first horseman said. ‘It is time to go. Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ Burnes said. ‘Yes, we are ready.’
They set off, their guard not dismounting but hemming them in between the horses’ high flanks. The horses walked with such stately gravity that at one moment, one of them could not bear the tenseness of the slow walk and wheeled abruptly off, circling like a hawk in the street before the rider brought the beast back. There could have been something brutal, a blunt assertion of power, in their making the party walk between the horses, like tethered slaves. They may have felt this – Gerard certainly felt this, to judge by his clenched-buttock stride, now the result of his august pride as much as his fluid bowels – but Burnes couldn’t feel any outrage in himself at this treatment. Rather, he felt, in his glittering exotic clothes, dress uniform draped splendidly with the heavy red court robes, like a pilgrim. An unworthy pilgrim, walking humbly up the hill to the great sawn-off blunt rock, the palace, the Bala Hissar, in the middle of which vast plain mass sat the Amir. Up there was the Emperor, politely patient, waiting; you could feel his calm wait here, walking the street between their mounted companions. And the mounted companions, too, seemed quiet, subdued by the Emperor’s patient quiet. What splendour was up there, Burnes could not tell; but he felt that there would be none. This city, plain-dressed, the high clean air given its florid perfume by the fruit trees, wasn’t ruled by some fabulous potentate; he could feel it. No cushion-fleshed tyrant in a pile of rubies sat up there, watching them approach; just a mind.
As they walked through the narrow mud streets, they were given a thorough inspection. The children came to the windows, and stood, staring; shadows, in the upstairs shuttered windows, showed them that the women of the city, too, were curious. The shops in the bazaar were opening, and, behind the piles of fruit, of bags of spice, the merchants and customers, sitting in the early sun, followed the procession with humorous open eyes. Over the city, the Bala Hissar, a great shapeless piece of power, and they walked the streets, not responding to the keen attention of the city.
They walked on, not speaking to each other or their guards. Occasionally, over their heads, one of the horsemen would call out to another, or to someone in the street. They called out in Pushto, and each time Gerard, walking by Burnes’s side, stiffened, knowing that they didn’t want to be understood. Burnes worked on his patience; if Gerard could be kept from speaking at least until his easily-ignited fury had died down, that would make things a great deal easier. After they had run the gauntlet of the bazaar, the houses seemed to drop away. The hill of the Bala Hissar itself was bare, clear for a siege.
This last stretch, as the road turned upwards, seemed to divide and stretch before them, and it seemed to Burnes, as the Bala Hissar receded from them, that this was the road in the paradox; that with each step, the road doubled in length, that each step grew smaller and more painful, and the great fortress would never be reached, as they laboured at its gates, endlessly. But it was mere minutes before they were there at the open gates, and their escort turned, at some unseen signal, and rode off, calling to each other, now, in Persian.
8.
A small man ran up to them and beckoned quickly with his two hands, scowling. He seemed alone, and they followed him into the big square court of the palace. It was quite empty, and they walked briskly across it into another opening, the doors swinging open. Two boys were lounging there, each with a jezail slung across his back, each turbanned massively, and they made some side-to-side swing of the head, acknowledging not them, but their little guide. He gestured and beckoned continuously, and they followed him into another hall, where a group of more soldierly youth stood, waiting, and then into another. As they walked through the rooms of the palace, they acquired some kind of attendance behind them, the boys forming a chattering guard behind them, and all the time the little man, dancing, beckoning, in front of them. They walked through one room after another, the heavy blunt-carved dark wood doors opening weightily, and in every room there was almost no furniture, almost nothing, just plain plaster walls, the narrow windows of a palace in a country which knew all about heat, and about cold. Abruptly, they all fell silent, and at a circling gesture from their guide, stopped. The guide looked them over, critically, as if for the first time, and, with a circling gesture, stirring something in the air, a half-smile, a nod at the guards at the door, conveyed somehow that here they were. The doors were brought open and their guards fell back behind them, as they walked, in an awe they tried to subdue, into the great hall of the Amir. And there he was.
The hall was bare, long and square, with a single step at the end rising to a modest platform. There was nothing in the room except a huge Turkey carpet, rich and deep as rubies. At the far end of the hall, perched on the edge of the step, sat the Amir. A group of courtiers and mullahs, ten or twelve, stood behind him; the courtiers wore swords dangling from their kummur-bund. As they entered, the group seemed to stiffen, and drew back, forming a little fan around the Amir, who did not rise. They bowed deeply from the far end of the hall, rose very slowly, and walked forward. Every five paces, they stopped and bowed again, an obeisance returned with a tiny benevolent craning of the neck by the Amir. It wasn’t a court ceremonial; just a ritual concocted to show the greatest possible deference, which, it was hoped, the Amir would take as some court ritual of Europe. Finally, at ten paces from the Amir, they dropped to their knees and bowed their heads very slowly to the floor, counted to five, as agreed, and raised them again.
The Amir was smiling. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said. He was a sharp-featured man, a scimitar of a nose scything through his beautiful humorous face, and his big dark eyes danced, curious or amused, from one to another. His robes were plain, and, like the earth, a dozen shades of brown, and wrapped around his body as he sat, cross-legged, on the edge of the step. By his side, the nobles looked savage, graceless, bundled like washing. He gave a small bow from the neck, not in humility but, as it were, cueing Burnes to speak.
‘Emperor,’ Burnes began. ‘Lord of the distant horizon, Emperor of the wind, King of the Afghans, Heir of Israel …’
That was not quite right. He continued.
‘Heir of Israel, we come to offer you the shade of our friendship. May the shade of our friendship always offer you rest and solace, may the waters of the love between our empires never run dry.’
‘May the song of the nightingale always bless your counsels,’ the Amir returned, ‘and may the wise horses of your empire bear you without tiring to your last home. Sit down, sit down.’
Burnes, Gerard and Mohan Lal awkwardly forced themselves into a cross-legged posture; a painful business in high-topped boots.
‘Greetings, Sikunder Burnes,’ the Amir said. ‘Your name is auspicious.’
An old and now familiar joke, from much repetition. Memories were long here, and every single Afghan, on hearing Burnes’s name, had asked him if he were Alexander the Great, come to rob the country again. It had seemed unfortunate; now, he had come to see it was just their sense of humour. ‘There is nothing, thank God, I share with the Greek Alexander, and come not to plunder your kingdom, but in all respect.’
The nobles, teetering with nervously thrilled anxiety, now gave way to a general giggling, stopped with one quick sideways jerk of the Amir’s head. Behind him, the two pairs of double doors, one on either side of the throne room, were half opened; it had clearly been a great honour that, on their entry into the Bala Hissar, the double doors were all opened. Out of the doors came now a procession of cooks, bearing great dishes of heavy beaten silver, starting with a whole steaming lamb, lying on its back with its legs pathetically upwards in a sea of steaming spinach. It was, Burnes estimated, ten o’clock in the morning, and Gerard was tensing at the sight.
‘How many kings are there in Europe?’ Dost Mohammed suddenly asked. ‘And Napoleon, is he still King in Europe?’
