The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “Wonderful.” We really gave meaning to the word breakfast in those days; we broke the fast to smithereens instead of just damping it with a cup of coffee. “I’d like some pancakes and maple syrup instead of the porridge.”

  “Ugh,” said Clive. I think that the English don’t put in their sweet tooth till mid-morning.

  The Ranee must have been as disgusted as we were at last night’s dinner and had issued instructions that a good breakfast had to be provided. It was as good as the one I’d had at the Lodge, a real English breakfast. We ate, not in the dining-room, which was no place for breaking a fast, but in a small room that looked out through arches on to the river. Everyone met for breakfast at the same time, as if nobody wanted to miss anything of what might be said about last night’s happenings.

  “A burial?” Magda Monday was a woman obviously accustomed to champagne; she might not be able to hold it while she was drinking it, but it didn’t hold her the next morning. “Before breakfast? Poor Major Savanna.”

  “What did this—this Major Savanna die of?” said Zoltan Monday.

  “Poison,” said Clive.

  I glanced up from my porridge and saw him look casually round the table as he dropped his small bomb. He looked and sounded casual, but I was now coming to recognize how alert he could be under that relaxed exterior. None of the others, except Lady Westbrook and the Ranee, looked relaxed; or if they had been, they had all at once stiffened. Even Magda lost her bright gaiety.

  “Or he was overdosed with drugs. One or the other killed him.” He was spreading the shrapnel from his bomb. “Or murdered him, if you like.”

  The Nawab was the first to recover. “You haven’t told us why he was here.”

  “I don’t know.” Clive pushed his empty porridge bowl away, signalled for a servant to bring him bacon and eggs. “I thought one of you might be able to help me.”

  “Murdered?” Magda seemed to take a while to recognize the word, as if she had suddenly forgotten all her English.

  “He was here to see Bobs,” said the Ranee, ignoring Magda as she might have one of her servants. “I told you that last night.”

  “So you did.” Clive’s face might be able to hide his true thoughts but it could never feign innocence. He must have realized it, because he suddenly smiled, then attacked the bacon and eggs that had been put down in front of him. “But Sherlock Holmes examines every avenue.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?” Monday, too, seemed to have recovered. “Are we supposed to be characters in some Conan Doyle mystery, Major?”

  “The butler did it,” said the Nawab, distributing that wide, insincere smile round the table. “You must have a thousand butlers here in the palace, Mala.”

  “You know your household protocol as well as I do, Bertie—there can only be one butler. And I’m sure Mohammed didn’t do it, did you?” She smiled at the grey-haired butler who stood behind her chair supervising the other servants. He just returned her smile, as he might have handed her a clean napkin. “I think it would be good manners if we dropped the whole subject.”

  So the death, or murder, of Major Savanna by poisoning or an overdose of drugs was dropped as a matter of etiquette and we all got on with breakfast.

  Prince Mahendra did not return till mid-morning. In the meantime Clive paced up and down the corridors and terraces like one of Mahendra’s menagerie eager to escape. With a reluctant Private Ahearn as my bodyguard I, too, paced the terraces but at a more leisurely speed. Despite the threatening atmosphere of the palace I began to wish I could spend a few more days here.

  “Would you stay in India, Mr. Ahearn, if you could live like this?”

  “Like the prince or like them?” He nodded down towards the servants we could see in one of the many courtyards. Men were chopping wood with small axes, their strokes almost as slow as the growth of the tree that had supplied the wood; it seemed to me, and it was an heretical thought for an American, that these people knew the proper value of time. Women, graceful as stalks in a gentle breeze, walked from a well with tall jars balanced perfectly on their heads. “I shouldn’t want to be a coolie, miss. Even a ranker’s better off than them. But a prince, yes. Yes.” He paused a moment and imagined Prince Mick Ahearn, Rajah of the Bogs. “Yes, I’d stay here then.”

  Then Zoltan Monday came along the terrace, tipped his deer-stalker hat and asked if he might accompany me in my stroll. “We foreigners perhaps should stick together, Miss O’Brady. I feel very much an outsider, don’t you?”

  I did, but I was not going to confess it to him. I was suspicious of Mr. Monday for no other reason than that I did not like his trade. “Don’t you always feel something of an outsider, Mr. Monday? I mean, selling arms?”

  Perhaps because he had always been an outsider, Monday managed to hide any offence he might have felt at my remark. He had developed a thick skin, he wouldn’t have been stung if he had fallen into a beehive. “If arms were not available, do you think the world would be a better place?”

  “Of course.”

  He shook his head at my naïveté. “Miss O’Brady, when Cain killed Abel he hadn’t bought his club from an arms salesman. If my employer and others were not here to supply what the kings and princes and governments and revolutionaries want, all those people would try manufacturing their own. And they would kill as many of their own side as the other because they would manufacture such faulty stuff. Man is a fighting animal, just like those elephants of Prince Mahendra’s, and all we do is give him a professional supply of what he needs to survive.”

  “Or kill, as the case may be.”

  “The balance of human nature.” I waited for him to smile, but he was serious. “I make no apology for my profession, Miss O’Brady. You are a newspaper reporter. Don’t newspapers demolish governments and people, only you do it with the written word? The law of libel is only another name for a shield.”

  “I don’t think I have ever demolished anyone with a story of mine.”

  “I have never killed anyone. I have never fired a shot in anger.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Mr. Monday.”

  “I am Hungarian, Miss O’Brady.” He must have heard all the jokes about Hungarians; but I was to learn over the years that Hungarians had a sense of humour that allowed them to laugh at foreigners’ jokes about them. We Americans still don’t have such tolerance, something I have lately been told by some Poles. “Don’t let’s quarrel. We may have to form our own little international cartel to survive this journey down to Delhi. You, me, my wife and Baron von Albern.”

  “What would you say was the inside cartel?” If Clive was to play Sherlock Holmes, I decided I might attempt Dr Watson.

  But if Monday had any clients in the palace, he was protecting them. “I don’t sense any cooperation at all amongst the rest of our friends. Except perhaps between Major Farnol and Lady Westbrook.”

  “Do you suspect they might be up to something?”

  “In my profession one never takes anything or anyone at face value. I once sold two dozen machine-guns and five hundred rifles to some Orthodox priests in Turkey. They said prayers for the quick delivery of the consignment.”

  Oh, I tell you, I was being exposed to cynicism and corruption that fine morning. “I think I can vouch for Major Farnol and Lady Westbrook.” I tried the direct approach: “Was Major Savanna a client of yours?”

  “No . . .”

  But there were dots after his answer and I read them. “But he was buying for someone else?”

  “Ah, here comes Prince Mahendra!” We were on a terrace that overlooked the main gates. He looked past me down towards the road. “Perhaps now we can start on our way.”

  Very politely he had shut a door in my face. He was going to answer no more questions by an inquisitive reporter bent on demolition. I gave up, watched Prince Mahendra as he came up the road and in under the archway of the big gates. The leopards, unmasked now, were in their cage on the cart; across the rump of a horse was slung the bloody, mangled carcas
e of a small deer. Mahendra looked up, saw me and waved a hand at the carcase.

  “You should have come with me, Miss O’Brady. It was a marvellous hunt.”

  “Some other time, Your Highness.” But I knew now that I wanted to be gone from the palace as soon as possible.

  End of extract from memoirs.

  II

  The caravan got under way immediately, as if Mahendra was no longer interested in creating any delay. It was now a sizeable procession, a slow train on its way to pomp and ceremony. Mahendra brought his own additions: six more elephants, none of them fighters; carts and a small victoria; twenty servants and a dozen mounted escort. He himself was astride a magnificent black stallion and he rode up to the head of the line and raised his arm for the order to proceed. “I don’t think the Nawab’s wives are all aboard yet,” said Farnol.

  The wives, two to an elephant, were still scrambling into their howdahs. They were laughing and chattering amongst themselves, schoolgirls ready for another holiday picnic. It was as if their veils did indeed cut them off from the world: they appeared ignorant of, or unconcerned by, Savanna’s death and burial. Yet Farnol knew how quickly news and gossip reached the zenana: it was food and drink to the women.

  Mahendra did not even look back down the procession. “I don’t wait for women. We move now.”

  Farnol, still looking back, was relieved to see the last of the wives settle herself into a howdah. He was no supporter of women’s rights, but he had always felt that Indian women deserved better treatment than they received. One didn’t necessarily have to give women the vote and equal rights, but they should be treated as near-equals and not as privileged, and more often unprivileged, prisoners.

  “They’re all aboard.”

  Once they had begun to move Mahendra looked at Farnol riding just behind him. “You may be my second-in-command, Major.”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind. We may run into trouble and I think I’m more experienced than you at handling it.”

  “I would remind you that we are still in the State of Serog and this is still a princely State. Under the treaty with the English, we princes may not make war on each other—” He paused a moment, as if sipping chagrin at what the interfering English had forbidden. “But within our boundaries we are still entitled to keep order in our own way. I am descended from a long line of warriors, much longer than yours, Major—it’s in my blood. I think I can handle any trouble that may occur.”

  Farnol made no reply nor did he look at Bridie and the Nawab riding beside him. Like a professional soldier he did not like having command taken away from him, especially when he knew he was more competent than this half-mad youth who was taking over. But now was not the time to start any small war between himself and Mahendra.

  As they came to the bend in the road that would hide the palace of Serog, he drew his horse aside and waited for the procession to pass. He looked back at the palace, towering like some fantasy from the past above the cascading river. It had been the home and spawning bed of a long line of warriors; more than one murderer had lived there under the title of prince. But now a thought struck him: who would inherit it all? Neither Mala nor Mahendra, as far as he knew, had an heir. Had Rupert Savanna been thinking of that when he had begun his interference in the affairs of the Kugar family?

  He cantered after the procession, glanced at the Ranee as he passed her carriage. She was riding with Lady Westbrook, Magda and the Baron, but she might have been riding alone, so little notice did she seem to be taking of them. She looked up at Farnol and smiled from under her parasol.

  “Do you have any children, Your Highness?” He might as well ask the question in public as in private: he doubted that she would give him a truthful answer anyway.

  The parasol wavered above her in a coy display. “What a question to ask a maiden lady! And in front of my guests, too!”

  “Take no notice of us, Mala,” said Lady Westbrook, as if her hostess had not already been doing that. “I’m trying to imagine you as a mother.”

  “No, Major, I have no children. Do you have any, Madame Monday?”

  “I hope to,” said Magda, but she made it sound as if having children were an inconsequential pursuit like having tea or getting her hair done. “What about you, Lady Westbrook?”

  “I had three. My two sons died, one from the fever and the other from a Pathan bullet. My daughter lives in England with her husband and evidently is dying slowly from the climate, so she writes me.”

  Farnol noticed how the Ranee had turned the question of children away from herself. She glanced up at him from under the parasol, gave him a mocking smile; he was sure she knew why he had asked the question. He gave her a smile in return, winked and rode on up ahead again. So far their small war, as Viola Westbrook had called it, was still civilized.

  The procession passed through the narrow gorge that was the gateway to the valley and soon they were back on the cart road. This would not meet the main road to Kalka for at least another two days and Farnol knew he would not feel safe till then. And even then, not entirely so.

  Every so often the river from the valley came close to the road, then disappeared through a cut in the hills. The vegetation on the slopes was changing; scattered cacti could by now be seen among the thinning pines. In another day or two the air, too, could change; Farnol wrinkled his nose at the thought of the dust-laden, ammoniac smell that lay below. After his first experience of the high air, when his parents had taken him to Simla as a small boy, he had never again felt comfortable with the smell of the plains.

  Occasionally he saw game bounding or fluttering away through the scrub or trees above the road: deer, partridge, once a small arrowhead of ducks shooting up from a hidden pond. But he did not want to pause to re-stock the larder. There could be someone on the higher ground still intent on hunting him.

  They passed through another village and the villagers came to the doors of their huts and stores and looked fearfully at the procession as it came down the narrow street. Was this an army of tax-collectors? Was the Ranee or the Prince demanding more money to pay for the pleasures that the villagers never shared? Then they recognized that there was an air of ostentation about this caravan that told them they were safe till another day: taxes were never collected with swagger such as this. The horses and elephants proceeded down the street and the villagers pressed their hands together and bowed their heads as first the Prince and then the Ranee went by. Above the villagers’ heads monkeys bared their teeth in sardonic grins and scratched themselves in what could only be described as derisive places.

  “Oh, I should love to have been a ranee or a princess!” said Magda and waved to the populace, who squinted at her above their clasped hands and wondered who she thought she was.

  “Keep your hand down,” said the Ranee. “They only become confused if they have too many to pay homage to.”

  “What will they all do when there are no more kings and princes?” The Baron knew what he would do: retire and be content. He had met the Kaiser only once and did not like him.

  “We must ask Miss O’Brady,” said Lady Westbrook, who, though no republican, had never really felt the need of kings and princes. “Think of all those Americans waiting to pay homage . . . May I wave a hand, Mala? I see a little boy there staring straight at me. He probably thinks I’m the Dowager Ranee.”

  “Do, by all means,” said the Ranee graciously, but didn’t extend the favour to Magda or the Baron.

  Up front Prince Mahendra rode looking straight ahead, uninterested in his sister’s subjects. He had not spoken since his few words with Farnol at the start of the trek from the palace. It hurt him that the villagers were not paying homage to him, but even if they had been he would still have ignored them. Half-mad, he knew how to lock the doors of himself.

  “When your sister dies, these people will bow down before you, Your Highness.” Farnol had guessed part of the reason for Mahendra’s sullen silence.

  Mahendra unlocked h
imself. “Is she going to die?”

  “Sooner or later. It’s a habit with us all.”

  Bridie shivered. “Do we have to talk of dying? We started the day with a burial. That’s enough.”

  Still a discomforted rider, exhausted by the tensions that had warped her in the past thirty-six hours, she had lost, if only temporarily, all her enthusiasm for the adventure. She had been inspired to be a newspaperwoman by the deeds and excursions of Nelly Bly; she was beginning to appreciate that Nelly had had an intrepidity that she doubted she wished to emulate. The Boston Globe would, if the worst happened, give her a glowing obituary, but obituaries were bequests from the living that the dead could never cash. She began to think of easier assignments, such as covering another of the testimonial dinners, Catholic feast days in a double sense, to Mayor Honey Fitz. To sit on a comfortable, unmoving chair, to eat good American food and to hear Toodles Ryan relay all the latest gossip . . .

  “They say,” said the Nawab, “that Mala is running short of funds. Is that true, Bobs?”

  “I’d heard the same about you, Bertie.” Mahendra was fully open now, almost amiable.

  “We’re all feeling the pinch. Everything is so bally expensive nowadays. Have you tried to buy an elephant lately? Pretty soon we shall all have to get rid of our elephants and horses and ride in a single motor-car and nothing else. The world is going to pot.”

  “The tortoise must be sinking,” said Farnol.

  They all looked at him blankly. “We were talking of elephants.”

  “You haven’t read your Warren Hastings. The world is supported by an elephant, who stands on a tortoise, who stands on water.”

  “That is one of our sayings,” said Mahendra. “General Hastings stole it, as you have stolen everything else.”

  “Oh, I say, don’t let’s start that, Bobs old chap,” said the Nawab. “Even with the price of elephants what it is, we haven’t done too badly.”

  Bridie had heard the rich of America, riding in their Pierce-Arrows and Rolls-Royces, complain of what the government, their own government, had stolen from them. The rich, it seemed, were more put upon than the poor.