had cried. ‘They wouldn’t leave us to our fate, would they, Sandy?’
But Sandy had stopped placating Emily with false words of hope and would only shrug. It was left to a gaunt-faced Colin to try to reassure her.
‘We won’t be left here – it would be a stain on the honour of the British Army. We know that Pollock has already arrived in Afghanistan with fresh troops – he’s not going to stop and turn tail now. Take heart from that, Mrs Ayton. We are not forgotten.’
But, later, Alice had overheard the men talking anxiously about the matter.
‘Even if Pollock intends to fight his way back to Kabul,’ said Sandy, ‘we might be moved out of reach long before he gets here.’
‘Or have our throats cut,’ said Vernon.
‘Don’t let the ladies hear you say that, Major,’ Colin had said impatiently.
‘Well, if I was Pollock I wouldn’t risk coming back for a handful of women and sick officers. The wives should never have been allowed to come in the first place – utter madness.’
Sandy had sighed. ‘What’s done is done.’
‘Well, their being here has been the cause of all our problems. Our army wiped out and our country humiliated,’ Vernon had said bitterly.
Colin had snorted with derision. ‘I don’t remember you complaining about the wives when they saved you from the retreat and certain death.’
‘At least I didn’t run away and hide in a cave like you did,’ Vernon had retaliated.
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