‘No, madam,’ he replied cautiously, ‘I do not recall any disappointment.’
‘The cobra – it was not as you had imagined.’
He smiled. ‘Disappointment? Perhaps – in that I had imagined the cobra to be a much larger serpent. But I had a very healthy regard of it, I may assure you!’
When the raj kumari smiled, though it invariably presaged her own pleasure, the effect was always great – no matter with whom. ‘I am resolved to take you to the forest to see the hamadryad. There is a serpent of which you will stand in awe,’ she promised, nodding emphatically.
‘Madam,’ he began hesitantly, ‘. . . the jungle – do you think it would be wise?’
The raj kumari laughed. ‘Captain Hervey, you cannot be afeard? Not you – not the fighter of boars in deep caverns!’
He had heard that mocking tone before, and Henrietta’s smile flashed before him. ‘Sometimes discretion is to be preferred,’ he said softly, hoping she might see the difficulty.
She chose not to. ‘Lakshmi shall be our protector, Captain Hervey. We shall first make an offering at the temple.’
He had but a moment to decide.
It took an hour to reach the little village on the forest edge where the sampera, the snake-catcher, lived. Hervey was not especially afraid of the hamadryad, for he supposed they would view it from a safe distance. Rather was he chary of any return to the tumult of senses of the day before. Evil thoughts came as a temptation: he could not be condemned for the thoughts themselves. But if he indulged them – dwelt on them, took pleasure in them, or, worst of all, opened himself to them – then he stood condemned. Avoidance, he had learned, was always more effectual than resistance.
The village was a more than usually mean settlement. What passed for the main street also served as an open drain, in which lay repellently the domestic ordure of the ryots – a sad, tired-looking people squatting on their heels by fires of cow dung. Even the children were subdued – boys all, for infanticide was still a practice of the poorest. They were only three – the raj kumari, Hervey and the raj kumari’s syce. Despite the obvious status of the party, however, the ryots made no show of deference or even greeting. It was more than the repose of the afternoon, for it was far from hot, even by his own reckoning. He judged the torpor spiritual.
She wore the Rajasthani breeches again, and with the sweat of her pony’s flanks having its way, she was once more an image of allure as powerful as any of the temple carvings he had lately stared at in disbelief. But Hervey was now master of himself – of that he was certain.
An older man stepped from one of the earthen huts and made namaste, greeting her in what Hervey supposed was some dialect. He could get no sense of what then passed between them, but the raj kumari’s familiarity with the place and the man was apparent. At length she turned to him and explained. ‘The sampera says there is a hamadryad in the forest nearby and she is seeking a mate. He saw her this morning.’
‘How does he know the snake is the female?’
‘He knows,’ she replied, with sufficient inflexion to suggest that there was some mystic power in his knowing. She told the syce to take the horses and beckoned Hervey to come with her across the open ground between the village and the forest edge, to the diminutive temple of the village’s protecting deities. Here she placed three silver rupees in a bowl at the foot of an image of Lakshmi and motioned Hervey to do likewise. Then the sampera, singing a dreary, repetitive mantra the while, led them into the darkness of the thick-canopied jungle.
Hervey’s encounter with the forest of his worst imaginings was come at last. He walked gingerly, stooping slightly, in the manner of one expecting to be assailed at any second. He searched the ground each time – albeit momentarily – before placing his foot down. He glanced about unceasingly, as a tiny bird at water. He searched with his eyes and his ears – and he saw nothing but green, and heard nothing but the faint rustle of his own steps. In front of him the raj kumari trod softly but without the same hesitation, and ahead of them the sampera moved as silently as if his feet did not touch the ground. They walked for a quarter of an hour along an old gaur track, the going easy, the track wide and clear of the bines which so easily arrested progress elsewhere. Here and there they had to crouch a little to pass below the branch of a tree that had fallen or bowed under its own weight, but there was little undergrowth even off the track, for the light barely filtered through the canopy of teak, tamarind and sal trees, and few seedlings were able to flourish in the gloom. Elsewhere in Chintal, where teak and sandalwood had been cut, allowing the sun to penetrate in great shafts to the forest floor, the undergrowth was profuse and their pace would have been that of the snail. But here was primal forest, virginal jungle. And it was, at this hour, silent – no birds singing, no monkeys gibbering or calling, no cicadas trilling. Silent, as it must have been at the Creation.
‘ “And here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery.” ’ Hervey was slowly regaining self-possession.
‘What is that?’ said the raj kumari.
He thought he had breathed it to himself. ‘Oh . . . a poet.’
‘Which poet?’ she demanded.
‘Coleridge,’ he whispered.
‘Coleridge is mad, is he not?’ she asked, scowling.
He cursed himself. Her father’s knowing had been one thing, but how in heaven’s name did she know of Coleridge? There were deeps not even Selden had perceived. ‘Mad? Well, I, that is—’
The sampera made a hissing sound to silence them both. She turned back and frowned – a sort of halfsmile, though its effect with Hervey was as potent as the fuller ones had been in the palace gardens. They walked in silence for another quarter of an hour, the conspiratorial closeness adding to the potency, for the raj kumari was stepping with growing care, glancing to right and left from time to time. Out of the sun it was cooler, but still warm, and the air, so laden with moisture that it was as some luxuriant shroud about them, seemed to be drawing Hervey by degrees into one with the spirit of the forest. The raj kumari had taken his hand when the sampera hissed, squeezing it in a gesture of reassurance, and he had not loosed it, so that now, moving a little ahead, she was leading rather than walking with him. Whether knowing or not, with every step he was further from the civilization that was his very being – and closer to a place of only primal forces.
In a while the sampera slowed, and soon he was stopped altogether, peering about him intently. And then with exhilaration, plain even in his whisper, he pointed ahead and to the right. ‘Dekh, dekh, samne!‘
She pulled Hervey close, gripping his hand even more firmly. He could feel her pulse, faster and faster – so near must be the deadly spirit of the forest. They searched hard, as the snake-catcher told them. There was so much green on the forest floor . . .
And then both saw her. Even though she was partially coiled, Hervey knew at once she was a serpent of altogether greater proportions than the palace charmer’s. She lay quite still, oblivious or not to their presence only a dozen yards away. He reached slowly, instinctively, for his sword – though he was not wearing it. The snake-catcher began to sway from side to side, humming to himself. The raj kumari began swaying, too; less extravagantly, but swaying nonetheless. The snake-catcher raised his hand carefully and began moving it, palm outward, across his face, eyes half-closed – slowly, gently, this way and then that, several minutes passing in a profound silence, nor with any motion on the forest floor, only the swaying of the sampera and the raj kumari.
The silence ended with the faintest sound, the merest rustle, difficult to identify and impossible to locate: a sound perceptible only to those whose senses were heightened, who were alert as if their very lives were threatened . . . The sampera froze, and then slowly lowered his hand. Hervey felt the tingling in his neck and down his spine, as intense as anything he had known. He put a hand slowly to the raj kumari’s shoulder and held her, as still as if they had been the very trees of the forest, the d
anger as great as any he had faced – wholly defenceless. The hamadryad rose up. She stood two-thirds his height, as tall as the sampera himself. She looked at them, moving hardly at all, her great hood spread, exposing the creamy bands, her eyes cold, mesmerizing – as if she knew the evil she could deal them in a second. Hervey knew, too: she would be able to strike all of them before any might run clear. She turned slowly to one side, to the cause of her rousing: another hamadryad, a male, edging towards her, slowly, cautiously.
For what seemed an age he inched closer to her. She stayed upright, hood spread, ready to strike him in an instant. He crawled in a careful circle about her, and then, even more cautiously, crept the length of her body, to where it rose from the ground, never himself rising above an inch. He began to stroke her flank with his head – slowly, ever so gently at first, for any misjudgement would bring her needle fangs to his neck. As slowly, she lowered herself, and his stroking became more insistent. Gently but purposefully he began to coil about her – still slowly, very slowly. She coiled likewise – slowly, very slowly, watching him constantly, so that in a while it was not possible to tell which coil was which.
Hervey did not see the sampera slip away, spellbound as he was by the serpents’ slow, deliberate writhing. The cold tingling had turned to heat: a curious, inflaming heat. The raj kumari, her leg pressing against his, was swaying once more, moving against him, as the male hamadryad had done with the female. The heat grew as she seemed to coil around him, aroused by the potency of what was happening only yards away. An age seemed to pass as the serpents coiled and moved against each other . . . And then the raj kumari was pulling him towards her, and he could hear nothing for the confusion inside, and he could see nothing for the mist about his eyes. He could only feel the ancient rite of the forest claiming him, and the lust to imitate the writhing of the hamadryads, the elemental forces of the forest.
Then came the sudden, monstrous hissing. Like a cold douche. They looked in terror to where the cobras coiled, the mouth of one about the other’s neck, coiling now turned to violent thrashing. Hervey sprang to his feet, pulling the raj kumari after him. They fled the trysting place, straining every muscle to give speed to their limbs. As sometimes in his dreams, he felt as if no effort, however great, could make them work. They ran, and ran, and ran, not daring to glance back, fearing any moment the cobra’s strike would halt their flight. They fled along the gaur track, darker now than it had first seemed, Hervey clutching the raj kumari’s hand, pulling her with all his strength, until at last they stumbled from the forest into half-blinding sunlight.
XII
RACE TO THE SWIFT
The rajah’s apartments, that evening
As Hervey entered, his host held out his hand. They were to dine alone, and all but the khansamah had been dismissed. ‘Captain Hervey,’ began the rajah, his face not as grave as in the morning, ‘I have here a letter for you, just come – brought this day from the Collector of Guntoor by dak. And with uncommon velocity, I might say.’
Hervey wondered on what matter the collector might write to him, and took the letter curiously. Then he saw the hand.
‘It is not inclement news, I trust?’ asked the rajah solicitously.
‘I do not suppose it to be, Your Highness. It is a letter from the lady I am to marry. I . . . I am astonished that it should find me here!’
‘Do not be, Captain Hervey: we are hardly a primitive tribe of Africa here in Chintal.’
Hervey was discomfited by the rebuke. ‘Sir, I did not mean . . . it is just that she had every reason to suppose me in Calcutta or even Haidarabad.’
‘And how was the letter addressed?’ he asked, still kindly.
Hervey glanced at it again. ‘Captain M. P. Hervey, Aide-de-Camp to the Duke of Wellington, India.’
‘In which case there can be no surprise, for such a letter, were it to be misdirected or delayed, would bring severe opprobrium on the official concerned. This is India, Captain Hervey: the duke’s name still inspires a respect verging on reverence.’
Hervey nodded, gladly acknowledging his error.
‘And now you would wish to read it in some privacy, of course. I shall retire for one half-hour and then, if it is agreeable to you, we shall resume our intercourse.’
When the rajah was gone, Hervey opened the letter. But he did so hesitantly, taking care to preserve as much of Henrietta’s seal as he could. He unfolded the single sheet; only the one – not a propitious sign. He began to read, with every shade of feeling from trepidation to joy – and guilt, for the forest was all about him in one sense still. It was addressed from Paris not five days after his leaving.
My dearest Matthew (a good beginning – as affectionate as ever he had seen),
Your letter from Paris was given to me upon arrival at Calais by the admirable Corporal Collins who was at once all solicitude, explaining that he had waited there for three days in vain, and feared that you would by then have sailed for the Indies. We set out at once, however, for Le Havre – a pleasant town where I learn that your name is now well known to the authorities for so fearlessly opposing the enemies of the King. Alas, I also learn that your ship has sailed two days before, and I am unable to find any which admits to the possibility of overtaking a frigate of the Royal Navy, and, in any case, Corporal Collins is insistent that your express wishes are that I should remain in France or England until such time as it is expedient for you to return or for me to follow you. And now I am in Paris at the house of Lady George, whose husband shows me every kindness and understanding – as, I may say, does your Serjeant Armstrong in equal measure. Tomorrow I shall call on the duke and make all our arrangements known – if, that is, he be in any doubt of them at this time – and thereafter shall return to Longleat with a heavy heart, though not so heavy as upon first hearing of your mission. Be assured, dearest Matthew, that I understand perfectly the duty to which you have submitted. I beg you do not have any concern that might stand in the way of affairs in India. I pray only that, in the fullness of God’s time, we may be restored to one another and that thereafter there should be no unwonted putting asunder.
Your affectionate – nay, adoring – Henrietta.
He was at once overcome by two wholly different responses. First, great relief at learning of Henrietta’s constancy. Second, shame at how close he had come in the forest to losing any honourable claim to it. He resolved in that instant to be done with intrigue in Chintal – for it had been that, he imagined, which had predisposed him to such conduct – and to press Selden for a speedy resolution of the matter of the jagirs. Then he might proceed with the business of Haidarabad. And when this was done he might return to Horningsham, or have Henrietta join him in Calcutta when the duke came there. By the time the rajah returned, he had steeled himself to his new course; gathering up the reins, so to speak, with a view to driving forward at last with some impulsion.
His face must have reflected this change, for the rajah felt obliged to remark on it. ‘Is everything well, Captain Hervey? You look a little agitated.’
‘Thank you, Your Highness; everything is well. There is not the slightest cause for concern.’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said the rajah somewhat heavily, ‘for I wish to speak with you of certain matters, and it would not do for you to be distracted. I believe I may confide in you things that I scarcely dare think to myself, for to place trust in anyone in these lands is almost always folly.’ There was sadness in his voice, but a note of optimism, too: ‘You are an honourable man. That, or I am no judge of men at all.’
If the hamadryads had not so savagely ended their own coupling, might he still have been worthy of that esteem? What might have been standing now between him and Henrietta, between him and God – and between him and the rajah? He could not blame any great primeval power, as the raj kumari might, or Selden even. If there was nothing, in one sense, beyond a fervid embrace, there was much else in his heart that called for the most abject contrition. ‘India will sweat
the false civilization out of you,’ Selden had told him. And he had not believed it for one instant. To his sins, therefore, he must also add pride. ‘Sir,’ he began hesitantly, ‘I fear that I, as most men, have feet of clay.’
The rajah frowned. ‘Englishmen are inordinately fond of their Bible.’
Hervey looked surprised.
‘You think that I should not be acquainted with your good book? I have read the Bible many times from beginning to end. I read it every day. I would speak with you of it at some time. But I confess I do not remember with any precision whence come these feet of clay.’
‘The Book of Daniel,’ sighed Hervey. The knife – for such was the rajah’s undeserved admiration – was going deep.
‘Ah, yes – Daniel. Remind me of Daniel, if you please.’
Though bemused by the rajah’s diversion, Hervey needed little time for recollection, for it was one of the regular stories of his boyhood. ‘Daniel, you will recall, sir, was a Hebrew slave in Babylon, but he had become something of a favourite of King Nebuchadnezzar.’
‘I trust you see no more than a superficial correspondence with your own situation here in Chintal, Captain Hervey?’ smiled the rajah.
Hervey smiled too. ‘No, indeed not, sir.’
The rajah rose from his cushion to take a book from a recess in the marbled wall. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out the black leather volume, ‘here is your Bible. Read to me where is this allusion to feet of clay. I am much intrigued by Nebuchadnezzar and his slave.’
Hervey could not sense whether there was any design in the rajah’s meanderings, but he opened the bible a little after the middle and turned the pages until he found the Book of Daniel. ‘I think it must be in chapter two, or possibly three,’ he said, searching. ‘Yes, I have it – chapter two. The king has a dream, sir, a dream in which there is a graven image. I will read from verse thirty-two: “This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” ’
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