Nightrunners of Bengal (8 page)

Miss Langford continued. “Of course I’d heard of her when I was here before, but hadn’t met her. We asked the way and reached her house with no trouble. A little man followed us, looking worried, but did not try to stop us. Sitapara is a very striking woman—and she did not seem surprised to see us. We talked in French, of a sort.”

“French!”

“Yes. She was a harlot in Chandernagore for a few years, Captain Savage, will you please stop pretending to be shocked. I am a grown woman and I spent two years in a hospital at Scutari. The soldiers came in from the Crimea with wounds, but half of them stayed with venereal diseases they contracted in Turkish brothels. I am not
going
to talk round any subject, and I
will
make myself clear. Sitapara used to be the mistress of the French Governor of Chandernagore, and her French is as good as mine. I went to her because I hoped she could prove that the Rani and the Dewan murdered the old Rajah.”

Rodney stared at the dark water and thought, Does this have to come? Already, fifty hours after greeting the other
British guests, murder seemed a dirty crime—whatever its motive—and in his bones he knew the Rani had committed murder. He had not faced it in his thoughts about taking the post of commander-in-chief. His mind had accepted other grounds for deciding to refuse; anything not to have to reach down to that, drag out the ugly thing, and look at it.

He mumbled, “Why go to all this trouble? Why stir up filth? No one cares, and the Company are going to support her.”

“Because the old Rajah was my friend! Because you told us on Saturday that you’d seen the wall-eyed man who shouted to you in the riot hanging on a gibbet three days later. Because the Dewan tried to shoot Sitapara. Because the Commissioner gave me no satisfaction about the Silver Guru and what he said to the crows. As for the Company, they would not dare to support her if I can prove that she is a murderess.”

He kept his head turned away; it was nearly dark and he could no longer see across the river. She caught her breath and went on less vehemently, “Unfortunately, Sitapara had no legal proof.”

“Why did she say she
knew,
then?”

“Partly because she knew the old Rajah exceptionally well; he was her father. I’d heard that too, and Sitapara confirmed it. Her mother was a famous courtesan. The Rajah fell in love with her as a young man—and she with him, Sitapara says. At all events, Sitapara hears a lot, or her girls do. She has a dozen of them, and all the court officers go there, get drunk, and talk too much to prove they are in the inner circle at the fort. One of them saw the Rani push her husband off the roof walk. What no one understands is why she murdered him. She had great power, through him. Her little boy is the only heir the Company could possibly recognize. Sitapara’s suggestion is that she is a loose woman, really promiscuous—the kind that must have scores of lovers—and the Rajah found out.”

Rodney hunched his shoulders and blurted before he could stop himself, “I don’t believe it!”

She kept her voice flat and unemotional. “Nor did Sitapara, in her own mind. And that leaves the assassination, and all the judicial murders which followed, quite pointless—unless the Rani has such an insane lust for personal power that she did it for that.”

Rodney sat holding his knees, thinking miserably of Sumitra and the golden weeks since January the second. Above the falls the water was a sheet of dull steel; bats flickered by, and the river grumbled below in the blackness. He said, “What else did you find out?”

“Sitapara could tell us nothing about the Silver Guru. She agreed with me that he must have known something, but she insisted he’s a true holy man. She couldn’t think of any reason which would make him work with such people as the Rani and the Dewan. There’s nothing big enough, she says. Then she told us that weird things have been going on since the New Year. Everyone is on edge. People whisper of stars falling, dogs running about headless in the streets, vultures flying in threes across the moon—things like that. No one knows where the rumours come from. And”—he heard her turn to face him directly—“a young officer said one night in her place that one of the top three here—the old Rajah, the Rani, or the Dewan—was bribing Mr. Dellamain, and had been for a long time.”

That he could believe, especially since a chance fall of light had uncovered for him the fear behind the Commissioner’s imposing manner. If they had been bribing him for a long time, the murder might have been long-planned, and the bribes the price of Dellamain’s support for the Rani in official quarters. It made a big difference exactly which of the three was giving the bribes. But again, why the murder at all? Who benefited? The bribes could be for something else. There was the salt monopoly to encourage smuggling; rajahs did slip jewels to British officials who “forgot” to apprise the Governor General of their more outrageous vices
and extortions. The girl had uncovered a real dungheap in her determination to drag Sumitra down. And what could she know of all the circumstances to be so self-righteous?

Turning to watch her face, he said with malice, “The Lieutenant Governor was in Kishanpur till yesterday evening. Why didn’t you tell him?”

The near-darkness softened the firmness of her bone structure, and she looked less ruthlessly self-assured. She answered slowly, “I did consider it. My uncle, Lord Claygate—Lady Isobel’s father—is an important man. The Lieutenant Governor would at least have to listen to me—and if I had evidence, he would have to do something. But everyone knows that I’m unbalanced! Unless I have proof, he’ll do nothing. And proof I am going to get! Sitapara is as determined as I am. She’s promised to send me a message if she hears of anything definite enough for us to act on.”

“Us? You mean you and Major de Forrest?”

“Major de Forrest? Oh, he just said he’d come to the city with me. I meant anyone who will help me.”

She meant him. She meant to drag him into this crusade, with herself cast as Peter the Hermit, the madam of a knocking shop as Walter the Penniless, and the Rani and the Commissioner as the infidels.

Of course, if he became commander-in-chief of Kishanpur, he could probably find out—and destroy Sumitra, who had offered him the post because she liked him. Joanna would have a fit at the idea of spying on Dellamain. Even if he did unearth a great scandal he would only be marked down as an interfering busybody. The Company was too big to know everything, and too powerful to relish having the fact underlined by one of its own servants. Anyway, he wasn’t going to accept the Rani’s offer, and if Miss Langford thought such a lot of de Forrest, let her use him. Damn it, nothing could happen until Sitapara sent word, and then he’d have to judge the facts and see what was his duty.

She said suddenly, “It is your duty, sir.”

He shut his mouth with a snap. After a moment he said coldly, “I am not prepared to spy on the Commissioner or on Her Highness. May I escort you back to camp?”

She said nothing. He rose to his feet, pulled her up, and walked at her side away from the river. After a few yards they all but cannoned into Victoria de Forrest; she must have been near enough to hear at least the mumble of conversation, and to have seen them under the tree. Her eyes glinted oddly as he bowed and apologized. Heavens, did the stupid little tart think he was flirting with Caroline Langford? If it had been light enough to see the expression on his face, she would have known different!

F
RIDAY, February the twenty-seventh, was the fourth and last day of the hunting. Many tigers had been killed, and the arrangements for their slaughter were by now little more than a drill. At four o’clock each morning the naked beaters trooped off in hundreds to surround the appointed square of jungle. At seven the cavalcade of elephants began to form up in an avenue between the tents. At that hour dewdrops trembled on each blade of grass, the tents stood knee deep in a lake of mist, and the sun touched the bright flags.

At half-past seven the procession moved off; by seven thirty-five the trees had swallowed the hiss and rumble of the falls. Thirty or forty minutes later the hunters reached the starting line and spread out along it; then the drive began.

This day Rodney rode with Geoffrey Hatton-Dunn on an elephant near the centre of the line. The mahout, naked but
for turban and loincloth, sat below and in front, astride the great neck. A shikari, one of the state’s paid hunters, crowded into the howdah with them; he wore a patched black coat and a loincloth, and stank of garlic. Twenty yards to their right the Maharajahs of Tikri and Gohana shared the next elephant; beyond them were de Forrest and Caroline Langford. Twenty yards to their left the Rani, Mr. Dellamain, and the chief shikari of the state rode on Durga, the Rani’s favourite elephant. Beyond in both directions the line stretched away through thin forest, the khaki and grey of the hunting howdahs patterned by the gaudy colours of the princes’ coats. The elephants were dull black, the trees green and yellow, the shadows warm blue.

Rodney murmured, “Wouldn’t Julio love this!”

Geoffrey drawled, “He’d go wild, old boy—prob’ly shoot the mahout.”

The chief shikari glanced at the sun and listened for a moment to the silence ahead. The beaters should be well in position. The Rani spoke a word; the old man cupped his hands, his goatee beard waggled up and down, and he sent a shrill call quavering across the roof of the jungle. “My lords—forward!”

Each mahout grunted, kicked with his bare heels, and brandished his ankus. Each elephant heaved one slow foot forward, waved its trunk, and began to move. The yellow tiger grass swirled along their flanks; the teak branches swept overhead and tugged at the howdahs; the carpet of teak leaves crackled like a pistol battle. Rodney stood in the front of the narrow howdah, tense and alert, gripping his favourite rifle, a double-barrelled ten-gauge that fired a spherical ball. Geoffrey, similarly armed, stood in the back. Between them the shikari carried two spare rifles, both loaded; powder flasks and canvas bags were slung across his shoulders. Rodney caught the Rani’s eye, and she smiled briefly over to him. He’d have to see her tonight and tell her. He’d managed to put it off so far, but now it could not be avoided. He’d tell her tonight.

A confused noise broke out somewhere ahead; that was the beaters, beginning to move. He wondered whether there would be any tiger left by now, then remembered that the shikaris had been trapping for weeks before the hunt began. There would be tigers, crouching in pits, angry and hungry; there would be men up trees with ropes to spring the traps and let the tigers out. Then the tigers would run away from the loud noise of the beaters towards the faint noise of the elephants. The State of Kishanpur would ensure that its illustrious visitors went home satisfied. After all, they had come a long way, just for this.

The elephants swayed forward in irregular line. In front the shouting increased, and a boom and clangour as the beaters banged metal pans and struck the tree trunks with sticks.

Durga stopped. The mahout jabbed the point of his ankus into the hide behind her head; Rodney saw the man’s set teeth and the sweat shining on his shoulders, and the Rani’s blazing eyes. Durga took three slow paces and stopped again. She curled up her trunk and her head wove from side to side. To right and left of her the mahouts halted their elephants to keep in line.

Behind Rodney, the shikari muttered, “Whore of a great sow. Can’t think why Her Highness keeps her. She’s played up every single day.”

There was no wind, and the jungles smelled hot and dry. Ahead the ground fell away for a hundred yards, then tilted up in a long even slope. Up there the sun momentarily picked out the white of a beater’s loincloth among the trees. The shikari muttered urgently, “Sahib, sahib, look—there!”

He thrust forward, pointing with his chin. Geoffrey raised his rifle and set his face in an expression of boredom, his monocle swinging free at the end of its ribbon. Half-right, at the foot of the slope, a deeper gold moved in the yellow grass and was gone. Rodney’s heart beat painfully. He gripped the stock of his rifle and stared into the grass. The shikari cried, “There! There!”

A Royal Bengal tiger—ten feet long, male, heavy, and white-ruffed—ran crouched past a tree trunk. It ran with head and tail down, elbows up, and stomach close to the ground. The waving grass swallowed it. All the elephants fidgeted, catching fear from Durga as she fought to turn round, oblivious of the ankus hook driven through her ear. As the mahout tugged at the flesh, she curled her trunk up and over in an S, opened her jaws, and trumpeted. All the mahouts jabbed and bawled; all the elephants sidled back and trumpeted. The appalling thunder screamed along the line; it filed the hunters’ nerves and crackled in their brains so that they lowered their heads to it and screwed up their faces. Away to the left a rifle exploded with a heavy boom—and another. The echoes sprang back from the trees. Rodney, leaning over the howdah and searching the grass, saw a black bar move in the shadow of bushes, and lifted his rifle.

The tiger burst from a patch of thorn. The sun burnished him, made him a rippling glory of black and gold, and turned the white ruff at his jowl into a golden halo. He stretched his stride and came on like a river in the sunlight, his head high and his jaws half-open. Geoffrey whispered along the stock of his rifle,” ‘Tyger! tyger! …’”

Before he could fire, the tiger swerved and ran under their elephant’s belly. Geoffrey swung round to face the back of the howdah. The tiger sprang up from out of sight, dug his foreclaws into the hide over the spine, and jerked with his hind legs at the loose folds of the elephant’s fork. Opening his jaws wide, he roared so that the blast of fetid breath hit them with the quake of the sound. As he hung, he roared again, and his yellow eyes glared at them in a fire of fury; his hind claws sliced long raw strips of meat from the elephant’s loins.

Geoffrey put his rifle to the tiger’s chest and fired both barrels. The tiger coughed, choked, and dropped away. The mahout yelled and swung the ankus with all his might, but he could not keep the elephant facing the front of the line.
It ducked its head and swung round, while the howdah rocked. It jabbed down with its blunted tusks at the dying tiger and trumpeted. Then it hurried half a pace forward, and dropped its eleven thousand pounds of mass squarely on to its fore knees. The tiger’s breath boomed out in a harsh groan. The howdah bounced, and they clung to the framework while canteens, packets of sandwiches, and both spare rifles showered down past the mahout’s head on to the tiger’s corpse.

Geoffrey wailed, “The skin! Mahout, save my skin!”

The mahout could do nothing. He hung with his knees locked in behind the huge ears while the elephant trumpeted and squealed and kneaded the black and gold radiance until it was a pulp of fur and flesh, until blood ran out from the tiger’s nostrils and over its teeth, and the entrails spewed from its fundament.

The elephant squealed at last in triumph and stood up, again facing the front. Rodney scrambled to his feet and looked round, feeling seasick. No one had noticed their adventure. He saw tigers everywhere, running up and across the slope, half a dozen of them. The hunters were in a pandemonium of excitement.

A slim tigress ran out of the grass, raised her tail, and charged straight at Durga. Rodney took aim—no, that one was Dellamain’s; he waited in the aim. Dellamain leaned over, his big face white and crumpled. The rifle shook in his hand, and he fired.

The tigress’s snarl grated under the shots, trumpets, squeals and screams. She sprang up, all claws extended and jaws wide, and landed high on Durga’s forehead. The mahout rolled sideways to the ground and ran. Durga shut her eyes, lowered her head, and charged a tree thirty feet off. As her forehead smashed against it the tigress released her hold and flung clear. The tree cracked, splintered, broke apart, and keeled slowly over. The howdah fastenings burst; the Rani, Dellamain, and the chief shikari tumbled in a heap to the ground.

The tigress went mad. She sprang vertically twelve feet up, fell back, rolled over and over, bit at her spine, and bellowed. She bit the earth and attacked the fallen tree. Splintered wood and shattered boughs flew through the air in a cloud of dust. Rodney steadied his aim, but she was a whirling demon. He fired. The bullet smashed her across the broken tree as though she had been a kitten, but it did not kill her. Durga lumbered round and ran, the howdah bouncing and rattling beside her on the end of its tangled harness. He had his finger squeezing the trigger again when she passed between him and the tigress. The trailing howdah knocked the Rani down, and when he could see again the tigress was out of sight. From the corner of his eye he saw Dellamain throw down his rifle, turn, and run. The chief shikari writhed on the leaves, held one knee, and groaned. The Rani climbed slowly to her feet.

The tigress crouched in a dip of land behind the broken tree. He could see nothing but her lashing tail, and Sumitra stood too near his line of fire. Her hands hung at her sides, the sari draped her shoulders, and her head was up. She must have looked straight into the tigress’s eye, for they were less than ten feet apart.

Rodney put one hand on the edge of the howdah and vaulted out. Geoffrey’s cry faded in his ears. A long, long fall, watching the tigress all the time; he must land on his feet, he must not stumble for a fraction of a second; he must land on both feet, balanced, the rifle in his shoulder and his finger on the trigger. Ten feet to fall—not to look down, to watch the lashing tail. While he fell the tail rose. The earth smashed up under his feet, the rifle came into his reeling shoulder, the yellow eyes sprang out. The eyes passed Sumitra, still as a silken statue, and came on. He did not hear the roar, for all of him was in the sights—in the V of the backsight, the bead of the foresight, the expanding eyes. He fired in her teeth. The recoil knocked him on his back, and the eyes and a quarter of a ton of gold fur somersaulted
on to him. The sun went out, and it was painless, dark, and without breath.

The sun on his eyelids … a whirlpool of light in his head … men grunting. They dragged the tigress off him, and each breath stabbed a spear of ice into his lungs. Sumitra was there, her hands at her sides, exactly as she had faced the tigress, but now she was looking at him. Suddenly she grasped at a tree, and men ran to help her.

Geoffrey’s arm was under his shoulders, helping him up, and when he stood the arm supported him. He felt his bones and moved his limbs and laughed unsteadily. His ribs ached, and that was all. The princes crowded round him, touching and murmuring; Lady Isobel limped up and kissed him; Geoffrey stammered incoherently. The Rani thanked him with a sudden stilted formality, but did not meet his eyes. Sir Hector Pierce strutted through among the awed whisperings and wavings and stopped a yard from where Rodney stood between Geoffrey and Isobel. Sir Hector was wearing checked trousers, a brown frock coat, and a tall beaver hat. He swept the hat from his head and spoke in a small lilting voice that yet enforced silence with the effectiveness of a pistol shot.

“Captain Savage, the hand of the Almighty guided you and kept you.” His mouth shaped a prim smile; the skin crinkled round his eyes, and Rodney felt the force of an overwhelming personality embrace him with its approval. He found himself blushing like a girl as the general continued, “I am privileged to have made your acquaintance, sir.”

He replaced the ludicrous hat, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked away. No one smiled.

From the edge of the crowd de Forrest muttered a phrase of congratulation. Caroline Langford caught Rodney’s eye but said nothing; he thought she was crying. Lady Isobel definitely was. He patted her shoulder and said, “I’m all right, Isobel, quite all right. There’s no need to cry now.”

She sobbed. “I know—but we’re all so proud of you.”

Then they took him back to camp.

He slept till seven, and awoke stiff and bruised but well. The Rajah of Mamakhera sent his barber over to massage him, and while the man was at work Geoffrey sat on a canvas chair beside the camp bed and told him the news. Mr. Dellamain had taken to his tent and given out that his ankle was seriously injured. He had in consequence already received many straight-faced messages of condolence from the princes. The Nawab of Purkhas composed his in the form of an elegiac Persian quatrain. The Dewan had had the head elephant keeper’s right hand cut off, and intended to proceed in the same manner, a member a day, till there was nothing left.

Rodney sprang up, swore, and scribbled a scornful note to the Rani. Rambir went off to deliver it; Geoffrey left; Rodney ate a meal and dozed off again.

Lachman the bearer was shaking him.
“Sahib, ek admi
a-gya.”
Rodney propped himself on one elbow, saw the lamp was lit, and looked at his watch—eleven o’clock. He said, “What sort of a man? Damn it, it doesn’t matter, tell him to come in.”

The visitor was a Kishanpur court servant. He sidled into the tent behind Lachman, salaamed, and said, “Sahib-bahadur, His Excellence the Dewan asks if you can spare a minute to talk with him on urgent business. It is about your sepoys.”

Rodney slipped out of bed and pulled on the black suit and white shirt which Lachman had put out. He couldn’t imagine what had happened to the company. They were still in the river camp downstream; Narain was in command and sent a messenger up every other day; the reports so far had been that all was well. On the other hand, anything might have happened—fire, rifle accident, man run amok, someone drowned, cholera—oh, God, not that, not so soon. He hurried after the servant through a maze of tents until the
man stopped at the end of a canvas alley outside a big marquee. Only then did it strike him that the Dewan might have had the consideration to come to him instead of sending for him at eleven o’clock at night. He paused, drew himself upright, pushed back the flap with a curt swing of his arm, and strode into the marquee.