Free A Beggar at the Gate by Thalassa Ali Page A

he had fretted for days before her uncle's latest bout of fever.
    When she had asked her old munshi about Saboor's curious ability, he had smiled.
    “These things,” he had replied vaguely, “are not for us to know, Bibi. But we should remember that Saboor is the grandson of Shaikh Waliullah.”
    Not for us to know. Mariana caught the bouncing child and pulled him onto her lap. “Yes, darling,” she murmured, forcing a smile, “you will soon see your Abba.”
    THE NEXT day, one hand holding a large black umbrella over her head to fend off the rain, Mariana sat upright on Uncle Adrian's oldest, fattest horse, watching Lady Macnaghten's baggage train being prepared for the long overland march from Bengal to Afghanistan.
    She had risen early, before her aunt and uncle were awake. After waving away Dittoo's offer of coffee and a slice of bread, she had commandeered a horse no one would miss and set off to the muddy open ground where the caravan had assembled.
    Her own modest goods had been delivered the previous afternoon to one of the yawning storerooms fronting the rain-soaked ground, but it had not been worry about Saboor's comfort or anxiety about her boxes of foodstuffs, her trunks, or the elderly settee donated by Miss Emily that had driven Mariana from her bed so early in the morning. It had been curiosity about the journey ahead of her.
    How many elephants would the baggage train require? Would those elephants travel all the way to Afghanistan? How large was their armed escort to be? How many coolies would they have? How many servants, blacksmiths, carpenters? Were the tents of Lady Macnaghten and her party to be separated from the rest of the camp by a high canvas wall, as the tents of the Governor-General Lord Auckland's party had been two years earlier? If so, where would Mariana's tent be, inside the private compound, or outside?
    It would be outside, she concluded as she rode through the rain. The news of her uneventful wedding night, although it had come from Sir William Macnaghten himself, had so far shown no sign of improving his wife's opinion of Mariana and her family.
    Mariana shifted her umbrella as she passed a heap of folded canvas tents. Before her, rows of half-loaded donkey and bullock carts and scores of kneeling camels waited, surrounded by the bundles and boxes that spilled from the surrounding storerooms and lay heaped in muddy piles. At one side, a trio of soporific elephants knelt under a dripping tree.
    While the mahouts sprawled lazily on their elephants’ necks, scores of half-naked coolies stacked canvas-wrapped furniture and crates into carts, and tied boxes and baskets onto the backs of bored-looking camels. The ground rang with the familiar sounds of a traveling camp—the staccato shouting of natives, the groaning of camels, the harsh braying of donkeys.
    As well as tents and furnishings for Lady Macnaghten and her party, the caravan was to carry everything she would require for her house in Kabul, save for her best china and wineglasses, a pair of Bohemian crystal chandeliers, and two dozen cases of brandy. These precious items were to go by steamer with the English party, up the Ganges to Allahabad, a means of travel that would spare them all three months of hard, cross-country travel. Because Lady Macnaghten's things were not to be used by anyone but herself, other furnishings had been added to the camp's baggage for the other travelers and for the dining tent, which required a table and chairs for twelve as well as china, linen, and candlesticks. Less elegant but still necessary were the kitchen tents with all their equipment, and the camp food, including stores for the English palate: coffee, crates of wine, sugar, and hundreds of jars of pickles and chutneys and preserved fruit.
    Lady Macnaghten's horses were traveling with the camp, as were many of her one hundred and forty servants, their wives, and their children. They, the workmen, the gang of coolies, and the drivers of the