The Sandalwood Tree (12 page)

At least the man is not lowborn. He speaks the Queen’s English, having lived in London & studied at Cambridge, & he comes from a family of wealthy landowners—silk, I believe. Still, he is Indian, & we represent the Raj, & no good can come of their association at this volatile time
.

The flap amongst the sepoys revolves around some new cartridges for their rifles. Apparently, the grease on them is profane, cow fat or pig fat, or so they believe. Whether the grease is profane or not, religion is no thing to trifle with in this land of many gods
.

1947

I
heaved the record book open near the center and checked the date—1855—then leafed through pages of church trivia until I came to 1856. I read endless lists of births, christenings, and deaths, a note about a parishioner suffering from consumption, details of the acquisition of new rattan chairs for the Club, and a description of a swanky ball at the Viceregal Lodge.

I turned the page and saw a heading penned in graceful calligraphy—
New Arrivals, January to June, 1856
. The list included dates, names of officials and family members, military personnel with their ranks, and halfway down the page,
May 1856, Miss Adela Winfield, Companion to Miss Felicity Chadwick
. No more doubt. It was my Adela in the graveyard.

I flipped through the book to January 1857. Ordinary parish business followed a dismissive remark about malcontent sepoys. In March, an entry fairly seethed on the page, the handwriting an angry scrawl.

March 1857

More rubbish about those damnable cartridges being a plot to corrupt their faith. General Anson says he will never give in to their beastly prejudices. Hear, hear
.

That sounded pretty bloody-minded for a cleric, but Reverend Locke had said that records were often kept by anyone willing to take the time. Whoever took the time to record the mutiny seemed to speak for the majority.

April 1857

Mutiny
! A sepoy in Barrackpore, one Mangal Pandey, actually shot & wounded a British officer. The community is outraged. This cannot stand
.

April 1857

Pandey has been hanged, but there have been protests
.

May 1857

Disaster in Meerut. Sepoys have slain the entire Christian population! Now they ride for Delhi to enlist the Moghul Emperor in their cause. Bahadur Shah Zafar will never give his blessing to these malcontents. He is too shrewd a fellow to defy the Crown. He will put them down for us
.

May 1857

Bahadur Shah Zafar has given the sepoys shelter in his palace. Surely he was coerced. In any case, it is war
.

June 1857

The sepoys have taken the Red Fort in Delhi. British citizens, women & children included, roam the countryside seeking shelter. It is a bloody rebellion, but the Indians are calling it a War of Independence
.

Thus far, we in Simla have been spared, but there have been ominous incidents, gatherings that approach the character of mobs. The mood is threatening, & we venture out of our homes infrequently. We watch our servants for signs of subversion. Even some of the children carry sticks, which they brandish with an air of menace. God help us
.

June 1857

The Tytlers are safe in Karnal, God knows how, but Vibart is missing. The Clarke family was slaughtered in their home, but Morely could not describe the scene. Mrs Clarke was far advanced in her pregnancy
.

July 1857

Kanpur! Our women & children dismembered & thrown down a well! Unspeakable. God curse their black souls. They will pay. One hundred of theirs will die for every one of ours. Wagentrieber has called for annihilation. Canning has asked for restraint & has been dubbed “Clemency Canning.” He is roundly ignored. It is agreed that we must avenge Kanpur in a way that sends a clear message. Never again!

Strangely, the next pages listed only births and deaths, a wedding, and a cricket match with multiple exclamation points after one of the scores. It read,
“Cracking match!”
It seemed that rebellious sepoys, however troublesome, were not taken as a serious threat to the Empire; they were, after all, only employees. I saw one more mention of consumption, and then a description of British revenge for Kanpur.

August 1857

Nicholson has been disarming regiments of sepoys with great success & hanging their leaders. He has abandoned the practice of blowing mutineers from the mouths of cannon because he believes that the powder expended might be more usefully employed
.

August 1857

Canning says we go too far, but he is a lone voice. Our army of retribution sweeps across the north & entire villages are put to the torch. Loyal Sikh troops have been allowed to torture captured insurgents. Sepoys have been made to lick clean the floor of the massacre site at Kanpur, after which they are ritually outcaste by having pork & beef & everything that could possibly break
caste stuffed down their throats. Then they are sewn into pigskins & hanged. General Neill has ordered that, contrary to both faiths, the Hindoos are to be buried & the Mohammedans burned. Distasteful, but as Mackenzie said, “We would be less than men if we did not exterminate them like snakes.”

The Indians are calling our revenge the devil’s wind, but it is our right, enshrined in the Bible. Wallace bayonets sepoys whilst chanting the 116th Psalm
.

The bile that I’d swallowed at the sight of the burning car rose up the back of my throat again. I pushed away from the desk, imagining a British officer, crazed by revenge, chanting psalms like an angel from hell while he waded through the blood and gore with his bayonet raised. My sense of sarcasm kicked in, and I thought, poor God, six thousand religions in the world and everyone claiming that He is on their side; what a headache.

September 1857

British troops have retaken Delhi. This Sunday we will give thanks as a community united in gratitude. Dalhousie, the dim-witted scoundrel, has been chastised & there is talk of reorganising the East India Company. The need for a stricter rule of law has been impressed upon us at great cost. But rebellion will not be tolerated & reprisals will continue for some time
.

September 1857

How fortunate we are to enjoy the cool climes of Simla. Newcomers report that the humid heat in Calcutta & Delhi is oppressive &, for some, even fatal. But comfort can breed moral laxity, as we have seen recently with the Singh scandal. It is disconcerting to imagine …

But the next page had been torn out. I wondered why the record book in an Anglican church would mention a scandal in an Indian family, so I leafed through the book, hoping the page had been placed elsewhere, but it had not.

I stared at the wooden duck decoys on the mantel. Britons would not take any notice of a scandal in an Indian family unless one of their own was involved. Of course Englishmen often took Indian mistresses, but after 1830, when missionaries began to arrive en masse, interracial relationships were condemned along with pagan idols and harems, and they would certainly not be recorded in a church record.

As for a relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian man, well, that would have been beyond scandal, simply impossible. The man would have been lynched if he lived long enough to get a rope around his neck. Even in the twentieth century, when an Englishwoman in the Punjab reported being bothered on the street by an Indian man, the governor ordered all Indians using that street to crawl its length on their hands and knees.

A relationship between a Victorian woman and an Indian man was unthinkable. But what could have happened in an Indian family that would be recorded in church and then torn out?

The record ended in December 1857, and it was time for me to go home. As I replaced the volume on the bookshelf, the row of old-fangled Bibles drew my attention, and I ran my hand over the cracked leather spines imprinted with names in an ornate gold type: Chilton, Braithwaite, Marlowe, and—yes—Winfield.

When I opened the Bible, a folded sheet of paper floated to my feet. I picked it up as the church bell began to chime the hour, and I imagined Billy staring at the clock whose hands indicated that I should be home. I imagined Habib watching the door. Quickly, I scanned the top line.

February 1857

She is expectorating blood & I begin to despair. My best efforts have failed
.

It appeared to be a journal entry. I fanned the pages of the Bible to shake out any other loose sheets, and breathed a quiet “Holy
Christ” when several more folded papers wafted down in a swinging drift. I stooped to gather my windfall, wanting to read them immediately, but I had to get home. As I shoved them into my purse, I thought I heard footsteps and glanced at the door. Tricked by guilt, the word “stealing” came to mind and I mumbled, “Only borrowing.” I clicked my purse shut and replaced the Bible. I had the irrational idea that my hair must have gone messy, as if whipped by the wind, and I patted it down before I let myself out. I slipped away without seeing the splendid Reverend Locke, and I was glad. My purse felt heavy with ill-gotten loot, and I wouldn’t have been able to meet his eyes.

I hired a tonga and on Cart Road we passed the burned-out car, scorched and skeletal and still smoldering. But there were no bamboo sticks to be seen, and feet and hooves and wheels had already churned up the dirt where there might have been blood. In time, they would haul away the wreck, leaving no hint of what had happened there. A cow stood nearby, grazing on a pile of refuse, and I was struck by how such a thing could happen and leave no trace. Oceans of blood had been shed in India, but the only evidence left was in books. It seemed wrong, yet at that moment I, too, wanted only to forget.

1856

W
hen Felicity first met him at the orphanage, he avoided her eyes, and she thought him cold. The children and the missionaries made her feel needed, but he made her feel like an intruder in his world. She wondered if he held her responsible for the subjugation of his people, but she thought that would be unfair. After all, he didn’t know her. Still, his presumed judgment made her quiet in his presence.

Sometimes she watched him from the corner of her eye and admired the way he swung along, dignified and self-confident. He had a well-groomed black beard, and his turbans always matched his sash—he was Sikh, and he carried a ritual dagger at his waist, a symbol of his willingness to defend the weak. She found this at once gentle and courageous and a little dangerous. She wondered how he looked without his deep-blue turban.

She had no idea how much she frightened him; one word of accusation from a white woman could get him killed. He found it astounding that the British still didn’t understand that Indian men found white women unattractive—unfinished, like uncooked dough. But he had to admit that the young woman who came to the orphanage had an appealing delicacy about her face and a pleasing
fluidity of movement. Her hands were long and slender and she had exceptionally fine bones in her wrist—he wondered how a henna tattoo might look on those creamy white hands. Although he usually found blond hair wanting, hers was warm, with a touch of the sunset in it. She was different from other white women in many ways, wearing strange clothing, riding astride, covering her head with a veil instead of a topee. It was all very unsettling.

Once, she stepped into his path and said, “Pardon me,” in a low, buttery voice that terrified him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she had done so deliberately. But why would she do that? He tried to avoid her, but she kept turning up at the orphanage he sponsored. He didn’t mind that the missionaries were Christian. As a liberal and educated man, he believed religion was a matter of karma and everyone had his own path.

Felicity liked his smoky dark eyes, but every time she caught his glance he seemed angry. Strange. Apart from his chilliness toward her, he did not behave like an angry man. He played easily with the children, bringing them strings of sequined elephants and soft blankets from his silk plantation near Pragpur. He had a wide, white smile—but never for her.