The Damascened Blade (29 page)

She left the Malik and turned to retrace her steps to the harem and as she came on, she looked up at Lily’s window and Lily could have sworn, just for a moment, that Grace winked.

She handed the child to one of Halima’s attendants and spoke to another who promptly ran off. ‘I’ve asked for your things to be returned to you, Lily,’ said Grace. ‘No time to change; I want to leave at once. Let me look at you . . . yes, you can ride in those trousers. And have you got a veil somewhere? Good. Put it on. The Malik has agreed to lend us an escort to see us and the Scouts off his territory. It’s generally believed that I was brought here by miracle. The Imam and the strength of his prayers is the talk of the village apparently. I’m not telling them otherwise!’

‘There is no “otherwise”, said Lily fervently. ‘Me and Ramazad – that’s just about the only thing we’d agree on! You’re a miracle, Grace!’

‘Well, our thanks are largely due to Halima’s little boy,’ said Grace. ‘He’s our ticket out of here! But I’m not hanging about. In the excitement of the new arrival it may be forgotten that you shouldn’t be here. You may be safe enough for the moment at least. But all hell is about to break loose! The news of the birth – the birth of an heir – is running like wildfire already. Soon every man with a rifle in his hand and a horse between his knees will ride in and – there! – listen! Can you hear? Drums! This is only a beginning and thank God for it! We can sneak out in the racket. I don’t usually go out by the back door but the circumstances are unusual, I do believe. This’ll go on for days! Just what I wouldn’t prescribe for my patient. Nothing we can do about it though,’ she added as the drums grew louder and, in a fusillade of shots, one party after another galloped into the fort, bending their horses through the crowd, barely visible through the thickening dust.

By the time Lily had slipped in to whisper an unheard goodbye and drop a kiss on the cheek of the heavily sedated Halima, a little party had formed up in the square. Their horses had been cared for and seemed ready for the return ride. Two of the Afghan stallions had been brought round, one for Lily and one for Rathmore. Rathmore! In the excitement of the birth his fate had completely slipped her mind. He was looking annoyingly jaunty and totally pleased with himself, and she tried to avoid his eye.

‘Ah, Miss Coblenz, good to see you again and I . . .’

‘
You
will remain silent until we get out of here,’ Grace said curtly. ‘Aslam will ride ahead with our two escorts, Lily will ride next to me and I want you, Rathmore, to bring up the rear with the other two Scouts.’ She spoke in Pushtu and the two grinning Scouts fell in, one on each side of Rathmore.

‘Well, he won’t get up to any nonsense with those two villains watching him,’ Lily thought with satisfaction, ‘and the rest of us won’t have to listen to his braying voice telling us how he impressed the Malik.’

She leaned over and spoke to Grace urgently. ‘Something missing, Grace? I mean your Afghani escort. Somewhere about this place there’s thirty fellers who must be wondering just where they’re meant to be headed. Surely the Malik isn’t holding
them
hostage?’

‘He’s planning a phased release. They’re being allowed to leave tomorrow so we’ve a chance to get back to the fort and warn James not to blow them to perdition when they arrive and ring the bell.’

Lily scanned the mêlée of men and horses in the courtyard one last time as their small procession picked its way carefully around the edge and made for the great gate but still there was no sign of Iskander. Was this good or bad? He didn’t even know about his sister’s child. But in these parts it seemed everybody heard everything before it happened so he would surely be told.

Aslam set off at a good pace and soon they were saying a friendly goodbye to the two Afridi escorts who handed over their guns and went back on sentry duty in the rocks. Lily saw Grace’s back stiffen as they rode on as though she could sense rifle barrels trained on her spine and she did not appear to relax until they had rounded one or two bends and begun to descend to a broad valley. After an hour’s riding Grace called a halt in the shade of a clump of twisted apricot trees near an ancient bridge over the Bazar river. Apprehension at last seemed to melt away. They were no longer playing mouse to the Malik’s cat. Lily was glad nevertheless to be back under the watchful eye of the Scouts and comforted to mark their continued state of readiness. Eyes were always moving, surveying the land ahead as well as behind them, hands were never far from rifles.

Two of them tethered the horses and melted silently away – scouting ahead, Lily supposed. To them the whole expedition was a gasht with its usual precautions being taken. This was no picnic by the river. But this thought was instantly belied by the third Scout, who began to take tea-making equipment from his saddle bag. Idly Lily’s mind drifted away to the memory of so many lake-shore picnics with starched table cloths and cascades of napkins. Attendant and obliging young men in blue blazers and straw boaters standing by: ‘Let me pass you an anchovy sandwich, Miss Coblenz.’ Lily supposed it was all still going on on the other side of the world.

She looked about her – pitiless sun in a pitiless landscape. ‘Pitiless people too. Still,
he
looks peaceful enough,’ she thought, her eye on the third Scout. She watched as he lit a fire and admired his deft and economical movements as he picked an old bird’s nest from a cleft in a tree, made a little teepee of broken rushes, added some driftwood from the river bed and applied a match. No straw boater here, just a mud-coloured cloth twisted carelessly into a loose turban.

Lily looked at Grace expectantly, waiting to hear her story. Negligently Rathmore accepted a tin mug of tea from the Scout and sat down a little apart from the women.

‘Wouldn’t it be great if someone emerged from those rocks and shot him – just shot him!’ Lily thought viciously.

‘We can’t stay here long if we’re to be back at the fort before sunset,’ said Grace with an anxious glance at the sky. ‘Sunset! What a day! It seems to be an eternity since I set off at dawn.’

‘Won’t they be thrilled to see us back again, all in one piece!’ said Lily with satisfaction.

‘Especially Joe?’ said Grace, slyly.

‘Joe! Fat lot of use
he
was!’ said Lily. ‘Funny – all along it was Joe I was expecting to come to my rescue. For a while back there I really thought he cared about me! But when it came to the point, well! – where was he? Probably playing squash!’ Pink with indignation, Lily looked from one to another. As she spoke the third Scout, the silent, enigmatic third Scout looked up.

‘Jor ye?’ he said. ‘Jor ye, missy baba?’

Grace began to laugh. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Very good, Joe! And speaking Pushtu, it seems?’

‘Can’t spend a day in the exclusive company of these boys without picking up a bit. Anyway – I enjoyed the “hallagullah”! I think I’ve got that right – it seems to mean “uproar”. Useful word.’

Lily stared and stared again. She reached out a hand to touch Joe’s shoulder to make sure he was real. ‘Why!’ she sputtered. ‘You old devil! There you were all along! You fooled them all!’ And more soberly, ‘You darned well fooled me! You
did
come for me! And,’ she added seriously, ‘I’m not going to forget that. And when I’m a little old lady in mittens in a rocking-chair I’ll tell my grandchildren about you and all the hairy bandits who didn’t spot you! But Joe! That was a dangerous thing to do! Those men would have killed you if they’d known!’

‘Well, I’m damned,’ drawled Rathmore, not pleased by this turn of events. ‘So the forces of law and order make a belated appearance!’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “belated”!’ Suddenly angry, Grace turned on him. ‘It was Joe who worked out where you were being held and it was Joe who risked his skin coming into enemy territory to get you out of the spot you’d blundered into, smug, self-satisfied and supremely unaware. I think a little more gratitude wouldn’t come amiss.’

Undismayed, he opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by an excited shout from the Scouts patrolling the area. All turned to look and look again as they took in the sight of the two Scouts. Between them was a third man, a man in Afridi dress. He was being encouraged along with a pistol in his side towards the group by the fire. At the sight of him, Lily and Joe leapt to their feet calling out his name, Joe in puzzlement, Lily with recognition and relief.

‘Iskander!’

‘Joe, you’re not to shoot him!’ said Lily urgently. ‘He’s an outlaw now, did you know? And we’ve got an arrangement. At least I think we’ve got an arrangement,’ she hissed mysteriously.

‘I think I’ll wait to hear what he has to say for himself before I shoot him,’ said Joe easily. ‘Tea, Iskander? I think I can squeeze another one out.’

Aslam handed Iskander’s weapons, a pistol and a dagger, to Joe.

‘Well, this is very jolly!’ said Grace. ‘Anyone else lurking in the rocks you’d like to invite?’

‘No, no,’ said Iskander, completely unabashed. ‘Be reassured! We are alone. I waited here, knowing you must pass this way. This is the place everyone stops on their way to Peshawar or the fort and there is adequate cover for brigands or outlaws as many less careful than yourselves have found to their cost.’

He settled down between Grace and Joe, confident of his welcome. ‘I was hoping to hear your news.’ His eyes flicked to Lily and she was quick to reassure him.

‘Your sister is fine, Iskander. And, thanks to Grace, so is the child. It’s a boy. They both looked very healthy when we left them.’

Joe noticed again the instant understanding between these two and wondered with trepidation what exactly was the nature of the arrangement Lily had mentioned. He began to fear that his career as chaperone might have been compromised. ‘I think we all have many questions but the main one must surely be addressed to Dr Holbrook. What magic did you use, Grace, to prevail on the Malik to release us? Are you able to tell us now?’

Grace looked consideringly at each questioning face raised to hers – Iskander, Lily, Joe and Rathmore – and replied slowly, ‘Yes. In fact there are things I would like to clear up before we get back to the fort. I have things to tell you – a story going well back into the past, a story that starts in a ravine not far from here . . .’ Grace looked around her and shivered, ‘. . . that encompasses the death of Zeman and ends with the birth of that small Afridi boy. But I can see only half the picture and we must look to Iskander to fill in the details that have been hidden from me.’

Iskander nodded. No one interrupted and she resumed, a supreme raconteuse, apparently telling a story by a camp fire but Joe sensed that she was taking no pleasure in the telling. Her eyes were full of pain and fixed on a distant past.

‘Before the war, about four years before the war, a section of the First Peshawar Scouts, based at Fort Hamilton as Gor Khatri was called before it was refurbished, was in the throes of a more than usually bloody struggle with the local Afridi. They’d been having problems for some months – the Afridi had somehow or other got their hands on large numbers of first-class bolt-action rifles and were keen to show their prowess. A barrampta – a punishment squad I believe they called it – was sent out to teach them a lesson but they got into difficulties and had to make a run for it. The whole thing was botched I must think – the patrol was under strength for the job it had to do and the Afridi had been underestimated. They were cock-a-hoop and tails up and giving our chaps a thorough pasting. Several wounded, some dead.

‘They were making their way back, over rough ground, retreating to the shelter of a back-up force that came out belatedly to cover them with Lewis gun fire when an awful thing happened. One of the men – he was their medical officer – fell from a cliff he was climbing with others and was very badly injured. Not walking, not even crawling wounded. Well, I don’t need to spell out the implications. His own men wanted to go in and fetch him out in spite of the thick enemy fire and the difficulties of the terrain. Harry – the MO was called Harry – was lying in an impossible situation at the bottom of a ravine with Afridi lined up overhead ready to pick off anyone attempting a rescue.

‘It would have been a suicide mission had it taken place but it was never attempted. The Colonel commanding ordered the men to stand down and who shall say he was wrong?’ Grace paused, thoughtful.

‘Couldn’t they have shot him?’ asked Lily anxiously. ‘I mean, I think that’s what they would normally do, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. But he was at the bottom of the defile and they couldn’t get him in their sights. Well, there was one man in the company who wasn’t prepared to leave it like that. He was a subaltern, only twenty years old at the time and he’d only just joined the unit but he knew what was bound to happen to Harry if no one acted. His name was Jock – his nickname I should say – inevitable, because he was a Scotsman.’

Joe stirred uneasily but made no attempt to interrupt.

‘And, as many Scotsmen do, he carried one of those little daggers they have in the Highlands . . .’

‘A skian dhu,’ Joe supplied.

‘Yes, that’s it. It means a black knife, I believe. He also had his pistol and armed with these he set off by himself, disobeying orders, into the gathering gloom. As he crept along he noticed that the Afridi had melted away in their Pathan way and left the ravine apparently clear for him. But when he got to the place where Harry had fallen he found he was too late – others had got there before him. Two Afridi lagging behind the rest had found Harry and were robbing him. They’d taken his gun and were searching through his pockets. They were so occupied with this they didn’t hear Jock approach and he killed them both silently. When he turned his attention to Harry he realized there was little he could do for him. The man was a doctor and knew perfectly well the gravity of his own injuries. He told Jock that his back was broken and he could not possibly survive and he asked him to do what was expected of him.’

‘Poor man! And poor kid! What a god-awful thing to have to do,’ Lily murmured.