Companions of Paradise by Thalassa Ali Read Free Book Online Page B

Bhaji,” Hassan Ali Khan replied softly. “I am thinking of Yusuf.”
    Safiya nodded. “May Allah Most Gracious bless and keep your dear friend.”
    “It was my fault,” he said abruptly. “It was I who killed him.”
    Fully dressed, as always, in a comfortable shalwar kameez , Safiya sat up and cuffed her bolster into a more comfortable shape. “Nonsense,” she declared. Her voice, as deep as a man's, echoed in the small chamber. “You and Yusuf were both shot in the Hazuri Bagh. You lived and Yusuf died. That is all there is to it.”
    He dropped his head. “They shot him because of me.”
    So that explained why Hassan's wounds were taking so long to close. Remorse was certainly no aid to healing. Needing time to think, Safiya offered her nephew a noncommittal grunt.
    Memories of the recent civil strife that had led to Hassan's wounds and Yusuf's death were still raw in the walled city of Lahore, indeed in the whole kingdom of the Punjab.
    It had taken Maharajah Sher Singh, the present king, three savage January days to wrest the throne of the Punjab from his hated rival, Rani Chand Kaur. While Sher Singh's gunners shot down into the Lahore Citadel from the high minarets of the old Badshahi Mosque and his artillery sent cannonballs through its smashed-in Alamgiri Gate, damaging the royal palace and military buildings and slaughtering courtiers, soldiers, and servants, thousands of his own hungry, unpaid soldiers found their way into the old city that shared the Citadel's ancient, fortified wall. There they had rampaged, uncontrolled, through the city's bazaars, invading its houses and murdering its citizens.
    The wounds remained.
    It was only through Allah's Grace that the Waliullah family's old haveli had been spared.
    Hassan's odd English wife had proved useful more than once during that time. For all her odd behavior, the girl had her good points.
    During the battle for the throne, an ambitious Englishman had tried to murder Maharajah Sher Singh. Learning of the plot, Hassan Ali had braved the fighting in the Hazuri Bagh with his friend Yusuf and two Afghans. Together, they had managed to thwart the assassination, but at the cost of Yusuf's life.
    The Afghans had since disappeared, leaving the wounded Hassan the only witness to what had happened that day.
    Afterward, wracked by fevers, Hassan had left that story to the imaginations of others. Too ill to care, he had ignored the speculation about his complicity in the assassination attempt, and the gossip that his English wife had sided with the British plotters and persuaded him to kill the Maharajah himself. Later, after Sher Singh had learned the truth, and the city had covered him with glory, he had still remained silent.
    He had borne without complaint the surgeries that had rescued his left hand and cleaned out the wide, putrefying flesh wound on his leg. He had cried out, of course, as the surgeon plied his knives and his cauterizing tools, but to Safiya's ears, Hassan's groans had sounded like those of a man who knew he deserved punishment.
    “I should never have gone to the Hazuri Bagh that day,” Hassan said harshly. “I should have let Yusuf, Zulmai, and Habibullah do the work of stopping the assassination. Unlike me, they were well versed in the art of killing.”
    “It is true that you are no soldier,” Safiya agreed, “and that the battlefield is no place for the Assistant Foreign Minister. And it is also true that Yusuf was a fighter, but what of your Afghans? I thought they were mere traders, men who come to Lahore every year, bringing saffron, rubies, and horses.”
    “Zulmai and Habibullah are merchants, but they are hard men, and expert shots.” Hassan shook his head in the dimness. “If I had stayed in this house and not insisted on joining them, Yusuf would still be alive.”
    “Then why did you insist?”
    He made a tired gesture. “I do not know, Bhaji. I thought they needed me—”
    Whatever Hassan's secrets might be, they were