Free A Beggar at the Gate by Thalassa Ali Page B

animal wagons made up a population of some nine hundred souls, all to be managed by four young and harried-looking English officers, borrowed from the army for the purpose, who now rushed to and fro among the piles of baggage, calling out orders.
    Separate from the baggage train, a company of eighty native sepoys with four of its own officers waited at a distance with its own pack animals, tents, fodder, and supplies.
    Of course, all of this paled before the enormous traveling camp that Lord Auckland had taken to the Punjab, for his baggage train with its three complete bazaars, its large army, and its countless pack animals had been fully ten miles long.
    Last of all, Lady Macnaghten would be no substitute for Lord Auckland's two sisters, whatever their failings might have been.
    A skinny boy in a muddy loincloth led a string of camels past Mariana. She yawned, glad that she had sent Dittoo to Uncle Adrian's storerooms to find the carpet, the bolsters, and the little carved table she had acquired in the Punjab. Whatever unpleasantness this journey might bring, her tent, at least, would have a comfortable native floor arrangement.
    Besides Dittoo and her palanquin bearers, Mariana would have a sweeperess to brush her tent floor and empty her chamber pot, and, unexpectedly, the albino courier.
    “Let him come with us, Mariana,” her uncle had suggested. “He seems a resourceful man, and he speaks Punjabi, which may prove useful when we get closer to the northwest.”
    She tweaked her damp veil from her face. Within hours all these carts, pack animals, and walking men would set off, taking the old northeast route from Calcutta to the River Ganges. At the river, they would turn west, and follow the Gangetic Plain until they reached the city of Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, both sacred to Hindus. There they would stop and await the English party's arrival by steamer.
    Joined by Lady Macnaghten and her companions, they would then turn their faces to the northwest, and set off on the long, final leg of their fifteen-hundred-mile journey to Kabul.
    It was nearly seven o'clock. Mariana was hungry for her breakfast, but there was one thing she wanted to do before leaving the ground: she must examine the elephants.
    She clucked to her horse, disappointed to find that only three of the great animals were to accompany Lady Macnaghten's camp. Should the camp find itself forced to ford a swollen river, the elephants would have no difficulty in ferrying the English party across, but they would also be expected to extricate any baggage wagons that became caught in the mud. Having only three animals to do all that work would mean wasted time. Mariana sniffed. If she were in charge of this expedition, there would be more than three elephants in Lady Macnaghten's baggage train.
    As she stopped a safe distance away from the first elephant and opened her mouth to awaken its sleeping mahout, an English voice rose behind her.
    “There he is, just as I told you,” Lady Macnaghten announced in a high, irritated tone.
    She sat stiffly on a bay gelding, impeccable in a gray riding habit, pointing to a beautiful black horse that stood tethered with a dozen others. Despite the dampness and the heat, her hands were encased in butter-yellow gloves.
    She turned to her nephew, who slouched in his saddle beside her. “What a fool you are, Charles,” she said sharply, her voice carrying easily across the space between herself and Mariana. “That one is Ali Baba, of course it is!
    “I particularly told you,” she added, “that Ali Baba is not to travel with the baggage train. I said that he is to come on the steamer with me. I do wish you would listen when I give you instructions.”
    Not wishing to eavesdrop, Mariana searched for a way to escape, but saw none. What she did see was a camel being loaded with wooden crates that clearly held some of Lady Macnaghten's china or glass. As baggage camels were famous for their