A Proper Education for Girls (37 page)

M
R.
H
UNTER CRAWLED ONTO
M
RS.
B
IRCHWOODE'S
veranda.

“Lily,” he croaked.

Lilian jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Tom?”
She peered at him. “Is that you?” She fumbled for ammunition and fed it with shaking fingers into the empty chambers of Mr. Gilmour's pistol. “God, oh God, it
is
you.” She felt hysterical tears and rage rising up inside her. “I could have killed you. Only I was so frightened I couldn't hold my arm still.”

The shadows around them seemed to jump and flicker. “We should move away from here. Get out of sight, at least. Come
on
. Take my hand.”

But Lilian's eyes had taken on the fixed and glassy look of someone who has seen horrors aplenty and is no longer certain what reality might look like. She gave no sign of having heard and understood Mr. Hunter's words, and she ignored his outstretched hand. “I didn't expect this,” she whispered. “You said there would be trouble, but I didn't expect this.”

Out of the corner of his eye Mr. Hunter saw a figure detach itself from the shadow of the neem trees at the edge of the compound. Slowly, with a stealthy creeping movement, it began making its way toward them. Mr. Hunter whispered, “Give me your pistol.”

“Mrs. Fraser,” said a voice from the shadows. “Mrs. Fraser, is
that you? Keep your voice down. They'll hear you. They'll come back.”

“Mr. Vine?” Lilian peered into the darkness. The shadow took on the thin, round-shouldered form of the magistrate, a saber held out before him with shaking uncertainty.

“What happened here?” demanded Mr. Hunter.

“Surely you can see what happened,” said the magistrate hoarsely. He looked Mr. Hunter up and down with unconcealed dislike. He opened his mouth as though about to say something disparaging but then appeared to change his mind. He shrugged, his saber drooping in his hand until its defeated point rested in the dust. “The natives went berserk,” he said. “They cut Captain Wheeler down where he stood and set upon him like dervishes. There is nothing but a stain on the ground to show where he fell.” Mr. Vine pointed across the
maidan
with a shaking finger. “They stamped him into the ground. They had already overrun the officers' barracks. The place was a slaughterhouse, according to Captain Lewis. The poor chap was so shocked he could hardly speak. When they caught him they cut his tongue out and threw him down the well. As for Captain Forbes, well, I have no idea what happened to him. The last I saw of him he was galloping toward the native town. I dare say he's met the same fate.”

“And what fate is that?” whispered Lilian.

“Butchered. Even young Fanny.” Mr. Vine's chin trembled. “I'm most dreadfully sorry, Mrs. Fraser,” he said. “Fanny was so very fond of you.”

“Indeed,” said Lilian. “And I of her.” Lilian tried to recall what Fanny had looked like, but the girl had seemed so insignificant beside the vast galleon of her mother that it was all but impossible to remember anything about her. Still, what did it matter now?

“Mr. Rutherford, dear man, always so quiet and unassuming among his friends but quite a zealot in the pulpit. Such a
missionary
. Stabbed, again and again like St. Sebastian by the very men he had tried to bring to God. Dr. Mossly burned alive in his hospital. He tried to hold back the mob with his own hands, but the patients were
mostly Eurasians, of course. They didn't stand a chance. No more that any of us did.” Mr. Vine began to sob. “The screams were terrible, terrible. And I saw that bearer of yours making off with what looked like a basket of chickens.”

“We must leave here,” said Mr. Hunter, his tone urgent.

“We must wreak vengeance,” cried Mr. Vine suddenly. His voice rang out into the night sky like the cry of a furious preacher. “We must smite this godless race so that they never again rise against us. We must show no mercy.” His voice rose to a shriek. “Already, the garrisons at Delhi, at Cawnpore, at Lucknow and Meerut, they will be coming to our aid. They will be marching …” He gasped and pressed his hand to his chest as though seized suddenly with indigestion. The look of rage on his face turned to one of puzzlement. He gazed at Lilian, his mouth open, his eyes wide. “Why on earth are you dressed like that?” he said at last. He stared at her, his eyes glazed and fixed upon her turban. And then all at once he toppled forward onto the dust. Behind him, a
sepoy
put his foot onto the small of Mr. Vine's back and tugged out the blade of his saber from between the magistrate's shoulder blades.

Mr. Hunter fell to his knees and groped in the dirt toward the fallen magistrate, his fingers searching frantically for a weapon of some sort—a stone, a stick, even a handful of dust. Above his head he could see the
sepoy'
s blade glinting in the light of the burning cantonment. And then at last his hand curled around the hilt of Mr. Vine's fallen saber. With a sudden, swift movement Mr. Hunter thrust the blade up as hard as he could into the groin of the rearing
sepoy
.

With a scream the
sepoy
collapsed beside the magistrate. Mr. Hunter staggered backward, and then danced forward, the shirt around his head flying out behind him as he stabbed at the writhing body at his feet.

“D'you think his clothes would fit me?” he panted, standing back at last and eyeing his attacker's uniform.

Lilian shrugged. “He's got a horse too,” she said.

L
ILIAN AND
M
R.
Hunter rode out of the cantonment. They were not the only travelers on the road that night, and the path they had chosen—which headed in the opposite direction from the native town—was as busy as a bazaar thoroughfare. All manner of people were leaving Kushpur: gangs of men wielding sticks and cudgels, bands of drunken
sepoys
, their insignia ripped away, their faces shining with victory, whole families, their possessions carried on their backs or loaded into hackeries, made their way slowly and purposefully along the road. Lilian saw not a single white face among all those they passed. The air was filled with the sound of singing and crying, of shouts and bursts of victorious musket fire. Here and there camps had been erected, the flickering light of numerous cooking fires illuminating the roadside like welcoming beacons. The smell of wood smoke and roasting meat reminded Lilian how hungry and thirsty she was.

“Where are they all going?” she hissed. “Can't you find out?”

Mr. Hunter nodded.
“Shabash,”
he shouted, waving the dead
sepoys
cutlass at a group of men lounging beside a campfire at the side of the road. “How many have you killed today?” He spat a mouthful of saliva he could ill spare onto the ground, then threw back his head and laughed raucously. The men grinned at one another. Mr. Hunter wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Lilian gazed at him with reluctant admiration. Certainly, he looked the part. His teeth were perhaps a little too white to pass as those of a seasoned
sepoy
, but no one would notice in the darkness. Besides, a few minutes chewing a quid of betel would remedy that cosmetic defect. In the meantime, his dark looks and skillful horsemanship, his fluency in Urdu and Hindi, his ability to transform himself from an English gentleman into a bazaar ruffian in an instant, why, despite the danger of their present situation, had she not been so shocked and stunned by the day's events, she might even have been thrilled.

The men looked up at him, taking in his stained uniform and bloody face. “Yes,” said one. “We have had some heavy work this
evening. There is not a white face left in the whole of Kushpur. I have lost count of the
ferringhee
throats I've cut. Certainly,
hussoor
, there is little more to be done here. We are on our way to Delhi, where they say the
Sircar
is at his last gasp. A sight I would not miss for all the girls in the Delhi bazaar!”

“Bravely said,” replied Mr. Hunter. “May we meet again over a pile
of ferringhee
bodies at the Cashmere Gate!” He pulled on the reins of the horse so that the animal reared beneath him. “Death to the
Sircar!”

“Shabash!”
cried Lilian, her voice sounding shriller than she had intended.

S
O
D
ELHI HAD
fallen. Lilian and Mr. Hunter turned off the Trunk Road, heading north and east into the safety of the mountains. They rode in single file, for which Lilian was glad. She was preoccupied by her own thoughts, and they were thoughts she could not possibly have shared with Mr. Hunter. Despite the horrors she had witnessed that day, Lilian was finding that the farther they went from Kushpur, the harder it was to recollect even the most terrible of those events. She was no longer able to recall the face of the officer whose head she had blown off; she could not remember the look on Mr. Vine's face as he took his last breath. Even the memory of the headless ladies sitting around their tea tray—a sight she had been certain she would never forget—had become impossible to visualize, so that it was almost as though she were looking at a series of pictures in a storybook.

T
HEY COVERED MANY MILES BEFORE THE FOREST BECAME
so impenetrable that the moon was obscured and it was too dark to ride any farther.

“We can be up and away early in the morning,” said Lilian, dismounting and leading her pony into the jungle. “I have enough in my panniers to provide us with a comfortable camp.” She produced a tinder box and some kindling and in minutes had their own camp-fire burning.

Mr. Hunter dismounted slowly. He felt stiff and bruised all over—in his heroic bid to drag Lilian from her horse he had sprained his shoulder, and now, having been on horseback for so long, it seared as though a red-hot iron were being thrust into his shoulder blade. He sank onto the ground beside the fire. He felt exhausted, and though he was annoyed to admit it, he was feeling slightly feverish as well. He hoped it wasn't anything serious.

Lilian was rooting in her baggage. At length she pulled out a cooking pot and a bag of rice.

“I've been in these hills before,” said Mr. Hunter, unbuttoning the dead
sepoys
uniform (the fellow's coat was beginning to feel like a vise about his chest). “They're wild and dangerous, you know. I mean, most of the
nawabs
north of here are only nominally loyal to the British. There are a few hill forts here and there—isolated places, mostly. Places John Company pretends to have coerced into toeing the Company line, but the
nawabs
really do just as
they always did. Mind you, there might not be any of them friends of the British now.” He smiled, wincing manfully as he struggled out of his coat. “If they ever were in the first place, that is.”

Lilian nodded. In the light of the fire she began sharpening her knife on a whetstone she had produced from some corner of her baggage.

“Of course,” continued Mr. Hunter. “Most of these hill forts are at least a week's journey away, and over the roughest terrain you can find in India. I was planning to head north anyway, you know, even before … before everything happened the way it did. I need to check out the lie of the land before I mount a proper expedition—bearers and baggage and so forth.”

Lilian said nothing but tested the blade with her finger.

“Yes, a reconnaissance trip, so to speak. I need to find some new rhododendron species—they simply can't get enough of them back home, you know. Some low-growing ones would suit admirably. This corner of India is as out of the way as you can get—well, once we ‘ve traveled for a few days it will be—and no one's been to see what botanical treasures it contains. I have great expectations.”

Lilian nodded.

“It's the perfect place to hide out and the perfect place to find what I'm looking for. I stand to make a small fortune if I find varieties that travel well and that can be propagated back home.” Mr. Hunter shrugged. “Of course, it's a pity I had to leave all my things behind, but you seem well equipped. Certainly I don't see what else we could do at the moment. We can pick up further supplies from villages we pass through—most of them won't have seen white faces before, though, so we'll have to tread carefully.” He rubbed his hands together. “The place is a veritable Eden, Lily,” he said. “You'll fall in love with it.”

“I'm sure I will,” replied Lilian.

“That's settled, then,” said Mr. Hunter.

Lilian nodded again.

Mr. Hunter sighed. This was a new, economical version of Lilian he had not met before. He wondered what might be the matter
with her, though it did not cross his mind to ask. Instead, assuming that his detailed monologue had been too taxing after the day's events, he switched to colorless observations about her camping skills.

“Where did you learn to light a fire like that?”

“When I go painting, I always take a tinder box,” said Lilian mechanically. “I find a cup of tea most refreshing. Would you like one?”

“Don't you have anything stronger?”

“Brandy.”

Mr. Hunter raised his eyebrows. “Brandy?”