Nightrunners of Bengal (24 page)

Ramdass talked for both of them, and Harisingh grunted softly in agreement. Rodney lay with his head on the hard earth.

Ramdass whispered, “Take Rambir’s uniform, sahib. We will find a sack.”

Rodney did not answer. The hoarse whisper continued.

“And, sahib, we did not believe what they said. Remember us when the madness has passed. We will take off our uniforms as soon as we can, and go to our villages. But now we will be killed unless we behave like the others. Do not give us away. Remember us.”

They slid off his back, and Ramdass helped him to crawl into the black shadow of the peepul by the corner of the wall. Harisingh hauled Rambir’s corpse in by the arms, so that its dragging boots clicked together, and then went back for Robin. Ramdass eased off the batman’s black leather belt and dark tunic. Harisingh, nursing his bitten hand, searched among the flowers until he found the shako. Then they rolled the body under the wall and spread earth and leaves over it.

Ramdass whispered, “He had no other equipment. Here, he was using this pistol of yours. There was a little ammunition in his trouser pocket. Do you want my rifle too?”

Rodney shook his head dumbly; he’d have enough to carry. The birds had been cheeping and croaking for some time, disturbed by the false dawn of fire. He had no watch, but he knew the light would come soon.

The two sepoys crept along in the shadows for thirty yards, stood up, and walked slowly forward. When they came close to the others he heard a shouted greeting, and, very distinctly, “Did they kill Savage-sahib?”

Harisingh’s deep voice spoke for the first time. “I think so. At the court building.”

“Anyway, we killed the dam and the pup here, didn’t we?”

The speaker laughed raucously. For a few minutes the group of sepoys followed Ramdass and Harisingh, asking questions about the affair at the court building. Rodney could not hear how they got rid of them, but soon the others dropped away and the two green coats trailed into de Forrest’s compound and out of sight. He saw that de Forrest’s bungalow had not been burned.

He began to struggle into Rambir’s uniform. The wet patches on collar and chest were cold to his skin, and the batman had been fatter than he and a little shorter, so that the tunic bagged in one place and stretched in another. When he had finished he drew up spittle into his mouth and spread it on his face among the burns and dust. Then he lay down,
listened to Robin’s breathing, and stared at the white blur of Joanna on the grass.

The two sepoys slipped back over the wall near him; in a bar of light between the trees he saw the burns on their faces and the charred ruin of their coats. Ramdass carried a bulging canvas sack, a military kitbag, over his shoulder. He put down the sack and walked on at Harisingh’s side; in a second they were gone. Rodney emptied out the straw they had put into the sack, and saw that the metal eyelets at the mouth would give Robin air. He had been numb, and thought he dreamed. Looking at the little holes through which his son would breathe, he was gripped by a terrifying urgency, so that his hands trembled. He lifted the boy and eased him carefully into the sack. The shape was recognizably human, particularly the head. He filled the spaces and rounded the bumps with straw, loosely roped the mouth, and prayed Robin would not cry. He slung the sack over his left shoulder and made sure the pistol at his belt came easily to his right hand. Daylight began to paint livid green-grey streaks on the underside of the smoke pall over Bhowani.

He forced his brain to think what he should do next, where he should go. One thing at a time. The Cheetah River was to the west; he could not swim it with Robin, and dared not risk the ferry. To north and south bands of mutineers would be roving the Deccan Pike. He must go east. He had no choice.

In this earliest promise of a scorching day the green of the trees was yet fresh, and some of the night’s dust had settled. His stables were level with the ground and his horses roasted alive. His bungalow was a black and crackling-red ruin, and the bougainvillaea had burned with it. The gold-mohur by the entrance pillar of the driveway scintillated in a cold brilliance of orange and gold and scarlet against the rack overhead; when the sun touched it, it would hurt the eyes, it was so bright. Stooped under the weight of the sack, he climbed the wall and crept along the side of de Forrest’s compound. He threaded east through the gardens, a lonely
sepoy with a dark and bloody face, murderous eyes, and a sack of loot. Those who saw him did not interfere with him.

Here in the overcast morning pallor he saw clearly what had been half-seen in the tumult of the dark. To right and left smoke rose from the shells of bungalows, and the nauseous-sweet smell of burned hair and flesh clung in the dust. Broken sofas and chairs strewed the lawns, their covers ripped and the horsehair stuffing dragged out. Children’s toys littered the roadsides among cups and clocks and torn clothes. A few low-caste followers grovelled drunk under the trees.

A gang of sepoys of the 88th marched by, dragging the body of a white woman by the heels. They did not recognize him, and he did not recognize her, for she had no head. The head that swayed in triumph on a bayonet’s point at the tail of the group, severed by a hundred blunt sawings at the neck, was the head of a man—Major Swithin de Forrest of the 60th Bengal Light Cavalry. His mouth was set in the same dead sneer he had worn through life, and below the powder burns on his forehead the eyes were contemptuous.

The jackals were out. Usually they hid themselves by day and ran about the cantonment by night, shrilling a maniacal chorus. They had kept quiet through this night, frightened by the noises and the light of fires; even now they were not sure that all the new dead were really in their power. Their sense of smell would reassure them as the May sun climbed, and already they were out of their earths, sniffing and wondering. They ran from bush to bush or cringed grey and hang-tailed among the cactus and crept closer to the bodies lying in field and garden and lane and street and courtyard. Vultures sat in rows on the branches of the trees, stretched their naked necks, and waited.

The Silver Guru might help him—but that would mean going close by the city and into the Little Bazaar. And perhaps they had discovered his race and killed him too. Dellamain must be dead. The Commissioner’s bungalow was next to the court buildings. Surely the mob had burned it
and killed him. Where had Lachman run to, and Ayah? Where were Simkin, Anderson, Sanders, Caversham, Isobel, Dotty, Caroline? There were too many to think about. Kishanpur lay east, in the direction he was going. Kishanpur, where all vices slithered in coils about each other, where the shadow of the fort lay like a corruption. Sumitra had melting flesh and huge eyes. Had he touched a clean fire in her once, so long ago? Was it all gone, all pretence? He couldn’t face her again. There must be somewhere else. Robin had to have rest and shelter. The kites dropped one by one out of the barren sky, the wind soughing in their wings. For him there was no place.

He’d saved her life. She’d help him. He had no other hope, no choice.

He passed into the fields and tramped on, skirting the common to the north of the city. Flat ploughland, dotted with mango groves and clumps of stunted thorn, spread for eight miles ahead to the low rock ridges of the Sindhya Hills. There the jungle began and he could hide. The sack bit into the raw flesh of his shoulder. A single bird sang loudly and flew from branch to twig ahead of him.

Once he came upon about thirty sepoys of his 13th, marching from north to south in formation. He lay on the ground till they had passed, but none of them looked round. The crop stalks scratched his chin, and as he watched he knew that the world was mad. Where were they going, so purposefully, to the tap of a single drum? What mad perversion of discipline brought them here, sweating through the cane stubble and wearing the Company’s uniform so proudly? He groped to his feet and walked on.

Later he found a body in a ditch and saw that it was ex-Subadar-Major Mehnat Ram, unhurt but stiff and dead. He was dressed in old-fashioned uniform, and his sword was in his hands. Rodney turned the corpse over with his boot and muttered, “You, too?”

Two hours after leaving the bungalow, and four miles across the plain, there were no more sepoys but many signs
that the people fled from a scourge. Avoiding the main road, they had slipped away on bypaths from the cantonment and the city, and here the paths began to converge. Each thin pony and trailing family, each pack-ox and bullock cart dragged a finger of dust across the plain. There had been no such terror here for fifty years, but the people knew what to do and were ready when the word passed; flight and despair were a part of the folklore they inherited at their birth. This government, like every other their fathers and grandfathers remembered, had blown up in murder, mutiny, arson, and pillage. Sooner or later they would be the ones to suffer. It had seemed so secure, but they trusted nothing, and now they knew what to do. Rodney passed close to some of them and thought it could not be long before they saw through his thin disguise. Perhaps they would get a rupee for telling the sepoys—or perhaps two for killing him themselves.

He dared not stop to rest. Robin’s irregular breathing was close at his ear, and faint. His back ached and his hands kept scraping loose from the crimped mouth of the sack. He gathered all his strength and will and concentrated them on one task—the next step forward, then the next.

He tramped heavily out of a mango grove. There were square shadows here, and a yellow dog snapping at his heels. The dust swam beneath his feet, and he raised his eyes. He was in the dirty alley which was the road through Devra, and he could not turn back. Objects sprang into sharp focus and as suddenly blurred and were gone. He saw a peasant family resting in the shade of a well and thought they looked away as he passed, but could not be sure. He saw a cluster of people under a tree: the village well. His tongue swelled and his mouth opened, He saw among the swaying half-tone curtains a single point of silver brilliance. It was a trooper of the 60th, haranguing a crowd at the well. His accoutrements sparkled above the stooped colourless peasants. He was a leader, sober but alert and exalted, and his eyes flashed over the thin crowd. An old man mumbled a
question, and he cried, “How do you know it’s true?” He groped in his sabretache and threw something out. “Here, look at
that
. Isn’t that the sign of the raw flesh which ran through your village in the night?”

A man’s left hand, tightly clenched and cut off at the wrist, fell in the dirt at Rodney’s feet. He recognized the heavy gold signet ring on the little finger, and the red hairs curling behind the powerful knuckles.

The listeners murmured and twisted around to stare at the hand. The trooper called across their heads. “
Jai
ram, ji,
brother. Here, come and help me persuade these yokels to kill any English they catch. A few escaped. And give me back the Englishman’s hand. It is the fat Colonel-sahib’s.”

Rodney dragged on. He muttered with averted head, returning the salutation,
“Jai ram,
brother.”

The tall trooper flashed through the crowd to block his path, and said hectoringly, “Not so fast, you. Who are you, where are you off to? And what have you got in that kitbag?” His eyes narrowed. “Looting?
And
deserting?”

Rodney moved out of the tree shade into stabbing sunlight. His face was scorched bronze-black under the dirt, and out of it his eyes crackled old and ice-blue and mad. The trooper saw it all, and the bullet hole, and the wide stains on the tunic front. He and every watching villager read in those eyes the murderous finality of despair. He did not see that this creature was an Englishman, only that it was insane, and he spoke quickly in an altered, more humble voice, “Brother——”

The sack across Rodney’s left shoulder stirred, and the child wailed, “Mummy.”

A bewildered frown crossed the trooper’s face. Rodney drew the pistol out of his belt. George Bulstrode’s clenched fist lay in the dust between them. The pistol moved, coming up. Robin moaned inside the sack, and Rodney whispered gently, incessantly, “It’s all right, Robin darling, Daddy’s here. It’s all right It’s all right.”

When the barrel lined up with the emblazoned belt buckle in the centre of the trooper’s stomach, he pulled the trigger. The buckle disappeared, blown through a gaping hole in the flesh. The trooper coughed once and held his stomach. His eyes were tight and amazed; his frown deepened, and blood gushed between his fingers. His knees folded and he slipped silently to the road. Still talking gently. Rodney put the pistol back in his belt. He picked up the Colonel’s fist, stuffed it in his pocket, and stumbled forward again. The villagers made way for him.

At the edge of the jungle the trees stooped over him, the ground slid away, and he fell down.

When he recovered consciousness he dragged Robin out of the sack and laid him in the shade. The sun was not yet high, but the temperature was about 110 and the sky already turning from blue to the lead-grey of extreme heat. He was on a low rise of land where the trees began. He knew the place; it was a favourite lying-up spot for the deer that came out to eat the crops at night. Near here he had met the nightrunner with the chupattis. Near here his father had ridden under the mango trees and waited for the terrified villagers to come out and whisper news of the Thugs.

He had no present and no future, only a past. His past sprang back, beyond the conceiving of him, to the first Englishman who had come to this land, and linked him for ever with India. He looked out to the west through eyes too crusted-burnt to close. He put his head in his hands and looked at the stones. He had no money and no food. Countless millions of Indians crouched ready to kill him. The sea was six hundred miles away.

He grated his teeth, scratched among the stones, and buried Colonel Bulstrode’s hand. He’d rest first, and then see. He’d creep down into the village when the men were out, kill a woman alone by her hearth, and steal food and perhaps a bullock cart.