The Command Read online

  ‘Are you sure you are comfortable?’ Chand Bibi asked.

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  She smiled at him, and signalled her women, who immediately presented the bowl of couscous. It was given to Chand Bibi first, and she scooped some of the meat and semolina up with her fingers, placing it in her mouth with no more than a flutter of her yashmak. Then she took some more, and held it out to him. ‘I do promise you that it is not poisoned.’

  Murdoch hesitated, then leaned forward, and her fingers entered his mouth with the food. Almost he thought he could taste her flesh. Could she really have castrated a living man with those fingers? It was not possible. Or was he being incredibly naive? His problem was that he had always been a romantic. If he had not seen life in those terms he would not have collected the medals and the reputation he had. He sought adventure, and had done all his life. To attempt to change now would be to negate everything he was.

  The fingers were back, offering more food to his mouth, and he sucked them. Now the princess laughed, a low gurgle in her throat. And he waited for the next mouthful. Neither of them spoke while they ate. But at last she rinsed her hands in a little dish of scented water.

  ‘There are sweetmeats,’ she said. ‘But shall we digest a little, first? Here is lemonade.’ She filled the gilt goblets herself, held one to his lips. ‘It is a long time since I have played the handmaiden to so renowned a soldier,’ she remarked.

  Murdoch for the first time realized that the other women had left the tent, and they were alone.

  ‘How long will it take us to reach Basra?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh...a week, perhaps.’

  ‘Then we will have the time to get to know each other.’

  ‘It won’t work, princess.’

  ‘What will not work, Colonel?’

  ‘I meant, you will not get me to change my mind about placing you under arrest.’

  ‘But you have already placed me under arrest. I would not expect you to change your mind now. Is it criminal for me to enjoy the company of an attractive man?’

  ‘Nor will I be able to help you in any way, once you have been handed to the authorities.’

  ‘I am not thinking of the future, Colonel. I am enjoying the present. Can you not do the same? Just for an hour?’

  Murdoch hesitated, then smiled. ‘I am being a little stiff, I suppose. You have been accused of something quite horrible.’

  ‘We should not discuss that either, as I can only protest my innocence. Do you really suppose I look like a woman who would do something like that?’

  Murdoch drew a long breath. ‘I do not know what you look like, princess.’

  Chand Bibi regarded him thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then she reached up and released one side of her yashmak. It fell down to her left shoulder, and Murdoch gazed at perhaps the most flawless face he had ever seen. The high forehead and wide-set black eyes had already entranced him. Now he looked at a straight, slightly long nose, but without any kind of hook, a wide, smiling mouth, and a pointed chin, the whole encased in that pale brown skin which he had noted on her feet.

  Chand Bibi gave another of her throaty laughs at his obvious admiration, and then shrugged the haik from her head, to reveal the long, straight black hair. She continued to gaze at him, and her tongue came out, for just an instant, pink and healthy, before retreating again. ‘I think you are handsome, too,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Well...’ he was sweating with desire — for a cold-blooded murderess? But he did not know that. Well, then, with a traditional enemy of his race? But that surely did not have to be. What did have to be was a rapid escape from this tent. ‘I must be getting back to my men.’

  ‘You have not yet had your dessert.’

  ‘I must return in an hour.’

  ‘There is yet time,’ Chand Bibi said. ‘Are you afraid of me?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. ‘Suppose I give you my word that I will never harm you, Colonel Mackinder?’

  ‘Then I should be reassured. But I must still leave.’ He stood up.

  She rose also. ‘I am sorry. I would like to be your friend. I would like to be your lover.’

  ‘My...my dear young lady, you shouldn’t say things like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘You will not take advantage of it. You are an officer and a gentleman.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘That is an awful waste.’

  Murdoch held out his hand. ‘It has been a great pleasure.’

  She squeezed his fingers. ‘And you will remember me, eh? But not enough. Suppose, just suppose, there is no justice in the British courts, and I am condemned for murder. What will happen to me?’

  ‘Oh. Ah...I’m afraid they will probably hang you.’

  She released him, and her hands went up to clasp her neck. ‘That would be horrible. Will you come to watch me die?’

  ‘Good lord, no. And it is unlikely to happen. If, as you say, you are innocent.’

  ‘Of course.’ She gave another throaty laugh. ‘I hope we may meet again one day, Colonel Mackinder. I should enjoy that.’ She stood against him and kissed him on the mouth, took his right hand and placed it on her breast. He realized she wore nothing beneath the haik, and the breast was the most heavenly he might ever have touched. Before he could stop himself his other arm had gone round her, and he was crushing her against him. All manner of thoughts raced through his mind, but principally that Lee had given him permission...to sleep with a cold-blooded murderess?

  He let her go and stepped back, turned and left the tent. Behind him he heard a low, husky laugh.

  *

  Murdoch realized he had all but been vamped. But that made him the more determined to keep her under wraps until they reached Basra. He called in Sergeant Matheson, had him place a sentry inside the tent.

  Chand Bibi raised no objection. ‘He can amuse himself with my ladies,’ she said, and retired to the inner chamber.

  Murdoch had two more sentries placed outside the tent as well, to patrol all night. ‘Operate in two-hour spells,’ he told Matheson. ‘You’ll be relieved at dawn.’

  He returned to camp to face a very inquisitive Prendergast. ‘All I can say is, if she did cut up any of our men, they probably died happy,’ Murdoch grunted. And then saw the expression on Billy’s face. ‘Sorry, macabre joke. But it’s damn near impossible to feel she’s guilty. Although I intend her to stand trial.’

  Prendergast was reassured, but Murdoch himself hardly slept. The princess’s image floated before his eyes, the feel of her lips on his, her scent, her fingers in his mouth, her laugh...He could not ever remember having wanted a woman so badly before. That was the heat and the desert and the separation from Lee, he knew. But it was also the princess’s beauty and allure. He must make sure not to allow himself to be alone with her again.

  He was awakened almost the moment he fell asleep, by a huge noise from the caravan. He leapt out of bed, dragged on his clothes. ‘Sound the alarm,’ he snapped at Reynolds and ran outside, revolver in his hand.

  The regiment was already turning out to the notes of the bugle, but no shots had as yet been fired — the troopers were all veterans and trained not to shoot except at a target. Murdoch gathered several of them and made his way across to the caravan, where there was still a great deal of noise, women screaming, men shouting, English voices protesting.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Murdoch demanded of Matheson.

  Who looked extremely embarrassed. ‘Trooper Clarke...well sir...’

  Murdoch looked at Clarke, whose clothes were disarranged and who looked even more embarrassed. Behind him were several of the princess’s women, shouting and gesticulating. One of them had lost her yashmak and her haik and like her mistress wore absolutely nothing underneath.

  ‘For God’s sake...Mulai,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell are these women complaining about? And why is that girl undressed?’

  Mulai shouted at the women, and they somewhat calmed down. Then th
e guide turned back to Murdoch. ‘They accuse this soldier of rape, effendi.’

  ‘Rape? Clarke?’

  ‘I never laid a finger on her,’ Clarke protested. ‘I swear, sir.’

  Murdoch looked at the girl again. ‘Get some clothes on her,’ he snapped. ‘So how did she get undressed?’

  ‘Well...’ Clarke hung his head. ‘I was on duty inside the tent, sir. And...I must have nodded off. Just for a second, sir. Next thing I knew this bint was in my arms, naked as the day she was born, sir, cuddling and squirming and pulling at my clothing. But the moment I woke up she started screaming fit to wake the dead.’

  ‘Yes. All right. You are on a charge for falling asleep. From now on, Matheson, you’ll have two men inside the tent. All right, get back to your duties.

  ‘I suppose it was my fault for only putting one man at a time in there. Seems Chand Bibi’s ladies are about as amoral as their mistress,’ he said to Prendergast, who had appeared.

  ‘It’s a wonder all the hubbub didn’t wake her up,’ Prendergast remarked.

  ‘Oh, Holy Jesus Christ!’ Murdoch turned back, pulled open the tent flap, gazed inside. The outer chamber was empty, the women having all left it during the excitement. ‘Come with me,’ he told Prendergast, and opened the inner silken doorway. He gazed at a pile of cushions on a thick carpet, and inhaled Chand Bibi’s scent. But of the princess there was no sign. And there was a slit in the back wall of the canvas.

  *

  Murdoch dashed outside, looked left and right. ‘Find her,’ he snapped. ‘She can’t have gone far.’

  His men swarmed over the encampment, while the Arabs stared at them in wonder. But there was no sign of her. He sent a rider out to alert Manly-Smith’s troop, and then they began a systematic scouring of the ground outside the encampment. But again there was no sign of her.

  ‘A woman, alone,’ Prendergast grumbled.

  ‘This area is so broken up with wadis and pits she could be anywhere,’ Ramage said. ‘Maybe at dawn...’

  ‘By dawn she’ll be miles away,’ Murdoch said. ‘She was brought up on the North West Frontier. God damn.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll die in the desert,’ Lowndes suggested.

  ‘She won’t do that, either,’ Murdoch said. ‘She’s too close to the river. Well, we aren’t doing any good right now. If Manly-Smith’s men don’t get her, she’s made it.’

  They went back to the encampment.

  ‘Maybe it’s all for the good,’ Prendergast said. ‘It’d have been a shame for her to hang.’

  Murdoch did not feel like meeting Morton’s eye, next morning, when he finally called off the hunt.

  *

  General Maude agreed with Prendergast. ‘Frankly, I’m rather glad you didn’t bring her in, Mackinder. We would have had to put her on trial, and God knows what would have happened. Right now we need the support of all India, including people like the Mahsuds. It wouldn’t have helped us to put one of their young princesses on trial for murder, even if she deserved it.’

  ‘It’s not just that, sir,’ Murdoch said. ‘It was the feeling that she hoodwinked me...’

  ‘Happens to us all, from time to time.’

  ‘And that she was also a spy, all the time. Who now knows we’re a long way from ready to march on Kut.’

  ‘The Turks would have found that out anyway, soon enough. For God’s sake stop worrying about it. One little Indian girl isn’t worth a damn in this situation.’

  Murdoch knew he was right. He knew that the real trouble was that kiss, and those few magic moments when all things had been possible. ‘I would like to make love to you,’ she had said. And he had been up like a ramrod. God, he should have known better. Now it was doubly important to forget her.

  But it was difficult to do that. Only a month later, news arrived that Kut had surrendered.

  Chapter Four: Mesopotamia 1916-17

  ‘Well, that at least ends the need for haste,’ Maude told his officers. ‘When we move, we shall move in strength, and we shall beat those fellows out of sight. Our duty now is vengeance.’

  He was of course bitterly disappointed, and chagrined that Townshend could not have held out just a little while longer. Townshend’s military reputation had rested to a large extent on the magnificent defence he had made of Chitral on the North West Frontier in 1895, against overwhelming odds. No one had doubted that he would defend Kut to the last possible moment, and his decision was a stunning blow. His action was to a certain extent explained when news came down the river of cholera amongst both the British and Turkish forces — General van der Goltz had even died of it, and been succeeded by a Turkish emir, Halil Pasha. But none of this altered the fact that British arms had suffered a defeat of the first magnitude.

  It was a grim year on every count. In France the Germans had already launched an all-out attack upon the fortress of Verdun, which the French were defending with frenzied determination. But at least they were holding. In June, just a month after Townshend’s surrender, three tremendous blows were struck at British morale throughout the world. First news was received that the long-awaited clash between the Grand Fleet of Admiral Jellicoe and the German High Seas Fleet of Admiral Scheer had at last taken place, in the North Sea. And the Royal Navy had failed to win. Some even said they had lost, because they had suffered twice as many casualties, in ships and men, as the Germans. The mere fact that the force which Nelson had made the greatest in the world had been unable to annihilate their enemy was distressing enough.

  Hardly had this been digested when word came that Lord Kitchener was dead, drowned at sea when the cruiser Hampshire, on which he had been travelling to Murmansk to confer with the Russians, had struck a mine. From a personal point of view, Murdoch learned of this tragedy with mixed feelings. He and Kitchener had never got on. But that it was another blow for the country could not be doubted.

  Then at the end of the month the British launched an offensive on the Somme, to take some of the pressure off their French comrades at Verdun. It was the greatest British assault of the war, and it was a disastrous failure, with some sixty thousand casualties on the very first day — nineteen thousand of them dead. This brought about the fall of the Government and its replacement with a coalition led by Lloyd George, while Murdoch and his officers gazed at each other in horror when they read the figures. But now distress was tempered by guilt. They should have been there, fighting and suffering with their old comrades; General Allenby, their erstwhile commander, had actually led one of the British armies into the battle. Instead of which the dragoons were lolling about Basra, trying to keep fit, carrying out futile reconnaissance raids which accomplished nothing: the Turks were well satisfied with their great victory at Kut, and had no desire to advance on Basra.

  For Murdoch it was a doubly difficult year as he brooded on Chand Bibi. If he told himself over and over again that her escape should have had no effect on Townshend’s objective decision to surrender, given his circumstances, the knowledge that the British would not be launching a rescue operation for some time could not have helped but discourage the defenders.

  But there was more than that. He did not know whether she had escaped simply because she was a Turkish spy — in which case she would surely have done better to have gone to Basra and seen the British situation for herself, relying on being able to get a message back up the river to her employers — or if she had been forced to escape because she had known that once in Basra she would be hanged. He had not let himself entirely believe Johnnie Morton, had been content to leave that to the courts. But if Johnnie had been right...he had held in his arms and kissed a demon from the pit of hell. A woman who had murdered men of his own regiment.

  No one in the world knew of that kiss, save only Chand Bibi herself. Or of the temptation which had accompanied it. But he would remember it for the rest of his life.

  His letters to Lee were more than usually loving. To her joy, judging by the replies he received. But it was something she should never kn
ow, just as she did not know the truth about Margriet von Reger and the Somali girl, Mulein. Because Mulein’s face also kept cropping up in front of him. Mulein had also been a devil from hell...and he had plunged his sword through her heart. Chand Bibi he had kissed and held in his arms.

  The desire for action burning inside him was so intense he had to use all his self-control to stop himself leading the regiment right into the Turkish lines on their own, to slash and cut and thrust and expiate some of the guilt which obsessed him. Close friends like Peter Ramage and Billy Prendergast, no less than George Reynolds, were deeply concerned, and not knowing the truth of the matter, worried that he was suffering from the heat or some lurking illness. Johnnie Morton perhaps suspected more than most, but as a trooper kept his own council. He steadfastly refused all offers of promotion, however, even to corporal. No doubt he looked forward to settling with Chand Bibi in his own way, one day.

  And still the year dragged on, while more and more troops, most of them Indian but a good proportion of British and Australian as well, landed at Basra and helped to swell the huge encampment outside the town. The presence of so many soldiers complicated both the health and social problems, but Maude was determined to make it, as he put it, a once and for all victory, and he was not prepared to begin his advance until he was sure nothing would stop him short of Baghdad.

  The final straw, for Murdoch, was a letter he received at the beginning of December, via Bombay, but mailed in Peshawar:

  Dear Colonel Mackinder,

  You may be distressed to learn that I have safely regained the house of my father. It has taken me a long time, and some of the journeying was uncomfortable, but never so uncomfortable as that night I spent on the banks of the Tigris, huddled in a hole, while your dragoons trampled all about me, and even on me, more than once, without suspecting my presence. My discomfort was intense, as I suffered from both hunger and thirst, apart from heat, until you had taken your men away. But I survived.

  You may obviously feel that my escape was a form of confession, that I am indeed guilty of the deeds of which your soldier accused me. I, on the other hand, cannot regard anything I have ever done as a crime. When I was a little girl my father made me swear eternal hatred for the British. Your soldiers, led sometimes by your own father, have time and again invaded my homeland, spreading death and destruction. My people, and I, have fought back as best we are able. But we are few, and ill-armed. You are many, and strong. We can but fight, and make those of our enemies who fall into our hands suffer for their crimes against us.