The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [650]
Ash sent instead for Gul Baz; who had spent the greater part of the day on guard outside the door leading into the rooms that Nakshband Khan had set aside for the use of his guests, in order to prevent Anjuli-Begum from running through the streets to the Sahib's place of work in the Bala Hissar – which she had attempted to do once it became clear that the Residency was being besieged. In the end reason had prevailed; but Gul Baz was taking no chances, and after that he had remained at his post until the Sirdar returned with the welcome news that he had taken steps to ensure the Sahib's safety. Not that the Sahib's present appearance justified that claim.
But Gul Baz had asked no questions, and done his work so well that by the time Ash went up to see his wife the worst of the damage had been either repaired or hidden, and he was clean again. Nevertheless Anjuli, who had been sitting on a low rush stool by the window and had leapt up joyfully when she heard his step on the stairs, sank back again when she saw his face, her knees weak from shock and her hands at her throat, because it seemed to her that her husband had aged thirty years since he had left her at dawn that morning, and that he had come back to her an old man. So aged and so altered that he might almost have been a stranger…
She gave a little wordless cry and stretched out her arms to him, and Ash came to her, walking like a drunken man, and falling on his knees, hid his face in her lap and wept.
The room darkened about them, and outside it lights began to blossom in the windows of the city and on the steep slopes of the Bala Hissar as throughout Kabul men, women and children finished their evening prayers and sat down to break their fast. For though the Residency still burned and hundreds of men had died that day, the evening meal of Ramadan would still have been prepared; and as the spy Sobhat had predicted, the hungry mob had left the ransacked, blood-soaked shambles that only that morning had been a peaceful compound, to hurry home in droves in order to eat and drink with their families and boast of the deeds they had done that day.
And in the same hour, on the other side of the world, a telegram was being handed in to the Foreign Office in London that read: All well with the Kabul Embassy.
At long last Ash sighed and lifted his head, and Anjuli took his ravaged face between her cool palms and bent to kiss him, still without speaking. Only when they were seated side by side on the carpet by the window, her hand in his and her head on his shoulder, did she say quietly: ‘He is dead, then.’ ‘Yes.’
‘And the others?’
‘They too. They are all dead: and I – I had to stand there and watch them die one by one without being able to do anything to help them. My best friend and close on four score of my own Regiment. And others too – so many others…’
Anjuli felt the shudder that racked him and said: ‘Do you wish to tell me of it?’
‘Not now. Some day perhaps. But not now…’
There was a cough outside the door and Gul Baz scratched on the panels requesting permission to enter, and when Anjuli had withdrawn to the inner room he came in bearing lamps and accompanied by two of the household servants. The latter carried trays of cooked food, fruit and glasses of snow-cooled sherbet, and brought a message from their master to say that after the exigencies of the day he thought that his guests would prefer to eat alone that night.
Ash was grateful for the thought, as during Ramadan it was the custom of the house for the men-folk to