CHAPTER XXIII.

DENZIL A NAWAB.

When consciousness came back to Denzil he found himself alone--alone with the dead. He knew not what time had elapsed since he had been struck down by the treacherous wretch whose life he had sought to save; and no vestige of the retreating troops remained, save those whose bodies dotted all the wintry waste. Angrily and sadly the rising wind howled from the mountain pass, blowing before it over the frozen snow the long leaves of the coss, or dead grass, the fir cones and pistachio nuts from the thickets close by; and some of these cones, that fall from the jelgoozeh, or mountain pine, are larger than artichokes. The dark and tortuous pass had apparently swallowed all his comrades; yet through it now his way must lie, and, staggering up, he strove to follow the blood-stained track; but the landscape, the mountains, the abandoned cannon, dead horses, camels, and bodies of soldiers, of the Hindoo dhooley-wallahs, and of many women, seemed all to whirl round him, and he nearly fell on the snow once more. Benumbed as he was, stiff and cold in every limb, with a dull crushing sense of pain in the back region of his head, from which the blood, now crusted and frozen, had flowed freely, he felt that he could only remain there and wait for death or succour, the former too surely, for already the gloom of evening seemed to be setting over the mountains, and he looked about him wildly and despairingly.

He had been in love, and had lost hope; but he was in love yet, and had lost his mistress, which was sadder still, and was now likely to lose his life.

The bodies of several men of his company lay near, all mostly in attitudes expressive of the agony in which they had expired, with their wan and ghastly faces turned to the winter sky; but the body of General Trecarrel was gone; at least, he could nowhere see it. Had Polwhele and Sergeant Treherne succeeded in removing it? If so, why was he left to his wretched fate? Or had a wolf--but that idea was too repugnant, and he shrunk from it.

An European woman, young and pretty, in her night-dress (as many ladies were who left the cantonments in litters), lay half in and half out of a dhooley, from the bed within which she had apparently been escaping when overtaken, and the snow was falling alike on her white bare breast and the pale face of the little babe she had been in the act of nourishing when the bullet of some relentless Ghilzie had slain her; so her child must have soon followed. It was a piteous sight; and let those who have seen death amid all the hushed solemnity of a sick chamber in a land of peace imagine such a scene as this, and death under auspices so horrible and revolting.

Though sick and feeble, Denzil contrived to draw the dhooley a little way from the body of its late occupant, and crept within it for warmth. Prior to doing so, on seeing near him the Queen's colour of the 44th, or East Essex Regiment, lying in the hands of a dead ensign, he tore it from the staff and wrapped it over his poshteen, as an additional garment, and with a soldier's natural desire to save so important a trophy from the enemy. To this trifling circumstance, as it eventually proved, he owed his life; and there he lay in a species of stupor, neither quite asleep nor quite awake.

Ere long the hungry vultures began to alight upon the bodies in the snow, and one, after flapping its dusky wings on the roof of the dhooley, actually perched upon his breast; but on receiving a blow from his hand, it fled with an angry croak. Denzil was now thoroughly aroused, and his action would seem to have been observed, for twelve Afghan horsemen who had been scouting near, each with a juzailchee riding _en croupe_ behind him, came cantering up, accompanied by, or rather escorting, Shireen Khan of the Kuzzilbashes, who was mounted, as usual, on a great solemn-looking camel, and armed, among many other weapons, with a formidable lance.

Seeing that Denzil was alive, one of the Kuzzilbashes (a pale-faced and black-bearded fellow, who wore a prodigious red cap, and had dangling at his neck the watch presented to General Trecarrel by Sir John Keane, after Ghuzni) made a thrust with his lance that must have killed him on the spot had not the Khan interposed, and commanded all to spare his life. Instinctively Denzil had drawn his sword, but Shireen said, with a grim smile,

"Sheath your weapon, Kaffir; I, too, wear a sword, but I am an old man now, old by more than thrice your years, and I have learned to know that the sword is but the sickle of death--it destroys much and reaps little."

Denzil thought this moral reflection came somewhat late, but the Khan added--

"Your life shall be spared--_pesh_" (_i.e._, forward), and stroked his beard, which is the silent form of an oath with the Afghans.

The singularity of his costume, the regimental colour of bright yellow silk with its massive gold embroidery, amid which the sphynx was conspicuous, with the mottoes "Badajoz, Salamanca, Bladensburg, Waterloo," and so forth, appeared so remarkable, that the old Kuzzilbash chief conceived, in his simplicity, that he had captured at least a great Nawab or Bahadur of Feringhistan, whose ransom or value as a hostage could not fail to be of importance. Hence, resolving to say nothing of his prize to Mohammed Ackbar Khan, of whose power he had already become jealous, Shireen ordered four juzailchees to alight, sling their rifles, and carry the dhooley with its inmate to the rear, naming some place to which the prisoner was to be conveyed, and they obeyed, but grumbling under their beards that they were only "carrying that which ought to be killed." Moreover, they were not without serious fears that, instead of being a Nawab or lord, Denzil might be a sorcerer, for these sphynxes and gold letters looked necromantic in their sight, and he might possess the power by a word to turn his bearers into yaboos or four black stones.

He remained perfectly passive and, perhaps, indifferent in their hands. His wound had bled profusely, and he was now in that state of extreme prostration which usually succeeds a great loss of blood, when the senses wander, and wild dreams, tangled and incoherent visions, disturb the brain of the sufferer. He felt very heedless of life; but there are times when death seems to avoid those who are so, and who fear him not. In all the misery of his condition he had but one consolation--that Sybil knew nothing of it. As his bearers trod on, he heard them, when occasionally they stumbled against a dead body, burst out into anathemas against the Feringhees, whom they stigmatised as "dogs, devils, sons of Shytan, sons of burnt fathers, and base-born Kaffirs," all of which gave him little hope for his ultimate safety.

The dusk of the January eve was closing in, when, after passing for some miles through a sheltered and well-wooded valley, the sides of which were studded by several castles or bourges, the strongholds of Nawabs and Khans of military tribes, the dhooley-bearers arrived at the arched gateway of the great country residence of the chief of the Kuzzilbashes.

It was, as usual with the Afghans, whose state of society is pretty much what it was among the Scots in the feudal days, a square fort, measuring about a hundred yards each way, with solid wa;ls twenty-five feet in height, and flanked at each corner by a strong half-circular bastion. A fausse-bray and deep ditch surrounded it, the latter being filled by a canal cut from the Cabul river.

The zunah-khaneh, or private dwelling of Shireen and his family, occupied the centre of the great square, and was surrounded by an inner wall or barbican, all loopholed for musketry, while traverses mounted with cannon, guarded the entrances. The devan-kaneh, or hall of audience, through which Denzil was borne, was literally crammed with the plunder gleaned up from the retreating army--bullock trunks filled with wearing apparel, barrack furniture, tents, arm-chests, musical instruments, and utensils of all kinds. It was decorated with much of barbaric splendour, and had its wall on one side composed of carved and gilded wood, wherein were six great panels inscribed with passages from the Koran, amid green and gold arabesques. These opened into apartments beyond, and could be slid up and down at pleasure (like windows in Britain) for the free circulation of air in summer.

Into one of these apartments Denzil was borne, placed on a couch made up chiefly from the bedding that was in the dhooley, and then a hakim came to examine his wound.

Amid all his deep grief, and mortification for past events, he felt himself thankful for a cup of golden coloured mellow Derehnur wine, which the hakim gave to restore his wasted strength; "for it is the law of human nature, that the claims of the living must become a counterpoise to the memory of the dead."

As loss of blood was the chief ailment of Denzil, on his wound being dressed he recovered rapidly, and in three days was able to sit on a kind of divan--for chairs were unknown in that part of the world--at a window, which overlooked a garden and the long wooded valley, at the extreme end of which, and in the dim distance, rose a high, green, conical hill which he recognised, and knew to look down on the plain and city of Cabul. His hakim was experienced enough in the art of dressing bullet holes and sword cuts; but his ideas of physic, beyond a charm written on paper, and washed into a draught, were somewhat perplexing and peculiar; thus he prescribed and proffered various kinds of pills, powders, and potions, from the medicine chests of Doctor Brydone and other medical officers, in the belief that if one thing failed to insure perfect recovery, another might do so.

Denzil knew that he had been spared in the belief that he was a Nawab, and he feared to undeceive his captors as to that circumstance, lest they might kill him after all; while he feared also that if he left them in error, they might detain him for years, or seek to extort some enormous ransom. He knew nothing of the total destruction of the army, or of the existence and retention of other European hostages for the evacuation of Jellalabad. Thus he resolved, as he had no resort but patience, to await the pleasure of Shireen Khan, who was still absent, and hoped that he might find a more powerful, and less avaricious protector in the person of the Shah, of whom our Queen was the friend and ally. Moreover, through his wuzeer Taj Mohammed, some light might yet be thrown upon the fate of the lost Rose Trecarrel.

The Kuzzilbashes, in whose hands he was a prisoner, are a powerful military tribe, who formed exclusively the Royal Guard of Dost Mohammed, and can always, with ease, muster five thousand fighting men. Distinguished by their scarlet caps, they are of Persian descent and form a peculiarly Persian party in Afghanistan, where as being Sheeahs, they remain apart from the other Afghan people (who are bigoted Soonees), and are so exclusive that they have their own quarter of Cabul fortified against all the rest. Hence, though their chief was outwardly, and when it suited his own interest, actually an adherent of Ackbar Khan, he had been secretly and deeply implicated in political intrigues with the late Envoy, whose remains yet hung in the market place.

From the hakim, Denzil learned that one of our officers, named Colonel Palmer,* had been cruelly tortured in the city by having a rope tied round his bare leg, after which it was twisted tight by a tent-peg (like the old French boot), and this made him more than ever anxious to reach the presence of the Shah, who still held the Bala Hissar with a few adherents; the remnant of the Native army we had organised for him under British officers, all of whom, of course, had left him now. From his strange medical attendant he learned also of the old General's surrender, and subsequent death.

* Of the 27th Bengal Infantry.

"Bosh!" added the hakim; "your General Elphinstone, sahib, blew his trumpets and beat his drums before Cabul, like a hen that cackles when she has laid an egg. It was with him, as it is too often with the hen--premature exultation; for as little may become of the egg as has become of his army--for the former, instead of being in time a crowing cock, may become sauce, pillau, or pudding!"

The snow passed rapidly away; the weather became pleasant and warm, and though Denzil saw nothing of the Khan, from his window he could see the ladies of his household in the garden below, where as usual with the upper class of Afghans, they spent much of their time in chatting among the bowers, talking scandal and listening to the songs of an occasional wandering musician, who played the _saringa_, or native guitar. It was once, while sitting listlessly looking into this garden, that Denzil had his hopes of succour from the Shah, crushed for ever.

No ladies appeared that day, but he perceived Shireen Khan, to whom another Kuzzilbash was speaking, gesticulating violently, and as they drew nearer his window, which was on the third, or upper story of the zuna-khaneb, he could overhear their conversation.

The stranger, Zohrab Zubberdust, now a Hazirbash, in the Body Guard of Ackbar Khan, was a handsome but fierce looking young man, with a high aquiline nose, heavy black moustache, and a face of almost European fairness. He had a tall plume in his scarlet cap, which was braided with gold; but, as the hilt of his sword, and the right sleeve of his yellow camise of quilted silk, were thickly spotted with blood, it was evident that he had been concerned in some recent outrage. There was sternness on his brow, a sneering expression on his lips, and a wild glitter in his eyes, as he said in a mocking tone,

"Khan, what mean you by this indignation? Solomon had seven hundred wives, and old Shah Sujah, whom the queen of Feringhistan sought to befriend, had one hundred more, because he deemed himself wiser than Solomon; but with all his wisdom, where is he now?"

"In Cabul."

"No--on the road near Shah Shakeed--dead."

"Dead, say you?"

"Yes; dead as that Solomon of whom I spoke--dead as a dog!" he added savagely.

"What new horror is this?" asked Shireen, starting back.

"Bah," replied the other, adding in the true style of Afghan cant, "there has been nothing new since God put the sun in the firmament, and touched the stars with his fingers to send them through the sky. Everything that is now, has been before, and shall be again."

"Did not the Shah, according to agreement, leave the Bala Hissar to go to Jellalabad?"

"This morning he did so; but it chanced that last night, the son of Zamon Khan placed in ambush fifty of his juzailchees secretly among some wild tamarind trees, and when about the hour of morning prayer, the king's retinue reached the spot, a cry like that of a jackal was heard. It might have been a signal. I do not say it _was_; but oddly enough, the juzailchees rose as one man, and fired a volley. One ball, pierced the Shah's brain, and three his breast, while seven of his soldiers fell dead. Then we rushed on him, and took from his litter the crown, the royal girdle, his sword and dagger, his jewelled robe, and as they could be of no use to him now, we rode off, and laid them at the feet of Ackbar Khan."

"May he who planned this deed be stung by a scorpion of Cashan!" exclaimed Shireen, with great emotion, as he wreathed both hands in his venerable beard; "in all these affairs I ever meant that the life of the Shah should be sacred!"

"Whatever you meant, Khan," replied the other with a mocking smile, "the King of kings ordained otherwise, and Azrael, the angel of death, must be obeyed."

And significantly touching the hilt of his sword, the speaker made a low salaam, quitted the garden, and Denzil saw him no more. Shireen remained for some time sunk in thought.

"And this has been your morning's work, son of Zamon Khan, when I thought that you and your fifty juzailchees were on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Lamech, in the vale of Lughmannee!" he muttered, as he walked slowly away, referring to a white temple which covers what is alleged to be the grave of Noah's father, and is a favourite place of pilgrimage among the Afghans.

Denzil felt alike saddened and depressed on hearing of this unforeseen event; but to it, in some respects, he owed his future safety, and the circumstance that Shireen Khan retained him in his own hands, and did not deliver him to the terrible Ackbar, as from the day of the unfortunate Shah's assassination, the Afghan chiefs were split into two factions--the Kuzzilbashes taking part with one, and the tribes of Cabul and the Kohistanees with another.