The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [591]
‘Yet if the Amir was able to find the money to pay the Heratis,’ reasoned Ash, ‘he can probably find enough to pay off the others. He must have realized by now that he can't afford not to, and that the money must be raised somehow, even if he has to squeeze it out of his rich nobles and merchants, or from the money-lenders.’
He must have spoken the last words aloud without realizing it, because Anjuli, sitting beside him in the curve of his arm with her head resting on his shoulder, stirred and said softly: ‘But such people do not give willingly. And if it is taken from them by force they will extort it in their turn, by one means or another, from the poor. This we know. So how shall it profit the Amir if in order to appease his soldiers he angers his nobles and rich men, and incurs the hatred of the poor? That way the unrest will not only remain, but grow greater.’
‘True, my wise little heart. It's a hard knot, but until it is untied or cut there will be no peace in Kabul – least of all for those in the Residency compound or in the Palace of the Bala Hissar.’
Anjuli shivered at the name, and instinctively his arm tightened about her; but he did not speak, because he was thinking of Wally…
He had not spoken to Wally since the afternoon they had spent in the garden of Barbur's tomb, though he had seen him often enough from the window of the Munshi's house – fleeting glimpses of him going about his duties in the Residency compound. He must arrange another meeting soon, which might not be so easy now; it had been tolerably simple until the day that Cavagnari had angered the Amir by insisting on the removal of the Afghan sentries, but since then none of the four European members of the Mission had been able to move a yard beyond the compound without a double guard of Afghan cavalry clattering at their heels, in addition to their own escort.
In these circumstances it had been impossible for Wally to go anywhere on his own, let alone stop and fall into conversation with some apparently chance-met Afridi. But working in the Bala Hissar had its uses, for Ash had recently learned something that was not yet known to the Residency: that from the first of September the British Mission would be required to collect the fodder needed for their horses themselves.
Hitherto, the grass and bhoosa for this purpose had been supplied by the Amir, but now this practice was to be discontinued. In future the Guides' own grass-cutters would have to go out to forage for what they required, and as it was certain that for their own safety the foragers would be accompanied by an escort of sowars, it would not be thought in the least odd if Wally were to ride out with them.
The inevitable Afghan guard would of course be there to keep an eye on him, but the chances were that after the first day or two they would relax their vigilance and make it possible for Ash to have speech with him without arousing anyone's suspicions. In that way the two of them ought to be able to meet at least once or twice before the end of Ramadan, by which time, if fate were kind, it was possible that the ominous tide of hate and unrest that had been washing through the streets of Kabul for the past few weeks would have turned at last and begun to ebb.
One person at least appeared to harbour no doubts as to the ebbing of that tide. Sir Louis Cavagnari was convinced that it had already turned, and on the twenty-eighth of the month he instructed William to dispatch another telegram to Simla to say that all was well with the Kabul Embassy, and two days later wrote in a private letter to his friend, the Viceroy, that he had nothing whatever to complain of as regards the Amir and his ministers: ‘His authority is weak throughout Afghanistan,’ wrote Sir Louis, ‘but, notwithstanding all that people say against him, I personally believe he will prove a very good ally, and that we shall be able to keep him to his agreements.’
The only other contribution to the out-going dâk that day had been a light-hearted post-card from Wally to his