The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [574]
There was a third stairway at the opposite end of the long courtyard near the door that opened on to the Residency lane. But as any attack would come from the front, the stairs in the thickness of the archway would be as vital to the defence of the barracks as the barracks were to the defence of the Residency. Not that Wally believed that there was the least likelihood of an attack, yet as this was his first solo command it behoved him to take what precautions he could – though they were few enough, in all conscience. But at least he had made a gesture in that line.
He was to make others. ‘Once we are there, it'll be up to us to see that we get on good terms with the people,’ he had told Ash on that night in Mardan. And now he set about doing so with enthusiasm, organizing Mounted Sports, that because they called for skilled horsemanship would appeal to the Afghans, whom he invited to compete with the Guides at tent-pegging, lemon-cutting, spearing a ring with a lance and similar contests. Nor were the others behindhand in the task of fostering good relations; Ambrose Kelly laid plans to start a dispensary, while the Envoy and his Secretary filled their days with informal talks with the Amir, discussions with Ministers, and endless visits of ceremony from nobles and officials.
Sir Louis also made a point of being seen daily riding through the streets, though at the same time he issued an edict forbidding all members of the Mission access to the roofs of any of the Residency buildings, and ordered canvas awnings to be stretched across the barrack courtyard; the aim of both these measures being to protect the susceptibilities of neighbours in the Bala Hissar from the possibility of being affronted by the sight of the ‘foreigners’ taking their ease.
‘This is an amazing country,’ wrote Wally, replying to a cousin serving in India who had written to congratulate him on winning the Victoria Cross and inquire what Afghanistan was like. ‘But you wouldn't think much of Kabul. It's a seedy-looking place…’
The letter had included a light-hearted account of a well-attended ‘PagalGymkhana' he had organized on the previous day, and contained no suggestion that the Herati regiments in the city were a continuing source of trouble. But the dâk-rider who carried that particular letter to the British-held outpost of Ali Khel, where all the Mission's telegrams and letters were either forwarded or received, had already carried a telegram from Sir Louis Cavagnari to the Viceroy that read: ‘Alarming reports personally reached me today from several sources of the mutinous behaviour of the Herat Regiments lately arrived here, some of the men having been seen going about the city with drawn swords and using inflammatory language against the Amir and his English visitors, and I was strongly advised not to go out for a day or two. I sent for the Foreign Minister and, as he was confident that the reports were exaggerated, we went out as usual. I do not doubt that there is disaffection among troops on account of arrears of pay, and especially about compulsory service, but the Amir and his ministers are confident that they can manage them.’
A further telegram, sent on the following day, was considerably shorter: ‘State of affairs reported yesterday continues in a milder degree. Amir professing complete confidence to maintain discipline.’ Yet in the diary that Sir Louis wrote up every evening and sent off at the end of each week to the Viceroy, he described the arrival of the mutinous Heratis in Kabul, clamorous for pay and completely out of hand.
It was all very well, thought Sir Louis, for the Amir's Foreign Minister to assert that these men would be given their arrears of pay in full within a day or two, after which they would return to their homes; or to insist (as he did) that the reports of their lawlessness and looting were greatly exaggerated and due solely to the behaviour of a ‘few wild spirits’. But Sir Louis had his own sources of information and he had been given several