As he threw open the door of his chamber, the girl looked up — a slender, trembling thing, her doe-eyes wide with fear, as if she had been a crouching fawn, and he a ravening leopard. His wild eyes told her he would spring, as the leopard springs when he finds the fawn. She dropped the bowl of fruit she had been so carefully arranging, and fell in a dead faint.
XI. FORESTS ANCIENT AS THE HILLS
The following morning
‘Good morning, Captain Hervey; I gave instructions that you were not to be disturbed.’ The rajah motioned to his bearer to bring tea. ‘But I must know how is your wound.’
Hervey made to rise from his divan but the rajah would not have it. ‘No, Captain Hervey, there is not the least reason for you to rise. I now bow to you as a man of most exceptional courage and resourcefulness. But I wish to know how is your wound.’
‘In truth, sir, I can barely feel it,’ replied Hervey. ‘Mr Selden has as much facility with a man’s limbs as he does with a horse’s. And I asked him for something that might make me sleep.’ By now he was standing, despite the rajah’s protestations, and agreeably surprised that there was scarcely any stiffness in his leg.
The rajah sat by the window as the bearer poured tea. ‘You will be pleased to hear that the little thing who so charmingly fainted on seeing you last night is fully recovered,’ he smiled.
Hervey reddened.
‘Your sanguinary appearance must have been more than she was able to bear.’
He nodded, much relieved with the explanation.
‘Captain Hervey, I would speak with you concerning several matters that occupy me,’ pressed the rajah, changing course pointedly. ‘I know that you had intended taking to camp with my rissalahs, but you may just as well meet with them tomorrow, for they will do no more than carouse on their first night under canvas. Will you dine with me?’
Hervey said it would be his privilege, but that he feared his opinion would be inadequate in any matter.
‘Captain Hervey, your counsel will be more valuable than any other that might be had.’
‘I am obliged, sir,’ he replied, making a small bow, intrigued by the response.
The rajah returned the bow and took his leave. ‘I regret that our sport yesterday was brought to so sudden an end,’ he added, turning at the door. ‘I shall arrange more at once, but for today I must be about other business. I have asked the raj kumari to see to it that all you have need of is provided.’
Hervey dressed and made his way to the maidan at the foot of the droog, where all but a quarter-guard of two dozen sowars were parading to join the rest of the rajah’s lancers for the last evolutions before the hot weather. From a quiet corner he studied them carefully, trying to assess how they compared with a King’s regiment. There was first the obvious difference in complexion, although there were times in Spain when his own dragoons were so sun-baked that they might easily have passed for natives of Bengal, if not quite of Madras or Bombay. There was the lance, not yet in a British trooper’s hand. The uniform, too, had not the appearance of one of the King’s army. It bore, indeed, a passing resemblance to an Austrian heavy’s — green kurta, white breeches with long jacked boots. Yet it was neither the dark skin, the lance, nor even the uniform that revealed these men to be other than British cavalry. Rather was it their bearing, for in a British regiment Hervey had always observed a certain animation, even when sitting at attention. With these sowars it was different. They held their heads higher, their eyes set on something distant — an altogether unfathomable look which he had not seen even in the Madrasi sepoys. Perhaps it was the German method in which their regulation seemed bound. He watched the rissaldar and Captain Steuben exchange salutes as the native officer handed over the parade. It was as ceremonious as if they had been at the Horse Guards, but there was a certain something… a stiffness. In any case, it was not how it would have been in the Sixth, where discipline and ceremony never wholly suppressed the spirit. Nor, for that matter, with the Madrasis: Cornet Templer held himself not nearly so aloof as this German. But for all that, he was much taken by the good order in which the rajah’s lancers paraded. Whether they could use the lance as well as they could carry it — beyond the exercise yard — he could not yet judge.
A trumpeter sounded ‘Walk-march’ and the rissalahs left the maidan in fours, the quarter-guard remaining at attention throughout, only their lance pennants making any movement. The jemadar in command of the guard, his charger’s saffron throat plume as brilliant as the displays in the rajah’s aviary, lowered his sabre to salute the standard as it passed, carried proudly by a veteran nishanbardar, and dust swirled knee-high in spite of the best efforts of the bhistis to damp it down. As he turned back for the palace he saw the raj kumari watching from the shade of a huge parasol carried by a bearded giant of a sepoy. ‘Good morning, Your Highness,’ he said, taking off his straw hat and bowing, keen to put the ardour of the previous day at some distance by a display of formality. ‘Have you been watching long?’
‘Yes, Captain Hervey — I have been admiring the horses especially. I think your Mr Selden has much to be satisfied with. He has transformed my father’s stables. And I understand that he has worked the same wonders with your leg.’
Hervey smiled. ‘I think it was in no danger, madam; but yes — he is very sure with his potions and stitches.’
The silk breeches had given way to a chaste saffron saree, recasting the raj kumari as a figure of nobility rather than of sensuality — but a figure of no less appeal. ‘Will you walk with me a while?’ she asked. ‘I would speak with you of certain things.’
Despite his intent on formality, there was little he would rather have done.
They strolled together in the water gardens. A host of Java sparrows, red-vented bulbuls, flycatchers and wagtails — and several others of which the raj kumari did not know the name — were drinking and preening in the fountains before the growing heat of the morning sent them to seek the shade. She turned to him suddenly. ‘Why did Mr Selden leave your regiment, Captain Hervey?’
‘Oh,’ he said, more than a little alarmed, hoping the expression of surprise might also give him time to find a satisfactory answer.
She dropped her gaze, helpfully.
After what seemed an age he found the words. ‘You know that the climate here is more to his liking. He was sorely troubled by fevers.’
The raj kumari looked at him directly and raised her eyebrows. ‘So it is not true that he was… obliged to leave, following… shall we say, an indiscretion with a fellow officer?’
Hervey blanched. His dismay at the hint of the vice — and from the lips of the raj kumari — was partially eclipsed by his admiration for her remarkable facility with the language. But as stated, the detail of the concupiscence was untrue.
The raj kumari was not inclined to afford him time to consider. ‘Captain Hervey, do not be abashed: such things are not regarded as of any great moment here.’
Hervey knew that his continued silence would only serve to condemn, yet he could not bring himself to confirm any part of her supposition. ‘Forgive me, madam,’ he tried, ‘but it is a practice which we abhor. Such accusations are not to be made lightly.’
‘Then we may suppose, Captain Hervey, that your coming to Chintal was not occasioned by vice?’
Hervey boiled, and would have let his rage show had he not had to weigh the consequences for his charge from the duke. ‘Madam, such a thought gives me great offence — more than I can say. I beg that you speak no more of it!’
The raj kumari looked, for an instant, genuinely contrite, but soon regained her self-possession. ‘Very well, Captain Hervey,’ she smiled; ‘I shall not.’
He bowed.
She was as good as her word, but he could not know how pleased she was that his reply had permitted her to strike the notion from her mind at last. ‘Captain Hervey, do you recall your disappointment with the diversion at your first night here in the palace?’
‘No, madam,’ he repl
ied 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 danger as great as any he had faced — wholly defencele
ss. 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.
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