Silk and Shadows(5)

"Impressive." Sarah knit her brows as she invoked her memory. "Kafiristan is in the Hindu Kush mountains beyond the North-West Frontier of India, isn't it? Several years ago you wrote that you intended to travel into the area, but it was months until your next letter. By then you were back in India, and you said nothing about the trip to Kafiristan."

"I may be the only Englishman who has visited there." Ross's face lit up, the passionate scholar showing through his gentlemanly facade. Like Sara, his conventionality was only surface deep—but they both had excellent surfaces. "The Kafirs are remarkable people, unlike any of the other Himalayan tribes. It would be interesting to know their history—there is the most amazing jumble of races and languages in central Asia. In appearance and customs, Kafirs resemble Europeans more than they do their Muslim neighbors. Perhaps they are a Germanic tribe that went east instead of west—they claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great and his men.

"The Kafir languages are the damnedest ones I've ever come across, every valley with a different dialect. The tribesmen are wild as hawks, and they love personal freedom more than any other people I have ever met." He gave his cousin a laughing glance. "Even the women are allowed to roam about at will, once their chores are done."

"Clearly they are people of great good sense," Sara said serenely, refusing to rise to her cousin's bait. "Your friend Peregrine is a Kafir nobleman?"

"There is no aristocracy in the British sense, but he was a man of great influence among them, a mir, which is the Kafir term for a chief." Ross bit his lower lip thoughtfully. "I never grew proficient enough in the language to be sure, but I had the impression that Peregrine was not a native son of Kafiristan. There was a suggestion that he came from somewhere farther west, Turkestan perhaps. Or perhaps his father was a wandering Russian who impregnated a Kafir woman and then left. I never asked about his background, and he never volunteered the information."

Intrigued, Sara asked, "How did you come to meet him?"

"He saved my life. Twice, in fact."

When Sara frowned and opened her mouth for another question, her cousin shook his head. "Believe me, you don't want to know any more than that."

"Ross!" she said indignantly. "You can't possibly make such a statement without explaining it."

He chuckled. "The first time he saved me was just after I entered Kafiristan. I had fallen afoul of a group of chaps who misliked my foreignness, and they immediately began debating the best method of effecting my demise. While my understanding of what they said was imperfect, the gist was most unpleasant.

"At a critical point in the proceedings, Peregrine happened along and was invited to join the fun. Deciding that it would be inhospitable to allow his friends to flay me alive, he challenged my chief captor to some sort of gambling game. As I recall, the stakes were about twenty guineas worth of gold against my life. When Peregrine won, I became his property. He saved me again when he was escorting me back to India. We were attacked by bandits, and I was cornered by two of them when I had run out of ammunition. He intervened to even the odds."

Sara shuddered, knowing that behind Ross's light words lay the specter of a hideous death. "How many other times have you been nearly murdered in your travels?"

"I said that you wouldn't want to know." Ross put his arm around her shoulders for a brief, reassuring hug. "You needn't worry when I am out of the country. If only the good die young, I will always come home to England.

"At any rate, after winning me at gambling, Peregrine took me back to his village and patched me up. Come to think of it, he probably saved my life again by keeping the local quack away from me. When I had recovered enough to take an interest in my surroundings, I was amazed to learn that my kind host spoke very decent English. He was also the cleanest Kafir I ever met, which is one reason why I think that he was born somewhere else."

Ross paused meditatively. "Perhaps his cleanliness is what made his coloring seem fairer than that of his fellows. Hard to say. Once I saw a Kafir lad who had fallen in a stream, and he was pale as an Englishman, but within a week or two he was back to normal. But I digress. During the months I was Peregrine's guest, we became friends. He has a remarkable mind, shrewd and quick, and he never forgets anything. Europe fascinated him. He asked questions constantly, absorbing every word like a sponge.

"He must have put what he learned to good use, because when our paths crossed again two years ago in Cairo, he had left Kafiristan and become a very wealthy trader, with interests throughout the Orient. He mentioned that someday he intended to make an extended visit to England, and here he is." Ross gave Sara a smile of cherubic innocence. "A simple enough tale."