The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [641]
At the last moment Wally turned, and looking up at Ash's window, flung up his arm in a Roman salute. But the gesture of farewell went unanswered, for Ash was not there. The despair that had stabbed through him when he saw the guns had served to goad his brain into searching yet again, and for at least the hundredth time that day, for a way of escape; and this time, suddenly, he had remembered something. Something that it had not occurred to him to consider before – the geography of the storey below…
He knew which room lay below his own, but he had not thought to visualize those that lay on either side of it; and doing so now he realized that under the Munshi's library lay a small disused room that had once possessed a balcony window. The balcony itself had fallen long ago and the window had subsequently been boarded up; but by now those boards were probably rotten, and once he had broken through the library floor and dropped down through the cavity, it would not be difficult to wrench them off. After which it would merely be a matter of using the sheet rope to negotiate the twenty-foot drop to the ground below.
Any Afghan seeing him slide down from the window would suppose him to be an ally eager to get to grips with the enemy, and the only danger was that one of the jawans on the barrack roof would spot him, and taking the same view, shoot him before he could reach the ground and the cover of the low wall that separated the line of tall houses from the Residency compound. But that was a risk that would have to be taken, and Ash did not trouble his head over it, but within a matter of seconds was back in the Munshi's library and attacking the floorboards.
William, who had seen that valedictory gesture and jumped to a wrong conclusion, clutched at Wally's arm and said breathlessly: ‘Who were you waving at? Was someone trying to signal us? Is the Amir… are they…?’
‘No,’ gasped Wally, flinging his weight against the door to help close it. ‘It's – only – Ash…’
William stared at him blankly: the name meant nothing to him and the sudden flare of hope that had sprung to life at the sight of that gesture died again. He turned away and sank down to the ground, but Ambrose Kelly looked up from the wounded sepoy he was tending and said sharply: ‘Ash? You can't mean – do you mean Pelham-Martyn?’
‘Yes,’ panted Wally, still busy with the bars of the outer door. ‘He's up there… in one of those… houses.’
‘In –? For Christ's sake! Then why isn't he doing something for us?’
‘If he could do anything, he'll have done it. He'll have tried, anyway. And God knows he warned us often enough, but no one would listen – not even the Chief. Get that fellow into one of the quarters, Rosie. We're too near the door and they're bound to blast off again. Get back – all of you.’
The mob had only waited until the door was closed before rushing forward to take possession of the guns once more and drag them round and into position in front of the archway, while from every housetop their allies directed a storm of musket-balls onto the stout, windowless walls of the barracks, the unmanned roof and the tattered, bullet-torn canvas awnings.
There was very little light inside the barracks, for the sun had sunk behind the heights of the Shere Dawaza, and by now the whole compound was in shadow. But as the day waned the flames from the burning Residency gathered brightness, and when the guns fired