Nightrunners of Bengal (26 page)

He saw that Shyamsingh’s rifle was slung across his back, and heard Piroo’s whining voice. “Here’s the cart, your majesty. The broken place is round the front.”

The sepoy said, “If you can’t mend it, Piroo, what can I do? You’re a carpenter. Anyway, I’ll look.” He had the face of a lost and frightened child, and there were bloodstains and clots of liver on his bayonet. His voice was thick, and
wherever his mind was it was not here by the Monkeys’ Well. He moved towards the front of the cart; Piroo followed, whining, and Rodney could no longer see them. Silently he twisted round, while Caroline put one hand on Robin’s forehead and held the other near his mouth.

The low sun projected the shadows of the two men on to the canvas of the hood. In front was Shyamsingh’s angular bulk—the towering shako, the long bayonet; behind, Piroo’s small head and hunched back. Rodney raised the pistol.

Piroo’s arms moved, pounced up and over, jerked back and clear. A straight black bar of shadow linked them to Shyamsingh’s neck. It was a shadow play, and the hairs crept on Rodney’s scalp. The sepoy’s fingers clawed up at the bar, his shako toppled and fell into the dust, his body rocked. After a minute of fearful soundless straining he began to fidget and his boots to dance a noisy little jig, clicking together. His bigger shadow subsided slowly, and still the rigid bar connected the two marionettes; the other moved its hands, the bar curved in the middle and opened out. Shyamsingh fell, his head crashing against the cart wheel.

Rodney jerked open the flap and saw Piroo, sweat starting out in pimply drops on his forehead, tuck the square of black silk back into his loincloth. Shyamsingh lay on his side against the wheel, his face purple-black, his eyes half out of his head.

Piroo looked ten years younger as he turned excitedly to Rodney. “Did you see that, sahib? Did you see, miss-sahiba?
Very
good, that was. Of course he’s known me for ten years and trusted me, but still—I did it single-handed. And—let me think—twenty-five years and a few months since my last. I’d reached eighty-four then. This is my eighty-fifth.” He was squatting by the corpse, unfastening the belt. He looked up, and a childish pucker creased his cheeks. “But I can’t really count him, because we’re not on a proper expedition. I haven’t been blessed or anything.”

He dragged the body away by its arms towards the well, shaking his head and muttering to himself. Rodney climbed out and stowed the rifle, bayonet, and belt into the cart. He felt better; the sight of Shyamsingh’s corpse had made spittle run into his mouth, and his eyes sparkled.

Caroline was looking at him, and he hung his head, pretending not to see. She said slowly, “What does it mean? Who is Piroo?”

“Mean? He’s a Thug, a professional religious murderer—retired. My father probably made it too dangerous for him, and he got out while he could. And he’s been a carpenter in the regiment, my regiment, for over twenty years!”

He laughed silently. Piroo returned, and Caroline said, “Why did you kill that man, Piroo—lure him in here and kill him?”

The carpenter turned his head and peered down in surprise. “The sahib needed a bigger shako, didn’t he? The sahib’s father nearly had me hanged, didn’t he? Oh, he was a great one, the sahib’s father. So of course I’ll get a hat for his son. It’s a privilege. It’s fun, too. Well! we nearly forgot it after all that!”

He handed Shyamsingh’s shako through the flap, took the other and threw it carelessly into the bushes.

Caroline said, “But—but—he wasn’t going to harm us.”

Rodney snarled. “Look! See those marks? That’s Alan Torrance.”

He thrust the bayonet close under her nose and held it there a second. When she dropped her eyes he put it in the scabbard and called through the canvas, “Get on, Piroo.” The rough wheels rolled again.

After a quarter of an hour the cart stopped and Piroo spoke back to them “Sahib, I won’t go up to the gates. We’re two hundred yards away. I’ll go to Sitapara’s. Yes, I know her. I’ll be there if you want me again.”

He unfastened the flap and Caroline got out, carrying Robin; Rodney followed. Piroo turned the bullocks and the cart creaked away. The sun glare struck back from the road
into Rodney’s eyes. Screwing them up, he saw the fort gate, the sentries there staring down towards them; there was safety, and four walls, and a place to sleep. He walked slowly forward beside Caroline. Step by step his strength ebbed, and the nervous force he had so strainingly held in. Caroline’s feet were bleeding, but Robin was comfortable in her arms and she had the strength to carry him. The fort swam and his knees were buckling so that he had to hold on to Caroline’s shoulder. At the gate the sentries in their primrose coats barred the way, and their havildar ran out. Rodney knew the man and tried to draw himself upright, while the N.C.O. stared as at a ghost.

He said thickly, “Greetings, Gurbachan. Send word to the Rani. We ask for shelter.”

In through the dark of the entry port, leaning more heavily on Caroline. The fountain splashed in the courtyard and she sat down suddenly on the edge of it, where Julio had sat and showed his book of birds to Prithvi Chand. Robin awoke and cried; she soothed him and drew her fingers across his forehead while Rodney swayed. He must stay near her, or he’d fall down.

The Dewan came, with three or four courtiers. Rodney hung his head. They gasped and looked at him and muttered. They took his pistol away. They grasped his hand and led him somewhere. He shook loose and clung to Caroline’s elbow. He could not see well. They crawled along dark passages where his shuffling boots whispered and each stumble echoed and re-echoed and currents of cool air stirred the hangings. Up, up, up; he forced his knees to bend and stretch, and held tight to Caroline. Sentries in the corridor—what for? They saluted—drill as ragged as ever—one of them pushed open a heavy door He went in. The door clanged shut.

Three wide window embrasures were cut at a slant through the outer wall, and a large divan stood under the centre one. Isfahan rugs in pale colours covered the floor, and it should have been a light and luxurious apartment, high in the palace
and overlooking the river. He stared round at the string beds ranged against the bare walls, at the litter of cushions and soiled rags. He had been here before; there had been an ormolu-encrusted table in the window at the right, and revealing shadows on Dellamain’s face. Now there was a smell of sickness and weeping, and people drooped like unstuffed dolls. Tears trickled down through the stubble on his cheeks as he turned from face to face.

Father d’Aubriac stood by one of the windows, telling his beads. Mrs. Bulstrode sat on the floor and stared at a wall. Louisa Bell crouched on the divan, listlessly giving suck to her baby; her filthy nightdress hung round her waist, exposing her narrow shoulders and swollen breasts. The Myerses were grouped by one of the string beds; Rachel lay on it. Mrs. Myers sat on the edge, and young Myers stood at the foot. Mrs. Hatch and John McCardle were by another bed where a man lay with bandaged eyes and twitching fingers; Rodney knew by the straggly hair that it was Geoghegan. Dellamain’s features swam into focus; the man’s mouth opened and shut but Rodney heard nothing; he saw that the riding trousers were torn and the heavy face shrunken.

One by one, as he met their eyes, they had acknowledged that they knew him. Father d’Aubriac smiled, Mrs. Hatch exclaimed loudly, but none of the others spoke. A flicker of something passed over, and then they were again as they had been—wide dry eyes, slack lips, taut cheeks. His head nodded and he tried to think what ailed them, and himself. Not fright—only Dellamain’s always-moving eyes showed fright. He looked again, and this time saw, mirrored in the refugees, his own shame. They were naked in their minds, stripped of faith and trust by the same blast that had destroyed wealth, family, and position. Naked, they did not want to see or be seen.

He walked slowly to a vacant bed and lay down. Caroline glanced at him and carried Robin over to John McCardle. He heard them talking; the tiny whispers boomed in his head.

“Mr. McCardle, can you do anything for Robin—Robin Savage? He’s bad.”

“One moment. We’ll finish wi’ Mr. Geoghegan here.” A long silence. “Now, miss, wha’s this muck on the child’s heid?”

The whispering faded. Robin whimpered, and Rodney gripped the frame of the bed while sweat sprang out on his face. He’d have to leave it to Caroline, because the ceiling was floating away and the darkness coming. He shut his eyes.

T
HE SUN shone level through the grilles and traced a geometrical design on the wall above his head. The aura of despair had lightened; the room was not cheerful, but he heard a murmur of talking, and the refugees moved about as men and women move, instead of dragging themselves like ill-handled puppets. Caroline was at his bed; she gave him a cold chupatti and milk from a brass bowl. He ate and looked at her, and followed her with his eyes when she went to help Louisa Bell with the baby and afterwards came back. Robin was asleep.

Dellamain was talking to someone in a dark corner; Rodney heard a few words. “… ghastly disaster … dastardly scoundrels … troubles over now, my dear lady … every reason to believe the outbreak was confined to Bhowani …”

The Commissioner’s voice had recovered its fruity timbre; that meant he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t be, because his words made nonsense, and he must know it.

Rodney munched the chupatti and muttered to Caroline, between mouthfuls, “He knows, but he pretends not to. We’ll
never sleep again. We’ll never trust a soul. What did
he
see? Oh, God!” The moths were fluttering away with his sanity. He put his hands to his head and rocked to and fro. “Shyamsingh’s face. Thaman, Vishnu, Thirteenth Rifles, to me!”

He laughed, and Caroline was there, holding his shoulders.
She
knew,
she
understood; he stared up at her. She was appraising him for some reason, seeing how strong he was, testing whether he was broken quite into little child-pieces. He sat up and said quietly, “Well?”

Something was coming which she must force herself to say. He jerked round to see if Robin had died in his sleep, but the boy’s chest rose and fell regularly.

To stop the shaking in him he folded his arms and stretched out his legs. She was bending over him, and in the shifting windows of his mind her breasts were tight and her thighs perfect, smoothly shaped. He looked at her in dumb anguish. It was God’s punishment to thrust that piercing-sweet desire into his wonder of her. She was his elder sister and his mother; she would protect him and guide him. Robin was hers, not his, because he and Robin were equally children and equally helpless. She looked down at him through a rent in the veil; he could for the instant touch the sanity of her world, and know it was cold and shadowed. She had taut pointed breasts, and he could have kissed them, but she was weighing him like a little boy to be told bad news. He saw her as once in a long time, out of nowhere, without words, a little boy sees his mother and is bowed by the weight of her anxiety and holds her hand to comfort her. Wondering, he touched her fingers.

Sister with the fragile neck and blue-veined wrist, what have I to do? Shall I tell you a story? … Of a Jack-a-Manory? Shall I kiss it and make it better? When I was a little boy, and my mother was worried, and I saw it and was very good for her sake—she cried. I don’t understand.

She dragged her words up one by one. “Robin is a little better, but—the Silver Guru was in the courtyard as we came in. He moved away. It was too late. I saw him.”

He said, “He escaped? I was afraid they might find out he is English.”

She braced herself once more, and her voice was sharper-edged.

“Listen. I can understand how the Rani had to make peace with the Dewan when you uncovered the plot against her. But she had no need to forgive the Silver Guru. You know her better than I. Is it likely she would? If the Guru is here, the Rani has no quarrel with him. So the guns were not for a revolution against her; they were for rebellion against us. Colonel Bulstrode did not say it was impossible; he said it would be ridiculous, because the Bengal Army could crush all the princes put together.”

Rodney giggled suddenly.

She went on. “And now I have seen the one thing that we were never to see—that you must have been so near to seeing the night of the Holi, the night the Silver Guru lied to you. You saw all the people who were supposed to be plotting against each other—the Rani, the Dewan, the Guru, the ringleaders of the sepoys. It must have been a terribly important meeting, perhaps their last, the one where they confirmed their plans. And you came so close. A few minutes later and you would have seen them together, not separately. They would have killed you, I suppose. Captain Savage—Rodney—we must not be blind again. Please, please see. O Almighty Father, please not again, not too late again.”

He listened to her urgency and struggled to encompass and acknowledge the meaning of the phrases. He mumbled, “We’re all right. Silver Guru’s an Englishman. Lots of reasons he could be here—may’ve run for his life like us, come to make his peace, come to preach. Sumitra wouldn’t harm us. I saved her life. Anyway, it’s not true!”

She wanted to believe him, and the glow in her eyes died to an unwilling point of grey flame. Robin babbled something; Rodney turned towards him. Bandages enswathed the small head and hid the fair hair.

When Rodney looked back, Caroline’s lips were hard set; he cowered under her harsh whisper. “There is no rest. We’re exhausted with horror. We think we can’t face any more of it. We’re sick from shame and horror. Mr. Dellamain’s useless, he’s trapped by his past, he’s blind! He thinks he has a hold over the Rani, but it’s the other way round. We’re prisoners; there’s a guard on the door. You and I are the only ones who know enough to see the truth. And you’ve given up, like the child you are. You’re not
going
to lie down and get better, not this time.
You
killed them all in Bhowani because you wouldn’t see the truth about the Rani. You don’t care about Robin, but you’re not going to kill me. Get up! Self-satisfied prig, lazy lecherous cad, baby!”

The words rattled round his ears: sister, telling him to be a man, failing to coax, desperately trying to prick his little boy’s pride. But he wasn’t a little boy any more. He stared at Robin’s bandaged head and knew she was right. He was possessed in that moment by the exact and terrible shape of the demon beyond the curtain. He snarled, “Shut up! Go away! Leave me alone!”

He sprang off the bed and walked aimlessly across the room. Damn, damn, damn her! Prisoners. His eyes glittered; the walls were thick, the room sixty feet above the river, Another slaughter—in here; blood soaking into the carpets; perhaps it would be in the dungeons with the bats. Sane, cold clear sane. He’d have to kill someone—people—the more the better.

What if these fears were fantasies? The Rani
might
harm the refugees; flight would certainly kill most of them. They were frail and battered, and at this burning season half of them would die, including Robin. Disease swept the fields and travelled the roads; they’d die in the jungles, foodless and without shelter.

The others were looking at him strangely. He stopped his pacing and cried, “I’m going to see the Rani.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He heard the gasp of relief in Caroline’s voice. He twisted the iron ring of the door handle and when the door did not open tugged harder, hammered with his hands on the wood, and shouted, “You outside there! Open the door!”

Feet approached leisurely down the passage, and a man called through, “What do you want?”

“Open this door at once. I am Captain Savage. Miss Langford and I wish to see Her Highness at once.”

Bolts slid back and the door opened. A pair of armed soldiers stood outside, and though he knew them both they would not meet his eyes. They said, “Wait please, sahib,” and one called down the corridor over his shoulder. Rodney sat on his bed, trembling and staring in front of him.

Mr. Dellamain came over and said heavily, “I do not wish to intrude, Captain, but as the—ah—senior British representative here I feel communications with Her Highness should be made through me. Perhaps I can carry your message at my next meeting with her?”

Rodney answered shortly, “No.” After a while the Commissioner went away from him while the people in the room muttered to each other and Caroline whispered something to McCardle.

Ten minutes later the Dewan came; his sharp dark features were lighted by a fire behind the skin, and Rodney thought he had been drinking, or doping, or both. The twilight from the windows bathed his pitted face; the pupils of his eyes were black points. His tongue caressed his lips as he glanced round the room; his eyes rested for a long second on Rachel Myers’ half-dressed nubile body. He said thickly, “Come with me, please. Her Highness is busy but has been kind enough to grant you an interview.”

Rodney and Caroline followed in silence along the passages and down the spiralling stairs. Heavy yellow curtains hung over the doorway of the small throne room.

They stopped outside, and the Dewan cried softly, “Your
Royal
Highness. Miss Langford, and Captain Savage of the
Thirteenth Rifles, Bengal Native Infantry, in the service of the Honourable East India Company!”

The words were loaded with sarcasm, and he leered at Rodney as he said them. Caroline pulled aside the curtains, lifted her head, and walked in. Rodney braced his knees and followed her.

The Rani sat on a pile of cushions, alone in half-darkness. A dim lamp, on a round ebony table behind her, silhouetted the smooth shape of her head. They stood side by side, looking at her, and she looked only at Rodney. No one spoke, and he scanned her face for a sign. There was triumph or pride in the carriage of her head—he could not be sure which. It was difficult to see her features against the light, but he thought there was no glow of happiness in the flat brown texture of her skin, and saw that the eyes were sad. He watched her make a slow careful inventory of his torn clothes and burned face. Had he met her in a city lane, and believed her noble lies? Had she sat on cushions like these, with a light like this, in a tent by the falls of a river? He didn’t remember. She had turned from him to stare at Caroline, and her mouth had hardened. He was conscious of the wills stepping out to meet each other. Prithvi Chand was right; they were alike.

At last the Rani sighed and compressed her lips. “What is it?”

He forgot what it was that he had come to say. She had helped to organize the mutiny. The Rajah had been an honest old man, one who held the given word above everything, and his father had given the Rawan word to the English; so she had murdered him. He knew now what the princes had talked about at the tiger hunt, why they had been gathered together. How many had said Yes, how many No?

It was Sumitra’s triumph that he stood destitute and wounded before her. And it was a rage of personal defeat trembling in Caroline beside him, not any abstract loathing of treachery or fear for the future. His spirit only absorbed
these things and recorded them. His own fury had evaporated, and he could not fight either of the women. He saw that Sumitra’s eyes were pitying and protective when she looked at him. He had nothing to say.

She repeated her question. “What is it?”

His hands fidgeted, and he muttered, “It doesn’t matter. My son is badly hurt. We wanted to know whether you are going to protect us. It doesn’t matter though.”

She leaned forward. “Who doubts it? You, Rodney? Mr. Dellamain?”

“
I
doubt it.”

She whipped round on Caroline. “You? Who are you to doubt the word of a queen?”

“You’re not a queen. You’re a murderess, a harlot, and a liar.”

Sumitra leaned back and smiled crookedly. “I see. Something has made our little white miss a woman. You would kill for him now, and like it? Poor little thing. You have not the courage to fight for what you want. I have. I killed my husband for India; I pretended to be a whore for India; I lied, for India. I am an Indian first and woman afterwards. Poor little thing, just discovering you are a woman first—and nothing else. It is bad, the first time, isn’t it?”

“It’s not true! Don’t say it!”

Rodney hardly heard what they said. They were miles from him and engaged in a battle he did not understand—a battle which had nothing to do with the point. Caroline was losing because she could not speak coherently for rage. It was an entirely new girl beside him, and he stared at her in astonished wonder.

Vaguely he realized that Sumitra had turned on him and that she was in a towering fury. “And
you
crawl down to insult me because she orders you to. Blind, cruel, stupid fool! English fool, man-fool! Why should I protect you or your son or this white she-rat?”

He jumped forward; the mad glare crackled in his eyes, and his voice blared. “If you touch a hair of Robin’s head,
I’ll break your son’s skull in front of your eyes. By God, I tell you we’re coming back in blood and fire. We’ll burn you black bastards alive over slow fires; we’ll quarter you, and hang you on gallows, and rip your filthy guts open with steel.”

He was panting, teeth bared, and could hardly see her. A red vision blurred his eyes, where Indians writhed, contorted in agony, and his own face laughed madly at their tortured antics.

He stopped, held down a shuddering breath, and said coldly, “Send us all under escort to Gondwara.”

The Dewan and two soldiers had hurried into the room when he raised his voice. They stood close behind him now, but the Rani was oblivious of them. She was on her feet, her eyes dilated; looking into them, he saw horror, and heard her whisper, “Shivarao! No, no!” Then anger overwhelmed everything else, and she spat in his face.

“There! I am Sumitra Lakshmi, Rawan, Regent for the twenty-seventh Rajah of Kishanpur, and I tell you that you English are
not
coming back. You will be rooted out of India like the weeds you are. Do you think you will be safe in Gondwara? Gondwara will fall when we are ready, then all India.”

Her voice dropped a tone, and the pride went from it; it crawled with a personal venom. “Who are you to plead? I hate you. I would like to see you all killed, but you—
you
I’d strangle with my own hands.”

She clawed towards his face. Caroline gasped and threw herself forward. Three long nail slashes sprang out on the Rani’s left cheek, and the blood welled up into them. The soldiers caught Caroline and dragged her back. In the silence the Rani sat back and began to laugh hysterically, shrieking and rolling about on the cushions, while the soldiers held Caroline, and Rodney felt the muzzle of a pistol in the small of his back.