by M. M. Kaye
Later a message from Mr Lapeuta had been brought him by Rahim, and he had left her to the care of the women and gone up to the moonlit roof to find Mr Lapeuta waiting for him. Mr Lapeuta and Dasim Ali, who had both come on the same errand.
‘It is not safe that that man remain longer in the Gulab Mahal,’ said Dasim Ali. ‘Who knows but that his shouts may have been heard by those outside the walls? He cried aloud, and in Angrezi, and while he remains he is a danger to us all. He must go.’
Alex’s face whitened and the lines cut deeper about his mouth. Half an hour ago he would have killed Carlyon if he could, and even now he would not trust himself within range of the man. But to send him out of the Gulab Mahal meant sending him to his death as surely, and less mercifully, as though they had put a loaded pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
The man could not be held responsible for that frenzied attack on Winter. He was mad - or very nearly so. Too mad to be trusted, and as Dasim Ali had said, a danger to every single inmate of the Gulab Mahal. But to send him to certain death in cold blood—
‘We cannot do it,’ said Alex at last. ‘It were better to kill him here. It would be quicker. They tortured the others. He would be caught in an hour - less!’
‘If he went alone, yes,’ said Mr Lapeuta. ‘But perhaps not if we go with him, Reverend Dobbie and myself. We have discussed this and we think it is possible. I, as you see, can pass veree easily as an Indian. Also I know Lucknow, and so does Reverend Dobbie. Lord Carlyon need not talk. We will tie a bandage over his eyes with much blood on it, and say that he has been injured in thee fighting; for his eyes are of a colour that is not usual in this country. We can lead him. We may be caught, as thee others were, but I think we have more chance than they, for Reverend Dobbie has dark eyes and speaks thee language with great fluency. It is worth trying, sir. To leave him here endangers all in this house, and he can endure no longer. This has come harder on such a man than on us, sir. He is I think a brave man, but not a patient one.’
Mr Lapeuta glanced at Dasim Ali and added: ‘I had wished to see you so that you might approach this gentleman and ask his help and his permission. But he is here now, and he is in agreement with me.’
“‘The raft of the benevolent gets across,”’ murmured Dasim Ali, looking thoughtfully at Mr Lapeuta: ‘It may even be that thou wilt all reach safety.’
And so they had gone. Their skins had been darkened with dye and they had been given food and a little money and what clothes they would need, and had been smuggled out by a small side door in the wall. They had taken, too, the clothes that they had worn when they arrived there, tied up in a ragged bundle.
‘If we are stopped we can say that we stole them from thee dead in thee cantonments,’ said Mr Lapeuta. ‘But the old gentleman has said that there is news that thee army moves on Lucknow again, and if we can join them we do not wish to be shot by our own side.’
Alex had not seen them go, for he did not wish to see Carlyon again. He had gone back to Winter and held her and kissed her with a passionate intensity as though he were saying good-bye to her. And she had known then that he would go too.
It had rained again that night, but in the morning the skies were clear and the clean-washed air brought the sound of guns. Havelock’s guns.
Alex had gone up to the roof in the dawn to listen. He had drawn away very gently from Winter, and thought that he had not awakened her, but she had felt that first movement and had not stopped him. When he had gone she had lain for a long time staring at the wall with unseeing eyes, and after a time she had turned on her face and wept quietly without sound or movement.
All that day the sound of Havelock’s guns shivered through the hot sunlight, coming nearer and nearer until it seemed as though they could only be a few miles from the city. And as twilight fell the four who were left of the British in the Gulab Mahal gathered on the roof-top to watch and listen.
‘We shall be able to get away!’ said Mrs Hossack, her voice trembling in hysterical thankfulness and relief. ‘We shall be safe at last - at last! When will they be here? Why don’t they hurry!’
‘They are fighting a battle,’ said Alex. ‘They will come as quickly as they can, but they won’t get a walk-over. Listen! - they must be at the Alam Bagh!’
He leaned on the parapet, his breath coming short and his eyes blazing, straining to listen: knowing that men he knew would be fighting out there - pressing on with everything that was in them to the relief of the battered Residency whose indomitable garrison had held out stubbornly all through that terrible, burning summer, and by doing so had occupied and held in check an army which, but for their resistance, would have been free to turn and attack the Delhi Force and create havoc throughout the North-Western Provinces.
‘We shall soon be safe!’ sobbed Mrs Hossack. ‘They must be here soon - perhaps tomorrow!’
But Winter did not speak, or Lou. Winter only watched Alex, oblivious of the guns. Absorbed in him as though he were the only person present: as though she were trying to imprint every line and angle and hollow of his face on her mind, and every tone and inflexion of his voice, so that she could keep them there sharp and distinct through the long days to come, and never forget them.
Lou was silent because now that deliverance seemed so near at hand she was suddenly frightened again. Not of possible hardships, but of the shadowy spectres of Amanda’s grandparents who might claim the child. All at once she knew that she did not want to leave the Gulab Mahal, as she had not wanted to leave the Hirren Minar. She was safe here, she and Amanda. She clutched the small, solemn red-headed creature tighter in her arms and the baby set up a protesting wail.
Lou and Mrs Hossack had taken the children away and left the moonlit roof to Alex and Winter, and for a little while only, Alex had forgotten the thunder of the guns.
The wind shifted in the night, and in the morning the cannonade was less easy to hear, and that day it came no nearer. But on the following day the guns were no longer a mile or so outside the city, but firing from within the city limits as the Highlanders and the Sikhs and the British and Indian Cavalry and Infantry under Havelock’s command fought their way through the streets.
The gates of the Gulab Mahal were barred and barricaded and every shutter closed and bolted, and none stirred outside while the city shook to the savage din of battle. And as the sun sank, the wind blowing from the direction of the Residency brought with it a new sound, faint but unmistakable. A roar of cheering.
‘They’ve got there!’ said Alex with a catch in his voice and a lunatic desire to cheer himself hoarse. ‘Listen to that! They’ve got there!’
‘They’re safe,’ said Lou, and wept.
They had got there at last. But the garrison of the Residency, though sure now of survival, had not been relieved after all. They had only been reinforced. The regiments who had fought their way through the streets had been too badly mauled, and their losses had been too great for them to be able to do more than join the exhausted defenders in the Residency and to stand siege there themselves.
The tumult in the city died down and the stench of death rose from the streets like a tangible cloud to foul the air. And once again the familiar rattle of musketry-fire, punctuated more frequently now by the boom of guns, sounded from the direction of the Residency.
Alex waited for several days, gleaning what news he could from Dasim Ali, and from Rahim who had been into the bazaars. But from what they told him there seemed to be little chance of the situation developing into more than another stalemate, if not a retreat. The garrison was hampered by an inordinate proportion of women and children whose safety could not be jeopardized, and now that Havelock and Outram, with the relieving force, were also penned up in the Residency it seemed more likely that they would have to remain where they were until they in turn were relieved, since to fight their way out with the women and children would be no easy task, and would mean abandoning Lucknow and that indefensible position that had, miraculously and c
ourageously, been defended for so long. They would have to retreat not only from Lucknow but from Oudh, and it might be many months before another and stronger force could be marched to attack and take the city.
Alex had talked for a long time with old Dasim Ali on the last evening of September, and afterwards he had gone down to the painted room and to Winter.
The light of the oil-lamp played upon the rose-coloured walls and the painted plaster birds and flowers as it had on the first night that he had seen that room, and once again it seemed to him that the trees swayed and the birds moved, and that the shadows made a mist under the curved ceiling so that he could not tell how high it was.
Winter was combing out the long waves of her hair, and he sat on the low Indian bed, as he had done that first night, and watched her; and did not speak.
After a moment she laid down the comb and turned towards him. The light of the lamp behind her fell upon his face but left her own in shadow, and the soft wavering flame threw an aureole about her, glinting on the long ripples of her black hair and outlining her small head.
She looked at him in silence, as she had done once before in that room; seeing in his face what it was that he had come to say. And once again he held out a hand to her, and she came to him and put her arms about him, standing between his knees with his head against her heart as she had stood in the dusk outside the Hirren Minar on the day that Lottie had died. Now, as then, he held her quite gently, leaning against her, and presently he said: ‘I can take you with me. There are troops at the Alam Bagh just outside the city. It will not be too difficult or too dangerous to get you there. You can pass as an Indian. And once you were there you would be safe. After that it would only mean reaching Cawnpore, and then by river to Allahabad and Calcutta. If Havelock is here it means the road must be open.’
Winter said: ‘Would you come with me?’ and knew the answer before she asked it.
She felt Alex’s arms tighten about her. ‘To the Alam Bagh, my darling. Perhaps to Cawnpore.’
‘And after that?’
‘I - you would be safe then.’
Winter put up one hand and stroked his dark hair, pressing her fingers through it; pressing his head against her so that he should not lift it and see that she was crying. She said softly and quite steadily: ‘And you?’
Alex moved his head against her as though he were in pain. He said in a harsh, difficult voice: ‘I must go back to Lunjore.’
He felt her flinch, and said as though she had spoken: ‘I must, dear. I should never have left. There was so much that I could have done there - or tried to do. It - it is my work; my responsibility. It’s my own district! And I ran away from it, because—’
‘Because you were saddled with three women,’ said Winter with a break in her voice. ‘But you can’t go back there now. Alex, you can’t! They would only kill you. There wouldn’t be anything you could do there alone - not now. You’d only be throwing your life away, and it isn’t only yours - it’s mine too. It’s mine!’
Alex’s arms were hard about her; he said: ‘I know, my heart. But it isn’t true that there is nothing that I could do there now. And - and there is more than an even chance that I shall be safe. There are several of the talukdars who I think would stand by me. Safdar Beg will lend me men; I got his revenues back for him and he was grateful for that. And Tará Chand - oh, a dozen others. There is no one to keep order there now. But once they see someone in authority again it will quiet them and bring back order and sanity; give them the assurance that there is still a stable Government and a law that does not depend on the will or the whim of any individual who happens to be temporarily in power. That is what they need; peace and quiet and that assurance. It wasn’t the villages, or even the city, that created the trouble. It was the sepoys, and they will have gone now. If I go back now I can— Dear heart, I must go back! Give me leave to go.’
Winter said: ‘And if I will not? Would you still go?’
‘I - I must. But I would go happier if I went with your leave.’
She said in a whisper, because she could not trust her voice not to break again: ‘Go with it, my love,’ and felt something that had been strained and taut relax in his mind more than in his body.
He leaned his weight against her as though he were very tired, and the tears that she had wished to hide from him ran down her cheeks to her throat so that they wet his face, and he felt them and tried to lift his head, but she held it closer and after a little while she said: ‘When are you going?’
‘Tonight. In an hour.’
She did not make any sound, but he felt the effort to control it shudder through her body, and knew what that effort had cost her. He said: ‘Can you be ready by then?’
She did not answer him at once, but her hand relaxed its pressure against his head and began to stroke his hair again, quite gently, and presently she said: ‘I am not going.’
He looked up then, quickly, and saw her face wet and sweet and calm above him. She smiled down at him, the soft, tremulous shadow of a smile, and laid her palm against the hard cheek that was wet with her own tears:
‘Dear, I could not go. They would send me away to Calcutta. I should be at the other end of India. I shall be nearer to you here, and far safer than you will be. Ameera will take care of me, and I shall be among friends. I was born in this room, and I have thought about it and loved it all my life. Perhaps your child will be born in it too. I will wait here for you.’
Alex said: ‘You don’t understand, my heart. I can’t let you stay. One day we shall attack this city, and take it. You don’t know what that would mean, but I do. I have seen a city sacked. If you were here—’
Winter’s hand moved from his cheek to his mouth, covering it so that he could not speak, and above it his eyes looked into hers steadily and for a long time. Then his lashes dropped and he kissed the warm palm that closed his mouth, and did not argue with her any more.
He had gone before midnight, slipping out by the narrow side door by which Carlyon and Lapeuta and Dobbie had left, and there had been only his wife and Dasim Ali to see him go.
Winter had stood pressed against the little iron-studded door and listened to the sound of his quick light footsteps dying out on the dusty road outside, and presently the night had swallowed up the sound, and old Dasim Ali had touched her on the arm and she had turned away.
She had cried again on the bed in the painted room after he had gone, and Ameera had comforted her. But in the morning it was the room that had comforted her most. She had woken to find it bright with the dawn, and as the sun rose and the familiar shadow crept across the floor and touched the bed on which she lay, peace and reassurance flowed back and filled her heart and her mind and her body. Nothing could hurt her while she was here. Alex would come back. She had only to wait.
51
Three of them left. Winter, Lou and Mrs Hossack. And the two small children; Jimmy Hossack and Lottie’s daughter Amanda.
Mrs Hossack had been horrified and indignant when she had heard the news of Alex’s departure, and had expressed herself strongly on the subject to Lou Cottar.
‘I cannot understand how Captain Randall could have brought himself to do such a thing. To desert his wife at a time like this. To escape himself and to leave her behind, alone and unprotected. Not to mention us. One would have thought that he would have remained here to protect us all.’
‘From what?’ inquired Lou shortly. ‘We are perfectly safe here; and if a mob should break in, one man would not be much help.’
‘Well, I consider it very shocking in him,’ said Mrs Hossack, ‘and I cannot conceive how he can have brought himself even to contemplate such a thing.’
‘He has an odd idea that duty should come before personal inclination,’ said Lou drily. ‘He also has a peculiar sense of proportion and value, and imagines that three women, who are really as safe as they can hop e to be, are of less importance than the welfare of his district.’
‘Personally, I shou
ld have thought that the first duty of an Englishman was to protect women,’ said Mrs Hossack indignantly.
‘I’m sure you would. It is a pity that so many of them would seem to agree with you,’ said Lou acidly, and turned her back on her.
Mrs Hossack had preserved an offended silence for at least half the day, but towards evening Jimmy Hossack had been fretful and refused his food, and had later become feverish. He had grown steadily worse and Mrs Hossack had been frantic.
‘He is going to die!’ wept Mrs Hossack hysterically, rocking herself to and fro and wringing her hands. ‘I know he will die! … with no doctor … no proper food … no medicines - this dreadful, horrible house! Oh Jimmy - Jimmy!’
Lou had slapped her. It had proved an efficacious remedy as far as Mrs Hossack was concerned, and Jimmy Hossack had not died. But he had lost a great deal of weight and did not regain it, and his recovery was so slow as to be scarcely perceptible.
Jimmy’s illness had frightened Lou almost as much as it had terrified his mother. What if Amanda were to get ill? - really ill? They must get away! They must. Alex had said that a road must be open from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and Josh would be in Calcutta. Josh would not object to her keeping Amanda. Josh had never objected to anything that Lou did. He would probably be amused at the idea, and might even one day come to look upon the child as being as much his own as she herself did. And she, Lou, had red hair too. If only the Englishes— Oh, to hell with the Englishes! She must get Amanda to safety. What was the Army doing? What was Havelock doing?
But Havelock, whose command had now been taken over by Sir James Outram, was still besieged in the Residency that he had hoped to relieve. And October came and went, and the air was cool now; the gardens bright with flowers and the early mornings sharp and chilly.
The news that Delhi had been recaptured by the British had reached the Gulab Mahal two days after Alex had left. Delhi had been taken, but the price had been high, for Nicholson was dead. He had been shot trying to rally his men in the attack on the city, and all that could die of him had died nine days later - leaving behind an imperishable legend and the echoes of those hooves that could be heard from Attock to the Khyber. ‘Nikal Seyn’ was dead, and the men of the frontier who had fought at Delhi - Pathans, Multanis, Afghans - had wept above his grave, and many, who had cared nothing for the Raj and had given allegiance only to him, had gone back to their own country. ‘There be many sahibs - but only one Nikal Seyn …’
