by M. M. Kaye
Four days later, at Ferozeshah, Alex had repaid the debt when Niaz had fallen with a bullet through his chest, and Alex, his own horse killed, bestrode the wounded man and fought above him in the storming of the Sikh entrenchments. Since then Niaz had attached himself to Alex as orderly and body servant, and when Alex had been removed on special duty he had managed, through the judicious use of influence in the right quarters, to gain permission for Niaz to accompany him. Niaz had been granted extended leave during the past year, and Alex had left him certain specific and unofficial instructions that he had no doubt at all would have been carried out.
The shadow of the loitering servant that the evening sun had laid across the dusty verandah did not move, and Alex said reflectively: ‘Bring my gun. There will be quail and partridge in the open country beyond, and I am stiff from jolting in that dâk-ghari.’
Niaz grinned appreciatively and went out to inform the khansamah that the Sahib wished to shoot and would return for an evening meal which had better be of the first quality or he, Niaz, would have something to say on the subject.
Alex strolled down the shallow stone steps of the verandah and walked slowly away through a mango-tope that lay to the left of the bungalow. The low sun thrust shafts of dusty gold between the tree-trunks, and a troop of monkeys chattered and quarrelled among the thick leaves. Facing the bungalow, the jungle through which the road had run swept almost to the compound wall, but behind it and to the left lay comparatively open country; a few fields where crops of maize and sugar-cane had been planted, grazing grounds and a glimmer of water that indicated a distant jheel and the probable presence of waterfowl, and the level plains stretching away to the far horizon.
The ground in the mango-tope was hard and dry and splashed with the droppings of green pigeons, and a warm shaft of sunlight probing the shadows illuminated a slab of stone crudely carved with the lingam, the emblem of fertility, that stood propped against the bole of a tree. The thing was daubed with red paint and there were offerings heaped upon the ground before it. Humble offerings: a handful of parched grain, a bunch of marigold flowers, a string of red jungle beads and the remains of a chuppatti - the flat cake of unleavened bread that is the staple food of half India. Two small striped squirrels were tugging at the chuppatti, and a group of seven-sisters - those drab grey-brown birds who hop and twitter in small gangs like a covey of nervous spinsters - were disposing of the grain.
Alex paused and regarded the crude emblem with some interest. There was nothing at all unusual in the sight, for India is littered with such things. It was the offerings that surprised him. The flowers were unfaded, and the grain and the cake of unleavened bread must have been placed there comparatively recently, for the birds and the squirrels would make short work of them. Yet it was unusual for villagers to bring offerings to a shrine at such an hour - the work of a village restricting such attentions to the late evening or the early morning, when men going out or returning from tilling their fields or tending cattle might pass the spot and leave a small gift at the shrine.
There was a light step behind him and Alex turned to see Niaz who carried a shotgun and a bag of cartridges. Niaz glanced at the red-daubed emblem of Mahadeo and said cheerfully: ‘Misbegotten unbelievers!’ He spat on the ground and jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bungalow: ‘The drivers of two of the dâk-gharis, and he who drove the ekka, brought the offerings. There was, I think, a message also, but it has gone. See, there in the dust—’
The hard dry ground of the mango-tope did not hold the print of footmarks well, but the day was windless, and dust, twigs and fallen leaves betrayed a well-worn track from the bungalow to the shrine, while beyond it the print of unshod feet showed where a single man had approached from the direction of the grazing grounds and the open plain, and returned again.
Niaz moved slowly out of the shadows of the tope, his eyes on the ground, and presently he said: ‘Here he turns aside and goes back to the village. It is an old trick to thrust a message into a chuppatti and bake it so that it is well hid. But the driver of that ekka was a Mussulman and no Hindu.’
Alex nodded without speaking and turned to look out across the plain, his eyes screwed up against the low sunlight. A black partridge was calling, and he held out his hand for the gun. He was an excellent shot, and Niaz was carrying half a dozen limp feathered forms by the time they reached the edge of the jheel - a shallow stretch of water fringed with straggling rushes, stray clumps of elephant grass and a few scanty palms that stood up against the bright evening sky like worn broomsticks.
Alex sat down on a tussock of dry grass with his back to the open water at the end of a narrow arm of stony ground that reached out into the jheel, and pulling a packet of paper and pouch of tobacco out of his pocket, rolled two cigarettes - a habit he had acquired in the Crimea - and tossed one over to Niaz who squatted beside him.
Niaz struck a sulphur match on the sole of his shoe, and having lit the cigarettes, blew the flame out carefully and flicked the spent match into the placid water. ‘There are no ears here,’ he remarked approvingly, ‘and none can approach by the water. We need watch to landward only.’ He drew the tobacco smoke deep into his lungs and expelled it slowly through his nostrils. The evening was warm and very still. So still that they could hear the leap of a little fish a dozen yards away, a quack of water-birds far out on the jheel and the rustle of a small snake that slid through the grass-stems.
Alex had learned patience with much else from the East, and he sat relaxed and silent; watching the shadows lengthen and the smoke from his cigarette rise unwaveringly into the quiet air. He knew that Niaz would speak when he wished to and not before. Meanwhile it was pleasant to sit here and smell the familiar scents of an Indian evening while the sky behind the ragged palm trees blazed with the spectacular glories of a sunset unimaginable to those who live only in Western countries.
At last Niaz said reflectively: ‘I did as thou asked. I took my leave and went on horseback, as befits one of the rissala (cavalry), to visit those of my relatives in Oudh and Rohilkhand and Jhansi; from whom I heard much. And when that was done I went on foot, no longer as Niaz Mohammed Khan of the Company’s rissala, but as Rahim, a man of no consequence. From Ludhiana of the Sikhs to the north of my own ilaqa, to Benares of the Unbelievers - and even further south to Burdwan went I; listening to much talk in the twilight and hearing many things in the bazaars and by the way …’
He fell silent for a moment or two, drawing deeply at his cigarette while the sunset painted his face with a wash of vivid light so that it seemed to glow like polished bronze, and presently he said: ‘Thou wert right, my brother. There is devil’s work afoot; and this time it is not a plague that will break out in one spot only and may thereby be kept from others. This runs north and south, and the infection is carried by many and to all men. Even by such as the drivers of these dâk-gharis! There are also many tales told of signs and wonders, and the prophecy of the “Hundred Years” is spoken in every village throughout Hind.’
‘There is always talk,’ said Alex laconically, his eyes on a high-flying wedge of Garganey teal that cut a thin dark pattern against the quiet sky.
‘That I know, for when has it ever been otherwise? But this time it is more than talk. Thou dost not remember (it was before thy time) the year in which thy Government ordered the Army to Kabul. The Hindus in that Army became disaffected when they crossed the Indus. They had heard that when Raja Maun Singh crossed that river to wage war against the Afghans he had told all men that the Hindu religion ran no further than the Indus, and had built a temple on the far bank and ordered all Brahmins to leave their sacred threads, the emblems of their caste, in that temple. Then when they reached Afghanistan it was cold - a cold such as they had never known - so that they could no longer bathe before food, as is their custom, and must wear poshteens, coats of sheep skin, on account of the cold and the snow: wherefore, since none but the lowest caste will willingly touch the skin of a dead ani
mal, when the Army returned to Ferozepore the Hindus found that their own people would not consort with them because they had lost caste and been defiled. The Mussulmans too were angered, for they said that John Company had forced them to fight against their co-religionists, which is forbidden in the Koran.’
‘This I know,’ said Alex quietly. ‘It is an old tale. And now?’
‘And now, as then, there is a grievance among the sepoys on account of pay: and so the old grievances, that have never slept, are spoken of once more - that the Company desires to destroy all caste. The rail-ghari and the telegraph, the jails and hospitals where all are admitted, are looked upon as weapons for the destruction of caste. And the foolish talk of missionary-log adds fuel to that fire, since they and many of the Company’s officers tell the people of Hind that their customs and practices are evil and must be abolished. Perhaps this is so. I do not know. But their customs are as a tree that is deep-rooted, and if the trunk be cut down there are still the roots.’
Niaz cupped his lean brown hands about the stub of his cigarette and drew on it, letting the smoke trickle slowly through his nostrils, and Alex stayed silent. There was little in what Niaz had said that he did not already know. But he knew better than to hurry him.
‘It has long been a custom of Hind,’ said Niaz slowly, ‘for a man who has no heir to adopt one who shall succeed him; since the son, say the Unbelievers, delivers his father from the hell called Pat. If there be no son to perform the funeral rites, they believe that there can be no resurrection to eternal bliss. Therefore their priests and lawgivers have permitted the adoption of sons where the male line has failed. Comes now the order of the Company saying that where there is no male heir of the blood the lands and titles of a prince shall not pass to any adoptive son, but pass instead into the possession of the Company, and that man’s line shall die out and cease. Thus many states, by right of lapse, have been swallowed up into the maw of the Company and their ancient names have become as dust …’
Niaz’s voice had taken on a singsong quality as he spoke, and the pupils of his eyes had widened as though from the effects of a drug: he had forgotten that he, a Mohammedan, spoke of Hindus, and remembered only that he spoke as a native of India:
‘Satarah … Nagpur … Jhansi … Sambhalpur … Their greatness has departed. The Rajas of Satarah were descended from Shivaji, the founder of the Mahratta Empire. They committed no crime against the Company - save that the last of the Rajas had no son. Yet was their state forfeit. The Peishwa too, the Nana Sahib, smarts under the injustice of the Government who have refused him what is his right under the old laws—’
Alex said softly: ‘These be Hindus, O follower of the Prophet.’
‘That is so. But now there is Oudh also. In former times the Kings of Oudh rendered assistance to the Company, and because of that help there was a treaty made between them that the state would never be taken by the British - yet now it too has been taken. That it was misgoverned means nothing: that is a word for Councillors and Lat Sahibs, not for the common people. The common people say that Oudh belongs to Wajid Ali and his line, and whether he has governed well or ill as regards his own people he has in no wise broken faith with the Company. If, therefore, the Company dispossess one who has himself - and his forebears also - been faithful to them, who then is safe? Every princeling, every sirdar, every man who has anything to leave or anything to lose, from a small-holding of no more than a quarter acre to a state many koss* wide, is afraid. And men who are afraid are dangerous. Therefore Hindu and Mussulman, Unbelievers and the Elect of God plot together in fear and hatred; and the word goes up and down the land.’
‘And what is that word?’
‘That the feringhis (foreigners) are few and their councils are divided, and that the men of the North, the Russ-log, have made so great a slaughter of their armies that there are none left to come to the aid of those in Hind. That Dost Mohammed Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan, will rise against them and that the Shah of Persia will join with him to drive them into the sea - though that last I know to be fools’ talk,’ said Niaz, and spat to show his contempt. ‘Dost Mohammed would sooner take a live cobra in his hand than ally himself with the Persian! Yet there be many who believe all these things, and the word goes forth, carried into the towns and villages by a hundred different ways. It runs from pulton (regiment) to pulton - from rissala to rissala. Men on pilgrimage to the shrines of Kashi and Haramukh; merchants, maulvis, sadhus; Mussulmans, Brahmins, Sikhs and Jains; the woman who draws water at the well and the man who drives a plough - all or any of them may be a carrier of the Word. They spill the powder, and when the train is laid it will need but a spark to ignite it.’
Alex flicked his cigarette-end into the water where it went out with a little hiss, startling a paddy bird which undisturbed by the rise and fall of Niaz’s low voice had pricked through the shallows a yard beyond them. The bird flew off with a flapping of wings as a flight of red-necked Brahmini duck swished overhead with a sound like tearing silk to settle down with ruffling importance at the far end of the jheel. The rose and saffron of the sunset had faded, leaving the sky awash with clear green light in which a single star blazed and glittered in lonely splendour.
Alex rolled another cigarette and said: ‘Has that spark been found?’
‘Not yet. Those who plot seek for one. It wants only that to set the land alight. But it must be something that touches Mussulman and Hindu alike, for if one rise without the other, the Company, few and weak as they have become, may still triumph. Therefore they search diligently, and wait.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex reflectively, handing over another cigarette, ‘but a thing that will make Mussulman, Hindu and Sikh sink their differences and unite against us will not be so easy.’
‘Doubtless the Company will of their charity supply it,’ said Niaz ironically. ‘Are thy people blind or mad, or both, that they cannot see what is toward?’
‘Neither,’ said Alex. ‘It is a national conceit. They - we - can only see ourselves as benefactors whom such as thou’ - he grinned maliciously at Niaz - ‘must perforce regard only with admiration and gratitude.’
‘And do they never learn?’ inquired Niaz scornfully.
‘No. We Angrezis (British) are as God made us. The mould is set. All this that you have told me, word for word and letter for letter, happened once before some two score years and more ago, in the Kingdom that was Haidar Ali’s. At that time also there were a few who had eyes and ears and used them, but they were derided and their warnings laughed to scorn. So it is now.’
‘I have heard that tale,’ grunted Niaz. ‘Then too there were injustices pertaining to the payment of allowances, and then as now it needed but a spark to fire the train. That spark thy countrymen supplied by ordering the wearing of leather hats made from the skins of that unclean animal the pig, and of the cow that is sacred to the Hindus. Whereupon the Army rose and massacred their officers, saying that they would rid the land of those who sought to destroy their caste. Those same words are being spoken once again, but this time if the fire be lit it will not be so easy to stamp it out since it will not be in the south only, as it was in that day, but north and west and east also. And many will die in that burning! I tell you this. I who have hearkened this past year to the talk in the lines and in the bazaars, in the cities and the serais and at the wayside halts.’
Alex shifted restlessly. The swift tropic twilight was almost gone and he could no longer see Niaz’s face clearly. He said abruptly: ‘All this is talk. Have you proof?’
‘Proof!’ said Niaz and laughed shortly. ‘Spoken like a sahib - Sahib!’ - he gave that title the same scornful emphasis that Kishan Prasad had once done. ‘Have I ever lied to thee that thou shouldst demand proof of what I tell thee as though I were some vakil (lawyer) of the court?’
‘Gulam (slave),’ said Alex gently, ‘were it not that thou art as my brother in all but blood, I would throw thee into the jheel for that word.’
Niaz flun
g up a hand in mock appeal: ‘Marf karo (have mercy) - Sahib!’
Alex caught the upflung hand about the wrist and bent it backward, and for a moment the two men wrestled silently, hand against hand.
‘Is it to be the jheel then?’ inquired Alex.
‘Nay, it is enough. Marf karo - bai (brother).’
‘That is better,’ said Alex releasing him.
Niaz rubbed his wrist and grinned. ‘At least thy sojourn in Belait (England) has not softened thee. But what is that gaud thou art wearing? A love token, belike?’
‘That …?’ Alex looked down at the twisted silver ring with its three small red stones and shook his head. ‘No, it was given me by a man whom I would have given much to see dead.’
He told the tale and heard Niaz draw a short hissing breath between his teeth at the mention of that name. ‘Kishan Prasad!’ said Niaz. ‘I have heard of that man. And if all that I have heard is true it had been better that thou hadst cut off thy right hand rather than have given him his life.’
‘These things are written,’ said Alex philosophically.
‘Beshak!’ (assuredly) said Niaz grimly. ‘Nevertheless I think that that bauble will serve its turn. It may yet get thee this proof that thou hast demanded.’
‘It is not for myself that I require proof,’ said Alex composedly. ‘All that thou hast told me I knew without the telling. But those in authority are hard to convince. The Burra-lat-Sahib who has lately gone to his own land has told them that all is well - the land never more peaceful and the people filled with content.’
‘More fool he!’ grunted Niaz.
‘Therefore,’ continued Alex, ignoring the interruption, ‘those in high places are unwilling to lend an ear to warnings.’
