laden with gossip to weary the ears of women, and have no knowledge, no conclusion, nothing, nothing, nothing, of interest for your Emperor?’
Just at that moment, a hammer struck on metal, somewhere, three rooms away, and the court, with thanks, admitted silently that it had nothing to say about the Sikhs. In a moment, more food came in, borne at shoulder height; it was ceremonial food, and everyone gratefully arranged themselves around it. No one was hungry; everybody ate. It was easiest.
2.
‘We need to know about the English,’ Dost Mohammed said.
The English? It was an unspoken question around the court. These abrupt changes of subject were familiar in the inner chambers of the Bala Hissar; the court took them as they took the vapid maxims of the mullahs. They demonstrated the workings of a profound mind. When a mullah emerged from deep thought to pronounce that Life is a dream, and therefore, a dream is life, he commanded a general flaccid assent. No one would contradict him, not knowing what thoughts had led to a conclusion so perfectly meaningless. Talking to the Amir was rather like that, except that the workings of his mind usually emerged in the end. His brief peremptory comments could be difficult to link, since they were only fragments of a brilliant, involved, silent analysis of a large subject. But the court fell silent when he made these remarks, and observed the Amir, eyes lowered, in respect.
‘We need to know about the English,’ the Amir said again. ‘So send a boy down to the spy.’
The spy? The Mir Wa’iz went so far as to cast a gaze at the Newab Jubbur Khan, raising an eyebrow; perhaps the Newab would know what his brother the Amir’s intentions were. The Newab’s inscrutable way with a fistful of lamb, however, was most likely due to bafflement. Naturally the Newab would not want to admit that he, too, had no idea. But in a moment the Amir took pity on them.
‘We can hardly talk to the English about their ambitions,’ the Amir said. ‘And we will not talk to the Sikhs, to find out who is the tool of whom, like the tale of the monkey on the elephant’s back. But we seem to have a spy here. Very badly disguised, and he has made no attempt to come and speak to Us, so – a stinking spy it is. Gentlemen!’ The Amir clapped his hands, three times. His voice had shrunk to a whisper, and the noise in the bare throne room was explosive as gunshot. The gentlemen of the court came running at the handclaps, like birds magically called back to a branch. ‘Take this away. No food is required.’
The court froze, mid-chew; it was the grossest breach of etiquette to eat while the Amir had refused food, and they were left, suddenly, with cheek pouches full of meat, to swallow slowly without any evidence of chewing.
‘Send a boy down to him. Does he like boys? Not a commonplace boy, a boy of parts. Does he like boys?’ The Amir, now, was businesslike.
‘Yes, Pearl of the Age.’
‘Have one sent. Not too young. A remarkable boy. We will wish to talk to him afterwards. How old are your sons, Khushhal? How old is the most beautiful of them?’
The least of the nobles, called forward suddenly from the back of the crowd, twitched, terrified, at this direct appeal. His betters parted, let him through, gazed at him with solemn disbelief. He stuttered, nervously, unprepared.
‘In my eyes, Pearl of the Age—’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Amir interrupted. ‘Yes, very estimable, Prince. You know the son I mean.’
‘Hasan is seventeen, Pearl.’ Khushhal seemed unaccountably cast down. He had seven sons, the court remembered, or possibly eight.
‘Is he a sensible boy, cousin? Is he worthy?’
‘He is the finest steed in my stable, Amir, and I give him to any task of his lord’s willingly, knowing that he will succeed where many others, where many others—’ Khushhal was losing his way in the stately sentence, ‘—might to their Amir have brought failure and sorrow.’
Dost Mohammed seemed content. ‘Very well, excellent. Make him understand that he may have to do something beyond talking to the English about the Sikhs. Don’t tell him what to do, cousin – it wouldn’t do to shock the English out of countenance. Or out of bed, I mean, Khushhal?’ Everyone laughed at the Amir’s heavy joke, covering their mouths genteelly. ‘You’re certain he likes boys, the English spy?’
‘Yes, Pearl of the Age, quite sure.’
‘Well, let us see. Is it Friday?’
‘Friday, Amir,’ Khushhal said, overstepping himself. The Vizier had been trembling at the Amir’s coat-sleeves to make this announcement.
‘Have the people come to see Us?’
‘Naturally, Imperial One,’ the Vizier leapt in, urgent with his own grandeur.
‘Well, show them in. No, no, no more food.’
3.
Friday was, by decision of the Amir, set aside for any citizen of Kabul with a grievance to come and set it before the court. It was Dost Mohammed’s invention. None of his predecessors had carried out such a practice, as the scandalized nobility had muttered among themselves when it had become apparent that the young Sirdar – as he then was – was perfectly serious in proposing that any man at all might come and wear the court’s patience into rags with his trivial complaints. Only the Mir Wa’iz, however, had the nerve, as a licensed idiot whom Dost Mohammed liked to contradict, to say bluntly, ‘But no Amir before you, Lord of the Wind, has ever suggested such a thing.’
Dost Mohammed was ready for that, and reminded the court, and, particularly, the Mir Wa’iz (taking his sleeve firmly between thumb and forefinger and drawing the mullah’s face terrifyingly close to his own) that, although none of his predecessors had found it necessary to hold a weekly plebeian durbar, every single one of them had met a violent end. An end (beheading, hanging, dismemberment, crushing, and blowing into bits with gunpowder) which, the court would do well to remember, had invariably been meted out to the intimates of the Amir concerned at the same time. The court had swallowed, as one. All at once, precedent and the habitual practice of the court had seemed a much less important thing.
‘Remember,’ Dost Mohammed had said, exercising his imperial prerogative of a broad open unshielded smile, ‘it is only five hours, every Friday, a short afternoon of boredom for you, and my chance to speak to anyone who wishes to speak to me. And, in return, you probably won’t be murdered in the bazaar. Who knows? You might even come to be loved as much as Us.’
The court had swallowed again. Five hours! At most, they had envisaged one carefully selected and clean old man, allowed to sit at the far end of the throne room and abase himself for – surely ten minutes would be enough?
But the Amir had been in deadly earnest, and no one found it much consolation to go on thinking of the grim fates of various long-gone Amirs. Frankly, Khushhal for one sometimes thought, after an hour or two standing stiffly behind the mildly nodding Amir while an old man went on and on about his problems, a quick and merciful death might not be such a bad thing. Nor was it the smallest consolation that the Amir himself hardly seemed to look forward to these occasions with enthusiasm. Certainly, the court had suffered enough, and none of them would venture the slightest expression of sympathy at what had now become an official duty.
‘Well, well, show them in,’ the Amir said.
