She bit her bottom lip. ‘May I sit with you?’
Sonali nodded weakly. ‘Of course.’
Elizabeth crouched down. She met Jack’s gaze for a moment, before looking back at Sonali. She lowered her eyes. ‘You saved my life.’
Sonali frowned. ‘I just did what anyone would do.’
‘No. You risked your own life to save mine. I don’t know how I can ever thank you.’
A shell roared overhead and the guns continued to pound in the distance. The other wounded villagers were sighing and moaning again.
Sonali shut her eyes and grimaced as pain racked her. Then she lifted her eyelids again and gently touched Elizabeth’s hand. ‘You don’t need to thank me. You would have done the same for me.’
Tears streamed down Elizabeth’s cheeks and she said in a squeaky voice, ‘I’m sorry for what I said about you. I’m so sorry. I was wrong.’
Sonali raised her hand and touched the side of Elizabeth’s face. ‘Hush. I understand.’
Jack felt as though he were drowning. And yet he was happy. Elizabeth had apologised. She and Sonali were finally at peace. That meant he could be at peace himself.
He muttered a Hail Mary and crossed himself. He could have sat there for hours – days, even.
But Saleem scurried into the chamber, saying, ‘There’s a messenger here, Jack. The earl wants to speak to you. At once.’
The Earl of Shropshire sat propped up on a mattress that lay on the floor. He was covered by fine, embroidered blankets, although these were now speckled with dust and dirt. His long white hair was awry, and it stuck up like a bird’s nest at the back of his head. An ornate Rajthanan oil lantern – a precious item – sat next to the mattress, providing the only light in the tiny chamber.
Jack crouched down beside the earl, while Sir Levin squatted opposite him on the other side of the temporary bed. Levin’s features looked grim in the weak light, but the earl simply appeared dazed, like a child woken from sleep.
‘You were with the constable when he died?’ Levin asked Jack.
‘Aye.’ Jack nodded. ‘He’d come to defend the wall. He passed away quickly.’
A fireball pummelled the wall behind Jack. The floor shuddered beneath his boots, and the flames sizzled and snarled across the courtyard outside. He was in a small chamber within the palace where the earl had set up his residency. It was one of the few rooms where the roof and the walls were still intact.
‘Someone needs to lead the defence of the fortress,’ Levin said. ‘I would offer myself, but I haven’t been a soldier for many years and I’m hardly fit to fight at present. We need someone with more recent experience in war. Preferably someone who knows the ways of the heathens, the way they fight.’
A shell struck the courtyard outside and fragments of iron screamed against the wall.
‘Who do you have in mind?’ Jack asked.
‘You, of course.’
‘Me? I don’t think—’
‘We have little choice.’ The earl sat forward and seemed more alert now. ‘You are by far the best candidate. Sir Alfred spoke highly of you, and that is recommendation enough for me.’
Jack bowed his head slightly. ‘I will be honoured to command this fortress, if that is what you wish.’
The earl sat back and took a wheezy breath. ‘Good. If you succeed in defending the fortress, I will knight you.’
At first, Jack thought this a ridiculous thing to say. A knighthood? What was the point of making such a promise? They would all be dead in days anyway.
And yet, at the same time, his chest surged with warmth. He was indeed honoured to be asked to lead his people – even now, in their final hour.
Jack took the earl’s hand and kissed it. ‘I’ll do my best, my lord.’
Jack rode across the plains, holding a white flag above his head. To his right he saw the hills and the enemy artillery positions. To his left lay the battered fortress. And straight ahead stretched the expanse of the European Army. He could see the blots of the ambling elephants, the white dots of the soldiers’ tents and, further off, the colourful flickers of the grand marquees of the Rajthanan officers.
More than a thousand army troops had been slaughtered during the night. The bodies still littered the slope outside the fortress. But Jhala still had thousands more men at his disposal.
Jack ached with tiredness and his clothes were caked in dust. He hadn’t slept at all during the night and had spent most of his time beside Sonali. Now it was morning and, miraculously, she was still alive. But he had no idea how much longer she could last.
His mouth was painfully parched and he longed for a drink. Leaden clouds smothered the sky, and yet there’d been no rain for days.
If only it would rain.
Five riders, one of them carrying a white flag, appeared ahead. It looked as though the enemy were prepared to talk. Jack had waited until there was a lull in the firing and taken a chance in riding out. Jhala had already said he wasn’t prepared to negotiate further. Jack had wondered whether he would simply be shot once he left the hill.
He met the cavalrymen out in the middle of the heath. The leader of the party was the same Rajthanan officer Jack had dealt with previously.
‘General Jhala has agreed to see you.’ The officer’s voice was clipped and his moustache rigid. ‘Get off your horse.’
As before, Jack dismounted and the officer searched him for weapons. By the time the Rajthanan had finished, Jhala was already riding out across the plains. A batman rode beside him, holding a parasol above the general’s head despite the fact that there was neither rain nor bright sunshine.
General Jhala drew his horse to a halt and looked down at Jack. His face was serious and cold. He made no effort to smile as he had done before.
He sniffed, then dismounted and gestured for Jack to step away from the cavalrymen.
When they’d walked for about ten yards, Jhala turned to Jack and said in a crisp tone, ‘What do you want?’
‘We have many wounded—’
‘Are you expecting me to be sympathetic?’ Jhala scowled. ‘You had several opportunities to surrender. You did not take them. It is hardly surprising you now have many wounded.’
‘There are women and children. We can’t look after them up there. They must come down.’
‘They have been injured because of your own obstinacy. Their blood is on your hands.’
Jack was too exhausted even to be angry now. All he wanted to do was try to get safe passage for the injured. ‘One of them is a Rajthanan.’
Jhala pursed his lips. ‘What?’
‘One of the injured is a Rajthanan. A woman. You must at least let her leave the fortress.’
Jhala narrowed his eyes. ‘If true, that is very strange. Nevertheless, if she is up in that fortress, then she is a traitor. She will have to be treated in the same way as the rest of you.’ He took a deep breath. ‘No, I’m afraid the time for negotiations is over. Tomorrow additional forces will be arriving here. We have new weapons, beyond anything you will have seen before. You will not last long.’
‘You really want the death of so many innocents?’
‘They are not innocents. They are traitors. You are a traitor, Jack Casey. I once had faith in you English. I thought you were, in many ways, a remarkable people. Now I see I was quite wrong. You are merely ignorant natives. Nothing more.’
Jhala paused and gazed up at the fortress. ‘Colonel Hada told me not to waste my time with natives. I should have listened to him.’ He faced Jack again. ‘Farewell. We will not meet again. And do not come down here any more. You will be shot, regardless of whether you have a white flag with you or not.’
Jhala turned on his heel and marched back towards his horse.
Jack watched his old commander and guru walk away. And he scarcely cared. Because he was tired, and his people were in danger.
And Sonali was dying.
28
The Great Yantra circled in Jack’s mind, white on black. H
e held it steady, it blazed with brilliant light and then it faded again.
Nothing happened. Jack didn’t feel the lightness he’d experienced previously. He didn’t even know whether he’d used the power or not.
The Great Yantra remained impossible for him to understand. A mystery.
He sensed the powerful sattva coursing around him as he sat in the courtyard near the west wall. The familiar perfumed scent stroked his nostrils.
There’d been a lull in the fighting for the past hour and he’d come here to try the yantra one more time.
But now he heard footsteps. He slipped out of the meditation and opened his eyes.
Elizabeth and Saleem had entered the courtyard.
‘What are you doing here?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘We were wondering where you were. We were worried.’
Jack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. So far, he’d heeded Kanvar’s warning and largely kept the Great Yantra secret. But what was the point of that now? There was no reason for him not to tell everyone about it.
‘I was trying to use a power,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying in different ways for two days now. But I still can’t get it to work.’
‘A new yantra?’ Elizabeth asked. She and Saleem knew enough about yoga to understand what a yantra was. While neither of them was sensitive enough to sattva to become siddhas, they’d both learnt at least a little about these matters from Jack and the apprentices at the House of Sorcery.
Jack nodded. ‘It’s a yantra. But a very powerful one. I reckon it might even be the Grail.’
Elizabeth frowned. ‘The Grail is a yantra?’
‘I think it could be. You have Mother’s necklace?’
Elizabeth nodded and drew the necklace out from under her dress. Jack had given it back to her after he’d shown it to Jhala.
Jack pointed at the glinting cross. ‘That is the Grail.’
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow as she stared at the circling metal. ‘This?’
‘At least, that design is. It’s a yantra. And if you keep it still in your mind and meditate on it, you can use the power.’
Elizabeth gazed at the necklace with a new reverence. ‘It’s hard to believe.’
‘I’ve learnt a lot of things that are hard to believe over the past few days. But that’s a yantra. There’s no doubt about it. I worked it out with Kanvar just before he died.’
Elizabeth placed the necklace back under her dress and pressed her hand to it through the material, as if it could bless her just by touching her. She looked around the courtyard. ‘But why are you trying to use it here?’
Jack sighed. He wasn’t going to keep secrets from Elizabeth and Saleem now, but he also didn’t have time to go through everything in detail. ‘It’s hard to explain, but this spot is like a part of the Grail.’
Elizabeth frowned and even Saleem looked confused.
‘How can this place be part of the Grail?’ Elizabeth asked.
Jack stood up. ‘It’s a long story. But it’s as though the Grail is all around us here.’ He lifted his hand and swept it through the bubbling sattva. ‘As though we are touching it.’
‘Touching it? Like Galahad and Oswin?’
‘Aye. I was hoping it might make a difference. I thought if I tried using the yantra here, perhaps that would be the key.’
‘And was it?’
Jack shook his head. ‘Still nothing.’
He rubbed his eyes. He’d had little hope he would succeed. But he’d tried everything else he could think of. Since Kanvar had first explained to him what the Great Yantra was, he’d believed that somehow touching the Grail would release the power. The stories were so specific on this point, he thought it had to be an important part of the secret.
And yet, he’d failed once again.
A gun rumbled in the distance.
He searched the sky for round shot or shells. ‘We’d better get back.’
As the three of them left the courtyard, Elizabeth said, ‘Perhaps it’s better you didn’t get the yantra to work.’
Jack frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’
Elizabeth bit her bottom lip as she walked. ‘In the stories, the pure knight was always taken up to heaven when he touched the Grail, remember?’
Jack smiled grimly. ‘Don’t think you need to worry. I’m getting nowhere with that bloody yantra anyway.’
A second gun blasted and Jack walked more quickly. Would he really die if he managed to use the Grail? He hardly cared. He might be dead in days anyway. And at least, if he could use the power, he would have saved his people.
If the power even existed. If what he was hoping was actually true – not just a product of his desperate imagination.
Jack strode along the east wall, staring out at the dark line of the army encircling the hill. After a full day of firing, Jhala’s artillerymen had finally paused.
Jack had spent much of the past twenty-four hours up on the ramparts with the gunners or reporting to Sir Levin. But every few hours, he’d returned to the Folly Brook camp to check on Sonali. Each time he’d gone back, he’d expected to be given bad news. But each time, he’d found Sonali was still alive. Elizabeth and Mary had been tending to her and she was clinging on.
But she couldn’t last much longer.
Henry’s deputies had accepted Jack from the moment the earl had appointed him commander of the fort. None had questioned Jack’s authority.
Now the men were standing to attention next to their weapons as he paced along the walkway with one of Henry’s sergeants, a grizzled old man-at-arms. The cold wind fluttered Jack’s hair and he rubbed his hands together to warm them. Freezing winds often blew across the hilltop and up on the ramparts the men were exposed to them night and day.
Jack was pleased to note the walls had continued to withstand the onslaught. There were now numerous places where the parapet had been smashed, but so far the rest of the stonework had remained solid. However, he knew that couldn’t last. Mahasiddha Vadula had powers that could bring down a wall – Jack had found that out during the Siege of London. If Vadula came to the fortress in person, Jack had no doubt the general would use his powers to destroy the rebels’ defences.
Most of the artillery, Jack was pleased to note, had survived the fighting too. Several pieces had been struck by round shot, but the majority – around fifty guns and mortars – were still intact and lined up along the battlements.
He came to a halt and squinted in both directions along the wall. He noted there were several Mohammedans amongst the gunners. Most of the Mohammedans would have arrived in Shropshire as refugees during the past year. They’d remained loyal to the crusade, even when many Christians had abandoned the cause.
Finally, Jack turned to the sergeant. ‘Almost all the guns are here on the east wall. We only have a handful elsewhere.’
‘Aye, but we have to match the artillery over there.’ The sergeant nodded towards the hills.
‘Move an extra two guns to the other walls, in case there’s another surprise attack.’
‘We’ll do that, sir.’
‘Are the sentries still in place?’
‘Aye, sir. All along the walls.’
One of the first things Jack had instructed his men to do was to set up watchmen, to keep an eye on the slopes at all times. The rebels had to be ready for whatever further tricks Jhala might throw at them.
‘How are we doing for ammunition?’ Jack asked.
‘Plenty for the present time …’ The sergeant’s voice trailed off, because something over Jack’s shoulder had distracted him. His face dropped and he said, ‘You’d better take a look at this, sir.’
Jack turned and squinted to the north-east. At first, he couldn’t see what the sergeant was talking about. But then, beyond the sprawl of the European Army camp, he made out what looked like a column of figures moving along the road.
One of Henry’s men had given him a spyglass the day before. He raised this now and peered into the distance.
He shiver
ed slightly. More troops were arriving. Many more. At the head of the column came European cavalry, and behind them marched European foot soldiers. Further back, hazy in the dust rising from the dry ground, he spotted the turquoise tunics and turbans of a Rajthanan battalion. He cursed under his breath. Indian troops were considered superior to Europeans – they were more disciplined, better trained and armed with the most recently issued firearms. These Rajthanan soldiers would no doubt be carrying the new rifled muskets, which were far more accurate than the smooth-bore firearms the European troops carried.
The train snaked away into the distance. Bringing up the rear, Jack saw horse artillery, swaying elephants and the beginning of the baggage carts.
He lowered the glass for a moment and did his best not to reveal his alarm to the men. There might be as many as ten thousand soldiers approaching, leaving Jhala with a force of around sixteen thousand.
Sixteen thousand.
And there could only be around a thousand uninjured people left in the fortress, some of whom would be too old or too young to fight. Could they really hold out against such a large force? It seemed an impossible task.
As Jack considered all this, he heard murmurs rippling between the men along the wall. The sergeant was speaking to one of his comrades and pointing towards the north-east.
Jack lifted the glass again and surveyed the approaching army. To the right of the main column, away from the dirt road, a gigantic form lumbered across the heath. It was blurred by a cloud of smoke and steam. For a moment, Jack couldn’t make it out clearly. But then he spotted an iron thorax, jointed legs and a head dotted with stalks and rivets. Two green eyes glowed on the creature’s crown.
It looked like the avatar from the forest.
Jack studied the beast’s head carefully and identified several broken stalks. It seemed to be the same creature he and Kanvar had fought.
He lowered the glass and couldn’t stop his face from dropping slightly. The avatar had been almost invincible when he and Kanvar had confronted it. Bullets hadn’t harmed it. Kanvar’s powers had barely done any damage to it.
The War of the Grail Page 29
