by M. M. Kaye
Lou had turned round and come down again, looking thoughtful.
Winter had been married at night and by moonlight, as Sabrina had been. And like Sabrina, with no preparation at all and in a wedding-dress that did not even belong to her.
She would have worn Ameera’s scarlet and gold wedding-dress with its wonderful fringed and tasselled head-veil, but out of deference to the doubtful and anxious Mr Dobbie she had worn instead a dress of heavy white silk, yellowed by the years and scented with the neem leaves and tobacco in which it had been kept, that had belonged to Ameera’s mother, Juanita de Ballesteros.
There had been a lace mantilla too; once white but now as yellow as the silk and as fragile as the lace on the wedding-dress that had been Anne Marie’s and which Sabrina had worn when she married Juanita’s brother, Marcos, in the chapel of the Casa de los Pavos Reales twenty years ago. It had in fact been the self-same mantilla that her mother had worn on that night, though Winter did not know it.
The moon that looked down on that strange wedding looked down also on the ruined, looted, burned-out shell of the Casa de los Pavos Reales and the blackened, grass-grown paving stones of the terrace where Marcos and Sabrina had stood together on that other moonlight night to watch their guests ride away. But the scent of the orange-blossom and the lemon trees remained, and was as sweet on the hot air as it had been on that long-ago night.
The scent of orange-blossom rose too from the walled gardens of the Rose Palace, and reached the flat roof-top where Winter stood in Juanita’s white dress and felt Alex’s parched, fever-hot fingers push a heavy ring of beaten gold and silver onto the finger that had once worn Kishan Prasad’s glowing emerald. The ring too had been one of Juanita’s, a gift from her mother Anne Marie, for none of the Europeans had possessed such a thing - any trinkets they might have had having been either taken from them or parted with in exchange for food long ago.
Alex had worn Mussulman dress, borrowed for the occasion from Dasim Ali, and had only managed to keep on his feet with the assistance of opium and one of the pillars that divided his room from the roof. He had stood with his back to it, and had looked so entirely un-English in the moonlight that poor, worried Mr Dobbie had suffered yet another qualm.
Up to now it had been young Mrs Barton who had always seemed to Mr Dobbie to look like an Indian. He had never seen her wear anything but Indian dress, and he had never quite followed the intricacies of her relationship with the Indian woman - or women - in the Gulab Mahal. But tonight, wearing the long full-skirted stiff silk dress with its old-fashioned neck - and sleeve-line, her black hair drawn back and rolled in a heavy chignon at the back of her small head and the folds of the lace mantilla falling demurely about her, she looked like any young lady arriving to be married in one of the more fashionable London churches, and it seemed entirely wrong, thought Mr Dobbie unhappily, that he should be marrying her to a Mohammedan.
But to Winter there had been nothing strange about this wedding. It was the fulfilment of the promise that the Gulab Mahal had always stood for - that old Aziza Begum had given to her and Zobeida reaffirmed so often - that once she returned to it, all would be well.
She stood in the warm white moonlight and looked down at a ring that had once been Anne Marie’s as once, long ago and on just such a night, Sabrina too had done. And like Sabrina she was suddenly aware of an uplifting sense of timelessness - as if all Time were one, and she would live for ever in the future in Alex’s children and hers, as she lived in the past with Marcos and Sabrina; with Johnny and Louisa …
But her wedding had not ended peacefully as Sabrina’s had done.
They had all been gathered there on the roof, their shadows black in the moonlight, and the fantastic skyline of the Lucknow palaces like a purple pattern at their backs: Lou Cottar and Mrs Hossack, Captain Garrowby, Dr O’Dwyer, Mr Climpson, Mr Lapeuta and Lord Carlyon. Even Ameera and Hamida had been there, standing in the darkness behind the lowered chiks that screened the interior of the pavilion from the roof, in deference to the fact that Ameera was in purdah and could not be seen by strange men.
The guests had come forward to offer congratulations and good wishes at the end of the brief ceremony, and Carlyon had confronted Winter and said in a deliberate drawl: ‘Am I permitted the privilege of kissing the bride?’
Alex said: ‘Not in future,’ and hit him.
It had been luck more than strength or science, and rage more than luck, that had caused the blow to send Carlyon sprawling, for although Alex had recovered a good deal of his strength, the fever had once again drained an appreciable amount of it from him during the past twenty-four hours.
Carlyon had come to his feet, white with fury, and had returned the blow with a good deal more science and considerably more strength before the remainder of the wedding guests had rushed in to separate them. Alex had been unable to defend himself, because the well-meaning Mr Dobbie had leapt at him, catching his arm, and Winter had turned and clung to the other. Carlyon’s clenched fist had taken him under the jaw and he had fallen between them as though he had been pole-axed, hitting the back of his head on an angle of the pillar as he fell, and had not recovered consciousness for some considerable time.
‘Men!’ said Lou furiously. ‘As if we were not in enough trouble already! Now they’ll try and kill each other as soon as they get the chance. You’d think there was enough fighting going on without— Oh God! Men!’
Winter spent her second wedding night, as she had spent her first, in tears and terror. But this time it was on her bridegroom’s behalf and not on her own.
Alex’s own recollections of the night were hazy. His head hurt abominably, his jaw ached, his body burned with fever and his parched mouth was full of blood from a cut that his teeth had made in his tongue. Somebody periodically gave him water to drink and persuaded him to spit out the blood instead of swallowing it, and someone else - or the same person - put a pleasantly cool and aromatic-smelling compress on his forehead and changed it at intervals.
The fever had lessened towards morning, and he had fallen asleep at last and had not wakened until the sun was hot on the roof. And then it had been Lou who had been standing by one of the pillars in the pavilion, peering through the slats of the chik and listening to the crackle of rifle-fire and the boom of guns that had been silent during the past night but had begun again with the dawn.
She had turned when she heard Alex move, and said anxiously: ‘It sounds like a big attack. Listen to that! Are they never going to be relieved? We were told that tale about Havelock taking Cawnpore days and days ago, and Cawnpore is less than forty miles away. Why aren’t they here?’
Alex dragged himself up and went to stand beside her. They could see the smoke from the cannonade hanging like a haze above the roofs and the tree-tops that hid the Residency, and he listened, as Lou had listened, and presently said: ‘How long have we been here? Three weeks? or is it four? It feels like months, and it must feel like years to them. Havelock must get through soon. Oh God, if only one could—’
He turned away with a groan, and subsiding again on the edge of the low charpoy, closed his eyes and leant his aching head against the wall behind it. After a minute or two he opened them again and frowned at Mrs Cottar:
‘What are you doing here at this time of the morning, Lou? Got a sudden fit of the bore with that baby at last?’
‘No,’ said Lou. ‘I promised your wife that if she’d go to sleep I’d see that you were all right.’
‘My—?’ said Alex, and stopped. ‘Good God! Of course. Then I didn’t dream the whole thing. I seem to remember hitting that bastard Carlyon— Sorry, Lou, I apologize.’
‘He hit you a good deal harder,’ said Lou with a grin.
‘Did he?’ Alex put up a hand and felt his bruised and swollen jaw tenderly. ‘Hmm. He must have done. I don’t seem to remember that. I thought something hit me on the back of the head.’
‘It did. This pillar.’
Alex lowered himself c
autiously back onto the folded resai and said: ‘That accounts for it. I feel as though I’d been run into by a siege gun. What happened to - my wife?’
‘I rather think she spent the night bathing your fevered brow,’ said Lou. ‘She doesn’t seem to have much luck with her bridegrooms. Conway was filthy drunk.’
She saw the sudden black scowl that replaced the frown of pain on Alex’s forehead, and said abruptly: ‘You brought her out to him, didn’t you? What possessed you to let her marry him? You knew what he was like.’
Alex said: ‘Shut up, Lou. If you want to play at being Miss Nightingale you can give me some water. If you want to talk you can go away.’
Lou brought him food and water and prepared to depart, but with her hand on the chik she stopped and turned back.
‘Alex—’
‘What is it now?’ demanded Alex ungraciously.
‘Lord Carlyon—’ Lou hesitated and bit her lip.
‘What about him?’
‘You won’t— Alex, we’re all in the same boat. You know as well as I do that someone may give us away any day, and then - and then it will be all over with us. We’ve got to stay together, and that man has got a bad temper and not much control over it.’
‘I don’t seem to have had much control over mine lately,’ said Alex wryly.
‘I know. But that’s different. You wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardize all of us just because you were in a rage. But he would. You don’t know what a lot of nonsense he’s been talking. About escaping from here.’
Alex turned his head and looked at her oddly, and she met the look and said with a twisted smile: ‘Oh yes - I know you’ve thought of it too. We’ve all thought of it, if it comes to that. But we - the rest of us - have enough sense to see when we are well off and not do anything stupid. And we know that we don’t need to escape. That we may be kept cooped up in two small rooms all day, but that it isn’t to keep us prisoners. It’s to keep us safe - and everyone else who lives in this house, for that matter! If we really wanted to go away, they’d be thankful to be rid of us. But Lord Carlyon won’t believe that, and he doesn’t understand more than half a dozen words of Hindustani. If he once got out of this place he’d be caught before he’d gone a hundred yards, and that might give us all away. So you see—’
Lou jerked restlessly at the edge of the chik and turned away to peer through it again, her back to Alex. He did not speak, and presently she said: ‘He has only stayed quiet because of Winter. Because he’s in love with her, and because we’ve told him - all of us - that it was safer for us to stay here than to take our chance outside; and safest of all for her because the Begum is her cousin. And he wouldn’t leave unless he could take her with him. He asked her last night to marry him - did you know that? And then inside an hour she marries you instead, and he has to watch. And then you knock him down!’
Alex still said nothing and Lou turned and faced him, her eyes desperate. ‘Alex, please! Don’t quarrel with him. Keep out of his way. Don’t goad him into doing anything that may jeopardize all of us. Promise me you’ll leave him alone?’
Alex said: ‘Provided he leaves my wife alone.’
‘Of course he will, now. But you can’t expect him not to speak to her, and if you’re going to hit him every time he does—’
‘My dear Lou,’ interrupted Alex irritably, ‘at the moment I couldn’t successfully hit a fly. No, of course I will not start another brawl! I must have taken leave of my senses to start one last night. But if you imagine that I am going to apologize to the man, you are wrong. Get on back to your baby, there’s a good girl. My head is splitting and I can see six of you. And just at present one is more than enough.’
Lou had gone and Alex had lain on his back all through the gruelling heat of the day, and had thought as coherently as the pain in his head and desperate anxiety over the fate of the Residency garrison would permit.
Lou did not realize that there were only two things that had kept him from leaving the Gulab Mahal as soon as he was capable of walking, and they were neither of them what she had supposed. The first was the fact that a sick man was a liability and not an asset, and until he could rid himself of this damnably recurrent fever, and the weakness that went with it, it was infinitely more sensible to stay where he was, since he was of little use to anyone in this condition. The second was Carlyon. Carlyon and Winter. Winter was safe enough (or as safe as she would be anywhere at this time) with the occupants of the Gulab Mahal. But she was not safe from Carlyon.
He realized the sense of Lou’s request, for they were none of them safe with Carlyon. Carlyon had an ugly and unpredictable temper and was altogether too autocratic and egotistical a person to be relied upon to exercise patience and play a waiting game. He was also frightened, and that made him even less reliable. They were all frightened. Alex himself had woken more than once in a sweat of fear at the sound of a party of shouting roisterers passing on the far side of the high wall which enclosed the Gulab Mahal, imagining that they were a band of mutineers come to batter down the gates and demand that the feringhis should be given up to them. But neither he nor any of the others doubted that the inmates of the Gulab Mahal would keep them hidden; for their own sakes as much as to save the lives of their unwelcome guests, though there was always the danger of some servant betraying them for money or spite, or of the news leaking out through carelessness.
But Carlyon did not believe that. He knew little or nothing of India, and the little he knew had taught him to believe that all Indians were treacherous murderers, not one of whom was to be trusted. He refused to admit that the inmates of the Gulab Mahal were restricting his liberty, and that of the other Europeans in hiding, in order to save their lives. They were being kept prisoner, and would one day be handed over to provide a spectacle for the mob. Had not the fifty luckless captives in the dungeons of the King of Delhi - almost all of whom were women and children - been taken out and publicly slaughtered before a milling mass of spectators?
Carlyon had urged that they should attack the servants who cared for their needs, overpower the adult males in the house, seize any weapons they could find in the house, and thus provided with arms, money and food, escape to Cawnpore where Havelock and his army were known to be encamped. It was no great distance; less than forty miles. He had formulated other schemes, equally rash and impracticable, but had been persuaded that any such attempts must expose the women and the two children to too great a risk; and he would not escape alone and leave Winter. And now Winter, to escape him, had married Alex Randall.
She must have been very frightened of Carlyon to have taken such a drastic step, thought Alex, staring up at the flaking plaster of the ceiling while the heat danced upon the open roof outside. What had he done to her? Tried to rape her? Alex felt rage rise in him again at the thought and turned over and buried his face in his arms.
Lou was right. He must keep from quarrelling with the man. He had kept from doing it when they were in Delhi, and he could keep from doing it now. ‘All in the same boat,’ Lou had said. It was a leaky craft at best, and if two of its occupants started fighting in it they might well overturn it. As for Winter, now that she was his wife his name should be enough to protect her from any further insults from Carlyon. But he himself would have to continue to keep her at arm’s length or they would be lost.
The fact that she was now his wife made no difference to that particular situation. It merely made it more difficult. They might be here, or on the run again, for months - perhaps a year. Or more than a year. The garbled stories and rumours that Dasim Ali brought him were always more of successful risings than of defeats, and it was difficult to gain any clear picture of what actually was happening in the outside world. If the whole of India was really in revolt it was going to take more than a few months of campaigning to reconquer it and restore order. Months, thought Alex, perhaps a year - perhaps longer … And he thought again of Lottie.
He could not forget Lottie. That appalling, agonizin
g day had burnt itself into his brain. Nature did not stand still for wars. Lottie’s baby had not delayed its arrival because of murder and massacre; they had merely hastened it. It had had to be born, and prematurely at that. And in the process it had killed Lottie far more painfully than any shot fired from a carbine, or any stroke from a sword.
Had Alex kept away that day, and kept out of earshot as he had meant to do, leaving her to the women, he might have felt differently about it even though he would have returned to find her dead. Women did die in childbirth, too many of them. It was regrettable, but nothing - or very little it seemed - could be done about it.
But he had not kept away. He had stayed with Lottie instead, and he could not forget the torment she had endured before she died, or the fact that with proper medical care and attention, doctors, midwives, all the paraphernalia of modern medicine, she would probably have survived. But this was war. It was worse - civil war, rebellion, anarchy. There could be no safety anywhere for any woman in the country until it was over. He could not run the risk of watching Winter die as Lottie had died, and for the first time he was grateful for the ill-health that would provide him with an excuse to keep her at arm’s length.
The gunfire had continued for the greater part of the day with a fury that told of a large-scale attack upon the Residency, and an hour before noon the thunderous explosion of a mine shook the Gulab Mahal and disturbed the birds who were sheltering from the heat in the trees of the garden, sending them flapping and cawing up into the hot air.
Alex could hear the boom of the guns and the crash of the shells with shuddering clarity, and the shimmering heat of the roof-top seemed to vibrate to the sound and strike at his body with the same savage regularity as the sound itself struck through his throbbing head.
Was it just another attack on the Residency - or was it Havelock at last? But it could not be Havelock. The city would have been in an uproar and there would have been fighting in the streets if the relieving force had arrived. This that he could hear was still fire that was being directed at and returned by the Residency …
