The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “What do you think the Government will do, Major? They’ll be so busy bending their knees to the King, wondering who’s going to get a knighthood, that your report will just be pigeon-holed and forgotten.” He was that worst sort of madman, one who thought intelligently. “Don’t fret yourself, Major. The body will finish up at the bottom of the river eventually. What’s the difference whether it is buried under water or earth? It’s the soul that counts, isn’t that what you Christians teach?”

  Farnol shut his mouth, deciding to say nothing further. Whatever he said would not matter: Mahendra would only laugh. The prince stared at him, challenging him, then he turned and walked away, his thin arrogant back offering one last insult.

  Then Karim, still down on the rocks above the river, called out. “Sahib—come down again! Look!”

  Farnol, still trembling with anger and frustration, slid down the bank again. He looked up under the bridge to where Karim was pointing. One of the timber supports of the bridge roadway had been sawn through; a second was sawn halfway through. The saboteurs, whoever they were, had been interrupted by the arrival of the caravan. Or, macabre irony, had been scared off by the sudden appearance of Savanna’s body.

  “The buggers could be somewhere close, sahib.” Karim looked up at the surrounding slopes. “You think they are going to take another pot-shot at you?”

  Farnol was scanning the steep hillsides. They were only sparsely cloaked with trees. A few scrubby pines, some cactus trees that looked like dead signallers propped up, their raised arms semaphoring messages that had no meaning: he could see no worthwhile cover for a sniper. But then he had known Pathan tribesmen who had fired on him from behind the cover of a rock no bigger than their heads and he had not seen them till they had shot at him. He felt a tightening of his nerves, a creeping itch in his back.

  “Karim, get Private Ahearn and half a dozen men. Chop down two of those pines over there, trim them and shove them up here beside those two supports. And Karim—” The Sikh paused, looked back. “Say nothing about Major Savanna’s body. If anyone saw it, I don’t think they recognized what it was. So mum’s the word.”

  “Of course, sahib. Mum’s the word.”

  Karim scrambled up the bank. Farnol looked up again at the sabotaged supports, wondered who seemed so intent on his not getting down to Delhi; for he was certain, even if he was self-centred in his concern, that he was still the target. Then he wondered if he should attempt to shore up the bridge at all. Perhaps he should have waited to see if any of his fellow-travellers would have hung back from crossing the bridge. But that would mean exposing the innocent to danger and he couldn’t risk that.

  He went up the bank and across to the picnic. The Ranee, sitting in a camp chair, turned her head sharply as she heard the sound of the axes cutting into the pines. “Why are they cutting down those trees?”

  Why should she be concerned with what the servants are doing? But Farnol told them curtly of the sabotage Karim had found under the bridge. “I don’t know if those extra supports I’m putting in will be enough, but we’ll have to risk it. We’ll go across one by one on foot, then one horse at a time, then the bearers pulling the coach and the victoria and the tongas.”

  “What about the elephants?” said the Nawab.

  Farnol had been watching him, the Ranee and Mahendra: if anyone in the party had any connection with the saboteurs, they were the three main suspects. But none of them gave anything away. The Nawab and the Ranee appeared as concerned as himself that the journey should continue, and safely; Mahendra, Savanna apparently forgotten, seemed careless of whether they went on or not. Farnol felt he was touring with a troupe of actors far more experienced and talented than himself.

  “Do you have to take the elephants with you?”

  “Of course!” The Ranee was not going to sacrifice appearances at the Durbar for the sake of safety here at the bridge.

  Farnol shrugged, though he did not like the thought of putting the elephants at risk. The generations of India-born Farnols had not bred that English trait out of him: he hated to see any animal hurt, even those he hunted. And he truly loved elephants.

  “Well,” said the Nawab, “don’t let’s spoil lunch.”

  Farnol sat with Bridie and Lady Westbrook in the camp chairs that had been set out for the party. They were a little apart from the others and Bridie said quietly, “You look worried, Clive.”

  He had debated whether to tell her about the discovery of Savanna’s body and decided against it. “I feel I shouldn’t be sitting here with you. Just in case someone has me in his sights.”

  “He’d have shot you before this if he was going to,” said Lady Westbrook, munching on cold chicken, boiled egg and a tomato. She had learned long ago never to let anything spoil her appetite; she believed that one’s mind worked better on a full stomach than an empty one. She looked up at the hills, but her eyes were no longer good enough for distant viewing and all she saw was a blur of yellow and grey-green slopes. Once she had stood on a mountain-top on the Tibet Road with her husband and seen the edge of the world; or so she allowed her memory to tell her. Her memory was as sharp as her eyesight had once been, but she knew the pleasure of letting it slip occasionally into imagination. “You’ll just have to watch out when you get to the other side of the river. What’s that on that plate there, m’dear?”

  “Caraway seed cake,” said Bridie. “Would you care for a slice?”

  “Two,” said Lady Westbrook.

  Farnol finished his lunch, having eaten slowly, stretching out the minutes till he could no longer delay the crossing of the bridge. Karim and Ahearn had supervised the propping up of the supports of the bridge and now the journey had to be continued.

  He walked across the bridge, his nerves tightening again as he appreciated how exposed he was. He glanced up and around him but still could see no one; but he was as certain that someone’s eyes were on him as if they had reached down and put a hand on him.

  The bridge was little more than a wooden roadway slung across the river. It had thick ropes along each side as handrails, but they were more a warning than any sort of protection; anyone missing his step on the rough planks would slide under the ropes and into the water and would quickly follow Savanna’s body down the tumbling river. The bridge was built on the suspension system, with twisted cables of rope that came from anchors of rock at either end up over an arrangement of thick tree-trunks and down to meet in the middle of the span. It was a type of bridge that had been useful and safe for years. But now all at once it felt flimsy beneath Farnol’s light tread and he wondered if he should risk sending even the horses across, let alone the elephants.

  He made up his mind quickly, before doubt could strike again. He reached the far side and shouted back to Mahendra: “Come on over, Your Highness! The rest of you follow one at a time!”

  He saw Mahendra mount his horse. Furious, he was about to shout to the prince to come across on foot; then once again he shut his mouth. If Mahendra was foolish, mad enough, to test the bridge on horseback, then dammit, let him. If he crossed safely, then it would prove the bridge would hold while the others crossed singly on foot.

  Mahendra rode on to the bridge without hesitation, kept his horse on a tight rein while it picked its way across the rough flooring. Then he was sitting above Farnol, face stiff but eyes mocking.

  “You may tell the others to come across, Major.”

  So the party strolled across the bridge one by one: if there were any watchers hidden on the slopes, they must have been laughing their heads off. When the first half-dozen had crossed and he was satisfied that the bridge would hold under the foot traffic, Farnol went back to the opposite side, slid down the bank and inspected the supports again. The new poles looked firm enough. He came back up to the road.

  “All right, the horses now. One at a time, one syce to each horse.”

  The horses crossed safely, their grooms more nervous than the animals. Then the coach, the victoria and the t
ongas were hauled across, each of them pulled by only two men. Farnol went down below the bridge again. The sawn-through support had shifted, but the extra poles had settled in more firmly against the beams that carried the roadway.

  He decided to stay down here and watch the supports as the elephants went across. “Righto, Karim—send the first elephant across! Tell the mahout not to ride it—walk with it!”

  He had already instructed the mahouts what to do if he shouted a warning and the expressions on their faces told him they had no enthusiasm for the venture. But he knew they would do what they were told. They were prepared to risk the collapse of the bridge in preference to risking the wrath of the Ranee, the Nawab or Mahendra.

  Farnol stationed himself so that he could see under the bridge and yet follow the progress of each elephant as it made the crossing. The first mahout, an older man than the rest, hesitated before setting his thin bare foot on the first plank of the bridge. He looked down at Farnol and his fear was as clear as another feature on his thin dark face. Then the elephant nudged him with its forehead and he stumbled forward, the elephant moving after him. Farnol, alternately glancing under at the supports and up at the man and elephant on the bridge, saw the mahout putting his feet down so cautiously that one might have thought it was his weight that would bring the bridge crashing down. He minced his way across and the elephant lumbered after him; slowly they made their way across what had now become in Farnol’s eyes a frail catwalk. But the supports held and the old mahout and his charge safely made it to the other side, to a loud cheer from those already there. But the mahouts still on the wrong side of the bridge could not bring themselves to join in the cheering. Each one knew when he’d be ready to shout with joy and relief.

  The next half-hour was the longest thirty minutes Farnol could remember. After each elephant and its mahout had crossed he went in under and checked the supports of the bridge. The sawn-through support had shifted still further and the new pole beside it was now taking all the weight.

  He clambered out from under the bridge and looked up at the last elephant and its mahout. This one was only a boy, no more than fourteen; he smiled down at Farnol, but it was an old man’s grin, forced and hopeless. Farnol clambered up the bank and patted the boy on the back.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mahmoud, sahib.”

  “You run on across the bridge. I’ll bring your elephant.”

  The boy hesitated, then shook his head. “He will not move for anyone but me, sahib. He worked for my father, who is dead, and now he works only for me.”

  Farnol looked up at the great beast, which seemed to him to be the biggest of all the elephants in the caravan. A small eye returned his look, then the animal lifted its head and raised its trunk. He waited for it to trumpet, but it didn’t: it just waved its trunk from side to side as if dismissing him. He knew of elephants such as this, who could be rogues in the hands of anyone but their regular mahouts. This rickety bridge would be no place to try to prove he was the beast’s master.

  “Whom do you work for?”

  “The Ranee, sahib.”

  “I think you’d better go back, Mahmoud. I’ll tell Her Highness.”

  “Oh no, sahib. I must take my elephant across.”

  Farnol did not know whether it was loyalty to or fear of the Ranee that decided the boy on his duty. He knew that the Ranee did not treat her house servants well; but she would have very little if anything at all to do with her mahouts. But evidently fear of her temper had filtered down from the house servants and the boy would rather face the risk of a tumbling bridge than her wrath.

  “All right, Mahmoud. Go very slowly and keep to that side of the bridge. I’ll come behind you.”

  The boy nodded, tapped the elephant with his stick, and it lowered its trunk and he scrambled up it and sat on its neck with his legs tucked in behind the huge ears. He looked down at Farnol.

  “He understands me better if I am up here, sahib. He trusts me.”

  Farnol hesitated, then nodded. “All right, go ahead.”

  The boy gave a soft-voiced order and the elephant, as if suddenly aware that all was not well, put a tentative foot on the first planks of the bridge. For a moment Farnol thought it was not going to go any further; then it stepped on to the bridge and began to lumber slowly across. Farnol slipped down the bank again, peered in at the supports; the new poles slipped a couple of inches even as he looked at them. Then they settled, appeared firm against the rocks. He scrambled back up to the road, started off across the bridge after Mahmoud and the elephant.

  He could feel every nerve-end pressing to burst out of him, every sense heightened. The periphery of his vision had widened: it seemed that on one look he took in the hills above him, the raging river below, the anxious group standing at the far end of the bridge. He could feel the vibration of the elephant’s tread coming back at him through the planks; or so he imagined. He found himself treading lightly, as if trying to draw his own weight up into the air above the fragile roadway. He had once had a delicate encounter with the Calcutta top brass and had described the experience as walking on eggshells; he felt he was now literally doing that. His whole body was drawn in as if to make it weightless; his muscles ached with the effort. His hearing had become even more acute than usual; the noise of the river seemed a roar just below his feet. He looked down, half-expecting to see the water seeping through the cracks between the planks. And saw the roadway beginning to tilt back towards him.

  He heard the shout from those up ahead as he looked back. The end of the bridge was sliding slowly down the bank, the roadway rippling into a graceful curve as it fell away behind him. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion; but he knew it was all happening too fast. He yelled to Mahmoud and began to run. He could feel the roadway falling away beneath his feet; he was running up a hill that kept moving away. He threw his feet at the retreating, buckling planks; flung himself forward and fell headlong to grab at the side ropes of the bridge as they swung in over him. He looked up ahead and above him, waited with horror for the elephant to come sliding back down the bridge and take him with it into the river.

  It was the river that saved them, if only for the moment. The suspension ropes on the far side snapped under the strain and that end of the bridge fell into the water. The current grabbed it and swept it round like a tightly curved whip. The suspension ropes up ahead suddenly twisted into a net that caught the elephant and Mahmoud; they hung there above the raging white water in a basket of ropes and planks. Below them Farnol, up to his waist in water, clung to a rope and fought the river as it tried to drag him under.

  The elephant was screaming with fear, struggling to break out of the ropes and planks; the mahout clung desperately to its back, bound there by the web of ropes. There was pandemonium on the bank; panic seemed to have taken hold of everyone. Bridie had rushed to the bank’s edge and, though hampered by her long skirt, was scrambling down over the rocks, shouting to Karim to follow her. But the Sikh was one of those who had not panicked.

  He came down over the rocks, bringing a long rope with him that he had snatched from one of the tongas. Ahearn came with him, slipping on the glass-like rocks and almost tumbling into the river; Karim shot out an arm and pulled him back just in time. Bridie, wet through from the spray flung up by the trailing bridge as it whipped back and forth in the boiling water, recklessly reached out a hopeless hand towards Farnol, but he was too far away.

  His head was still above the tumbling surface of the river, but the spray was blinding him, choking him as he opened his mouth to gulp in air. His arms felt as if they were being torn away from his shoulders; a moment ago he had tried to be weightless, now his body felt as heavy as one of the black rocks that bordered the river. He was no longer afraid of the elephant’s falling on top of him; it no longer mattered how he died. If it was quick, and it would be, one way of dying was as good or bad as another.

  Karim balanced himself on a rock while Ahearn held on to his
belt. He flung the rope out towards Farnol; the wind caught it and it sailed away in a mocking curve. Karim tried again; this time the rope hit Farnol across the face. He grabbed at it, desperately clutched it for the lifeline that it was. Then Ahearn ranged himself beside Karim and both of them settled their legs like stanchions. Bridie, feeling useless but knowing she would only be in the way if she tried to help with the rope, resorted to prayer. She gabbled a Hail Mary, rushing through it in one breath.

  By the time she was halfway through it, Farnol was in the water, clinging with both hands to the rope and kicking his legs to drive himself across the fierce current. The water was icy but so far he had not felt it; he felt nothing but the strain on his arms and the terrible urge to survive. Slowly, fighting the river with all their combined strength, Karim and Ahearn dragged him across the current. He hit a rock, felt his hip and knee strike it, then Karim was reaching down and pulling him up on to the jagged bank.

  He lay across a black rock, arms and legs widespread as if just dropped from a cross. He felt, rather than saw, the drenched Bridie bending over him. At last he looked up through the water that still ran off his face and was warmed and surprised by the anguished concern she showed. He raised a bleeding hand, took hers and found the strength to squeeze it. For a moment they were as intimate as if they were wrapped together in love-making.

  Then he heard the screaming of the elephant, laboured now and not so continuous. He raised himself, saw the great beast still trapped in its basket of ropes and timber, looked for Mahmoud and saw the boy, seemingly unconscious, still pinned to the elephant’s back by the ropes. He got to his feet, still sore and exhausted, and Karim and Ahearn helped him up to the roadway.

  The Nawab and the others crowded round him. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? My God, we thought you were done for, old chap!”

  Farnol straightened up. Deep within him exhaustion and relief at his own rescue tugged at him to turn away from the river, to take the easy way out: let someone else worry about the young mahout and the terrified elephant. But he knew he couldn’t do that; and it was not just a sense of duty as an army officer. He could not turn his back on anyone in danger of losing his life. Life, they said, was cheap in India. But he had always put more than the market price on it.