by M. M. Kaye
‘They’re all right - at least - at least I think so,’ said Winter, turning to follow him. ‘I went to bathe in the river, and I lost my way coming back. It was getting dark—’
Alex appeared to know his way through these jungles, for despite the absence of paths and the fact that one tree or bamboo-brake or tangled thicket looked exactly like the next to Winter, he walked ahead of her unhesitatingly, until suddenly the dark entrance of the Hirren Minar was before them.
There was no sound from the ruined building, and he groped in the gloom and found that the rope ladder had been withdrawn. He said softly: ‘Lou - are you all right?’ and there was a swift movement above his head as though someone had been standing there with held breath, listening, and a voice said: ‘Alex!’ The rope ladder dropped and two minutes later they were both in the upper room. Mrs Cottar said: ‘What happened to you? I thought—’ She leant against the wall and burst into tears.
Alex pushed aside the chik that she had hung across the open archway, and went out onto the flat roof outside. The sky was bright now, and the day was already breathlessly hot. The tall bamboos that concealed the Hirren Minar, towering to the level of the ruined dome, walled in all but a small part of the roof, leaving a narrow gap through which he could look out across the jungle and catch a glimpse of the river. He sat down on the crumbling parapet and stared at that small square of brightness, and presently the sun rose and lit the tree-tops, and the temperature leapt up as though the door of a gigantic furnace had been flung wide.
There were things that he had to think about. Things that must be thought about soon. But all at once he knew that he could not do so now. He could not think about anything at all. He had not eaten for over twenty-four hours, and for months past he had considered problems that were now of no further importance. He would give himself a day in which to get what rest he could. At least he was clean again, and that in itself seemed enough of an achievement for one day. He had not expected to be clean again. He had expected to die grimed and filthy and with his face stiffened and caked with dust and blood and sweat.
The problem of the three women in the room behind him would have to wait. They could not stay there indefinitely, but they could at least stay there for a day or two; perhaps longer. He noticed incuriously that the ruined roof which was normally a foot deep in dead leaves and the debris of dying bamboos had been swept clean. A man would not have bothered. The thought of the three women pressed like a heavy weight on his shoulders, and his mind rejected it, turning tiredly away.
Winter came out on to the roof behind him, and a ray of the morning sunlight, piercing through the heavy screen of bamboos, caught her in a brilliant shaft of light. Alex turned and surveyed her with a faint surprise as though she were someone he had never seen before. She was still wearing the blue cotton sari that she had worn last night. It was a scanty length of cloth, and it moulded the slender beauty of her body with a classic perfection. Her skin glowed gold in the golden sunlight and her black hair had blue lights in it, and he thought with an entire lack of emotion that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen - and a stranger.
The wary, withdrawn creature whom he had met at Ware; the sea-sick child in the cabin of the Sirius; the Condesa de los Aguilares; Mrs Conway Barton - they had all gone. The wariness and the withdrawal had gone too, and the great dark eyes were no longer unsure but quiet and untroubled. There was a serenity and a glow about her. Something that was almost happiness.
How can she look like that? thought Alex with a faint twinge of irritation. As if she were entirely content and there were no longer any problems that mattered. Had women no imagination? Had nothing of all that she had seen made her realize that her life from now on - all their lives - was only a matter of living for an hour or a day more, by luck and cunning and the grace of God?
Winter said: ‘Breakfast is ready.’
The incongruity of the commonplace, matter-of-fact statement at that time and in that setting suddenly struck him, and he laughed for the first time in many days.
43
Alex lay flat on his stomach in a thicket at the edge of a glade in the jungle. He held one end of a thin cord in his hand and he was watching the leisurely approach of a peacock and his retinue of wives. The cord operated a primitive trap some twelve feet ahead of him which had, during the past fortnight, accounted for several jungle-fowl, two green pigeons, a pea-hen and an unwary porcupine. The porcupine, as a culinary problem, had proved insoluble, and after struggling with it for an hour or more, Winter had handed the charred and unsavoury remains to Alex for immediate burial.
The Hirren Minar was well stocked with salt and parched grain and a miscellaneous variety of the more durable stores, but they needed fresh food, and Alex did not dare fire a gun for he knew that the sound of a shot would carry far in the long, hot silent days. They had fish-hooks and lines, however, which had proved more than useful, and he had found that it was possible to trap birds.
Cooking was a difficulty, because they were afraid of showing smoke. In that still air it would have risen straight and betrayingly above the tree-tops, and there was no knowing who might see it. There were probably other fugitives in the jungles, and the hunt might well be out against those who had taken refuge there. So they cooked only after dark or before dawn, and in the lower room of the ruin, blocking the door with a home-made curtain of grass and bamboo to avoid showing a gleam of light. It was a hot and choking performance, but Winter and Lou Cottar managed it without complaint.
They had been in the Hirren Minar for over two weeks now, and already it seemed as though they had lived there for months - for years even. They had settled into a routine of living, occupying themselves with petty domestic details; living a curious dream-like life in the hot, silent, shadow-barred jungle. They might have been castaways on a desert island, surrounded by a thousand miles of empty sea, but the three women appeared to be contented enough. They never spoke of Lunjore or of anything that had happened there. At least, not before Alex. He did not know what they spoke of when he was not there.
Lottie’s gentle, trance-like daze had survived that second escape from massacre, and though she talked continuously of Edward, her clouded brain accepted the simplest lie, and the presence of Winter and Alex convinced her that all was well. Life in India was so very different from life in England - it was not in the least what she had expected it to be. But one must be prepared to make allowances for foreign customs, and when Edward’s manoeuvres were over they would be able to live in their own bungalow in Meerut again. She must be patient and not complain.
Lou Cottar, too, schooled herself to patience. At first it had been enough - and more than enough - to be alive and safe when so many were dead or living in dread and discomfort and danger. But as the days went by she began to take the security for granted, and ache to escape from the jungle and at least attempt to reach civilization. The British could not all be dead! That was nonsense. If only they could escape they would surely find that life elsewhere was going on much as before.
Lou had lived only for amusement, and for men; and she yearned for the society of her own kind again. For lights, noise, music, laughter - all the things that made life an entertaining affair. Josh would be in Calcutta, and she felt sure that Calcutta at least was still in British hands. She had never been particularly fond of her husband, and had regarded him with tolerance rather than affection; they had gone their own ways and had not interfered with each other. But Josh represented a way of life that suited Lou well enough. She took no interest in her own sex and had little use for them, and to live cooped up in the company of two young women with whom she had nothing in common was both tedious and irritating. But Lou possessed common sense and courage, and she knew that because of Lottie English they must take no chances. Lottie was no responsibility of hers, but that fact did not weigh with her. She had, surprisingly enough, begun to feel an odd fondness for the little creature. A feeling that verged on the maternal, though she woul
d have scouted such an idea with scorn had it been presented to her by anyone else. Lottie frequently irritated her, but she knew that she could not abandon her - that none of them could.
If Alex had paid her some attention Lou might have felt more reconciled to the situation. She had always considered that Alex possessed more than his fair share of sexual attraction, and she had been interested in him both as a male and as a personality. But Alex did not see her. He did not see any of them, except as a responsibility and a collective millstone about his neck. Hampered by them, he was tied to the Hirren Minar until he could make arrangements to get them to safety - if there was any safety to be had anywhere in the country.
Outside the jungle that sheltered them and yet hemmed them in there must be so much to be done. So much that needed doing. Delhi to be retaken. Somewhere beyond the borders of Lunjore William would be doing the work of ten men: and John Nicholson too, of whom it had been said that single-handed he could cow an entire mutinous army corps into obedience. Henry Lawrence in Lucknow and John Lawrence in Peshawar. Herbert Edwardes, Alex Taylor, James Abbott; Hearsay, Grant, Campbell, Outram - a hundred others. None of them would be standing still, and they would need every pair of hands and every brain and heart they could muster to save the country from falling into anarchy. Yet he, Alex Randall, sat here idle, tied hand and foot by the necessity of protecting the lives of three women.
If he could only be rid of them! If he could only get them to safety he could reach Henry Lawrence, or the troops that must surely by now be marching to attack Delhi. And then there was his own district … But he could do nothing as yet. For the moment at least the women were safe, and he could not move them until he had more reliable news.
He had slept most of that first day at the Hirren Minar, and awakened to a ravenous hunger that had been only partially appeased by a mess of dried corn and a somewhat muddy-tasting fish that Lou Cottar (who had found the lines and fish-hooks) had caught in the course of the afternoon.
He had been unreasonably angry on discovering that Winter had cooked it over a fire that she had made in a corner of the stone chamber below, and had informed her tersely that she had shown a lamentable lack of intelligence, and that in future no fire would be lit by day. Winter had smiled warmly at him, rather in the manner of an adult humouring a cross and convalescent child, and had apologized with a lightness that had further infuriated Alex, since he took it to be an indication of the fact that she had no conception of the precariousness of their present position. He would have to take charge of them. Left to themselves they would be lost. He could not leave them to die.
He had left them to themselves the next night and all the following day, and had made no mention on his return of where he had been or what he had been doing. Winter, who knew him better than Lou Cottar did, had not even asked. Lou had asked, and had not received an answer. For Alex had gone back to the Residency.
There was a bundle of native clothing in the ruined dome of the Hirren Minar, and Lou Cottar, coming unexpectedly upon him as he set out - she had been down to the river - had taken him for a Pathan and been betrayed into a scream.
‘Oh God, Alex, you frightened me! - I thought for a moment—’
Alex said: ‘Does it change me so much?’
‘Yes. I don’t know why - it’s only clothes. You look so much darker, and that hair makes a difference.’
‘It’s a mistake to wear false hair,’ said Alex, pulling at the greasy locks that fell onto his shoulders beneath the puggari cloth, ‘but it can’t be helped.’
‘You should grow a moustache and beard,’ said Lou, ‘then no one would know you.’
‘I would, except for the fact that it happens to grow too damned light; a good deal lighter than my hair. And though one can get rid of it quickly enough, it takes a hell of a time to grow again when needed. I may not be back for some time. Don’t show a light if you can help it.’ He had turned away and disappeared into the jungle in the direction of the Lunjore road.
The Residency had been deserted except for the kites and the crows and the scavenging pariah dogs, and the sickly-sweet stench of corruption had hung over it in a cloud almost as tangible as the clouds of bloated flies that buzzed above the dead. But there was nothing to be learned there. Not even the names of those who had died, since very few were still recognizable.
Alex had nerved himself to search among them for some evidence as to who they had once been, but he had been forced to abandon it. His own bungalow was empty, and like the rest of the bungalows it had been systematically looted. There had been an attempt to set it on fire, but the flames had not taken hold. The office, however, was reasonably intact, for the mob had not been interested in files and papers and had not troubled to destroy them. It had, however, contained one unexpected object. The body of the Commissioner of Lunjore.
Conway Barton had been slumped on the floor between the inner door and the desk, and Alex had turned him over and found no wound upon him. He was wearing little but a gaily coloured dressing-gown and one slipper, and there was no clue as to what he could have been doing there, or how he had got there - whether by his own will or by force. But one thing at least was obvious; he had not been dead for as long as the bodies at the Residency. And from the appalled expression on his ridged face he would seem to have died of fear.
It would have taken too long, and been too dangerous, to dig a grave for that fat, bulky body, and Alex, having collected certain files and records of importance, had closed the door on it and left him.
There was little that remained among the debris of the Residency or his own bungalow that was of any use, but having hidden the documents from his office in the roof of the deserted stables, he had made a small bundle of various objects which he considered worth removing, and filled a torn haversack with fruit and corn from the trampled garden. He had seen few people in the cantonment area, and had kept out of sight himself, crouching behind walls or in the shelter of tamarisk scrub at any sound or movement.
Alex had not gone to the cantonments again, and he had not again used the roads by day. He went - when he went - by night, and returned at dawn to sleep through most of the day.
On the night following his return from the Residency he had gone to the village where his shikari, Kashmera, lived; walking through the crops by the light of a narrow moon. It had been a grave risk, for he was well known in the village. But it was a risk that had to be taken, since he could do nothing without news. The old shikari had come to the door of his hut and had known who it was even in the faint starlight, for he, as Niaz had been, was cat-eyed in the dark. He had turned to speak reassuringly to someone inside the hut and had followed Alex out into the night, and they had crouched among the shadows of a corn field for half an hour, whispering together.
Three days later it had been Amir Nath and his hawks whom Alex had met at sunset by the third milestone outside the cantonments. Sometimes it would be Kashmera, sometimes Amir Nath, and once it was a friend of Alex’s from the city, Lalla Takur Dass, a bazaar letter-writer who lived in an alleyway near Ditta Mull’s silk shop. And in this way he heard the news of the city and the villages and the surrounding districts.
It was not yet safe to move, they told him. The countryside was in a ferment, for there were bands of armed sepoys swaggering through the villages. They had caught a sahib and a memsahib hiding in the hut of a villager, and had not only slain them, but had slain also the man who had given them shelter, and all his family with him, as an example to others. It was they who were responsible for the continued panic. The villagers for the most part asked nothing more than to be left in peace to continue with their ploughing, sowing and reaping. It mattered little to them who governed the land provided the rains did not fail and the crops were good, the taxes were not unduly heavy and allowances made for bad years and poor harvests. Several of the local talukdars were taking an active part in the revolt, and the lower elements of the city could always be relied upon to create trouble. But others am
ong the talukdars had remained quiet and were watching to see which way the cat would jump, as were many men in Lunjore.
‘But if thy people do not take Delhi soon,’ said Amir Nath, ‘they too will join with the others. There is no news of that yet, but there is talk that all the sahib-log are not slain, as was at first believed, and that an army marches from Ambala to retake Delhi. If that be true, and Delhi be taken, then many who now waver will stay quiet. Remain thou quiet also, and in hiding, until the worst is past. There have been many sahibs and memsahibs, and baba-log (children) also, who being driven out of hiding by lack of food and water have been taken and slain, or sent as prisoners to those who be no friends of the Company’s Raj. To move now were to run all heads into a noose, for there is no safety east or west, north or south. Oudh also has risen, and it is said that Lawrence Sahib and all the Angrezi-log in Lucknow will soon be slain, and that the Jung-i-lat Sahib (Commander-in-Chief) is dead at Ambala …’
None of the news was reassuring, and it was obviously unwise to exchange the comparative safety of the Hirren Minar for the dangers of a cross-country flight to some district that might well prove to be in a worse state than Lunjore. And there would appear to be few safe places to make for, if any of Alex’s informants were to be believed.
The tales that they told were all of disaster to the British. The whole of Oudh was in a ferment. In Cawnpore General Wheeler was constructing an entrenchment for the defence of the garrison and the European population. Delhi was still in the hands of the insurgents, and there was no news from Meerut. There had been trouble in Agra, and it was rumoured that the troops had mutinied at Allahabad and massacred the British. Punctually to the given day the sepoys in Barelli and Shajehanpur had mutinied, and Khan Bahadur Khan, a pensioner of the Company, had been proclaimed Viceroy of Rohilkhand. He had celebrated his accession by ordering the slaughter of all the British who had been unable to escape from Barelli, and there had also been a brutal massacre of Europeans in Shahjehanpur.
