The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [519]
Once again couriers from India carried letters to Kabul. Letters that accused the Amir of being ‘activated by motives inimical to the British Government' in receiving the Russian Mission, and demanding a ‘full and suitable apology' for the hostile action of the Governor of Ali Masjid in refusing passage to a British one. And once again it was stressed that friendly relations between the two countries depended on the Amir's acceptance of a permanent British Mission in his capital:
‘Unless these conditions are accepted, fully and plainly by you,’ wrote Lord Lytton, ‘and your acceptance received by me not later than the 20th November, I shall be compelled to consider your intentions as hostile, and to treat you as a declared enemy of the British Government.’
But the luckless Shere Ali, who had once described himself as being like ‘an earthen pipkin between two iron pots' (and who by this time had come to detest the British and distrust their motives), could not decide on how to treat this ultimatum. Instead he hesitated and wavered, wringing his hands and railing against fate, and hoping that if he took no action the crisis might somehow dissolve, as previous ones had done. For after all, the Russians had left Kabul and Stolietoff was now actually writing to him to recommend that he make peace with the British – Stolietoff, whose insistence on thrusting his way into Afghanistan, uninvited, had caused all this trouble in the first place. It was too much!
In Simla the Viceroy's Private Secretary, Colonel Colley, who was as eager for war as his lord and master, was writing: ‘Our principal anxiety now is lest the Amir should send an apology, or the Home Government interfere.’
Colonel Colley need not have been anxious. The twentieth day of November came and went, and there was still no word from the Amir. And on the twenty-first, declaring that he had no quarrel with the Afghan people but only with their ruler, Lord Lytton ordered his Generals to advance. A British Army marched into Afghanistan, and the Second Afghan War had begun.
53
The December weather had been unusually mild, but with the arrival of the New Year the temperature had begun to fall, and there came a day when Ash was aroused in the small hours of the morning by the furtive touch of soft, cold fingers on his cheeks and his closed eyelids.
He had been dreaming again, and in his dream he had been lying half-asleep by the side of a rushing stream in a valley among the mountains. Sita'svalley. It was spring and there were pear trees in blossom, and a breeze blowing through the branches loosened the petals and sent them floating down to rest upon his face.
The cool touch of those falling petals and the rushing sound of the stream combined to wake him, and he opened his eyes and realized that he must have slept for a long time, and that while he did so the wind had arisen: and it was snowing.
He had been afraid of this the previous evening. But there had been no wind then, and having lit a small fire in the back of a narrow cave among the rocks, he had cooked himself a meal, and when darkness fell, rolled himself in his blanket and gone to sleep, warmed and comforted by the glow of the firelight. The wind must have arisen some hours later, and now it moaned among the hills and drove a flurry of enormous snowflakes into the cave.
The flakes had settled on Ash's face and beard and he brushed them away, and rising stiffly shook the snow from the folds of his blanket before rewrapping it about his head and shoulders above the sheepskin poshteen that he had worn day and night for the past week or so. The poshteen smelt rankly of smoke and rancid oil, unwashed