Halima gasped, murmuring her brother’s name, and turned from the window to run from the room. As she turned she caught her foot in a pile of cushions abandoned by the children and fell with a crash to the floor. The women gathered round her at once, making sounds of concern and encouragement. They tried to raise her but she cried out in pain. At once the woman Lily had decided was the Malik’s sister took charge. Servants were summoned and Halima, moaning pitifully and gasping out terse orders, was carried from the room and placed in a smaller room next door.
For the rest of the day, Lily, unnoticed, could only sit anxiously in a corner of the common room watching the bustle as women hurried in and out with basins of hot and cold water, little chafing dishes in which burned strangely scented spices, piles of white linen cloths and trays of tea from which someone always remembered to hand her a cup. She tried once to sneak into the room where Halima was lying but was turned away in a polite but firm manner and she didn’t try again.
Her own situation was not looking very healthy either, she thought. In a surprisingly short time the only two people in the fort she felt any affinity with had both been put out of action. Iskander outlawed. Had he left already? Did the sentence have immediate effect and was there something she could do about that? And Halima in the throes of what exactly she wasn’t sure but it could be anything from sprained ankle to childbirth. So she was left to the mercies of that manipulative old Malik. ‘If I ever get out of this,’ she thought, ‘the first thing I’ll do is warn James Lindsay that the Malik has got his number. And that he’s gunning for any English soldier who puts his head above the parapet. And what was all that about the red-haired soldier killing the old brute’s two older sons? James? Does that sound likely? Well, that’s what soldiers do, I suppose. Bad luck though to lose three sons to the British.’
She flinched as Halima groaned again.
The cries and moans went on at intervals for the rest of the day and seemed to be growing in intensity. Lily watched as the Malik’s sister took a piece of paper from a pile on a table and wrote a note. This was handed to one of the children, the largest boy, and he ran off outside carrying it in his hand. ‘Notifying the boss,’ thought Lily. ‘So that’s their system.’ She was intrigued to see a few minutes later the lone figure of the Malik appear below the window. He began to pace about in the square and after one or two circuits he settled under the tree, looking up from time to time at the shadows that passed in front of the fretted window.
Lily eyed the pile of papers and the pencil on the table speculatively. It seemed this was the way the women communicated with the outside world. Not so very different from those little ‘chits’ the English women annoyed each other with in Simla. In the bustle no one noticed Lily sidle up to the table and help herself to a sheet of paper. She wrote a short note, folded it carefully and settled down to wait for the right moment. As two women attending Halima left – change of shift, Lily calculated – she went into Halima’s room. One girl still present and holding the hand of Halima who, eyes closed in agony, was sweating and writhing waved to her to go away. Lily played dumb for as long as she could and then slowly made her way back to the door. In the doorway she paused and called to the boy who was standing by and acting as messenger. She crooked a finger at him and, wide-eyed he approached.
‘Iskander,’ she said, tapping the folded letter. ‘Halima Begum . . . Iskander.’
The boy nodded in understanding, took the letter and scurried off. Lily settled by the window on watch.
Chapter Sixteen
‘At dawn.’
The phrase has its melodramatic ring and, as he delivered it, Joe had been aware of this and wished he could take back the words. Confronted now with the reality of dawn in a forbidding landscape drained of colour and with a sharp wind blowing off the hills, he felt many things and gallantry and confidence were not among them.
He looked at the two Scouts who had been told off to accompany this lunatic foray. Aslam and Yussuf were already standing by at the chiga gate, eager to start out.
‘How did you select them?’ Joe had asked James.
‘Not easy,’ had been the reply. ‘Every bloody man in the unit volunteered. No surprise to me! That always happens. And you’re faced with the alternatives of offending everybody you don’t select and inflating the consequence beyond measure of the two you do select. But still, they’re good men these two, you’ll find. Very reliable, very experienced. And they are not of the same tribe – don’t want any tribal combining, thanks! They’d serve you well even without the bonus of six months’ extra pay I’ve offered them to bring you both back out again safely. Six months’ pay! Enough to buy them a rifle or a bride. They’ll take good care of you!’ He paused. ‘And I had another reason for choosing this pair. They both have brothers in the unit.’