The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [571]
The lower Bala Hissar was a town in itself, crammed with the houses of courtiers and officials and all those who worked for them, and possessing its own shops and bazaars. It was in this part of the citadel that the Residency stood, and from his window Ash could see the whole stretch of the compound – the clutter of servants' quarters and store rooms, the cavalry pickets and the stables at the far end, lying almost in the towering shadow of the Amir's great Arsenal, and directly below him the barracks, an oblong, fort-like structure that enclosed a line of covered quarters on either side, and was bisected by a long open courtyard entered through a deep archway at one end and a stout door at the other.
Behind that far door a narrow lane divided the barrack block from the Residency proper, which consisted of two separate houses facing each other across a walled courtyard some ninety feet square, in the nearer and taller of which Wally, Secretary Jenkyns and Surgeon Kelly had their rooms, while the Envoy himself occupied the other: a two-storey building that on the southern side was part of the outer wall of the citadel, so that the windows there had a sheer drop below them to the moat, and a magnificent view of the valley and the far snows.
Ash too shared that view, since not only the Envoy's house but the far side of the entire compound stopped at the thirty-foot drop of the wall, beyond which stretched the open country, the river and the hills and the vast panorama of the Hindu Kush. But the beauty of the view held no interest for him – his attention being reserved for the compound below, where he could catch an occasional glimpse of the Envoy and his suite, watch their servants and the men of the Escort busy about their duties, and keep a check on callers at the Residency – and an eye on Wally's comings and goings.
Wally, like Anjuli, had formed an unfavourable impression of the Bala Hissar, though for different reasons. He did not find it sinister: he thought it deplorably shoddy. Having expected the famous citadel to be a magnificent and impressive place (something along the lines of Shah Jehan's Red Fort at Delhi, only better, as it was built on a hill), he had been disgusted to find it a rabbit-warren of dilapidated buildings and fetid alleyways, huddled behind a series of irregular and often half-ruined walls and interspersed by what appeared to be waste ground on which little or nothing grew.
The grandly styled ‘Residency’ had proved equally disappointing, being no more than a number of mud-brick buildings in a large compound that was hemmed about, on three sides, by houses built on rising ground, and on the fourth by the south wall of the citadel.
There was not even a proper entrance gate, and the sole barrier between the compound and the surrounding houses was a crumbling mud wall that a child of three could scramble over without difficulty; which augured a complete lack of privacy, as any member of the public who wished to do so could stroll in without let or hindrance to gaze at the Escort, hang around the stables watching the horses being groomed and fed, or even (if the doors of the barrack block were open) stare through the long central courtyard at the Residency itself.
‘Faith, it's a combination of a gold-fish bowl and a rat-trap, so it is,’ pronounced Wally that first afternoon in the Bala Hissar, as he and the surgeon surveyed the place that was to be the home of the British Mission. His critical gaze travelled to the towering bulk of the Arsenal, and from there to the tiers of tall, flat-roofed Afghan houses that overlooked the compound. Behind and above these rose the walls and windows of the palace; and above again, the fortified heights of the Shere Dawaza…
‘Glory be, will you look at that now!’ exclaimed Wally, appalled. ‘We might just as well be living on the floor of a bull-ring or the Circus Maximus, with every seat filled with spectators staring down