the finery

'10 February. The Peregrine flew north across the valley. He was half miles away, but I could see the brown and black of his wings, the shining gold of his back. The pale cream of his tail coverts looked like a band of straw twisted across the base of his tail. Thinking he'd return downwind, I went into fields with the river to watch for him. I stood in the lee of the hawthorn hedge, looking through it on the north, sheltered in the bitter wind' With this becuase they authorized the Sikh Army to cross the Sutlej in the headlong confrontation with all the English. Ranjit had signed a treaty using the British that forbade him to cross the Sutlej River, but this became broken. The English were however preparing for that conflict and so they had spies within the Lahore Durbar, with even the Prime Minister, the grandfather in the present Kashmir ruler( Now deposed) Karan Singh in league with them and plotting the defeat of the Sikh Army. This service what food was in return for him being made the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir.