Nightrunners of Bengal (5 page)

He did not reply. The lane at last debouched into a small square bounded on three sides by boarded and shuttered houses, and on the fourth by a sprawled temple. There the crowd was pressed too thickly together to move. A low building across the square was burning gently; the red flicker from it illuminated the upturned faces of the mob. They waved hand torches above their heads, and he saw more torches on the housetops. Drifting wisps of smoke dimmed the guttering lights, and a cloud of dust, heavy with the smell of sewage, hung over everything.

The grumbling mutter of the people in the square began to form words. He tried to make them out, while the Dewan screamed up at him, “They’re destroying the Rani’s property! They’re killing officials! It’s your duty to fire——”

Rodney snapped, “Shut up, you——”

—ugly, murderous little brute, he’d wanted to say. He heard distinct words in the crowd.

“Down with the murderess!”

That must mean the Rani. The news of the sepoys’ arrival did not seem to have travelled through the mob; only those nearest had turned to face them. He patted Boomerang’s neck and stared steadily down on them; they looked like honest men, puzzled and goaded. A big old fellow with a gauzy white beard shook his fist at the Dewan and yelled hoarsely, “Murderer! Adulterer!”

Round the speaker they surged forward, and a couple of bricks flew. Rodney saw that they were aimed at the Dewan, who was cursing beside him, but they crashed among the men. A sepoy staggered and spat blood and teeth into the road. Subadar Narain hissed, “Stand up, stand still!”

Rodney leaned down to the bugler at his other stirrup. “Bugler, blow three Gs.”

The bugler held his rifle between his knees and took up the bugle dangling at his right hip. He wetted his lips, whispered “prrp prrrmp” into the mouthpiece, then flung back his head and blew.

At the brazen shriek the voices in the crowd fell silent, and Rodney heard the massed, heavy breathing. He stood in the stirrups and called out, “Ohé, people of Kishanpur! Disperse quietly to your homes! If you move this way, we fire!”

A sibilance of whispering soughed over the square. “
Sahib
hai
—
Company ka sahib
—
Company ka sipahi!”;
then a ripple as they murmured,
“
Dewan bhi!
”

He saw consternation in the faces turned to him, and disbelief. They hated the Rani and the Dewan, and they could not believe that he and the sepoys had come to uphold the rulers. Flushing, he raised his voice and shouted his order again. A farmer, conspicuous by a wall eye and a pinched toothless face, jumped out, joined his hands in salaam, and cried in a shrill thick dialect, “Sahib, rid us of the murderess—and rule us—or she will strangle us!”

Narain muttered under his breath, “Swine!” The Dewan fixed the speaker with a wide stare, a hungry almost loving look. More brickbats clattered on the house fronts, and a stick curved through the air.

“Make way!” Rodney edged Boomerang back till two ranks of soldiers were in front of him and he was no longer blocking their line of fire. “Front rank—
kneel!
Front rank, second rank—
cap!
Fire a volley at point blank—
ready!
Present when the sword drops.”

He drew his sword and held it out level. From the corner of his eye the N.C.O. at the right of the front rank watched the point.

A long deep sigh shook the crowd. They began to move, peaceably, without panic or hurry. They edged away, pushed back, dispersed, dissolved. The dust drifted around the dark
soldiers, waiting, silent and still in perfect discipline. One tried to choke a cough, and Narain snarled, “Quiet!” Rodney’s sword arm ached.

At last he cried “Rest!” and slowly lowered the sword till it lay across Boomerang’s withers, and breathed out with a long whistle. The square was empty of people. Several abandoned bullock carts stood in it, and a pair of goats, tethered together, ran about bleating. He saw no bodies and no wounded, and the fire in the shack opposite had burned itself out. The housetops were deserted; a yellow light glowed on the portico of the temple; his eyes moved nearer along the second-storey windows.

He looked straight into the face of an unveiled woman, statue-still, and ugly.

She was leaning out of an open window two feet above him and not more than ten feet distant, her elbows on the sill. She was in her late forties; her face was square and powerful, and daubed with remnants of make-up. Red betel juice stained her teeth and mottled her lips; thick black hair, grey-streaked, fell in rats’ tails round her face. He knew by the contemptuous pride of her pose that she could be only a princess or a whore.

The Dewan saw her and exclaimed in angry recognition. Ignoring him, she said scornfully, “Of course they killed the Rajah. I know it. You English—blind stupid fools!”

The Dewan pulled the pistol from his sash and sprang forward. The woman inclined her head, pursed her lips, and spurted a jet of red betel juice down into his eye; she was gone, vanished into the dark behind her. The pistol exploded, and a sudden orange flash glared on the wall. The ball chipped the baked mud and sang up into the sky.

The Dewan put up his pistol and turned back, breathing hard. Rodney stared at him coldly, without moving. When the sloe eyes dropped he snapped out a string of orders, and the sepoys began to march. For an hour they explored the silent jungle of the city.

At last he halted them and turned to the Dewan. “Where is the other damage? Where were your officials killed? What’s happened to the corpses?”

The Dewan had recovered himself, and smiled crookedly. “It must have been exaggerated, sahib. But several men indeed died, so I was told. If not, we can remedy the matter tomorrow.”

Rodney turned Boomerang’s head without a word and led the sepoys back to the fort.

The riot should have settled something. Perhaps it had; but now he was on edge with suppressed anger and a certainty that No. 3 Company had somehow been tricked and misused.

In the courtyard of the fort, when he had praised and dismissed them, he detained the man who had been injured by the brick. The light was bad, and after a minute’s vain peering he called impatiently for a torch. No one answered; the Native Officers had gone about their duties; the N.C.O.’s and sepoys were trailing off to their quarters; his orderly, Rambir, had disappeared, and the Kishanpur officers were nowhere to be seen. His frayed temper broke and he shouted at a shadow passing near him, “You there! Go and get a light, quick!”

The shadow stopped moving. After a short pause a woman’s voice called softly, “Someone fetch a light to me,
quickly
!”

In five seconds Prithvi Chand panted up with a flaring torch. By its light Rodney saw that the shadow was a white burqa, the one-piece, top-to-toe garment worn by all Mohammedan and some high-caste Hindu women. Black eyes flickered behind the netting of the oblong eyepiece, and she was gone. He did not have to ask who she was. He frowned and turned to the sepoy.

When he had finished he set out to make his report to Mr. Dellamain. The Commissioner sat fully dressed at his desk. A pair of horse pistols lay beside the inkstand, the chewed stubs of cheroots filled the brass ashtray, and stale tobacco
smoke permeated the room. He looked up quickly as Rodney entered.

“Well, was it serious?”

Rodney laughed shortly. “It was nothing at all. Someone had set fire to a shack in the square, and they were throwing a few bricks. Of course it might have got worse, but as it was the Kishanpur troops could have put it down easily.”

“H’m. Was there much shooting? I did not hear any, but then the breeze might carry it away.”

“We didn’t fire a shot. The Dewan tried to murder a woman, but missed. Personally I doubt whether anyone was hurt, from beginning to end. I had a strong impression that it wasn’t real, spontaneous.”

The Commissioner rose, took a deep breath, and swelled to his full size. His voice was ripe again as he said judicially, “Now why do you imagine someone should have stirred up a riot—and whom do you suspect?”

“I have nothing to go on, sir, but …” He related how the crowd had behaved, particularly when he first saw them. “They may have been a bit boisterous. I think the Dewan made it out worse than it was, so that we’d be called in—which would prove that we’re supporting the Rani.”

He knew now the pattern of light and shadow which could reveal that other man behind the Commissioner’s heavy features. He looked, and saw that Dellamain was twisting away from some fact, or fear, or suspicion, even while he spoke words of certainty and reasoned confidence.

“Ah, I suppose that is possible. The workings of the Indian mind are tortuous. But even so, it is a trifle far-fetched. The Dewan is essentially an honest man, unusually direct and—h’m—crude for an Indian. And I do not see that any harm has been done even if your suspicions are justified—a point, I may remind you, on which we have no evidence. Had he asked me outright, I would have been glad to dispatch you on a flag march, in order that the infant Rajah’s subjects should be under no misapprehension. The Company’s policy
will certainly endorse him as the true heir, and the Rani as regent during his minority.”

“But they hate her; we heard them tonight! They called her a murderess—that means they think she killed her husband the old Rajah. And they hate the Dewan. They’re going to hate us too, and despise us, for supporting her. Some of them were shouting for us to take over the state.”

The Commissioner, who had been pacing the floor and slowly shaking his head, stopped in mid-stride and said sharply, “Nonsense! A small section of rumour-mongers and sycophants in the mob, at most.”

For a moment Rodney thought the man underneath, cornered, was going to lose his temper. Dellamain was struggling too draw around himself the Commissioner’s detached firmness. At last he succeeded, and it was the great Commissioner of the Bhowani Leased Territory who laid an affable hand on Rodney’s shoulder and gripped it, a gesture Rodney detested.

“There, my dear fellow, you have a sensitive nature, and I admire it in you. But in these matters of high policy we must subordinate the heart to the brain.” Rodney stirred, and the Commissioner let his hand drop. “You have carried out your task tonight with efficiency and dispatch—and Christian mercy. Be assured I shall commend your conduct to Colonel Caversham, and I—ah—flatter myself I have some small influence with him. You have great responsibilities of your own; pray do not burden yourself with mine too. Now let me see, I think a word or two in the right quarter might effect your speedy return to Bhowani, eh? And to the charming and gracious Mrs. Savage. How would that suit you? Caversham could send another officer to relieve you. The sepoys may have to stay for some considerable period.”

“Don’t do that, sir. It’s my company.”

“No? Very well. Now go to bed like a good fellow. You must be exhausted. By the way, I would wish you to move your men out into camp somewhere nearby as soon as the immediate danger is over—say in a week? We must not give
the impression that we have—ah—seized the reins of government.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Wait. Her Highness is very anxious that the officer who stays here should try to improve the efficiency of her army.”

“What for, sir?”

Mr. Dellamain raised his eyebrows. “To assure her own protection and the young Rajah’s, I presume. Perhaps a certain pride too—put on a better show for the Governor General than Lalkot does, you know—something like that. And of course the better her army becomes, the less chance there is that we’ll have to come in and help.”

“Very good, sir. Good night.”

“Good night, my dear fellow.”

Rodney saluted and walked quickly along the passage and down the spirals of booming stairs to his own room. The pompous Commissioner’s parting clap tingled on his back; poor frightened Dellamain’s contrived smile hovered before his eyes: two people in one, a composite man, committed by profession to the filth of politics, writing crooked démarches, saying something and meaning something else. He unbuckled his sword and for a moment let the cold steel of the scabbard touch his cheek. That was direct, honest; cruel—but clean.

H
E WATCHED the dancing girls through half-closed eyes, for he was full of food and lazily content. He had been here seven weeks, each week settling more comfortably into the new way of living. Tomorrow, Saturday, February the twenty-first, it would all vanish under a resurrected formality. Tomorrow the British guests arrived for the
installation of the young Rajah and the tiger hunt. He could gauge now the constraint their presence would put on him and the people here. After the tiger hunt he would return to Bhowani, his tasks completed.

There had been no more disturbances in the city, or, so far as he knew, anywhere else in the five thousand square miles remaining to the State of Kishanpur. Once a week letters came from Bhowani—the day he left, Robin had sat on a small scorpion; the dog, Jewel, recently had had a fight with a jackal; Joanna had bought the materials for a new bonnet from a pedlar, and the tailor had made it up for her—total cost, six rupees fourteen annas. She also “presumed” that she would soon receive an invitation to the tiger hunt; he knew she would not, but found it difficult to tell her in so many words. In his letters he “supposed that the Rani had never thought of the matter,” and pointed out that he could hardly “stoop to outright cadging.” It wasn’t true; Sumitra
had
thought of it. Whenever he tried to manoeuvre conversation towards the subject, she as subtly guided it away again. After several attempts he knew she avoided it deliberately. She was a wonderful woman, but a princess, and an Indian, and his pride forbade him to ask favours of her.

The Commissioner had stayed only a week, and had taken Julio’s troop with him when he returned to Bhowani. The six weeks since had passed quickly, and Rodney had been kept busy training the local army. He had not expected to achieve much in so short a time, and had set to work with mixed feelings. The work was interesting enough; on the other hand, half believing that the Rani was a murderess, he felt a strong distaste for the idea of setting her more firmly in power.

But after a few days the scruffiness and military ignorance of his pupils aroused his soldier instincts. In a week his only thought was that these people were a disgrace to his profession, and he worked on them as keenly as on his own company. He’d even fretted as his time ran out, but knew now that he would go back to Bhowani warmed by a little glow of accomplishment.

For Prithvi Chand he had begun to feel a genuine friendship. The fat captain seemed to be a court parasite, and if he owned a conscience of any kind he kept it concealed under a happy-go-lucky air and a flow of amusing stories. Rodney’s military ferocity terrified him, and it took the Indian two or three weeks to realize that the same man who flayed him so rigorously on parade would joke and drink with him off duty. He reminded Rodney of a gross butterfly, but no one could help liking him, and at parties such as this he was a pleasant companion. Airily drunk with sweet wine, he reclined now on a bank of cushions at Rodney’s elbow. The water bubbled in the silver bowl of his hookah; from time to time he belched explosively, for he too had eaten well and gave thanks there for in the customary way.

Rodney turned to him. “Prithvi, do you and your friends treat all English visitors so—easily? I expected you to be reserved, correct; you have no reason to like us. But it’s been more than that, especially in the last few weeks.”

Prithvi Chand scratched his stomach and grinned slyly. “If you mean Her Highness, Captain, who am I to say? Now don’ be annoyed, I’m only joking—but you know she likes you. She’s very unusual lady.” He glanced round automatically to make sure no one was in earshot. “The old-fashioned dragons wan-wanted her shut herself up rest of her life when the Rajah died—even become suttee. You know most of the princes are here already for the hunt? With their ranis and girls? I’ve got a li’l piece upstairs, she says she—she can’t hear ‘self think for the ‘foreign’ women d’nouncing our Rani’s out-out
rage
ous behaviour! Bzz, bzz, clatter, clatter—at it all day!” He hiccoughed and waved a plump hand in the air. “Waste of breath. Rani says, ever since she’s a li’l girl so high, she’s going to be different. ‘S not another woman of family in India dares do what she’s done. She’s wonderful—terrifies everyone. Woman like that’s like tigress with wings—a freak? I say, you won’ tell her this, will you? I’m drunk’s th’ Archer-God.”

Rodney shook his head and sucked on the amber mouthpiece of his own hookah. It was all true enough; she was like a fire, or a steel spring, and terrifying in the force and range of her passions. Her rages struck like lightning; she even stood still with a sort of passionate realization of her stillness. He had not sought a meeting with her, partly because he was ashamed of his outburst that night in the courtyard. Dellamain had presented him at an informal audience, and after that the Rani took the initiative. Rodney had tried to remain cold and official; it was impossible, because the emotions she aroused were powerful ones—whether of contempt, dislike, distrust, fear, or admiration. Within ten days after Dellamain’s departure he had felt all those, in that order. She saw him two or three hours a day; never covered her face; cross-examined him on a thousand minutiae of his work and life; sometimes asked him to call her by her name, Sumitra, to help her “think English.” She thought that way she would understand better what he was getting at It was an impossibility, of course; there was no Englishwoman in the world quite like Sumitra, Rani-Regent of Kishanpur.

The music beat a louder tune; the dancers swung, their fingers gestured, their silver anklets clinked and crashed. Prithvi Chand raised his voice. “What a row! You know the miss sahib—Langford, wasn’t it?—who was here six months last year? She an’ the Rani hated each other, ‘cos they’re so much ‘like.” Rodney opened his mouth to protest. “Oh,
yes,
Captain. One’s Indian, one’s English—one has power do what she likes, other wants it. But why you find us easy—tha’ss because you fit in, yet you’re still English as goddamn—’scuse me, Captain.”

Rodney smiled. Perhaps it was true. Or perhaps they had some ulterior motive in view and wanted to make sure he would report favourably to the Commissioner. But it was a nice thing to hear. He said, “Thank you, Prithvi. You’ve all taken such a lot of trouble to see that I had a good time—all the shikar you’ve shown me …”

Prithvi Chand giggled; Rodney frowned, then relaxed in a sheepish grin. In the beginning, Prithvi, Shivcharan, and even the golden youth, had indeed taken him out hunting. One of them always went along to show him where the wild fowl flighted and the red jungle cock fed. They clung close and never left him to do his own explorations; once, wanting to take the morning flight and not thinking it necessary to disturb anyone at four a.m., he had slipped out alone. The surly Shivcharan came running after, and later blurted out the reason for his haste. The Dewan feared Rodney might lose his way or come to some harm in the jungle. The Rani would hold the Dewan responsible; so one of the officers was always to accompany him when he left the fort. The Dewan himself seemed to be away a lot.

All that was in the early weeks. For the last month it had been the Rani who came with him talking without cease, demanding to be taught to shoot, asking his advice on the ordering of guns from England. She was a little over five feet in height, firmly built, and had big black moving eyes. It was she who sat over the kill with him when villagers brought in news of a leopard; she who shot the leopard and clapped her hands like a young girl.

He wanted to thank Prithvi for other benefits besides good hunting. He swept his hand in a gesture embracing the dancers, the bottle of imported brandy on a table, the liveried servants behind him, the strewn cushions. “And then there’s all this …”

Prithvi smiled happily. “We want you to see our life, Captain, what we are. This is the best tr-troupe dancers in the state. You still look’s if you’re on parade—jus’ happen to be reclining. Can you
never
relax? Try, jus’ thish once, feel like a prince—be Jonathan Savage.”

“That was nearly eighty years ago, Prithvi.”

“An’ now you’re not a’venturers any more? Jus’ bits great pomp-pompous machine? C’mon, try, jus’ please me.” He subsided with a belch and closed his eyes.

Rodney thought perhaps he could afford to unbend a little;
Dellamain and Julio gone, no other Englishman here to stand in judgment on his behaviour. He forced a small musical burp and giggled.

In the Rani’s court there were old men, Oriental Minnesingers; at night they told tales of Rawan history—of the magnificence, of hawking and hunting, of war, torture, and single combat. Rodney no longer read Marco Polo, for the old men’s stories were as true and as thrilling. The Rani encouraged them to embroider the legendary splendour remembered of his great-grandfather, Jonathan Savage; of how he had lived like a prince, and gone away at last with presents and loot worth half a million rupees. Rodney wondered fretfully what in hades he’d done with it.
He
hadn’t got it.

The room was warm; its luxury of gold and wine and music touched his jealousy. Four hundred rupees odd a month, Joanna’s pearls not paid for, Robin’s schooling to come—and there ought to be more children when she got over her fright or her pretended worry about her figure; or was it the fright that was pretence? Why did no one offer him a nice large bribe? What for? What reason on earth would anyone have to bribe a soldier these days? The civil, now! That was the place, and the middle of last century the time! India was a golden jungle then, and his own standards would have been different. Jonathan Savage took bribes and thought nothing of it Even William, Rodney’s father, who had never taken one so far as he knew, had not regarded venality as a form of social leprosy; neither that, nor sexual immorality, nor drunkenness, nor anything—except lack of physical courage. That had been the eighteenth century’s code, the code of the Regency bucks. This damned Albert was the root of the trouble, imposing his stodgy German decorum on the Queen and through her on all her subjects. The English had been a riotous crew once; they were a damned dull lot now. It was too late; he’d been bred and raised in the new propriety. He couldn’t take a bribe, even if he wanted to and if someone were fool enough to offer him one.

He brushed back the hair falling over his forehead and drank moodily. Prithvi Chand lolled on the scarlet silk covers, asleep now, his mouth open. Through drowsy eyes Rodney saw that only one lamp remained burning in a far corner. The few other guests, all men, had drifted away unnoticed, and the servants had gone. The weak glimmer of the lamp contracted the room so that its gold and scarlet hangings blurred close over him. The curtains were drawn on the musicians’ balcony. An Indian violin etched arabesques on the night; a drummer beat with two hands on his drum; each hand beat a separate rhythm, each rhythm different from the violin’s. The three rhythms followed their paths, came together at a point of sound, paused, separated, and in due time again met. Six girls danced; their hands writhed, slowing as the music slowed. Each girl wore two anklets on her right ankle; the anklets chimed,
chink-chink, chink-chink.
Shields and swords gleamed like silver ciphers on the walls. The light dimmed.

A brown girl trembled in the centre of the floor. She wore no anklets, or swinging skirt, or tight-drawn bodice. As her naked body moved, the glancing curves of light moved, and Prithvi Chand slept. The outer verges of darkness had swallowed the other dancers. Perhaps they lay beyond the light, locked with soldiers or courtiers, like the spread-eagled women of the temple carvings and the gods who grasped them with many hands—locked for ever, carved of one stone.

The girl was an arrow, straight and taut. She arched her back and was a bow, bent, straining to let go. The bow released; she was a woman and twisted in slow ecstacy. Her breasts pointed the way for her seeking, hesitant feet; her mouth drooped slack and wet and her eyes were blind. She twined around him, her restless body so slight it could not escape. His hands went out and took hold of her buttocks. He dug his fingers into her flesh; the flesh yielded.

He looked into her eyes, searching deep, his nostrils pinched and his breathing difficult The keys lay there, not in him; a shameless splendour of desire would drive him on
until her desire was peace. She moved, and his fingers tightened. She had brown eyes, and in their depths a flat wall of—nothing.

He sighed softly and let his grip relax. Dear girl, dear lovely arrow girl. She had done her best. He caressed her bottom, smiled, and pushed her gently away. After a long wondering hesitation she smiled and stepped back, pace by slow pace, smiling, into the darkness. A moment longer she remained as an image held on the retina—big eyes, tight hair, a half-smile, and a whiteness of small teeth. Prithvi Chand slept.

The violin crept down a stair of sound. At the foot the rhythms met for the last time, and silence joined them. The collar of his shirt constricted his breathing. He rose to his feet, walked carefully out of the room and along the passage, and climbed up through the fort towards the battlements.

It was cold in the open air; the day’s clouds had passed and the sky hung low, a roof of twinkling fire. Leaning against the parapet, he lit a cheroot and saw the smoke drift north against the stars; nearly always, at night, a breeze blew down the river. He looked at the bulk of the fort, black and enormously crouched below him.

A Rawan had built it on the site of a smaller house, in the sixteenth-century morning of the Mogul glory. The plan of the entry port showed the hand of a French engineer, and Prithvi Chand had confirmed that another Rawan had commissioned a student of Vauban’s to modernize the fort in 1710. Mahrattas, Rajputs, and Moguls had captured and recaptured it, and at last the British. For five hundred years the Rawans had ruled their lands from here. Their hold had been now tenuous, now firm, but they had never altogether relaxed their grip, whether as independent kings, as viceroys for the Mogul, as vassals of the Mahrattas, as caged pets of the British. The fort lived on with them. The Rani still held audience in the huge room on the ground floor; soldiers and servants moved up and down the passages; today no prisoners shared the dungeons with the bats, but
there were signs—a smell of ammonia, a pile of calcined excrement in the corner of a cell—that there had been prisoners yesterday, or last month, and might be again tomorrow.