by John Masters
He had forgotten it was in his hand, for he had been studying a new softness in her face as she worked. He lowered the pistol, keeping his eyes on her, and felt over the plates with his free hand--all gone, he’d eaten everything. The mango stones lay around him, chewed clean, and his mouth was full of the last piece of fruit. Caroline was giving Robin to Piroo. His mind fumbled at a curtain; reality was on the other side, but it would be too harsh there, on the other side, and he was glad he could not get through. He tried to stare her down. He couldn’t; let her fight.
“Lie down.”
He whimpered as she eased his eyelids down and spread paste over his face. It was hot, and smelled earthy, of worms and herbs. He writhed and clenched his teeth, but it cooled quickly and set to the consistency of dough. The jabbing needles shimmered away into a ventral ache that wrinkled his skin. She eased the tunic off his shoulders and opened his trousers and pulled them down round his ankles. He shook his head and mumbled, “Only the burns. Nothing else wrong.”
The edges of darkness crept round him. Oh, God, they had put something in the food. God, God, God. They had lulled him and drugged him. She wanted to kill Robin. She was jealous. Joanna had said so. He stared up at the weary face and could not move. Loose strands of her hair brushed his forehead. She wore a sari; she was an Indian in disguise; she’d planned it all. He strained to reach the pistol, but he could not move. Tepid lead filled his veins and weighted his muscles. His eyes would not stay--would not stay open. . . .
He awoke silently to full consciousness, and knew this time where he was and what had happened. It was dark; the sky twinkled with stars, and the moon hung low--east or west? He looked at the stars again. East. May the tenth, moon two days past full, rising; it must be early in the night. He had to kill someone. His pistol was gone and he sat up trembling. Caroline’s voice was low and strong in the darkness near him. “Are you ready to move now?”
The sari framed her face, and the moonlight painted it with calm so that it was beautiful. She was in her old position, her back against the tree, and Robin slept in her arms. Piroo stood beyond her; beyond him again there was something big and white among the tree trunks. Rodney recognized the shape of a two-wheeled bullock cart fitted with a low-domed canvas roof. Two white bullocks stood in the yoke and blew through their nostrils. The boughs creaked and a small breeze stirred his hair.
He said, “I want my pistol.”
Piroo gave him the pistol and he tucked it into his belt. Caroline tried to stand up, clinging one-handed to the tree until the strength came back into her legs. She must have sat there through the crawling hours of the afternoon heat, and never moved. She lifted Robin into the cart, and Rodney followed. Blankets, felt rugs, and a litter of pots and sacks covered the rough floor. She laid Robin along one side, and sat at his head; Rodney curled up on the other side.
Piroo fastened the canvas flaps front and back and whispered in through a tiny crack, “You can look through here, sahib, but don’t shoot until I say so--on no account.”
The frame creaked as Piroo took his place, squatting in the open on the back end of the shaft. They heard him prod the bullocks’ haunches with the goad. The cart heaved and settled back, heaved again, rode heavily over a tree root, and began to groan and squeak through the jungle.
After an hour it dropped into a rutted track, turned left, and moved faster down a forest alley.
The night passed. Rodney dozed twice for short periods and each time awoke in frantic terror. He must have cried out, for Caroline had put her hand across and was holding his arm. Each time he stilled the trembling and shrugged her off. Twice he heard Robin whimper, and after it Caroline’s soothing murmur. In the dawn she passed him a mango, and he lay chewing it and watching Robin. The boy’s eyes opened to stare up at the canvas, where the light filtered through and made the dust a cold dancing fog. The eyes were blank; shivering. Rodney scrambled over, kissed his son’s cheek, and muttered incoherently in his ear. The child’s blue lips stirred, then he closed his eyes and went to sleep again.
The cart turned off the track and passed through uneven rock-strewn jungle. After a while it stopped, and Piroo opened up the flaps. They climbed stiffly out into a clearing, where the rocks of a dried stream bed held a pool of black water. Piroo unyoked the bullocks, and propped up the shaft by turning the yoke bar through a right angle and jamming one end of it into the earth. The bullocks lay down where they were, and he flung them a few handfuls of chopped straw. Then he crept under the cart without a word, lay down, and in a minute was asleep.
The air was hot and fresh, and there was no dust. Caroline brought out a blanket and put Robin down on it; Rodney listened to the sounds of the jungle awakening. Twigs snapped a long way off, a deer called, voiceless birds stepped through the leaves. He did not want to know anything more; he would go to sleep.
He heard her speaking. “Piroo knew something bad was going to happen. But he didn’t know what. He says he tried to make you come away, but what could he say? Even if he’d known everything, no one would have believed him.”
Rodney grunted. Believe Piroo, if he’d announced on Saturday that the world was coming to an end? He didn’t believe it now, on Monday. It hadn’t happened.
The girl’s voice pressed him, pleading. “We have to get well, and fight for ourselves. We owe it to Piroo; he’s risking his life. He picked me up in the fields, found a sari for me.
I tried to get to Isobel at the van Steengaards’. I tried to get to you. There were fires everywhere and----“ Her voice trembled. “A goatherd from Devra told us where you were. We must fight, for Robin’s sake.”
He grunted again, shut his eyes and ears, and burrowed down into sleep.
A thin waft of smoke, sharp in his nostrils, roused him to the familiar panic and set his heart thumping. Piroo was cooking over a fire; Robin was conscious, and Caroline was fanning him with her hand. Rodney rolled over on his side and watched the red ants crawling among the leaves. Fight? What was there to fight? They ate and slept, and Robin lived; they ate and slept and moved. Moved. Where to?
He raised his head. “Piroo, where are we going?”
“Bombay.”
Rodney frowned painfully. Something wrong there--something wrong. Bombay was--eight hundred miles southwest as the roads ran. Eight hundred miles in a bullock cart, two and a half miles an hour. That made--too many hours. He drew his brows together. Too many miles, too many moths fluttering big black wings behind his eyeballs. If he could concentrate they’d go away.
Bombay. The only alternative was Kishanpur, and why did that make his spine tingle? Not reason--something lower, something that would make Jewel’s hair rise and roughen along the back. Jewel was dead. Shot to death for being a dog. A dog’s death.
He dared not see Sumitra again. What a chance she’d have to pay him back for that night of the Holi! She might even have him killed, by accident. Who’d know? And Robin with him.
What was Caroline waiting for, so compressed? In plain reason, they had no choice. The old fool Piroo couldn’t take this wreck of a cart to Bombay, across a score of great rivers, through a country in flames--and the monsoon coming in four or five weeks! And who knew that Bombay Presidency hadn’t fallen too? And Madras? Robin couldn’t survive the journey. Only a lunatic, or a scoundrel, could suggest going to Bombay. It was a trap.
He said, “Go to Kishanpur. We have to go to Kishanpur.”
When Piroo tried to argue Rodney screamed furiously, “Kishanpur, Kishanpur!” A drumming pain rattled his teeth, and he watched his hands fidgeting with the pistol. He’d have to kill someone.
Caroline spoke in her slow accurate Hindustani. “He’s right, Piroo. I hate it, I don’t know why--but the little boy must rest. We have no choice.”
Piroo shrugged and turned away with a curt, “It’s all the same to me.” Rodney looked keenly at his back: this wasn’t the same man as the carpenter of Bhowani; this was a dangerous man, not to be trusted. One hour at a time. If he ke
pt to that and was alert, he’d save Robin, and himself.
The decision made, he sank under a weight of depression and could not sleep but stared all day at the ants and talked to himself.
As the sun dipped into the hot red blaze behind the trees, they climbed into the cart. In the twilight they were threading through the jungle; at dark they dropped into the ruts of the track and the motion became smoother. The dark bulk of the trees passed over in a silent procession. Piroo swayed in silhouette against low eastern stars.
The night ended, the cart stopped, and the second day passed. Here there was no pool, and Piroo dug with his pickaxe to uncover a brackish trickle two feet down.
In the evening, as they set out, Piroo said, “We will cross at the ford by the falls. There may be other carts on the trail. Men travel by night in this season. I do not think we are in great danger, but keep hidden; and remember, do not shoot unless I say the word.”
There were other carts moving through the night. Piroo whispered that one, going in the same direction, was close ahead; shredded tendrils of dust from its wheels hung under the trees still. Twice carts creaked past in the opposite direction; once a group of men trotted by, bunched together and singing to frighten off wild beasts. Beside a deserted shrine there was a sepoy; his rifle was in his hand and he was getting up from sleep.
The sound of the falls swished against the canvas, and the bullocks splashed into the ford. Rodney, peering out, could recognize now each ridge and plain of the hunting preserve: there Sumitra saw a paradise flycatcher, that branch nearly knocked Isobel’s hat off, here the Silver Guru had sat by the Monkeys’ Well and waited for the Dewan. The monkeys crashed and chattered overhead. The cart turned off, moved through the grove until it was out of sight of the trail, and stopped. The monkeys fell silent.
Piroo slipped down and whispered. “You did say that shako’s too small for you, sahib? It looks like it to me.”
He answered dully, “Yes. Rambir had quite a small head.”
Piroo disappeared, and for ten minutes nothing happened. At last they heard muttered voices and the crackling of leaves. Rodney put his eye to the slit.
Piroo was coming back, and in front of him the sepoy they had passed on the other side of the river. His stained green coat showed that he was of the 13th; he threaded wearily among the trees with the rising sun in his face, and Rodney saw that he knew him. It was Shyamsingh of his own company. Shyamsingh the quiet fanner, Shyamoo who snarled like a dog. His feet stumbled, and he looked sick. Rodney dragged the pistol from his belt and aimed at Piroo’s chest; he’d get it first.
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.
