He sighed and then added, ‘It looks bad, Joe, I can’t deny it.’

There was a further silence at the other end and for a moment Joe thought the line had been cut. After a while the clickings and mutters resolved themselves and the raucous interference on the line Joe was able to identify as Sir George clearing his throat. ‘… and look here, my boy, if you’re going to disguise yourself as a Scout be sure to have a photograph taken. I shall want to put one on top of my piano. When are you thinking of leaving?’

‘At dawn,’ said Joe.

Chapter Fifteen

Lily gasped, turned and fled mindlessly down the corridor with a half-formed notion of reaching the door and calling to Iskander for help. In four long strides Halima had caught her and, hands on both her shoulders, had spun her round and seized her firmly by the upper arms.

‘Lily! Lily! What’s the matter?’ Her voice was gentle and amused.

With dire memories of a dozen seething romances each centred round the fate of innocent European girls lured into harems, Lily’s voice was shrill and apprehensive. ‘No one’s putting me in a harem! How dare you! Let go! Iskander can sort this out. If that bearded old barbarian – oh, my God, I’m sorry – he’s your husband, isn’t he?’

Halima looked puzzled. ‘Ramazad Khan? Yes, he is my husband. And you are his guest. As his guest you stay here.’

‘If he thinks he can shut me up with all the rest of his women, well, he can just think again! Any finger he lays on me gets broken! They can kill Rathmore if they like – I don’t care! Tell Iskander the deal’s off! I have rights! I’m an American citizen! You’re not to forget that!’

Halima laughed, saying patiently and slowly, seeking her words, ‘I have said this is harem, Lily. I explain. The word “harem” in our language means “sacred”. Women are sacred and in this place they live in safety. For you there is no safer place even among your own people. Here live all Ramazad’s female relations – his mother, his aunts, his sisters, cousins, nieces. And, of course, his wife. Me.’

‘Wife? Just the one?’

‘Of course! Now will you not come and have a bath and some food? I think you are very tired after your journey.’

To some degree reassured by the concern in the girl’s voice and allured by the idea of a bath, Lily decided to trust her and followed her up a staircase and into a long, airy room whose arcaded windows looked out on to the blossom-laden trees of an orchard. Lily stopped in the doorway and blinked. After the bleak strength of the exterior of the building the opulence of the interior was unexpected. The walls were hung with tapestries, the floor thickly carpeted and strewn with silken, tasselled cushions. The room was furnished with tables and chests of dark wood, intricately carved.

The six women who had been sitting by the window chatting and laughing turned, large-eyed, to look at her. Halima explained in Pushtu who Lily was and what she was doing in the fort. ‘I tell them that you are American princess,’ said Halima firmly, ‘and that you are honoured guest of Iskander and my husband.’ One by one the women, who ranged in age from very old to about sixteen, came forward, friendly and curious, to greet her and, though Lily was sure she would never remember them, Halima gave her each woman’s name and position in the family. The formalities at an end, Halima clapped her hands and two maidservants came hurrying into the room.

‘I will tell them to prepare your bath and then bring you back here to us where we will have food,’ said Halima.

With much cheerful giggling and chattering, the girls led Lily to an apartment at the end of the first floor corridor, part of which she was delighted to see was a bathroom. Nothing like a home-style bathroom but to travel-weary Lily it looked perfect. A large sunken, shallow stone tub lay ready for her. The maids went off and returned some minutes later with brass cans of hot water, mixed this with cold from stone jars standing by and poured a sweet-scented liquid into it from a tiny phial. A scatter of rose petals over the surface and all was ready.

Lily peeled off her dusty clothes to the fascinated comments of the girls who, she guessed, had never seen a Western girl or Western clothes before. They did not seem impressed. Lily tried to explain by mime that she wanted her things washed and returned to her. It took a tug of war to hang on to her boots but there was no way that the escape she had always in the forefront of her mind could be effected in the pair of backless gold-embroidered slippers she was being offered. In a puzzling world she thought her pioneering ancestors would applaud her forethought. At least she would allow herself to be put into one of the fancy costumes on offer until her own clothes were returned, she thought and looked in astonishment at the piles of colourful silks the girls had fetched. They seemed keen for her to choose a bright pink outfit shot through with gold thread but, with a vision of herself escaping through the hills looking like a stick of candyfloss, she turned it down, insisting on a green three-quarter length tunic over a pair of baggy trousers in the same fabric caught up at the ankle, and accepted, though she did not put it on, a gauzy yellow face-covering veil.

Her companions looked her up and down doubtfully and suggested alternatives and improvements. They brushed her hair for her and turned with great seriousness to make up her face with sticks of kohl and little palettes of this and that, ignoring her protests and holding up a silver mirror for her to admire herself, which – after a moment of shock to see herself transformed – she duly and sincerely did.

‘Goodbye Chicago!’ said Lily. ‘What have I become?’ An errant thought came to her. ‘I suppose these guys don’t sell people? But if they do – why! – I’d make a good price!’

She was escorted back to the durbar room where she found assembled a much larger group of women and several small children all preparing to eat a midday meal which had been laid out on a cloth in the centre of the room. Halima beckoned her to join her at the head of the table and all sank down on cushions to eat. For the first time Lily noticed as Halima lowered herself with a slight awkwardness on to her cushion that under her flowing tunic the chief’s wife was heavily pregnant.

‘Good Lord!’ Lily thought. ‘How could I have missed that! Under all that drapery she’s enormous!’ Lily tried to remember the few details Iskander had given her about the set-up at the fort. This Halima who really couldn’t be much older than herself – quite possibly younger – was, improbable though it might seem, married to the fearsome old Malik whose first wife, Zeman’s mother, the Afghan princess, had died last year. Had she got that right? There was no way she could find out. Lily had a hundred questions she wanted to ask Halima Begum but, apart from the barrier of Halima’s uncertain hold on the English language, the customary meal-time silence had descended. As she worked her way through a sequence of dishes Lily began to think the lack of conversation was in fact quite relaxing and certainly had the edge on exchanging mindless chit-chat with Nick Carstairs and Edward Dalrymple-Webster.

She eyed Halima Begum covertly from time to time, wondering how it had come about that such a young person had not been married off to a young man of the tribe – Zeman, Iskander or any one of the handsome faces that had risen up from behind rocks to shout a greeting to them as they drew near the fort. Surely her preference must have been for such a one? Lily had tried to engage Zeman in a conversation about arranged marriages but, smooth and courteous, he had neatly avoided being drawn by her questions so she could only speculate as to their customs. But Halima, smiling and confident, giving out brisk orders to the servants, playing happily with the children, didn’t seem to call for any romantic Western sympathy. ‘Now suppose President Harding did me the honour of making me the First Lady,’ Lily considered, ‘how would I feel?’ She decided her fantasy was getting somewhat out of hand.