Barbara Cleverly - The Damascened Blade

‘The report will take some time,’ said Iskander, ‘probably the whole of the rest of the morning as I shall write it out in two languages. This afternoon I have arranged for my men to bury Zeman. There is, Commander Lindsay tells me, a small Muslim burial ground between here and the river, the remains, I understand, of the village which was razed to the ground to make way for the building of this fort. It will be entirely suitable to lay him to rest there. I think we must put off until tomorrow our return with Dr Holbrook to Kabul. Perhaps you would be so good, Sandilands, as to inform her of our change in plan and ask her to be ready to move off immediately after breakfast?’

Joe murmured his readiness to do this. Lily, obviously hunting for some way of establishing contact with him and finding nothing better said, ‘Tea? I’ll have some tea sent to you, Iskander.’

To Joe’s surprise he turned to her and gave her a smile full of grace and humour. ‘You are kindness itself, Miss Coblenz. I should be very grateful for tea.’

Iskander was grateful for tea three times in as many hours and all delivered personally to the library by Lily.

‘What are you up to, Lily?’ Joe asked impatiently, finding her coming for the third time from the library.

‘Just keeping an eye on suspect number one,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, Joe. He’s just doing what he said he would do. It’s taking a long time and there’s a lot of pen chewing going on. But I think I was pretty helpful. You do spell “autopsy” with an “s”, don’t you?’

She continued to keep him under her eye during the afternoon but from the distance of the wall of the fort. Joe joined her to watch the funeral unobtrusively. With distaste his eye took in the bleak Islamic cemetery, rocky and forbidding on a flat plain between two folds of unrelenting hillside, perpetually shaped and honed by the endless, searing wind. An empty plain covered with forgotten memorial stones on end. Memorial stones of all ages, some new, some hundreds of years old, some straight and true, others undermined by the wind and leaning drunkenly.

‘What a place to await eternity!’ thought Joe and his mind fled to England, to peaceful and ordered headstones, soft, dark earth, here and there a self-sown blossom tree, healing rain and caressive wind. To a Surrey churchyard: ‘The Rev. Simon Graham, who departed this life… ’ ‘Dora, beloved wife of the above, who fell asleep… ’ ‘Benjamin Elliott, aged six months, asleep in the arms of Jesus… ’ According to legend they waited in joyful hope for their resurrection but who, in this horrible place, would wait in joyful hope – or hope of any sort? He looked at the shallow grave prepared for Zeman and remembered the style of that subtle and perhaps even romantic figure and, for a moment, Joe grieved for him. ‘I’d sooner be working with him than consigning him to this bleak and unforgiving stone yard!’

He cheered himself with the thought that warriors of Zeman’s religion were guaranteed eternal felicity in the arms of timeless houris and hoped it might be true. He said a silent prayer to any god who was listening and noticed that Lily also, head bent, was lost in thought or prayer.

Following the funeral, a very brief affair, the Afghanis returned and to Joe’s surprise Iskander approached James with the suggestion that some of his off-duty Scouts might be persuaded to teach the game of cricket to his men.

‘Of course,’ James replied. ‘There is in fact a game scheduled for this afternoon for your entertainment but I had wondered whether to cancel it in view of the sad event of last night. Your men are very welcome to watch and get the hang of the game and afterwards I’m sure the Scouts would be delighted to coach your chaps. That is if they are not too downcast by the death of their commander. I would quite understand if you thought they might prefer to spend the afternoon in quiet thought and contemplation.’

Iskander raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘These are hand-picked warriors as I’m sure you have noticed – a corps d’élite. They do not sit about quietly contemplating the sudden death of their commander. If they had some new activity, a competitive game to master, I think it would take their minds off the present sadness. And never forget, Major, that funeral games have a very long tradition! When our ancestor, Alexander the Great, passed through these hills two thousand years ago, his Greek soldiers would have done exactly the same to honour the dead.’

Joe was both impressed and amused by Iskander’s practical approach to leadership and settled down on the walls with Lily to watch the entertainment. They were joined by Eddy Fraser.

‘Not playing, Eddy?’ Joe enquired and Eddy held up a bandaged hand.

‘Stopped a lustful on-drive at short leg,’ he replied. ‘Are you interested in cricket, Miss Coblenz?’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Lily. ‘Never watched it in my life, though I have a dim memory that it has to do with the winning of the Battle of Waterloo – or have I got it wrong?’

‘It’s taken very seriously in these parts,’ said Eddy, not at all taken in by her sly humour. ‘We recruit from the Afridi and the Mahsuds who do most things in friendly, well fairly friendly, rivalry and here they are confronting each other on the cricket field. I would have cancelled this but James’s orders are “business as usual”. It generates a great deal of heat between the two tribes.’

‘Here we are,’ said Joe, ‘in the middle of nowhere and two cricket teams turn out who might be playing in England to all appearances!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Eddy. ‘This is serious stuff! Everybody in whites, everybody in cricket boots, stripy silk scarves round their waists! We have a little recreation fund which we milked to provide everybody with the appropriate kit. If you get into the eleven, you get the clothes to go with it. Bobby Carstairs – there he is – captains one side and Mike Burgoyne the other. I play when I can, so does James. I made forty last week but the men are developing at such a pace that I’m far from confident of my place in the side.’

‘I’m shaking with excitement,’ said Lily, drily. ‘Can’t you see? But you’ll have to explain to me what’s happening. It’s kind of like baseball, I expect, but I don’t know anything about baseball either.’

‘No reason why you should,’ said Eddy. ‘Both English games.’

‘My!’ said Lily. ‘Both English games! I don’t believe anybody in the States knows that.’

‘Probably wouldn’t believe you if you told them,’ said Eddy.

A Pathan and a Scouts officer tossed a coin together and took opposite ends as umpires. The opening pair made their way to the crease and the game began.

‘If I shut my eyes,’ Joe thought, ‘this could almost be any English village green on a Sunday afternoon. If I open my eyes, on the other hand, what do I see? A pitiless blue sky, sun shining down that would fry an egg, the boundary line packed with vociferous turbaned figures, wild applause and even a blast on the bagpipes after every ball!’

With shrill applause in which Lily joined, the game wound its way onwards. The Afridis were all out for ninety-eight and Bobby Carstairs hit a winning six amid boos and hisses from half the spectators and cheers from the other half. The Afghanis invaded the pitch. They’d evidently decided amongst themselves to take a ball each and pass the bat from hand to hand with the applause and encouragement of the watching Scouts.

‘They are damned odd,’ said Eddy. ‘Just watching them you’d say – natural cricketers. They’ve been doing this for all of ten minutes and they’re showing more skill than your average county side!’

‘Politically,’ said Joe, ‘it wouldn’t be a bad idea if they carried this back to Kabul but I’m not sure that Afghans would qualify either by birth or residence to play for All India.’