Coromandel! (36 page)

Azeema muttered, ‘The old mullah rode fast!’

Mansur cried, ‘Cavalry already! Well, just pass by with a salute. If they stop you, whine that we are poor men.’

The hoofbeats receded up the road. Mansur began to mutter. ‘I see them now. A whole troop! There’s never been more than a couple of tax collectors here before.’

Jason said in disgust, ‘And we’re only just in Mogul territory. I can still see the frontier pillar back there--two miles!’ He edged his horse closer to Catherine’s and said, ‘Mogul cavalry ahead! Remember, now--we’re from Sagthali.’

That was the tale the Rawan had rehearsed them in, in case awkward questions were asked of them. Catherine said, ‘We’ll remember. But, Jason, if anything goes wrong, don’t fight! Whatever you do, don’t fight.’

‘It wouldn’t be any use,’ Jason said. ‘There are about twenty of them.’

Now she saw the green Mogul cavalrymen riding out to form a line across the road. On the left one of them had a golden drum, and on the right another unfurled a green standard, and before the centre a green and silver vision danced on a trampling grey.

Slowly, with the thin
taratarararata
of the drum rolling round the wide plain, and the sun glittering on the steel helmets and the chain mail and the drawn swords, the parties came together.

Mansur rode a few paces forward, alone. The drummer beat a final ruffle. Mansur’s shape bowed and rose, bowed in the dust, rose again. He stood silent now beside his horse.

The green-and-silver spoke. ‘I am an officer of the Great King’s service. Where are you from? Where are you going? What is your merchandise?’

Mansur cried, ‘Great prince, I am a merchant of Sagthali. These are my servants, guards and women. We have opium, cotton, and fine oils, which we take to Tibet beyond the mountains, to exchange there for gold, salt, and borax.’ He added something in a low whine which she could not hear.

The officer said, ‘Are you trying to bribe me, dog? Did you not hear? I am a lieutenant of the Great King.’

Mansur rose and fell in the dust, chanting flattery and apologies. The officer said, ‘Get up. We are looking for two foreigners, a man and a woman, who ran away with the Great King’s favourite dancer. Stand still, you!’

He came closer and passed down the line of their party. Opposite Jason, he said, ‘You! You’re the man. Get over there.’

Jason said, ‘I’m not! I am the merchant’s clerk, I swear it.’ Mansur wailed, ‘Majesty, there is some terrible mistake. I have known this youth for ten years.’

The officer said, ‘As it happens, it is just ten years and three months since the dancer was stolen.’

Jason shouted, ‘You’re a liar! God’s blood, ten years ago I was only--I was only twelve, and I was in Shrewford Pennel.’ But two green coats rode up, one on either side of him, and their steel flashed in short, threatening gestures. Catherine had her hand on his arm, and she felt him reach for his knife. He muttered, ‘I’m not going to leave you now!’

She cried, ‘Don’t fight, Jason. I’m coming with you.’ But what had he said?
I’m not going to leave you.

The green-and-silver advanced on her. The voice, six inches from her face, said, ‘She’s another.’ She went meekly with the soldiers.

The officer said to Azeema, ‘Woman, show your face.’ Mansur wailed, ‘Majesty, that is a Mohammedan woman, a concubine of--one of my friends.’

The officer said, ‘Lower your veil. You are Azeema, the dancer?’

‘Yes, lord.’

Mansur screamed, ‘It’s impossible! She’s lying! She’s never danced in her life! Ten years ago she was only five!’

The officer said silkily, ‘The Great King trains his dancers young. Search them all.’

Jason said, dumbfounded amazement in his voice, ‘They’re taking everything we’ve got! The map! They’re taking the map from Mansur’s purse!’

Mansur cried, ‘Don’t take that! Majesty, it is a letter, a worthless letter, but important to the writer. A love letter, it is.’

The officer said, ‘Addressed to whom?’

Mansur said wildly, ‘To--to--to Tilni Bibi, the famous courtesan of Bareilly.’

‘We will deliver it. Wide is the generosity of the Great King!’ Mansur muttered incoherent praise on the name of the Great King. The officer said, ‘We will take the foreigners and the woman Azeema to the Great King. The rest of you may continue your journey. The blessings of Allah go with you.’

Mansur shrieked, ‘But lord, our horses! Our merchandise!’

‘Those who walk instead of riding live to a ripe old age,’ the officer replied. ‘And, as Jesus said, on whom be peace, “It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven!” Go--and in future be more careful whom you pick up as servants and slave women.’

Catherine hardened her heart. Mansur sounded so miserable that she could almost wish to let him go free. But he was a murderer. She said, ‘Lord, that man Mansur Khan is--‘

The Mogul lieutenant interrupted, ‘I got the message, woman. I know who and what he is. But wait! There is nothing like an alternation of hope and despair to purge the soul, which that man’s soul most surely needs.’

Mansur and the Kishanpur officer and the five soldiers and the four servants trudged away down the wide dusty road between the crops. As they receded she saw them more clearly, a forlorn little group in the empty landscape.

The lieutenant waited until they were almost out of hearing. Then he raised his voice and bellowed, ‘Ohé, come back! The white woman says there is a notorious murderer among you.’ The Kishanpur party halted and gathered together in the distance.

The lieutenant commanded, ‘Three of you, gallop down and make them hurry!’ Three of his troopers darted forward, and then, hastily, Mansur’s party began to trudge back.

When they arrived the lieutenant examined them all again. At last he said, ‘The woman was wrong. I see no murderer here. You may go.’

They turned as one man and walked south as fast as their legs would carry them. The lieutenant sat quiet astride his horse until they again reached the borders of earshot. Then again he stood in his stirrups and shouted, ‘Ohé, come back! You have left your opium and cotton and fine oils behind. They are valuable.’

Faintly, after a long interval, came Mansur’s answering shout. ‘Please accept them as a gift, Your Majesty. We do not want them.’

The lieutenant controlled his laughter enough to shout, ‘Come back! Are you trying to get me accused of extortion?’ Once more the party trudged back. As they came close enough to blur before Catherine’s eyes, a green soldier walked his horse forward to meet them. A sword flashed--a single negligent back-handed stroke. Mansur’s head jumped and rolled in the dust. The rest of the party fled, yelling, down the road towards the distant boundary pillar.

At last the lieutenant stopped laughing. He said, ‘So this woman Azeema would rather serve in the household of His Majesty, as a cook and cleaning woman, than as a concubine in the palace of the Rawan?’

‘Yes, lord,’ Catherine said.

‘She is beautiful enough. In fact, she is so beautiful that the empress will probably have her nose cut off.’

‘Better noseless among the faithful than beautiful among the heathen,’ Azeema said stoutly.

‘There is one God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God,’ the officer said devoutly. ‘All may be well. The empress has a kind heart--sometimes.’

‘But--‘ Jason said. ‘You knew we were coming?’

Catherine groaned aloud. This time it was she who had deceived him.

The officer’s helmet moved, and he said, ‘This fellow is weak in the head, isn’t he? What is he--a slave?’

Catherine said, ‘Yes, lord. He is my slave. May I have the map?’

The officer said, ‘Oh, no. I’ll look after that. My captain will want to see it. And if the story which you sent to me by the mullah should be false--Or if the map should be false--Mansur died quickly. The same result can be achieved much more slowly.’

They mounted their horses, and the lieutenant gave the order to move. She edged closer to Jason and said, ‘I had to do it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked sullenly.

She hesitated and then answered, ‘Because I didn’t trust you. You said we couldn’t escape, but really you were afraid to. You thought you’d only meet the same kind of bitterness somewhere else.’

Jason said, ‘So we will. I will be offered the post of chief extortioner to the Great King. Or he will have us killed, after playing cat and mouse with us as the lieutenant did with poor Mansur.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘he won’t. Because the map is true.’

Five days of travel brought them to the royal city of Agra. Jason’s sullenness slowly disappeared as the miles fell away and no new evil befell him. She thought that perhaps his anger had never been much more than masculine pique, because it was she rather than he who had forced a way out of Kishanpur for them.

And then in a brief twilight they entered the city. The houses rose higher, and the noise increased as the cavalcade trotted on. The lieutenant shouted more often, ‘Clear the road!’ and the beggars whined, and the merchants shouted their wares. The sky burned fiercely in a dusty scarlet sunset, and far in the eye of the purple sun she saw wild geese flying north. Gradually a paler red bluff rose up to obscure the sun, and it became a great fortress, larger than any she had seen. They rode on, the trumpet screaming ahead and Jason silent with awe at her side, until the high fortress blurred and the black stone elephants beside the gate dimmed in her eyes. They entered the fort.

The lieutenant said, ‘We go now to see the captain.’

‘Now?’ Jason asked. ‘My wife is tired.’ She bridled self-consciously. He had taken to calling her his wife, where before he had referred to her as his woman. He had said with a surly mien one night that she must not think he really meant to marry her, just because he called her his wife; only he did not want people to think she was a loose woman.

The lieutenant said, ‘I know she is tired. I am tired too. But I dare not delay in making this report. Perhaps the captain will let us rest when he has talked to you. Dismount here.’

Jason helped her down. Though she did not need his hand, she took it and jumped lightly on to stone tiles. ‘Now,’ the lieutenant said, ‘follow me. And if you have deceived me--But you are honest people, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. The poor man sounded afraid all of a sudden. Holding Jason’s hand, she entered a high arch and walked down a passage. The lieutenant ahead turned right, left, entered a small room, stopped. Another green coat rose and said, ‘Latif! What are you doing here?’

The lieutenant began to explain with voluble anxiety. Jason muttered, ‘The captain cannot read the map. He is holding it upside down.’

The captain sounded pompous. He said, ‘It is false. Claw them with red-hot pincers till they speak the truth.’

The lieutenant cried, ‘Yes, lord! At once, lord!’

Catherine said quickly, ‘Blood has already been shed to prove this map is false! Look at my lord’s fingernail. But it is not false, and that is why we are here.’

She heard the captain cracking the joints of his fingers. He said, ‘I have reached my decision, and that is--that the subadar shall decide.’

They went out of that room and followed along more passages, with scarlet-clad soldiers clanging among them and the smell of oil from the smoky lamps thick in her nostrils. They passed women too--a sudden whiff of languid scent and two tinkling voices. Jason tripped over his cheap sword.

She began to laugh, the gusts of laughter shaking her so that it hurt to keep her face straight and her body upright.

Jason cried, ‘Lord, please go more slowly. My wife is almost blind.’ But really it was his sword that was worrying him. Oh, she loved him, and all would be well, somehow, somewhere.

They hurried along, and Jason kept muttering, ‘Careful now! Steps up here--twenty-five. God’s blood, the thoughtless brutes! More steps--seven, eight, nine.’

(Blind she was, but she loved him. She had guided him from the coast of Coromandel to the fortress of the Grand Mogul. She had executed Mansur Khan because Mansur had done wickedness--no, because Mansur had tempted Jason to do wickedness. She was sorry that the lieutenant had been cruel about that execution, but that was not her fault. God would be good to her and find a place for Jason.)

This room was large and strongly lighted. The subadar wore blue, and the ranks of blue and steel were thicker about him, and a thin, ancient voice was reading aloud from the Koran in a far corner. The captain began to explain.

The subadar said, ‘Show me this map, then.’

In the corner the old man’s high voice piped on above the subadar’s grated decision. ‘It is false. Hang them up by the thumbs till they speak the truth.’

Catherine said, ‘The wazir has word of this map, lord. I am to show it to him when I go to his couch tonight.’

She heard Jason gasp beside her, but she felt hilarious and capable of saying anything. She had never met the wazir, but she knew he was a more important man than a subadar.

But the subadar stood up with a cry of astonishment and said, ‘The wazir! You! This is a miracle! We must take them to the wazir indeed.’

She thought: What have I said now? It didn’t matter. This was India! Let her speak, then, in riddles or jokes. Let her join the charade, because no one, including the actors, knew from moment to moment whether it was charade or reality. Kisses and blood, gold and cow dung--anything might be pressed upon her at any time. Meantime she was in love, and Jason loved her, though he dared not tell himself so, and this was a wonderful and ridiculous game of wits.

‘To the wazir!’ everyone cried, and one and all rushed out into the passage--half a hundred now, and she and Jason nearly forgotten in the crush, so that she could say, trying not to giggle, ‘I love you so,’ and he could cry, ‘God’s blood! What trouble have you got us into now?’

(She had given Azeema the power to leave the Rawan’s palace, where before she had had only the longing to. At second remove, the fire of her will had scorched the mullah’s ancient behind so that he had jumped up and on to his horse and galloped off, faster than a fur-capped messenger, to the nearest Mogul post.)