Fever Quest: A Clean Historical Mystery set in England and India (The Isabella Rockwell Trilogy Book 2) (20 page)

And she was no longer alone.

Isabella and her father emerged from the mine into
the blinding sunlight. The four guards Stone had dismissed were squatting
aimlessly and Cobra stood tethered in the shadow of a tree. Next to him was
Midge, with Rat crouched at his feet. When Rat saw Isabella, he walked over to
her and pushed the top of his head into her palm, regarding her every move with
his deep brown eyes. At this tiny gesture more tears welled up and poured down
Isabella’s face, and she bent over with the pain of it, until Vritra helped her
to sit down and rocked her gently until her crying had stopped. When she opened
her eyes, Midge was standing next to her.

“I’m Midge,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“John Rockwell,” her father replied, taking it. Then he
gathered Midge into a bear hug and ruffled his tallow-coloured hair.

“I think she’s been giving you some medicine.”

Midge was looking at her father long and hard. John
Rockwell let out a shout of laughter that thrilled Isabella to her core.

“I rather think she might have.” He looked at Isabella
with a mock stern expression.

“Calabar leaf.”

John Rockwell’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

“You could have killed me.”

“Abhaya helped me.” She was still unable to believe he was
here, that he was real.

He frowned. “Abhaya? Is she here?” He looked hopeful, but
Isabella shook her head and swallowed her pain.

“No, she’s not. I’ll tell you about it later. We should
really be on our way.”

“All right, dearest, you’re in charge. I seem to be a bit
behind the curve.” He stood up straight and went over to introduce himself to
Vritra.

Midge tucked himself next to her and gave her a drink of
water flavoured with orange.

“What did you do with it?”

“Dropped it down the hole.”

Midge winced.

“Did you have to do that?”

Isabella nodded and smiled, her first smile.

“Yes, I did.” She paused. “The prophecy turned out to be
true, then.”

Midge grimaced.

“Looks like it. Weird, eh?”

The sun blazed and swallows wheeled in and out of the
rocks. Time seemed to have stopped, just for a moment, and she was grateful.

“When did you steal it?”

Midge looked a little affronted.

“I didn’t steal it. It was stolen already. I just borrowed
it.”

Isabella felt her face grow stern.

“When?”

“I pick pocketed it on the boat, the day you was at the
bazaar. I was in the library in a high-backed chair. Stone came in with one of
his friends and showed it to him. He was boasting. I’d never liked the sound of
him, so I thought I’d get it off him, just to let the wind out of his sails. I
was going to let him have it back.” Midge shuffled his feet in the dirt.

“So why didn’t you?”

“I was bored. You were always off with your new friends
and I liked playing with it and looking at it. I think I fell in love with it.”
His face was puzzled. “And I couldn’t let it go. When you and I argued, I
decided to keep it in case I ended up by meself.

Isabella frowned.

“The night my cabin was burgled was after Stone thought Al
Hassan had given it to me in the bazaar.” Midge bit on a nail and nodded. “Did
you have it with you all the time?”

“Pretty much,” Midge replied.

“When Stone brought you here from the Governor’s Residence
in Hyderabad?”

“Yes.” Midge hung his head.

“Where did you hide it?”

Midge lifted his filthy tunic. Around his waist was a
fabric pouch which was hidden by his voluminous clothing.

“Did anyone know?”

“Only the dog. He sniffed it out.”

Isabella found she was smiling, despite herself.

“You must have been furious with me to let us stay in
prison when, with a word, you could have had us freed.”

Guilt stained Midge’s cheeks.

“I wanted to pay you back by making you stay one night in
prison, but then I heard Stone talking about you the night after you’d arrived
and I realised he was mad. He said he’d never let the diamond or its deliverer
go and he’d sacrifice you to Kali for what you’d put him through – that she was
so bloodthirsty it would make all the difference.” Midge nudged a pebble with
his toe which rolled down the hill, barging into others as it went, until the
pebble was enfolded in a tiny avalanche of red which only came to rest when the
ground became level. “I came to tell you the next morning, but Livia had been
taken ill and you’d gone. I found the seeds, but I left them where they was,
praying you’d come back. I had to tell Stone something, else he wouldn’t have
let me stay. So I pretended you’d be coming back because you’d hidden the Eye
of Kali somewhere, and that we should sit and wait.” He paused and took a deep
breath. “Which we did. Thank God you
did
come.”

“What were you going to do after that?”

Midge shook his head.

“I hadn’t got that far. It had all got so out of control,
I was frightened.”

“I can’t believe you had it all this time. I should
throttle you, really.” She looked across at the horizon where a line of orange
sat between the land and sky.

“Are you cross?” Midge looked a little unsure as he pulled
her to her feet. Vritra was coming towards them.

“No. I might be tomorrow, though. When I’ve had time to
think about it.”

“Why? Golconda’s got its diamond back now.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t have taken it in the first place.”

Midge’s face was set.

“He deserved it.”

They slipped sideways down the sandy hill to meet Vritra
and her father.

“You still shouldn’t have.”

“It was beautiful though, Iz, wasn’t it?”

Vritra bent and patted Rat, who had reached him first.

Isabella turned and looked at Midge’s artless blue eyes
and giraffe’s freckles and she smiled.

“Yes, it was. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Midge nodded with satisfaction.

He held his hand out to Vritra who put his arm
around Midge’s and her own shoulders and led them all back to the palace.

It was dusk three weeks later when Isabella and her
father, Midge and Vritra rode into the bustling city of Lucknow followed by
Rat. The city was filled with rickshaws and carts, British soldiers shouting at
each other from the backs of horses. Thick smoke from cooking fires was hung in
the air around them and Isabella’s stomach growled. A part of her wanted to go
straight to the fountain, just to see if the others might possibly be there,
but then her sensible mind clamped down. Of course they wouldn’t be there. The
girls would have gone to Simla by now, to escape the stifling heat. Maybe
they’d left word with Mother Muckerjee? Surely that would be the best place to
start?

But after they’d found lodgings, Isabella found herself
walking up to the palace, having left Cobra and Cloud, her father, Midge and
Vritra stuffing their faces with food. She bit into a meat-filled chapatti and
walked slowly, admiring the shops with their real glass windows, the elegant
high-caste Indian ladies in their fashionable saris. She lifted a hand to her
head, aware suddenly of how she must look. Her hair was growing back, and her
eyebrows, but they were sparse and tufty. Her native clothes were worn and
travel-stained, and she watched with envy as an English woman tried on a length
of yellow silk, pulling it in at her tiny waist and showing the seamstress
where to put the darts.

Isabella clicked her tongue at Rat and they set off
amongst the shadows. But her feet dragged as she approached the palace. She had
promised Rose, “dusk”. The least she could do was to check.

Isabella couldn’t help her heart beating a little bit more
quickly as she approached the broad sandy square lined with palms, which
rustled in the evening breeze. The palace glittered behind the gates and one of
its giant ceremonial cannons acting as a throne for a family of baboons. Apart
from them the square was quiet, the odd traveller looking at the ornate
buildings as they passed through; a trader wrapping his wares and putting them
back into his cart.

Isabella’s heart fell.

She sighed at herself. For heaven’s sake, she knew they
wouldn’t be here. Why was she upset? They would have no idea of what had
happened to her. They would believe she was dead. Why would they come here to
prolong the agony? Had she been in their position, she certainly wouldn’t have.

Rat whined. She looked down at him, but his gaze was fixed
on the other side of the square. A figure had detached itself from the shadows
of one of the palms. It started walking towards her. Rat didn’t need to see any
more and he took off like a bullet across the square, his tail wind milling
behind him.

“What do you look like?”

Rose was sitting in the dust next to the fountain and she
had Rat on her lap, on his back, in an ecstasy of submission, his teeth bared
in a grin, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

Isabella’s throat closed. And all she could do was reach
down and hug her.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, her voice gruff.

Rose got to her feet.

“Well, you said ‘dusk’.”

There was a step behind her and the sound of her father’s
laughter. Isabella turned. He was looking at Rose with a quizzical expression
on his face.

“Have you been here every night?” John Rockwell asked
Rose.

Rose looked offended.

“Well, yes. Wouldn’t you have been?”

“Of course I would. I’m her father.”

Rose’s delight at John Rockwell’s behaviour was obvious in
the way she took his arm as they walked back across the square.

“How did you get your memory back?” Rose asked him as she
put her arm around Isabella and led them to the far side of the square. She
followed a quiet road which led out of the city.

“Isabella drugged me.”

“She made you better? But you had no memory at all.”

John Rockwell pulled his daughter close.

“I know. That’s what I’ve been told.”

“But you don’t remember.” Rose peered at him, disbelief
still on her face.

He shook his head, his eyes clouding with pain for a
moment.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

There was a flash of lightning from far away and the hair
on the back of Isabella’s neck lifted Ahead of them, Rose had turned in through
a little gate off the road. Crimson hibiscus hung in profusion over the fence
and the polished waxy petals of lilies lined the path to a bungalow. Lanterns
burned on the sills and white muslin curtains blew at the open windows. Two
figures sat on the deep porch in rocking chairs. One of them got to her feet as
they came through the gate, her face etched with disbelief, then Livia ran down
the path to greet them.

“I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it. Oh, we hoped
– we hoped so much you were all right, but it was so hard sometimes …”
Then she broke off, both laughing and crying as she looked at Isabella’s face
and hugged her close. Rat leapt with pleasure, his front paws leaving dusty
prints on Livia’s turquoise cotton sari.

“Rose never gave up, did she, though, baba?”

Livia turned at the sound of the elderly woman who had
followed her down the path, her scarlet sari swaying either side of her heavy
wooden cane. She must have been over eighty years old and time had stamped
itself deeply on her face. A few strands of white hair curled over her brown
polished skull, which made her huge nose look even bigger, but her eyes were
bright black buttons through their latticework of wrinkles. She smiled at
Isabella.

“Rose has waited for you every night.”

Livia nodded, unable to take her arm away from Isabella.

“She has. I couldn’t bear it and I wouldn’t go. But she
was there. Always.”

Isabella could feel her tears coming once more and she
hugged Rose’s skinny frame again and held her by the shoulders. Rose’s mousy
hair was short but it was glossier than before, her skin burnt to a deep shade
of caramel. She smiled at Isabella, a smile of deep satisfaction.

“I knew you’d come eventually.”

Isabella started to speak, but then closed her mouth.

“I’m sure there were times when you thought you might
not,” said the old woman, reading her mind.

Isabella just nodded.

“Are you Mother Muckerjee?”

The old woman’s face creased into a giant smile.

“I am.”

Mother Muckerjee banged her cane down. “Come, let us go in
to eat now, and you can speak when you feel ready.”

Livia’s voice was hesitant.

“Is there anyone with you?”

This time Isabella did smile, and widely.

“Midge and Vritra.”

Livia and Rose let their breath out at the same time.

“You saved him.” Rose’s face was full of admiration.

“I’m not sure who saved who,” said Isabella heavily. Then
she lifted her head. “But if it weren’t for Midge, Vritra and my father.” She
turned to look at him, as he wiped his eyes and bent to pat Rat. “I wouldn’t be
here now.”