The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “You’re taking an awful risk, George. Playing dice with the King’s life.”

  Lathrop polished his monocle. “Don’t you think I know it? I daren’t tell anyone else, not even H.E. But if we can clamp down on this movement, get the whole lot of the buggers in jail on sedition charges and attempted assassination, it should set any other revolutionaries back on their arses for four or five years. By then I hope we’re mobilized enough to deal with anything. I’m worried, Clive. I can hear the sound of drums, faraway ones—” He breathed on his monocle, polished it; but no matter how clear it was, he knew he would never get better than a blurred view of the trouble brewing in Europe. “The Kaiser is looking for war, Clive. If ever he got a toe-hold in India, we’d have trouble on our hands that would make the Mutiny look nothing more than a tiger hunt.”

  “Are there any German agents operating here?”

  “Probably. But they’re not Germans. They’re too shrewd for that. They’ll be using people like Sankar. How does the Baron feel about it all?”

  “He’s on our side.”

  “Poor old bugger. They’ll never forgive him for that in Berlin. Well, go down and try and frighten the shit out of Sankar.”

  Farnol smiled as he stood up. “You’ve been very restrained in your language, George.”

  “I’ve been practising, in case I put my foot in my mouth in front of the Queen. I understand the King doesn’t mind a bit of language, after all he was in the Navy. But the Queen doesn’t like it at all.”

  So Farnol went down to see Sankar who, with the Nawab, greeted him politely if coolly. They sat in the main tent, which was so sparsely decorated, on Sankar’s orders, that the Nawab felt a very much under-privileged prince. He could never entertain anyone here, even if Sankar would allow it, which he wouldn’t.

  Farnol and the Nawab were armed with whiskeys, Sankar with water. “Colonel Lathrop sent me down, Your Highness. He wondered why you were not in the parade today. His Excellency the Viceroy is particularly keen that all the princes appear at every official occasion.”

  “I was indisposed, Major.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you call a doctor?”

  “I do not believe in Western medicine. I prefer to be treated by one of our own men who understands the use of herbs.”

  “The sadhu on Mussoorie Street?”

  “I see you have your sources of information. Perhaps I can recommend him to you if you should fall ill.”

  “I’d like to meet him, though not professionally.” Then Farnol looked at the Nawab. He could see that Sankar, despite his mystic leanings, could not deny his Indian tongue; argument was a passion with Indians and Sankar, though Farnol was certain he would be careful in what he said, was no exception. Farnol turned to the Nawab, who had the Indian tongue but would never be much good at argument. “One of our sources of information told me, Bertie, that you had a meeting early this morning with Mr. Monday and his wife.”

  The whisky splashed in the Nawab’s glass. He was an excellent batsman, could read the swerve and turn of a cricket ball, but he was a poor conspirator; perhaps he should have taken up some underhanded game like military manoeuvres. “I just wanted to be sure they would have a good view of the parade. That delightful Mrs. Monday only came to India to see the Durbar.”

  “Were you able to arrange that they got good seats?”

  “I believe they sat with the Baron.”

  Sankar said, “Are you paying as much attention to all the other princes and chieftains, Major?”

  “We don’t think any of the others can tell us anything about the death of Major Savanna.”

  “Oh yes. My cousin told me about his unfortunate death. You think he had something to do with it?”

  “Oh I say, old chap!” The Nawab didn’t like being accused of murder, especially by his cousin, the real murderer. He had had nothing to do with the death of Savanna and he had been shocked by it. He was not stupid, but he had shut his mind against the thought that there would be deaths, many of them, when the revolution began. The murder of Savanna had snapped his mind wide open to the realization that people he knew were bound to die. Some whom he knew as well and liked as much as Clive Farnol.

  “We know you had nothing to do with it, Bertie.” Sankar smiled at his cousin’s discomfort. “If ever Major Farnol decides to arrest you, British justice will see that you’re acquitted. Isn’t that so, Major?”

  “I’m glad to see you have a respect for British justice.”

  “Not really. It’s just an imperial tool of trade.”

  The conversation went on for another five minutes and Farnol knew he had not made a dent in Sankar. He might have, as George Lathrop would have put it, scared the shit out of the Nawab; but Bertie, he had decided, was a very minor cog in the revolutionary wheel. He wondered if there would be any dividend in kidnapping the Nawab and putting him under intense interrogation; but he dismissed the idea. He was restricted by the need to appear civilized. If only they were up in the hills . . .

  He went away frustrated and Sankar; suffering his own frustration but for other reasons, shook his head angrily at his cousin. “You mustn’t be so frightened. You looked ready to blab out everything—”

  “I may talk too much, but I don’t blab.” The Nawab gulped down his drink, as if defending himself had made him thirsty.

  “I should never have invited you to join us. You’re too—too damned English.”

  “We all have our faults.” He did not mean to be witty. He was afraid, of his cousin, of the future. “Where are you going?”

  Sankar had stood up. “Nowhere. I’m just going to send a messenger to tell Mahendra to come here.”

  “They’ll be watching us.”

  “Of course they will. We’ll sit outside and let them see us. But unless they are lip-readers they won’t know what we’re talking about.”

  Mahendra arrived within ten minutes, as if he had been waiting for the summons, and the three princes went out to sit in camp chairs on the manicured newly-planted lawns. Only the Nawab appreciated that they were sitting on a symbol of England: he remembered the lawns of Oxford and the country houses, so different from the scraggly grass patches that surrounded the princely palaces of India. He looked at the passing traffic on the red road running past the camp: who were the spies amongst them? A road-sweeper went by, taking his time about keeping immaculate the already immaculate road, his broom swinging back and forth like a ragged-ended metronome. He glanced across towards the three princes; to the Nawab he looked sly and intelligent, too sharp-eyed to be a road-sweeper. But surely the English wouldn’t use an Untouchable as a spy? The man went slowly on down the road and the Nawab shivered at the thought of the future. He, too, would be an Untouchable in certain places if the revolution succeeded. At Lord’s, for instance . . .

  “What happened this morning?” Mahendra was tense and upset, a spring that had been wound tighter and tighter all day. “You were supposed to have done it in the Chandni Chowk. I kept waiting for the sound of the shots—”

  “We couldn’t get near the houses.” Sankar’s day-long frustration made him sharp-tongued. “There were police and soldiers everywhere. They must have guessed where we would choose to strike.”

  “Why didn’t you go to another spot?”

  “Where? My men had only rifles—how could they have produced those in a crowd?”

  “Bad planning,” said the Nawab; fear made him spiteful. “You have me buying field guns and machine-guns from Mr. Monday and you forget to provide your assassins with pistols as a reserve.”

  “I don’t want your criticisms,” said Sankar coldly. “We shall kill the King before he leaves Delhi.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary,” said the Nawab stubbornly but weakly. He came of a family that had always looked for an easy way out; it had only survived because the British had protected it. There was no history of mighty warriors in Kalanpur, not like the ancestors of Sankar.

  “It is necessar
y and it will be done.”

  “Where?” said Mahendra.

  “At the Coronation.”

  “At the Coronation?” The Nawab strangled his voice, saw the road-sweeper coming back up the road on the other side, “Good God—how?”

  “With either a pistol or a knife.”

  “But none of your men will be able to get that close!” He felt a sudden relief: the whole thing was going to collapse because of its impossibility. “The crowds are going to be kept right away—”

  “We aren’t. No one will be closer to the King than us when we are presented to him.”

  The Nawab suddenly felt cold, as if winter had plunged out of the Himalayas. “You mean you are going to kill him?”

  “Perhaps me. Or Mahendra. Or you. It will depend on who draws the straw.”

  “Whoever kills the King is sure to be killed himself,” said Mahendra.

  “All in a good cause, as they say.” Sankar’s wit was too cold to have any humour in it. In any case neither the Nawab nor Mahendra would have been amused.

  “I am not going to kill the King!” The Nawab strangled his voice again; he could see the road-sweeper getting closer. “No, I shan’t do it!”

  “You will do it if you draw the shortest straw,” said Sankar. “If not, I shall kill you.”

  The Nawab looked across the road at the sweeper: should he cry out to him for help? Have him bring Farnol running, expose the whole plot, throw himself on the mercy of British justice? But he remained silent and the sweeper went on his slow way down the road.

  Mahendra said, “What if you draw the straw, Sankar? You will be needed later—we can’t afford to lose you—”

  Sankar was not afraid of death: he longed to be a martyr. He would have preferred to die an elderly martyr; but if the revolution was successful there would be no call for martyrs by the time he was old. “The deed must be done—”

  “But why not one of the others?”

  “How many of the others are to be presented to the King? Three, that’s all. And they all have higher rank than any of us, they are all much richer, the revolution will need their money.” He hated that thought, that money could buy one safety and position in a revolution. The anarchists of Europe would laugh their heads off at the idea. “Outside of them and us, none of the movement will be presented to the King, no one else will be able to get close to him. Don’t you want to die in the cause, Bobs?” The English nickname, on his lips, was a mockery.

  “Of course.” Mahendra felt something like fire race through him, his brain swirled.

  Sankar suddenly regretted he had suggested the idea of the straws. If he had approached Mahendra alone, he felt sure now that the latter would have accepted nomination as the assassin. He had not had enough faith in the boy’s madness.

  “We’d better go inside to draw the straws.”

  “Now?” The Nawab was horrified: decisions like that shouldn’t be rushed.

  “Now.”

  They went into the main tent, the Nawab last to move and then like a man suddenly stricken with arthritis. He looked back as he went into the tent, saw that the road-sweeper had stopped fifty yards away, stood like a ghost in the deepening dusk as if waiting to be called. But the Nawab had no voice, no will: he went into the tent a hollow man.

  Sankar sent for a broom, pulled three straws from it and dismissed the bearer who had brought it. He broke the straws into three separate lengths, closed his hand on them and offered his fist to Mahendra. He looked directly into the young man’s eyes and silently told him he was the man to be honoured; it was not hypnotism, but he had learned from the mystics in the mountains the powerful persuasion the mind could wield. Mahendra did not look at the fist held out to him; he gazed into Sankar’s eyes, feeling an intoxicating trance beginning to take hold of him; the killing was already done, he was dead and a hero and a martyr for India. He put out his hand and, still without looking at Sankar’s fist, took the straw that was gently pushed into his fingers. Then Sankar turned, held out his fist to the Nawab, who took a straw. Finally Sankar opened his hand palm upwards and the others did the same. Mahendra had the shortest straw.

  The Nawab had seen what had gone on, but he was not going to call for fair play, complain that it wasn’t cricket. He had been saved and he was not going to risk his life again to save a crazed boy.

  But the crazed boy was not so mad that he was impractical. There are times when there are none so sensible as the mad. He felt the fever that had possessed him die down and he said, “I shall be honoured to do the deed. But what if Mala refuses to let me accompany her in the presentation line? She can do that if she wishes.”

  “Why should she?” said the Nawab, suddenly nervous again.

  “You know what she’s like. If she gets out of the wrong side of the bed in the morning—anything at all can upset her mood—”

  “Perhaps if she had a man in her bed the night before—” said Sankar. “Women are more amenable after a night’s love-making. Isn’t that so, Bertie? You’re the expert.”

  But a man with a multiple of wives always escapes in the morning from the bed of his partner; the Nawab was no expert on the daytime moods of satisfied women. “I think Bobs should try and stay on her right side. Be nice to her.”

  “Be nice in the cause of revolution? You really are absurdly English, Bertie.” But Sankar passed on the advice to Mahendra. “Perhaps it would be best. You can be charming when you wish.”

  “Really?” Even Mahendra had to smile at that; he knew his limitations and took delight in them. “I’ll try. But what happens to her when the revolution succeeds? Will you promise me you’ll get rid of her?”

  He had dreamed of succeeding Mala as the ruler of Serog, but that could have happened only in the context of a British India. Even then the British might have interfered; they had deposed several princes who had not fitted into their schemes. In the context of a revolutionary India he would have been a very small fish; better to die and be hailed than to live and be forgotten or overlooked. But he could not bear the thought of Mala’s surviving while he was dead.

  “She’ll be attended to,” said Sankar. “Just as will all the others who oppose us.”

  “More killing?”

  “If need be. But don’t turn pale, Bertie—there won’t be a blood-bath just for the sake of revenge. If those against us want to leave and live in England, we’ll let them. They just won’t be allowed to take their wealth with them, that’s all.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the English. How many of our own people must die? You have already killed my wife Ganga.”

  “Not I. That was the stupid merchant Chand. He bungled two attempts to kill Farnol. He deserved to die himself.”

  “He killed my wife.”

  “I’m sorry about that. It couldn’t be helped, given the circumstances.”

  Suddenly he wanted to kill Sankar. Murder was there in his hands; but there wasn’t enough courage in his heart. He held back the tears of rage, at himself more than at Sankar. He had loved Ganga and the only way he could revenge her death was with words.

  Mahendra, insensitive to atmosphere, careless of what the Nawab might feel about his dead wife, said, “I hope everything goes according to plan. There are all the millions we want to follow us . . . For all you know, your wife Ganga might have been on our side.”

  The Nawab said nothing, wanting to kill him, too.

  “Everyone will follow us.” Sankar had the blind faith of the fanatic. “Nationalism isn’t something that only we feel—it’s in the villages, too.”

  The Nawab sighed, gave up the idea of immediate murder. “I hope you can spread the message quickly and then hold it . . . You may be killing the King too early.”

  “Killing the King will be our rallying cry.”

  The Nawab turned his face away, wondered if Ganga would have fled to England with him, been happy there.

  10

  I

  DURING THE next four days the hundreds of thousands
of visitors to Delhi got everything they had hoped for. Romance, scandal, adultery, picked pockets, polo matches, tea parties and such balls as would be talked about even more than the Maharajah of Patiala’s. The Nawab of Kalanpur played in a cricket match and, his mind on other things, was bowled for nought: the revolution was not going to be won on the playing fields of India. There were investitures at which honours were handed out like the cakes at the tea parties. Bridie estimated that if all the medals collected were dropped at the same moment the resulting clang would have been heard in Washington, where no medals were struck but where ex-Presidents and ex-Governors and ex-Senators held on to their titles as if they were baronies.

  The King and Queen, each night, were glad to escape to the quiet of the royal tents. The King slept peacefully. The Queen tried to read the biography of Warren Hastings and dropped off to sleep before he had even set out for India. In her dreams she envied him still being in England. Only in her dreams can a queen afford to be envious. Nobody would believe it if she showed it while she was awake.

  George Lathrop played cat-and-mouse with the plotters. He was sorely tempted by Farnol’s suggestion that they should all be arrested and thrown into jail for the duration of the Durbar. He went to the Viceroy, told His Excellency what was known and asked for permission for the arrests; Lord Hardinge gave an adamant refusal. The King had to be protected in more ways than one.

  “We can’t do it, Lathrop. The King believes the princes are the cornerstone of his rule in India. He’s right, of course—but he just doesn’t know how much we rule the princes. He’s no fool and if I went to him and told him some of them are plotting to kill him, he’d believe me. But to arrest them—and how many do we arrest? Three, four, a dozen? You don’t know how many are in the plot—that would put a cloud over his Coronation that he wouldn’t like at all. He had enough trouble convincing Cabinet and the Archbishop of Canterbury that he should come out here—”

  “The Archbishop of Canterbury?”