Zemindar (60 page)

The sun reaching its unbearable zenith forced us to halt, and some distance off the road we took shelter in a clearing of what seemed to be a large stretch of forest. For the remainder of the day, the only people we saw were a couple of woodsmen with their axes, and a woman going home from market carrying her purchases on her head, singing to frighten away animals and evil spirits. It was quiet and we slept away the hours of heat in the shade of the trees. After we had eaten in the evening, Oliver asked me to give him my
rakhri
. He had discussed the matter with Ishmial, and they had decided that, not knowing what state the city was in, it would be well to have an adequate escort to protect us through the maze of narrow streets. Oliver had bought a sheet of paper and a bamboo pen, and now sat down and wrote a letter to Wajid Khan in elegant Urdu, explaining our position and asking for some men of his household to see us safely into the Residency.

‘I have been politely but pointedly expectant of his help,’ he said, ‘assuring him that I know he could not in honour disregard such a token as I send him. It might do the trick; anyway, he can only refuse. I have taken care to be rather vague as to our whereabouts, just in case … And if he does refuse, well, we will still be the better off for Ishmial’s news of the city.’

Then he arranged a meeting-place with Ishmial, folded the floss-silk bracelet in his letter, and Ishmial tucked it into the folds of his cummerbund, salaamed and set off.

I experienced a moment of desolation as his tall form disappeared among the trees; now we were truly diminished, five Europeans and a baby alone in a hostile land. Fatigue and uncertainty bred in me a sense of hopelessness, and I told myself that we would never see Ishmial again. After all, why should he return to us? We were merely a responsibility, a liability, perhaps even a danger to him. What did he owe us that he should risk his safety for us? Toddy-Bob, too, seemed downcast at the going of his friend and sat whistling and whittling in a most dejected manner until we retired.

We were to meet Ishmial at dawn at a
serai
only a couple of miles further along the road, so that we could enter the city with the countryfolk taking their produce into the bazaars, whose numbers would give us a certain protection. At sunset we doused the small fire we had made to cook on and lay down to sleep, Emily and I stretched uncomfortably in the cart with the baby, the men on the ground beside it. The three of them were to take turns, as usual, to remain awake and on guard. Eventually we slept.

I seemed to dream all night. Not dreams of terror, but curious disjointed memories of scenes and people intermingled absurdly in improbable situations: my Aunt Hewitt sitting in the Hassanganj fernery knitting a tie on thin steel needles that became, somehow, Ishmial’s bandoliers; Emily declaring that Toddy-Bob always ate all the cucumber in vinegar at
tiffin
; a pile of Indian sweetmeats, covered with flies, as I had often seen them in the bazaars, all moving together, and Oliver Erskine assuring me that he never wore slippers made by Moti. Whatever the dream, I was hurrying; but my legs were leaden and, despite the effort I made, I knew I was missing something very important.

After an eternity of frustration I awoke, sweating, and lay looking up at the circle of stars above the clearing. It was very still, much quieter here in the forest than it had been in the peepul grove two nights before. But something had disturbed me; something was amiss.

Then I heard a very small sound, a clink of steel against the stone, such as a nail in a boot-heel might make; no more. My mind leapt to alertness. My face was uncovered, but the
burqha
covered the rest of my person. For some time, I heard nothing more, and concluded the sound had been made by whichever man stood guard. But I took the precaution of easing one hand out of my
burqha
and covering the butt of my pistol, which lay hidden in the folds of my clothing. I dozed again. Perhaps I actually slept. Then my eyes were wide open and I saw a form, black against the brighter black of the night, bending over the side of the cart with one hand outstretched, and in that hand a knife. In the same instant I saw the starlight glint on a broad silver bracelet which Emily wore on her right wrist. Unconscious of any formal reaction or process of thought, I tightened my fingers round the trigger of the pistol and fired directly into the dark bulk of the body, angling the weapon upwards from where I lay.

The noise of the single shot echoed round the clearing with terrifying intensity, frightening me much more than the knowledge that I had caused it. I saw the figure impelled backwards by the force of the bullet and for an instant glimpsed a dark, surprised face tilted to the stars before it fell out of sight, making no sound. Then the baby wailed, Emily shrieked, and Oliver, Charles and Toddy-Bob were all around us. I crouched in a corner of the cart, trembling, while my mind cleared and the men milled round the cart investigating the body and demanding explanations of Emily, who was only capable of crying distractedly and pointing to me.

Oliver came around the cart and placed both his hands on my shoulders. ‘Good girl,’ he muttered. ‘Good girl. Now you have your cry and you’ll feel better. You saved us, Laura. Bless you!’

Being told to cry, like a child advised to weep away its disappointment at a missed party, dispelled any desire I might have had to do so. Besides, my memories of what I had seen in the peepul grove were still too vivid and, though Oliver obviously thought I would be overcome by remorse and guilt at having killed a man, I was conscious of no such laudable sentiments. What bothered me was that I might have made a frightful mistake: it might have been Charles at whom I fired so instinctively, looking in at his wife and child asleep in the cart. But then I remembered the knife glinting in the starlight and my mind eased; it was the sight of the knife that had made me press the trigger, not an unthinking reaction to fear. I had done it in conscious self-defence, and at such a time and in such a place, who would blame me?

‘Well, you’re a cool customer. No denying that, Miss Hewitt. And now, since you are not going to have hysterics, would you mind telling us what happened—quickly!’ Oliver grinned as he spoke, and I pulled myself up and told him the little I had to tell.

‘Perhaps I was wrong to shoot. I should have given myself time to think. I could have screamed, at least.’

‘You could have indeed and by the time you’d stopped screaming you’d have been dead yourself. Just remember that.’ And he turned away.

‘You stay here, Charles. Toddy, take that side and search the thicket. There may be others. I’ll go this way, and Charles … shoot at anything that moves; we’ll call out when we are returning to warn you that it’s us.’

They disappeared immediately into the undergrowth. Charles sat on the tail of the cart, with his pistol cocked in his hands, trying to soothe his wife, and at the same time blaming himself for having slept on guard, for this was how the intruder had managed to approach the cart so closely.

‘I’ll never forgive myself !’ he said with painful guilt. ‘I must have dozed. Everything was so quiet; it seemed so unlikely that we would be disturbed, and I suppose I just, well, let myself sleep. Oh God, when I think what could have happened! You could all have been killed while I slept!’

‘Oh, don’t exaggerate!’ I snapped back. ‘One of us might have met our end, but no more. He couldn’t have seen Oliver in the lee of the cart, or Toddy-Bob under the trees, and if he saw you at all, he probably took you for another woman who would run rather than resist.’

‘It was my fault,’ he insisted, ‘all my fault …’

‘Well, yes, so it was,’ I had to agree, ‘but there’s no point in going on about it now, Charles. Oh, Emily, do stop snuffling like that.’

‘But,’ protested Emily, ‘it … it’s still down there; I can see his feet. Oh, Charles …!’

And the snuffles became a full-blooded wail again. I put my arm round Emily, drawing her head down on to my shoulder so that she would not see the corpse; I had no wish to see it myself, and could understand her feeling of repugnance. Charles got up and walked nervously to and fro, peering into the thick darkness of the jungle. It vexed me to see him, usually so controlled, undone by his own involuntary lapse. I had been shocked at seeing him drunk on the day of Pearl’s birth, but seeing him like this filled me with embarrassment as well as pity. I prayed (but whether for my sake or Charles’s I could not say) that Oliver would be forbearing with him and hold his tongue; knowing Oliver’s temperament pretty well, I did not think he would.

Only much later did I begin to take in the fact that I had actually killed a fellow human being.

That was after Toddy-Bob had returned, leading a well-saddled horse, followed in a few moments by Oliver and the intelligence that there was no sign of any other men.

‘Probably a lone deserter from a cavalry regiment, broken away from his comrades and more anxious to return to his village than reinstate the King of Delhi. Poor devil!’ He turned the body over with his toe. ‘Well, he’ll never have to bother about his crops again. That was a good shot, Laura. Blew his chest in.’

‘Oh, don’t, Oliver! How can you be so unfeeling?’ I was standing on the far side of the cart, having no wish to examine my handiwork. ‘I’ve been thinking; if he was alone, he might only have been a thief, mightn’t he? He had seen Emily’s bracelet, and perhaps if we had given it to him, he’d have gone away.’ But my theory didn’t sound plausible even to me.

‘So, and what was the knife for then, picking his teeth? Here, have a look at it, Laura, that should still your uneasy conscience.’

But I shuddered and turned away as he held the weapon out for my inspection. It was long and thin, a dagger I suppose one would call it, and a glance was sufficient to determine its deadliness.

To my relief Oliver ignored Charles, who was hovering about still with pistol in hand, like a schoolboy waiting outside the headmaster’s study, and turned to Toddy as he stuck the knife in his belt.

‘Undress him, Tod. The jacket won’t be much good, but his breeches and
puggaree
are more appropriate to our supposed state in life than the things you are wearing; and you can clean up the jacket and sling it over your shoulder. Then throw him into the
nullah
over there. Nobody will be expecting him, so nobody will miss him, but we don’t want to leave any traces. Harness up the bullocks, Charles. We’ll get going immediately.’

So it was that the party which left the clearing was very unlike the one that had taken shelter in it a few hours before. There were still three women and a baby in the covered cart, but beside them now rode a Pathan with his hand on his hip, his rifle in the saddle holster for all to see, while the cart itself was driven by a small man in the uniform of a
sowar
of the 7th Native Cavalry.

The rendezvous was reached ahead of time.

Light just tipped the topmost branches of the dusty wayside trees, but the
serai
was sleepily astir. Smoke rose lazily from a dozen cooking fires, pariah dogs crept out from under carts to search for food among the huddled bodies and the hooves of bullocks and horses, and mynas began to scold in the trees. One or two men carrying brass pots made their way down to the inevitable tank to make their ritual ablutions; the
bunnia
threw back the shutters of his shaky wooden booth, yawning hugely, and began to range his flat baskets of rice, lentils, gram and bright red chillies on old sacks laid on the ground before the booth. The clearing was redolent of woodsmoke, cow-dung and the sour scent of the scum-covered tank.

Ishmial was there before us, and with him four stalwart figures in bedraggled livery, carrying flintlocks and clubs. We found them discreetly situated at the edge of the camping ground; they had been cooking, so we ate what they had prepared, Emily, Charles and I (as befitted Mohammedan females) remaining in the cover of the cart, while Toddy and Oliver squatted with the men around the fire and Oliver interrogated Ishmial regarding the state of the city.

Lucknow, so Ishmial said, was in chaos, its inhabitants in a state of hysteria and liable to erupt at any moment into open and uncontrollable violence. The already vast population was augmented daily by the arrival of mutineers from outlying posts, armed, aggressive and anxious to prove their metal in combat. All the British, the troops from Mariaon, civilians from the city, together with their womenfolk, had been ordered into the Baillie Guard, while Mariaon Cantonments, that pleasant suburb of shady avenues and peaceful gardens, was deserted, its bungalows looted and burned.

In great haste, earthworks and fortifications were being thrown up around the perimeter of the Residency (‘Still! Good God, that should have been finished weeks ago,’ Oliver exclaimed in English when he heard this), but the work was unfinished and when the rains broke, as they soon would, further work would be impossible.

‘It is said in the city,’ said Ishmial with awe, ‘that Lawrence
Sahib
has issued orders that no private property and no holy places must be destroyed, and so, as almost all property is private and every man’s home is holy, to him, many buildings still stand which should have been thrown down. Is this not the foolishness of the
feringhi
?’

‘It is,’ agreed Oliver grimly. ‘But is the Residency still open to access? Do people come in and go out freely?’

Apparently they did. The English troops came and went and supplies streamed in from the bazaars, such loads of
dhal
, rice,
atta
, and sugar as made the
bunnias
’ eyes gleam daily more brightly. ‘For they believe,
Sahib
, that soon they will have it all back again to sell a second time—when the
Sahib-log
have been destroyed.’

The police had mutinied too, and the city lay open to anarchy. The more prudent of the wealthy natives had withdrawn to their country estates, leaving their town houses to be looted and burned by a mob who acted without discrimination or favour in its lust for destruction. Wajid Khan also would have left Lucknow, but there was smallpox in his house near Fyzabad, and his estate near Hassanganj was too far away in these times when the roads were as dangerous as they had been in the days of the Thugs.