by John Masters
Smith said, ‘Good! The tumulus is a semicircle of radius about a hundred and twenty feet, and depth six feet The cubic content would be ½ pi r2h….’
Foster wrote carefully in his notebook. After a time he looked up. ‘One hundred and thirty-five thousand, seven hundred and seventy-one cubic feet.’
Mohan exclaimed, ‘It’s the ruins of a big building. The old fortress that’s supposed to have been on Dobehari! But it wasn’t! It was there!’
‘Right under the cliffs?’ Foster sneered. ‘Besides, it’s not that kind of cut stone. They’re not shaped blocks, but irregular pieces. It looks like the debris of a quarry - but you can see there’s never been a quarry on that cliff face. And anyway it’s the wrong kind of stone, damn it. Pardon.’
Smith said, ‘It could have been from a special kind of quarry...’
‘A tunnel’ Barbara Kendrick said. ‘A dark, silent tunnel.’
‘My dear...’ Kendrick began warningly.
Smith said, ‘A tunnel? And the debris was removed from the site of the tunnel so that afterwards no one would know where it lay? I think you are right.’
‘The men who built it would know,’ Mohan said.
‘If they survived,’ Smith said.
Kendrick drummed his fingers nervously on the occasional table in front of him. ‘One hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic feet, Smith!’ he exclaimed. ‘That represents an enormous excavation - beyond the capacities of Indians even today, let alone in the distant past You are being over-fanciful.’
Rukmini let out a sudden, small, bubbling scream of excitement ‘Mohan!’ she gasped. ‘Recite the titles of the Rajah of Deori!’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Mohan said. In her excitement Rukmini had laid her hand on Smith’s wrist, and was gripping it hard.
‘Please!’ she cried.
Mohan said, ‘Devari ke Raja, Suvalonke Pita, Suraj ke Chote Bhai, Indra ke Uttaradhikari, Khoha ke svami, Devataon ke Priyatama ...’ He broke off, staring at Rukmini, and began again in English. ‘The Rajah of Deori’s hereditary tides are: Rajah of Deori, Father of the Suvalas, Younger Brother of the Sun, Heir of Indra, Lord of the Cave, Beloved of the Gods...’
‘Lord of the Cave,’ Rukmini repeated.
‘And it is not known what cave this tide refers to?’ Smith said.
Mohan said, ‘No.’
A cave, Kendrick thought. A cave or tunnel of the dimensions they had just calculated. He pressed his handkerchief to his cheek. Rukmini was the instigator of the search. Everyone knew that. If such a cave were found the superstitious would be certain that the gods had guided her to it. Even the priests, however much they hated her, would have to bow before the people’s adoration. And such a cave might contain carvings. It might contain something which she could claim was the Venus. His suspicion that she had planted the stone leg returned, redoubled. And the Buddha, too? He must think...
Smith swept out his hand in a wide gesture. ‘We have five and a half weeks to find a cave, whose mouth has been concealed, somewhere this side of the Deori River.’
‘It’s not as bad as that,’ Mohan said. ‘Didn’t we agree that no one would take the trouble to put us off the track unless they thought we were on it in the first place?
‘The Dobehari Ridge,’ Smith said. ‘Somewhere near, or under the cricket pitch. I agree.’
‘Bats,’ Jim Foster said suddenly. ‘I heard about a cave being discovered somewhere by people watching all the bats that came out in the evening, and noticing where they came from.’
‘Good!’ Rukmini said. We can start now.’
Too late,’ Smith said, glancing out of the window. Outside, it was almost dark.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ Rukmini cried.
Smith said, ‘I think the two men are here, sir, the ones who found the Buddha, with the headman.’
Kendrick jumped up and hurried out of the room. The two men waited patiently in the twilight near the verandah steps. The headman of Konpara was talking to a servant, a little apart Kendrick leaned over the verandah railing. ‘You,’ he said. ’You! Did you find the statue in the trench?’
‘Yes, lord,’ one of the men answered nervously.
‘It was put there!’ Kendrick cried. He felt his voice rising. ‘You put it there. Confess! You put it there for the reward.’ He was almost steaming. He could not help it, though he was conscious of Smith at his side, the others close behind.
‘Lord, sahib...’ the man stammered.
‘Don’t lie! You put it there for the reward.’
‘Sahib...’ The man fell to his knees. ‘I swear we did not’
Kendrick began to tremble. Take them away,’ he said to the headman and hurried back into the house, and to his study. His father’s sword waved bravely in the gloom, his father’s bold eyes flashed. Kendrick slumped into the big chair at his desk, his fists clenched.
The swine were lying. Every one of them was lying - to him. Not to Rukmini or Mohan or Smith. The conspiracy was against him.
He must think. Logically... There was a cave. It might contain the Venus. To please the A.G.G. he had authorised a search to find it But now its discovery would improve Rukmini’s position, and therefore be disastrous for his own plans. Therefore he did not want it to be found. Nor did the unknowns who placed the Buddha in the tumulus under the cliffs. So, somewhere, he had allies. But who - and why?
Chapter 13
On the second following evening Mohan sat on the bare summit of Indra’s Rock, his elbows supported on his knees, staring through his binoculars. It was the first moment of twilight and from his position he had a good view of the southern face of the pit walls. Yesterday from a point beyond Cheltondale, he had watched the eastern half of that face, which ended at the dam. Today he was to watch the western part, for bats.
He thought he heard a voice and looked round, but saw no one. Then he heard it again, more faintly. It was a woman’s. He went to the edge of the cliff and peered over. A file of men and women, all coolies, were wending away through the dense scrub, heading for the dam at the far end of the pit. Directly below him, where they had been working, it appeared that earth had been turned over under the trees. He could make out a pair of shallow trenches, twenty yards long and about the same distance apart.
That was odd. He did not know anyone had been working at this end of the pit, nor what their purpose could be. He must ask Foster some time. He returned to his post on the summit of the rock. The light was still strong enough to show the far cliff clearly in the beautiful German glasses, a present to him from Mr Kendrick on his eighteenth birthday.
Again he heard a woman’s voice; but closer this time. It could not be the coolie woman again. It was calling his name. He lowered the glasses, and Barbara Kendrick walked quickly up the final slope and sat down beside him.
‘No one gave me a task,’ she said, ‘but I have nothing to do -so I’ve come out to help you.’
‘Thank you,’ Mohan said, a little nervously.
He remembered that he had again broken an appointment with her. Instead of being alone in Southdown with her, he had been running to the shrine with Smith. She had said nothing about it, nor had he.
Mohan held the glasses to his eyes, but the light was dimming fast. Even the fine lenses could not draw in enough of it He put them down. Barbara Kendrick sat close beside him, facing the opposite direction, as in a conversation chair.
She said, ‘I don’t think this is the way to find the cave. We must use our imagination. But there are many kinds of imagination. Which are we to use?’
Mohan thought a moment and said, ‘If the cave is as big as we think, the men in charge must have been good engineers. Perhaps we should think as an engineer would, if someone told him, now, to build such a tunnel and cave.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
Several bats swooped and turned along the wall of the pit to right and left, but there was no concentration of them, and Mohan could not tell where they had come from.
; Barbara Kendrick said, ‘The smoke of the supper fires is rising from Konpara. It just creeps out-through the walls and under the eaves. It hides the whole village in a blue haze that doesn’t have any source. It softens it, so that you don’t notice the poverty... I can just see the bullocks grazing on the thin grass near the village. The children are going out to drive them back into shelter for the shelter against wild animals and demons of night... These are the people who built the cave. They’re not engineers.’
Fast now the ocean of darkness welled up out of the pit. It washed at their feet, and soon would engulf them. Her hand groped for his, found it, and held tight He turned his head slowly, unwillingly.
She was crying, without a sound, her face turned to him and the wide eyes wet, the tears forming slowly in the comers and slowly trickling down her cheeks. The hand moved continuously, up his arm, gripping, kneading, down to his wrist again, for a moment on to his thigh, a touch, and flew up, back to his elbow.
She moved suddenly, enveloping him in both arms, leaning into him, and pulling his body towards her. She pressed her lips, open and wet, against his. Her body began to move in a jerking, painful rhythm. She relaxed backwards, and he felt the frenzied pull of her hands on his shoulders. For a moment longer he struggled against her, but the animal nature of the assault and the virility of his own youth were too much. Her legs spread wide and her skirt fell back to her waist His male lust noticed she had come prepared; she had nothing on underneath. Her nails bit into his shoulders and her thighs grasped him. He felt a strong resistance in her secret parts, but only a moment for he would not be checked now. She shrieked once, and then moaned and writhed under him until it was done.
For a time she lay on the hard rock, her body shaking with slow, deep, almost soundless sobs. Then she sat up and arranged her skirt carefully over her legs.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she muttered.
‘I am,’ he groaned. ‘I meant to say no. How can I face him?’
‘The same way I have, for nearly ten years,’ she said. ‘By pretending. You have only done one thing wrong, and that in a moment. My crime is taking place every minute of everyday. I am a woman, and now - worse - I could be famous.’
A vivid sensual memory of a minute ago sprang into his mind. Rukmini was right Barbara Kendrick, until this hour, had been a virgin. The light which the knowledge threw on Mr Kendrick was too harsh, too painful to be borne.
‘He is impotent,’ Barbara Kendrick said flatly. ‘For three years I tried to help him, but he rebuffed me coldly. For three years I begged him to see a doctor - but he flew into blind rages. You know. You saw one yesterday, not half an hour after he had agreed with Mr Smith that we must gain the confidence of whoever is concerned in this extraordinary business... For the next two years, I was numb, prepared to live like this the rest of my life. Since he burned my painting, when he learned that it was good, I have hated. I am sorry, but it is true.’
Impotent. Mohan found that he was not thinking of sexual impotence. In every facet of life - except the killing of big game - Mr Kendrick made good plans, and came to the point of crisis in good order, knowing the right words and the right actions. And then he failed. He, Mohan, had tried, in loyalty, to pretend that it was not so. Now he had to admit the truth.
He rose miserably to his feet ‘We’d better go back,’ he mumbled. ‘There’s a conference.’
She stood up beside him. ‘Don’t be sad,’ she said. ‘Please. You’ve saved my reason. For over a year I’ve been thinking that I couldn’t be made like other women. That there must be something repulsive...’ They had come down from the bare top of the rock and were crossing the valley towards the Konpara Ridge and the lights of Southdown. She said, ‘Worse... I felt that it would be a physical impossibility for a man to make love to me even if he overcame his repulsion. Then, when I met Rukmini, I knew it was not true. She made me feel that I was as truly and as wholly a woman as she is...’
‘Sex,’ Mohan muttered. ‘She makes everyone think of sex.’
Barbara Kendrick gripped his arm. ‘Oh, Mohan, please! Try to understand what a wonderful, unique woman you have, who loves you. Jealousy isn’t...’ She groped for words and her voice, close to him, was hoarse with earnestness. ‘Jealousy doesn’t exist in her nature, in the world she lives in. Let me tell her about this evening. Let me thank her. I could do it and she would understand. I think she knows already.’
‘No,’ Mohan said at once; then wished that he had not; but it was too late.
‘I’m going straight into my bathroom by the back door’ she said. She stepped forward and kissed him on the lips. For a moment her body pressed against his, then she turned up a diagonal path behind the servants’ quarters and disappeared into the darkness. He knew she would never come to him again. She had broken free.
Smith said, ‘At a point in the cliff wall about forty feet above the floor of the pit, in front of Cheltondale, there must be a small crack or fissure in the rock, though the configuration of the cliff makes it invisible from below - certainly in that light’
They were gathered in the study of Southdown. Barbara Kendrick had not appeared. Rukmini, coming in alone a few moments after his own entry, gave Mohan a keen look when she sat down beside him, but said nothing.
Smith continued: ‘I saw nearly fifty bats emerge over a period of five minutes. Other bats came out from all along the wall but in most cases I had seen them hanging from the roofs of small overhangs before they flew out, I mean, there is no other fissure that definitely enters the rock... Now we have to find a way of getting up to the crevice. Or down from the top, perhaps.’
Mohan watched Charles Kendrick. The Resident sat silent at his desk, biting his lip and saying nothing, his eyes always moving.
Foster said, ‘That crevice can’t be the main entrance to the cave. We’ve got to search the surface, and do it methodically. We’ve got to divide the whole area into squares, and search each one.’
‘With the men we have available,’ Smith said slowly, ‘we can hardly cover the area in the time. We don’t know where to begin.’
‘We’ve got to begin somewhere,’ Foster said. ‘Begin at Cheltondale. I’ll give you some more men.’
Smith said, Thank you, Jim ... I think that’s all we can decide now. Jim and I will have to work out how we can get at that crevice, but we won’t waste your time here.’
Mr Kendrick nodded silently. The meeting broke up, and they went their ways to their own places.
Chapter 14
Far away, a man squatted under an overhang of rock on top of a hill. He was old, bent, and totally naked. In his clasped hands he carried an axe, the handle long and light, the blade small.
The old man squatted, motionless, and stared through half-closed eyes at the sweep of rock and tree, and the rolling hills, and the shimmering heat. The sun swung slowly across the zenith and dipped into the western ranges. At noon the jungles were silent. In the worst of the afternoon they became possessed by something more positive than the absence of sound, a physical menace of silence that oppressed the whole earth. Towards evening the trees stirred, the grass moved. Birds flew across the leaden sky and monkeys chattered. In the reed grass of the dried marsh two miles behind the old man a pair of sarus cranes sang a harsh duet. Once, immeasurably far, a hunting leopard measured the silence into five-second lengths, each one clean-cut by the rhythmic coughing saw. The old man did not move hand or foot or eye.
In the last dusk four other men came to the overhang from different directions, one by one. They were all small, and black, with long thick black hair, heavily greased, and flattened aboriginal faces. All were naked except for a short bow in the hand, and a crossbelt of woven grass, which carried a quiverful of small arrows. They were all younger than the man who had waited under the overhang.
They squatted around him in a semicircle. One of the new arrivals said, ‘He is to the west, ten miles. He ate the night before last - a sambur doe.’ Their language was guttural and blunt, f
ull of strange-sounding clicks and glottal stops.
‘He can hunt?’ the old man asked.
‘Well He kills men because he has lost fear. After killing the deer he crossed the river. He is asleep now... There are three others not far - one very close.’
‘And his mate?’
Another man spoke. ‘I found two females twenty-five miles to the south. I have not learned yet which is his mate.’
‘The mate will move tomorrow, to meet him.’
‘I think so, grandfather.’
The old man stared into the darkness with the same flat, unwinking intensity with which he had stared into the day. After ten minutes he said, They must be brought north separately. Have you heard both the females call?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make both calls for him, then. You - note which he follows and take him north with it. Keep to the far side of the westernmost hills... You - bring her north, with his call, in the same way, but keep well to the east of the river. Neither must hear the true call or they will become puzzled.’
‘And if they will not follow, grandfather?’
‘Drive. Do not let them kill. If they kill, do not let them eat. Do not hurry them. Two or three days it will take.’
He rolled over, the first movement he had made for nine hours, and lay down on his side. The earth was friable there, where the rock had sheltered it for a million years. In a minute he was asleep. The younger men spoke among themselves for a few moments in low voices; then one by one they lay down beside the old man and went to sleep.
Near midnight a leopard passed along the ridge close by. His gliding passage through the jungle stopped, and slowly he turned his head, until he placed the scent The five sleeping men lay twenty paces above him and to his left, up the slight wind. He padded up to them, and stopped a yard away to examine them. Stooping forward he sniffed the old man’s naked toes. The old man’s eyes were open and for a moment the two examined each other. The leopard went on his way and the old man closed his eyes.
