The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [657]
‘Goodbye, old fellow,’ said Ash quietly. ‘Sleep well!’
He lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell, and it was only as he turned away that he noticed that the stars had begun to pale, and knew that the moon must be rising. He had not realized that so much time had passed since he came into the compound to look for Wally, or that he had stayed far longer than he intended. Juli and Gul Baz would be waiting for him, and wondering if he had come to any harm; and Juli would think –
Ash began to run, and reaching the shadows of the houses around the Arsenal, fled through the network of narrow alleyways and streets to where the Shah Shahie Gate, still unguarded, gaped on a view of the valley and hills of Kabul lying grey in the waning starlight and the first rays of the rising moon.
Anjuli and Gul Baz had been waiting for him in the shelter of a clump of trees by the roadside. But though they had waited there for more than an hour in a growing fever of fear and anxiety, they asked no questions; for which Ash was more grateful than for anything else that either of them could have done for him.
He could not kiss Juli because she was wearing a bourka, but he put his arms about her and held her close for a brief moment, before turning aside to change quickly into the clothes that Gul Baz had ready for him. It would not do to travel as a scribe, and when he mounted one of the ponies a few minutes later he was to all outward appearances an Afridi, complete with rifle, bandolier and tulwar, and the wicked razor-edged knife that is carried by all men of Afghanistan.
‘I am ready,’ said Ash, ‘let us go. We have a long way to travel before dawn, and I can smell the morning.’
They rode out together from the shadows of the trees, leaving the Bala Hissar and the glowing torch of the burning Residency behind them, and spurred away across the flat lands towards the mountains…
And it may even be that they found their Kingdom.
NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS
The following notes are for the benefit of those readers who (in common with the author) like to know how much of a historical novel is true and how much is pure fiction.
Ash is a fictional character but the Guides and his fellow-officers in that Corps are not, and everything that they do in this book, with a few obvious exceptions, is true. The affair of the stolen carbines and their recovery actually happened; as did the incident of the sentry who fired at the rider of a supposedly stolen horse, the latter story being told me by my father, who himself heard the verdict given. It was my father who explained the Trinity to a group of jawans with the aid of a greasy tin and three drops of water, and he too failed his written language paper for the reason attributed to Ash, though unlike Ash he sat for the examination again, made two deliberate errors, and passed with flying colours.
Walter Hamilton did arrive in Rawalpindi in the autumn of 1874 and joined the Guides in 1876; and the poem is one of his own. A lone British officer (not in the Guides) actually did escort a little Rajput prince and his two sisters to their respective weddings, together with a far larger bridal camp than the one I have described – his included 2,000 elephants and ‘about 3,000 camels' for a start. When they finally arrived in the state where the boy was to be married, its ruler, the bride's uncle, behaved in the same manner as my fictitious Rana of Bhithor, and the officer dealt with the situation exactly as Ash did. The tale of the suttee is also fiction based on fact, as it is known that at least one Englishman rescued a widow from her husband's pyre, and subsequently married her.
All the Second Afghan War material is on record (except for Ash's involvement in it). Much of the information supplied to Cavagnari by ‘Akbar' was in fact supplied by an ‘unknown' spy or spies. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem (later set to music) about the disaster that overtook the 10th