The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [569]
The Sirdar's disclosures came as an unpleasant surprise to Ash, who, not having come across this particular story before, went out at once into the city to see for himself how much truth there was in these statements. Half an hour had been enough to confirm them all: and if he needed further discouragement he received it on his return, when his host met him with the news that Munshi Bakhtiar Khan, the acting representative of the British Government in Kabul, had died on the previous day.
‘It was given out that he died of the cholera,’ said the Sirdar, ‘but I have heard otherwise. I have been told in secret by – by someone well known to me that he was poisoned in order that he should not speak to Cavagnari-Sahib of certain things that he knew. This I think very likely, because there is no doubt that he could have told the Sahib much. But now his knowledge is buried with him in the grave. He was no friend of the late Amir's, and his appointment caused great offence in the Bala Hissar. But he was both clever and cunning and he made other friends here, several of whom are whispering behind their hands that his death was contrived by enemies – though I doubt if any word of that will reach the ears of the Sahibs.’
It was enough that it had reached Ash's, and on the following day he deliberately broke a promise he had made to Anjuli, and applied for the post he had held once before in that city: as scribe in the service of Munshi Naim Shah, one of the many officials attached to the court, who lived in the Bala Hissar itself.
‘It will only be for a few hours each day, Larla,’ he explained to Anjuli when she protested, white-faced, that he was putting his head into the tiger's mouth to no purpose; ‘and I shall be in no more danger there than I am here – perhaps even less, since half Kabul knows that the Sirdar-Sahib is a pensioner of the Guides, so it is always possible that his guests may be suspect. But having worked for Munshi Naim Shah before, I am known to a number of people in the Bala Hissar, and none will question my right to be there. Besides, the citadel is like a great ants' nest, and I doubt if anyone can say now many people live within its walls and how many come there daily to work or ask for favours, or to visit relatives or sell goods. I shall be no more than one ant among many.’
But Anjuli, who throughout the spring and early summer had been so happy in Kabul, had recently fallen a prey to terror, and the city and its surroundings that she had once thought so friendly and beautiful had suddenly become sinister and threatening. She knew that the entire valley was subject to earth tremors, and though the first of these that she had experienced had been barely noticeable, of late there had been one or two that were far more daunting. The tall house had swayed alarmingly, and though the Kabulis accepted the frequent earthquakes as a matter of course, to Anjuli the tremors had always been eerie and frightening. Nor, in these days, did she find anything reassuring when she looked out of any window that faced the street, and saw the men who passed below.
These lean hawk-faced Afghans with their long ragged locks and unkempt beards, their cartridge-belts, muskets and tulwars, were a very different breed of men from the gentle, friendly, unarmed hill-folk