The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [610]
‘Fifteen minutes,’ thought Wally, ‘if that. Fifteen minutes at most.’ And aloud: ‘Close the gates and give out the ammunition. Block the ends of the lane – no, not with bales of straw, that will burn too easily. Use yakdans, feed bins, anything – take the bars from the stables. And we will need to cut loopholes in the parapets…’
They worked desperately. Officers, servants, syces; soldiers and civilians, toiling together literally for dear life; dragging up baggage-wagons and empty ammunition boxes, flour barrels, firewood, saddle-bags, tents and ground-sheets and anything else that could possibly be pressed into service to reinforce the entrance to the compound and barricade the lane. They piled bales of fodder to form a flimsy wall across the open ground behind the gutted stables, pierced loopholes in the walls of the Residency and the parapet surrounding the barrack roof, and pitched the bodies of the enemy dead into a godown at the far end of the compound, laying their own two on charpoys in Amal Din's vacated quarter.
Cavagnari sent an urgent message to the Amir informing him that his troops had made an unprovoked attack upon the Residency, and claiming the protection he owed to his guests; and while awaiting his messenger's return from the palace, turned his hand to helping construct a makeshift parapet out of scratched-up earth, furniture and carpets on the roofs of the two Residency houses. But his messenger did not return.
The man had arrived at the palace only to be put in a side room and told to wait, and an answer had been sent back instead by the hand of a palace servant. ‘As God wills, I am making preparations,’ wrote His Highness the Amir Yakoub Khan. But he sent no guards, not even a handful of his loyal Kazilbashis.
Others were also making preparations.
Aided by his lone hospital assistant and a motley group of bearers, khidmatgars, cooks and masalchis (scullions), Ambrose Kelly was preparing rooms on the lower floor of the Mess House to accommodate casualties and provide an operating theatre, while William Jenkyns and half-a-dozen sepoys raced to and fro removing the contents of the ammunition tent – which, together with a second tent containing an assortment of baggage, had been pitched for greater safety in the Residency courtyard. This they divided between the barracks and an ante-room on the ground floor of the Envoy's House, where it would be less vulnerable to rifle-fire from the rooftops and windows of the many houses that overlooked both the Residency and the Mission's compound – from the nearest of which, though they did not know it, another officer of the Guides was even then looking down on them and watching them as they toiled.
Ash had recognized the futility of forcing his way into the compound in the wake of several hundred disgruntled and undisciplined soldiers, when it was too late to warn or advise. And when no shots greeted the invaders he realized that neither advice nor warning was needed. Wally must already have instructed the Guides not to fire and was in no danger of losing his head and precipitating a battle by reacting too strongly. The boy clearly had his men well in hand, and with a modicum of luck the situation would not get out of control before Cavagnari was able to speak to the Afghan soldiery.
Once let the Envoy talk to them, and their fears would subside. He had only to promise them that he himself would see to it that their grievances were righted and that they would receive the pay they were owed – if not from the Amir then from the British Government – and because to the tribes his name was one to conjure with, they would believe him. They would accept Cavagnari-Sahib's word