Shadow of the Moon

by M. M. Kaye

  The three other women in their soiled bedraggled Western clothes looked haggard and shapeless and ugly with anxiety and exhaustion. But this relaxed, sleeping creature managed still to be beautiful, though it was a different beauty from that which had attracted his instant attention in the ballroom at Ware.

  This was a woman, and no longer a girl. A woman thin-faced from strain and sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, but still as lovely a thing to look at as any man - even one as weary and desperate and as frightened as himself - could wish to see. In that hot, horrible room, surrounded by her fellow-captives in their stained and ragged clothes, she looked as colourful as a poppy growing on a rubbish dump, and merely to look at her was a refreshment to the eye and in some way served to lessen his fear and his despairing fury.

  Carlyon had never known before what it meant to be afraid, but he knew now, and he had often wondered of late how much longer he could keep it from showing in his face. Were the others equally afraid? He supposed that they must be, since only the completely unimaginative could fail to be. It was curious, this value that all men placed upon an outward display of calm. He was more afraid - as probably every man in the room was - of showing fear than of the actual thing they feared, and the fight to keep from showing it was the hardest part of living through the dragging, tormenting days: harder than the uncertainty, the intolerable heat, the torn, sweat-soaked clothing and the coarse scanty food, or the memory of horrors seen and endured and the dread of worse to come.

  It was an escape from that fear, and from ugliness and reality, to look at Winter lying asleep, the lovely curves of her body moulded by the thin folds of the wine-red sari whose deep blue border reflected in the blue lights in her hair. The smooth curve of the bare golden arm, the line of the long golden throat and the black sweep of the lashes that lay against her thin cheek were an assurance that the world still contained other things besides hate and terror and violence.

  Carlyon became aware that he himself was being watched, and looking beyond Winter he encountered Captain Randall’s grey, speculative gaze.

  He would not, he thought, have recognized Randall if Garrowby had not addressed him by name. The man seemed to have shrunk to no more than skin stretched over bone, and the almost black sun-tan had an odd undertone of greenish-white. Close on a week’s growth of beard blurred the outline of jaw and chin, and there were dark patches like bruises under his eyes. But the eyes themselves, with their thick black lashes that were almost as long as Winter’s own, were as unmistakable as Winter’s had been; and meeting them, Carlyon was conscious of a sudden flare of hostility and antagonism. That familiar antagonism that this man had aroused in him from the moment that he had first seen him in the drawing-room of the Abuthnots’ bungalow in Delhi.

  He had not known then why he should have disliked Randall so intensely; it was enough that he did. But he knew now. The reason lay stretched between them. A woman in a wine-coloured sari.

  They had escaped from violent death by the narrowest of margins; they had lived as hunted animals and now they were herded together as captives; their countrymen everywhere were being pursued and slaughtered and defeated, and the Empire of ‘John Company’ was crumbling into ruin. They had seen sights that would haunt their sleep for as long as they lived - and they did not know if they might live as long as another day, or another hour. But for a moment they could forget it all and stare at each other with antipathy and cold anger; the greater issues giving place to an instinct as elementary and as animal as that which drives rival stags to fight in the spring.

  Yet another bedraggled captive had come to swell the ranks of the prisoners that day, an elderly Eurasian clerk who had been found hiding in a village some five miles to the south. His tale differed little from the story of escape and flight, horror and hardship and final capture, that had been the lot of all of them. The villagers had helped him and sheltered him, but he like the others had been sent without explanation to Pari.

  ‘It is not thee country people who are cruel,’ said Mr Lapeuta in his soft sing-song voice: ‘They are like us you know - veree ordinary people. It is thee towns-people and thee sepoys who are hot against us. I think that thee Talukdar of these parts, he will protect us if he can, but thee sepoys and thee maulvis they are putting pressure on him, threatening him. He will not kill us, but I think that he wishes to be rid of us because he is fearful of thee maulvis, who preach against us, and he would like to wash his hands of us all. If there is better news, then doubtless he will keep us here so that he can show how he has sheltered us, and gain much reward. But if thee news is bad, then I think he will send us away. That is what thee headman in whose village I hid told me.’

  ‘Send us where? Why?’ demanded Carlyon.

  Mr Lapeuta glanced round cautiously, but the women were taking their turn in the primitive wash-room on the far side of the courtyard. Nevertheless he lowered his voice in deference to the code that his European blood enforced upon him, that women must not be alarmed but must be shielded from harsh truths and not be asked to face reality. ‘I think,’ said Mr Lapeuta, ‘that he does not wish to have us killed in these parts. If he sends us away, even though he may know that it is to our deaths, he can then say, if thee British armies come, “I did all that I could, I protected them, but I became most fearful for their safety and so I sent them away to more powerful protectors; is it my fault that those others caused them to be killed?” Oah yess, that is what I much fear he will do.’

  The accuracy of Mr Lapeuta’s forecast was proved within three days. News from Lucknow trickled into Pari, and it was news that took the heart out of the captives, put heart into the rabble, and frightened the Talukdar into ridding himself, Pilate-wise, of the responsibility of the fugitive Europeans whom he was holding captive.

  Sir Henry Lawrence was dead. He had died in the beleaguered Residency at Lucknow, and all over India men heard the news with a catch of the breath. Now that he had gone it would surely be only a matter of days before the Residency was captured, and its defenders massacred as the garrison of Cawnpore had been.

  The Talukdar wavered no longer, but hastened to rid himself of the haggard band of British before they were murdered by the mob in circumstances that might involve him in trouble in the event (which now appeared less likely) of the Hell-born ultimately defeating the insurgents and regaining power.

  He sent in more and better food, permitted the services of a barber and allowed the women facilities for the washing and mending of clothes. And having impressed his excellent intentions upon them he had them hurried by night into covered carts such as purdah women travel in, so that they might not be seen and dragged out on the way, and sent them off under guard.

  They had not known where they were going, but the unexpectedly good treatment they had received after days of surly neglect had raised the hopes of the majority of the party. It did not raise Alex’s hopes, or Mr Lapeuta’s, for they had a better understanding of the native mind than their fellow-captives. That understanding enabled them to read the motives of the Talukdar of Pari with accuracy, and they had scant confidence in the future, or in the good intentions of those to whom they were being sent. Winter alone might be safe, thought Alex. Her dress and her command of the vernacular set her apart from the rest of the British captives, and this cousin in Lucknow might yet be able to save her. He drew what comfort he could from the thought.

  In the hot jolting darkness of the cart he knew that he had only to move his hand to touch her. They had sent him in the cart with the women because he was still absurdly weak, and because, he suspected, Winter had demanded it. She had made friends with the native woman who had brought them food, and had coaxed her to bring more eggs and milk, and once even a chicken from which she had made broth for him and for the two children. He had lain on the string cot and listened to her talking and laughing with the native woman in the courtyard, and had thought, ‘She will be safe if anyone is,’ and had blessed the chance that had made her cousin to Ameera.r />
  She had adopted a different attitude towards him during those few days at Pari, and he smiled in the darkness, thinking that no man could ever submit to having the things done for him that Winter had done, without losing some small part at least of his personal entity and independence to her. He knew that she was frightened for him in the same way as Lou was for the baby, and he knew, too, that neither of them had any fear at all for themselves, and therefore were not burdened, as the rest of them were, with the grinding necessity of hiding fear. Alex envied them that.

  Even Mr Dobbie was afraid. He did not fear death, but owned to a horror of seeing others die by violence. ‘It is the thought of having to see women and children killed that appals me,’ Mr Dobbie had said, shuddering. ‘I pray I may never have to witness that again. It is a terrible thing to see. One cannot forget it, however much one tries.’

  Alex could not forget it either, and his stomach turned at the thought of what might yet be done to Winter and Lou. At what had been done to Alice Batterslea, and to the women whose unrecognizable corpses had strewn the grounds of the Residency at Lunjore. But he would not believe that it would come to that. He believed that Winter could not only save herself, but Lou as well. He had to believe it, and so he made himself believe it, and derived some comfort thereby. There was only one other spark of comfort to be found in the present situation, and that was that he was no longer responsible for their safety. The weight of that responsibility had been lifted from him at last, and he need no longer plan and contrive and lie awake worrying over problems connected with the feeding and protection of three women whose lives had largely depended upon him. He was as helpless now as they were - and as incapable of doing anything for them as the six other men who jolted along through the darkness in the second cart.

  The thought of one of those men gave Alex a familiar twinge of anger. His dislike of Carlyon had been as instant and as instinctive as Carlyon’s had been for him, but now he found himself unable to forget that he had once seen Winter in Carlyon’s arms. The thought infuriated him; and the fact that it could do so at a time like this, when such purely personal considerations should surely seem insignificant and petty, exasperated him still further. Was there no escape from the emotional bonds that sex imposed upon mankind? It was ludicrous and humiliating at such a time, when they were all together in the same and sinking boat and none of them knew from day to day whether they would be unpleasantly dead before the next sun rose or set, that he should suffer tortures of jealousy because Carlyon had once kissed Winter. The fact that at the time he had done so, he, Alex, had actually considered that it would be a good thing if she were to marry Carlyon as an alternative to Conway Barton, did not occur to him.

  He could not endure seeing Carlyon watch her by the hour. His own helpless and degrading weakness had not improved the situation or his temper, and he would have given anything to be back in the Hirren Minar, lying in the hot grass on the river bank setting fishing-lines while the three women washed clothes and cooking-pots in the twilight; though when he had been there he had fretted and agonized against the enforced inaction and had done nothing but think and plan how to get away.

  Well, he had got away. They had all got away - even Lottie. And it occurred to him to wonder if, after all, Lottie might not be the only one to be envied.

  * * *

  The four days and nights that followed their departure from Pari were a horror that equalled anything that Winter and Lou had yet endured. The carts made slow progress, because the heavy rains had turned the roads into quagmires. The torrential downpour soaked through the inadequate covering and drenched the huddled occupants, and when the rain ceased the sun turned the hooded carts into a steam-bath in which the perspiration poured off them, soaking them afresh and less pleasantly, and the temperature rose until it became difficult to breathe.

  They heard no news in those days, and did not know that on one of them the last survivors of the Cawnpore garrison had died, and with them, Sophie Abuthnot.

  Little Sophie Abuthnot, as small and fair and fragile as Lottie had been, had survived both that ghastly siege in General Wheeler’s pitifully inadequate entrenchments and the horrors of the massacre in the boats at the Sati Chauri Ghat, only to meet a more terrible fate. For the guns of the British advance could be heard at Cawnpore, and Nana Dundu Pant had heard in them the bitter knell of his hopes. All the evil fury and hate of which he was capable, and which Alex had seen in his face and heard in his voice in the vault beneath the ruins at Khanwai, had been let loose on the only victims that remained in his hands - the two hundred exhausted, hopeless, helpless women and children who were herded like animals in one small building, the bibi-gurh. He had listened to Havelock’s guns and had given the order for their murder.

  It had taken all day to kill them, for they had shrieked and dodged and twisted and striven to protect their children. But it had been done at last, and by nightfall the floor of the bibi-gurh was deep in blood and littered with the bodies of the dead and dying. When the new day dawned the butchers had dragged out the corpses and flung them into a well outside the house. Sophie had not been dead when they had thrown her down, but she had died under the weight of the dead. There had been several who were not yet dead, and one small child who was unharmed, and had lain all night, numb with terror, hiding under the corpses. The mob had laughed to see him run screaming round the well, and had caught him and swung his head against the stone work, and thrown him in. And half India shuddered in horror and drew back from the edge of the pit they had digged, for that massacre turned many men who would have fought the British to the bitter end to lay down their arms and return to their homes.

  ‘There can be no blessing on such a deed,’ said Ameera’s husband Walayat Shah, who had hated the British and rejoiced at the news of the risings, and had himself taken part in attack after attack upon Sir Henry Lawrence’s beleaguered garrison in the Lucknow Residency. But on the day that he heard the news of the murder of the women and children in the bibi-gurh at Cawnpore he had broken his sword in two and thrown away his musket, and come back to the Gulab Mahal and had not left it again.

  ‘We cannot prevail,’ said Walayat Shah. ‘The Jehad is dead. Those who slew the women and the babes have slain it also. To slay in battle or in hot blood, that is well. And to kill men, if they be unbelievers, is to achieve Paradise. But to slaughter captive women who have suffered the harshness of war and sorrow, and been robbed thereby of all strength and will, is a deed to blacken the sun! I will fight no more against the feringhis, since God can no longer be upon our side.’

  Alex had been taken from the cart in which the women travelled, at dawn on the first day. He had not come back, and presently the second cart had rumbled away. One of the escort told Winter surlily that he was to travel with the men, but she did not know if this were true or not, and when their own cart had started again, and without him, Mrs Hossack had given way to hysterics. ‘Oh God,’ screamed Mrs Hossack, ‘they’ve killed him! They’ve killed them all! They never meant to send them with us. We’re alone now - we’re alone!’

  Winter had felt the blood drain away from her heart. Was it true? Had they always meant to separate them - putting the men to death and allowing the women to live? Would she ever see Alex again? She had tried to force her way out and had been thrust roughly back again, and the cart had jolted forward on that long nightmare journey.

  They were given little food and insufficient water, and Lou Cottar’s face aged with every crawling hour. Mrs Hossack, cradling her small son, had wept and moaned with a hopeless and despairing monotony, and Miss Keir had suffered from bouts of sickness that added to the stench of the broiling, steaming cart. They had given the best of the food and almost all of the water to the two children, and Lou had made a paste of boiled rice and water and fed it to the baby with her finger-tip.

  The scarcity of food had been bearable, but the lack of water in that terrible heat had been a torment that had only been partially relieved on th
e second day when Janet Keir began to shriek and rave and tear frantically at the side of the cart, and Winter had flown at the escort with a flood of words that she was not even aware that she knew. Daunted by this blazing-eyed virago who could curse them so efficiently in their own tongue, the men had produced at the next stopping-place not only water but milk; though little enough of either.

  There had been no sign of the other cart again, and the terrible days had crawled past without their knowing whether the men were dead or not, or where they had gone. Winter nursed Lottie’s baby when Lou fell at last into a brief exhausted sleep, and longed for the Hirren Minar as a lost soul might long for Paradise. But the Hirren Minar was only a scorched and blackened pile of stone standing gaunt and exposed among a waste of charred stumps and layers of sodden ash, and Lottie was dead and her grave lost among that desolation. And if this terrible journey lasted much longer Lottie’s baby would die too. Perhaps they would all die - perhaps Alex was already dead.

  The sun was sinking again in a blaze of blood-red light that pierced through the chinks of the cart and its covering, but the darkness brought no relief. Winter’s mouth was dry and her tongue swollen, her throat parched with thirst. Her head and her body ached with one vast throbbing ache that seemed to beat like a gong in her brain, and the heat was like an iron band about her neck, tightening slowly and inexorably so that soon she would not be able to breathe. The ugly scar that Alex’s hunting knife had made on her arm burnt as though it were an open wound again, and the choking stench of the cart made her famished stomach cringe with nausea.

  How many days had they been in the cart? How many times had the sun gone down? She could not remember. They had had no food that day, and they had been given water only once and in the early part of the morning. Even Mrs Hossack moaned no more, for her parched throat could produce no sound, and the children who had wailed weakly all day were silent. Miss Keir too had ceased to writhe and mutter and beg for water, and lay still at last. Was she dead? or was she only asleep like Lou - or was Lou dead too?