by M. M. Kaye
The gathering at the Residency had consisted of the larger part of those who had been at Hazrat Bagh, and had included the members of the self-styled Italian Opera Company, who had sung excerpts from a number of light operas and followed them by a selection of popular songs.
Alex had attended the party for reasons not unconnected with the gentleman who called himself Mr Juan Devant. He had arrived in a singularly unpleasant frame of mind, and for perhaps the first time in his life had deliberately set himself to drink too much.
Wine and spirits always circulated freely at the Commissioner’s parties, even in mixed company, and although the heavy drinking of the Regency days had become a thing of the past, it remained a hard-drinking age in which a man who could not account for a bottle and more of port at a sitting was considered to be a poor specimen. But though the Commissioner’s port, wine and brandy were of the best obtainable, they had little effect upon Alex beyond increasing his ill-temper, which the sight of Mr Barton openly making amorous advances to the auburn-haired ornament of the Opera Company, in complete disregard of his wife’s presence, did nothing to mitigate.
It was verging on midnight when Mr Juan Devant’s not unpleasing baritone embarked upon a familiar ballad:
‘Believe me if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms …’
The music and a memory hit at Alex with an unexpected, wrenching pain, and some control in him seemed to snap, as though a wire drawn taut had parted. He put down his glass, walked across the room and calmly removed Signorina Aurora Resina from the Commissioner’s orbit. He had some experience of such women, and he had drunk enough to make him reckless for once of arousing the Commissioner’s hostility. It suddenly did not seem to matter any longer if he did so or not. And besides, there was Winter, who should not be made to endure the insult of her husband’s behaviour towards this ogling actress. But he did not want to think of Winter …
Alex could be charming enough when he chose, and he chose now. He had blandly ignored the glowering indignation of his chief, the hostility of Colonel Moulson and the momentary shock he had seen on Winter’s face, and had taken the lady away - ostensibly to view the garden by moonlight. They had not returned, though the majority of the guests, despite a long and tiring day spent in the open, had stayed until well after two o’clock.
The Commissioner had been crudely outspoken on the subject of Captain Randall’s behaviour when the guests had departed, and had ended by observing that Lou Cottar had been right about the man, by God! - he was a dark horse, and they were always the worst with women: trust a woman like Lou to know! Lou had always said that Randall was no cold fish, and he’d certainly taken home a hot enough piece to keep him warm tonight. It was only he, Conway Barton, who had a cursed cold fish on his hands.
The Commissioner had returned to the deserted drawing-room to drink more brandy, and Winter had gone to her room and had sat for a long time on the edge of her bed, staring before her and thinking of Alex. Alex with his hard, nervous fingers caressing another woman’s hair; Alex’s slow kisses on another woman’s mouth, and his dark head lying pillowed on that opulent powdered breast or buried in the suspicious brightness of those auburn curls.
She had cried only that morning for a dead bird. No, surely not for a dead bird? - for the wanton destruction of something beautiful. Was it for the beautiful day, or the strong, beautiful bird? or for her illusions and all that had happened to them? She did not know. But she could not cry now because Alex could be like Carlyon and Colonel Moulson, and Edmund Rathley who had kissed her so long ago at Ware, and - and Conway.
‘I must go away,’ thought Winter, as she had thought on that day when she had first discovered that she loved Alex. ‘I will go home to the Gulab Mahal. If only I can get back there I shall be safe again - safe from everything!’ And she thought, as she had thought so often, of the rose-pink walls and the brilliant flowers, and the brightly coloured birds who had been so tame that they had allowed her to touch them, and of old Aziza Begum’s comfortable, sandalwood-scented lap where she had sat in the warm, star-twinkled dusk to listen to tales of Gods and Heroes.
‘I will go back,’ thought Winter, staring dry-eyed into the shadows of her room. ‘If I can get back to the beginning again - the beginning of all that I remember - I can start again. If only I can get back I can start again …’
She had fallen asleep at last, fully clothed, and she had not ridden that day, either in the morning or the evening, because she had been afraid of seeing Alex.
She had not seen him again for some considerable time. Alex had taken care of that. The night he had spent in the arms of the Signorina had resolved nothing and solved no problems. It had not even made him forget, as he held her, the feel of Winter’s slim body in his arms. In the cold grey light of the early morning the auburn-haired Aurora had looked blowsy and coarse - the lip rouge with which she had deepened the red of her pouting mouth smeared and ugly, and the black from her lashes smudging her cheeks. She smelt faintly of perspiration and rice powder and overpoweringly of patchouli, and Alex had looked at her with impatience and pity and a twinge of disgust, and thought of Winter sobbing jerkily against his shoulder for the death of a wild bird. And had found that his anger had not evaporated with the morning but was still a hard, hot stone in his breast.
The complexity of his emotions exasperated him, and he had woken the woman and driven her back in the dawn light to the dâk-bungalow where the troupe were lodging, from where she and they had left later that morning for Delhi: Alex having sent word ahead of them to Mr Simon Fraser, and arranged for an unobtrusive individual to be attached to their seedy retinue of servants in a minor capacity - the previous holder of the office having been unaccountably taken ill and being unable to proceed further.
‘Am I seeing danger in every shadow?’ thought Alex. ‘That man can sing. But so can a good many Russians. Theatrical companies do not usually get further than Calcutta or Madras, and these people have been to Luck-now. Oh well - at least we shall know now who he meets on the road and who he talks to, and Fraser can deal with it in Delhi.’
Alex attended no more parties at the Residency, and he had not ridden again with Winter. His bungalow had not seen him for days at a time, for he spent more and more of his time in the outlying villages of the district, picking up what information he could between and in the course of his official duties, and doing what lay in his power to allay the uneasiness that he could see and sense in and behind every cautiously worded greeting or inquiry.
The villagers would bring him rumours - tales such as the story of the bone-dust that was reported to have been mixed with the Government flour - and he would deny them, explaining and exhorting, and his listeners would agree. Yes, yes, he was right. The Huzoor was right. It was only a tale, and untrue. A tale spread by evil men to alarm the simple … But he knew that they did not eat the flour, and that it lay rotting in the Government-stamped sacks in warehouses and carts.
He could not reach them. Their processes of thought were not of the West. They accepted an order if it were backed by force, but that did not mean that it was of itself acceptable. They respected Alex, and many of them liked him; but he was a feringhi - a foreigner. Impassable gulfs gaped between them, across which they looked at each other helplessly; seeing the same things by entirely different lights and weighing them by different standards so that they appeared as dissimilar as rocks and rivers. ‘Is there a meeting-point?’ thought Alex. ‘Is there any real neutral ground?’ But there was Niaz, who was as much his friend as William. How did one explain his strong kinship for this man of his own age who could turn from his own race to serve one of alien blood?
He had asked Niaz that question one evening when they were lying up in a patch of high grass waiting for a slow-moving herd of blackbuck to pass within range (Alex was in camp and they were shooting for the pot), and Niaz had replied lightly: �
��I have eaten the Company’s salt.’
‘That is no answer. Many have done so, but the bread that is eaten is soon forgotten.’
Niaz shrugged. ‘We are brothers, thou and I. Who can say why? Were I a dog of a Hindu I would say that perchance in some other life we were indeed kin, for I have met none other among thy race whose mind I knew - or cared to know. Yet I know thine.’
‘And if it come to bloodshed, as it may come, wouldst thou stay with me against thine own kin?’
‘Beshak!’ The answer was prompt and leisurely. ‘I owe thee my life - and thine is forfeit to me. That alone were a rope that is hard to cut. Quiet now! They move this way …’
It was Niaz who had brought him a copy of a pamphlet that was being circulated in the city calling on all Mohammedans to prepare for a Jehad - a Holy War. ‘This thing is in the hands of all Mussulmans,’ said Niaz, ‘and in the mosques also they preach a Jehad. I have heard too that it has been promised that Ghazi-ud-din Bahadur Shah, the King of Delhi, shall be restored to his own, so that once more the Mogul will rule in Hind.’
‘And what say the Hindus who hear such talk?’ asked Alex.
‘They do not speak against it. And that is a strange thing, for they would not wish to see us rule them as once we did. Yet they say that they will accept the Mogul because he is of Hind, and no foreigner. Sikunder Dulkhan (Alexander the Great)’ - Niaz looked at Alex with a half-smile - ‘I will fight at thy side and take thy orders when the bloodshed begins - and I do not say “if it begin” - but I too would like to see a Mussulman rule once more in Delhi; Sunni though he be, while we of my family be Shiahs.’
Alex said: ‘Art thou so sure then that it will come to an uprising?’
‘As sure as thou art! And were it not for thee I myself might well cry Deen! Deen! for the Faith.’
Alex shivered involuntarily. He had heard that fanatical war-cry in his time and had seen the green flags wave and the hot-eyed hordes of the Faithful sweep yelling up to and onto and over the guns, and he had not forgotten. He said now: ‘Who is behind this thing that comes? Is it the Hindus or the Mussulmans? Or is it the work of foreigners - Russians and Persians?’
Niaz laughed and made a gesture of negation with his hand. ‘There are many Russian spies; and Persian too. They, the Russ-log, plot with both, as is their custom - but always against thy people! And in despite of the police and the spies of the Company they still go about the land, even to the walls of Delhi, bringing money and arms and many promises, and their sayings and promises are printed openly in the Hindu press. But their words are of little account: they help to boil the pot, that is all. Nay; this that will come is the Rising of the Moon,’ said Niaz with oriental imagery. ‘We who were once great in the land have lost almost all that we had of power, and revolt may serve us where peace will not. This will be a Jehad. And I think it comes close. Dost thou remember the night of the earthquake at Hoti Mardan?’
Alex nodded. He knew only too well what Niaz meant, for the same thought had occurred to him more than once of late. Over seven years had passed since the night that Niaz had referred to, but he had never forgotten the weird, waiting hush that had preceded that violent convulsion of the earth, or the way in which the dogs and the horses had known what was coming and had striven with uneasy whining, shivering, sweating apprehension to give a warning that had not been heeded. Alex was aware again of that same uncanny, ominous feeling of expectant stillness. But it was a stillness that was not to last long, and the first warning mutter came from faraway Bengal.
The thing that Alex had visualized in the moment following Niaz’s casual comment on the greased cartridge paper - the fire that unthinking officialdom had put into the hands of Kishan Prasad and his like - had caught the fuel that had been prepared. And the fuel was dry and ready.
On that same January morning that had seen the garrison of Lunjore ride gaily out to shoot duck at Hazrat Bagh, a man of low caste, a lascar who worked in the ammunition factory at Dum Dum near Calcutta, had stopped a high-caste sepoy during the heat of the day and begged a drink from his lotah - the brass water-pot carried by every caste Hindu and religiously preserved from defilement. The sepoy had stared less in anger than astonishment at the outrageous request. ‘How can that be, fool? I am a Brahmin, and my caste forbids it.’
‘Caste? What is caste?’ grinned the lascar. ‘The cartridges that we prepare here are defiled with the fat of hogs and cattle, and soon ye will be as one - casteless together - when the new guns are given out to the pultons and ye bite the cartridges daily.’
‘What is that?’ said the sepoy thickly. ‘Tell again!’
The lascar had done so, with embellishments, and the sepoy had not waited to hear to the end, but had run to his comrades in the lines. Here was proof at last of the duplicity of the feringhis! The hated policies of Annexation and Lapse, the suppression of suttee, the seizure of land, the deposing of kings and the curtailment of pay and power and privilege were as nothing to this; for this struck at the deepest beliefs of men, in that it destroyed their souls.
Hindu and Mohammedan together recoiled in horror from sacrilege and defilement. Panic spread through the lines, and from there, with the incredible swiftness that fear lends to evil tidings, it swept out across India, its progress sped and fanned by those who had been ready and waiting for such an opportunity, and who made the best use of this brand that had been given into their hands.
A hundred men - a hundred thousand - picked up the fearful whisper and passed it on: ‘It is an order from Belait! from the Queen and her Council, that by means of the cartridges all sepoys, both Mussulman and Hindu, be defiled - as all men in the towns and cities are defiled by the eating of bone-dust in their flour - so that being made casteless they shall do the will of the sahib-log as slaves for ever! We are betrayed by the feringhis who have stolen our country and now wish to steal our souls!’
It was then that the nocturnal fires started. Suddenly, in the night, the thatch of an officer’s bungalow would catch fire, set alight, more often than not, by a blazing arrow shot by some unseen hand. The telegraph station of the big cantonment of Barrackpore burned to the ground, and night after night, despite guards and sentries, flames would glow bright in the darkness, spreading up northward from Calcutta and Barrackpore …
There were midnight meetings of men with muffled faces who kept to the shadows of walls and where no guards challenged them. There were letters (for the sepoy had learned to use the post in the days before the privilege of free postage to the Army had been abolished). Letters that went out by every dâk, calling upon the soldiery to resist the attempts to defile them. The news that the 19th Regiment of Native Infantry at Berhampur, a hundred miles to the north of Calcutta, had broken out into mutiny spread upwards through India and fanned the panic.
But that mutiny which had flared up so suddenly died out, and without violence. An inquiry into the question of the greased cartridges was instituted and proceeded upon its ponderous way, and officers who had begun to eye the men under their command with an anxiety they would not own to, relaxed again.
The rumours died down, and the Commissioner of Lunjore, who had consistently pooh-poohed the possibility of any serious trouble arising, remarked complacently that he had always known it was a mere tempest in a teapot, and there was too much panic about among fellows who ought to know better. Why, he had even heard some preposterous story of a manifesto being circulated to all Mohammedans, calling for a Jehad! All nonsense of course. There hadn’t been any such thing circulated in his district.
‘About eight hundred of them, I think, sir,’ said Alex expressionlessly.
‘What’s that?’ The Commissioner’s voice cracked with angry amazement. ‘You’re telling me we’ve had ’em in Lunjore? Then why the devil wasn’t I told!’
‘You were, sir. I sent in a full report - in triplicate. It will be somewhere in the files.’
‘Oh,’ said the Commissioner, disconcerted. He glowered angrily for a moment o
r two and then observed sulkily that he hadn’t had the time to read every damned, panicky paper that came into the office.
Relieved by the passing of the temporary uneasiness caused by the cartridge scare and the abortive mutiny of the 19th N.I., he had at long last turned his attention to the question of leave and a visit to the Casa de Ballesteros in Lucknow.
32
The January rains had been plentiful that year and the river ran high, so that the bridge of boats creaked and pulled to the current.
There were carts crossing it from the Oudh side, and Winter, who had preferred to ride rather than accompany her husband in the carriage, waited for them to pass, and while Conway fretted angrily at the delay, fell into conversation with a gaunt, white-haired Mussulman who was also waiting to cross.
Looking across at the dense line of the jungle that walled in the sandbanks and the wide, seemingly slow-flowing river with its placid surface and treacherous currents, they had seen a half-burned corpse bob slowly past, turning and twisting as though it were alive as the fish and the turtles tugged at it. It came to rest against the side of the bridge and Winter shuddered, wondering how long it would stay there before someone felt it necessary to push it off with a pole. But the hideous, bloated thing vanished suddenly, pulled under as though by a hand that had reached up from the deep water and drawn it down, and the old gentleman, observing her start, said: ‘That will be the mugger of the bridge. He keeps it free of all such things. Doubtless the All-Wise appointed him to the work. Where does the Memsahib go?’
‘I go to my home,’ said Winter, her face lighting to a smile - the first it had worn for more days than she could remember.
‘Thy home? Is thy husband then one of the sahibs newly come to Oudh?’
Winter shook her head. ‘Nay. I was born in Lucknow city. In the house of Aziza Begum, wife of Mirza Ali Shah, that is called the Gulab Mahal. But my father’s house lies to the west of the city. It is named the “House of the Peacocks”. Know you Lucknow?’
