by Talbot Mundy
Soon the priest noticed her — a cotton-skirted wraith amid the smoke — and shouted to the guards behind; one of them answered, laughing coarsely, and Rosemary understood enough of the dialect he used to grit her teeth with shame and anger. The men left off building, and, directed by the priest, came toward her in a ragged line to cut her off from closer approach; she stood, then — examined the new pyres as carefully as she could — walked to another vantage-point and viewed them sideways — then turned her back.
“Oh, the brutes!” she ejaculated. There were tears in her voice, as well as helpless anger. “There is not one devil, there are a million, and they all live here!”
She looked back again once, trembling with an overmastering hate, directed less at the priest who grinned back at her than at the loathsome rite he represented. In two actual words, she cursed him. It was the first time she had ever cursed anybody in her life, and the wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief. She revelled in it. She was glad she had cursed him. Her little, light, graceful body that had been quivering grew calm again, and she turned to hurry home with an unexpected sense of having pulled some lever in the mechanism that would bring about results. She neither knew nor cared what results, nor how they were to happen; she felt that that curse of hers, her first, had landed on the mark!
But she had come further than she thought. Distance, hot wind, and emotion had exhausted her far more, too, than she had had time to realize. Before a mile of the homeward journey had been accomplished, she was forced against her stubborn Scots will to sit down on a big stone by the roadside and rest, while the four that followed came up close, grinning and passing remarks in anything but under-tones. If the meaning of the words escaped her, their gestures left little to be misunderstood. A crowd of stragglers drew together near the four — laughed with them — took sides in the coarse-worded argument about Jaimihr’s known ambition — and shamed her into pressing on homeward.
But she was forced to rest again, and then again. Physical sickness prevented her from obeying instinct, reason, will, that all three urged her on. No false pride now told her to dare the insolence of the guards; nothing appealed to her but the desire to hurry, hurry, hurry, and do whatever should appear to need doing when she reached the mission house. She had no plan in her head. She only knew that she had cursed a man, and that the curse was potent. But her feet dragged, and her vitality died down. It was sundown when she reached the mission house, and she could hear the rising, falling, intermittent din of drums before she saw her father in the doorway.
“Father!” She ran to him, and he caught her in his arms to save her from falling headlong. “Father, there is going to be a suttee tonight! Hear the drums, father! Hear the drums! It’ll be tonight! That’s to stop the screams from being heard! Listen to them, father — two suttees, side by side — I’ve seen the pyres and the scaffolds — do they jump into the flames, father, from the scaffolds? — tell me! No-don’t tell me — I won’t listen! Take me away from here — away — away — away — take me away, d’you hear!”
He carried her inside, and laid her on the caned couch in the living-room, looking like a great, big, helpless, gray-haired baby, as any man is prone to do when he has hysteria to deal with in a woman whom he loves.
“I cursed a man, father! I cursed a man! I did! I said ‘Damn you!’ I’m glad!”
“Don’t, little girl — don’t! Lassie mine, don’t! Never mind what you saw or what you said — be calm now — there is something we must do; we must act; I have determined we must act. We must act tonight. But we can’t do anything with you in this state.”
Slowly, gradually he calmed her — or probably she grew calm, in spite of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of waking her.
Outside a full moon rose majestically, pure and silvery as peace herself, bathing the universe in blessings. And each month, when the full moon rose above the carved dome of Siva’s temple, there was a ceremony gone through that commemorated cruelty, greed, poisoning, throat-slitting, hate, and all the hell-invented infamy that suckles always at the breast of stagnant treasure.
Since history has forgotten when, at each full moon, the priests of Siva had gone with circumstantial ceremony to view the hoarded wealth tied up by jealousy and guarded jealously in Howrah’s palace. With them, as the custom that was stronger than a thousand laws dictated, went the Maharajah and his brother Jaimihr — joint owners with the priests.
There had not been one Maharajah, since the first of that long line, who would not have given the lives of ten thousand men for leave to broach that treasure; nor, since the first heir apparent shared the secret with the priests and the holder of the throne, had there been one prince in line-son-brother-cousin — who would not have drenched the throne with his relation’s blood with that same purpose.
Heir after heir could have agreed with Maharajah, but the priests had stood between. That treasure was their fulcrum; the legacy, dictated by a dead, misguided hand, intended as a war reserve to stay the throne of Howrah in its need, and trebly locked to guard against profligacy, had placed the priests of Siva in the position of dictators of Howrah’s destiny. A word from them, and a prince would slay his father — only to discover that the promises of Siva’s priests were something less to build on than the hope of loot. There would be another heir apparent to be let into the secret — another man to scheme and hunger for the throne — another party to the bloody three-angled intrigue which kept the Siva-servers fat and the princes lean.
Past masters of the art by which superstitious ignorance is swayed, the priests could swing the allegiance of the mob whichever way they chose — even the soldiers, loyal enough to their masters under ordinary circumstances, would have rebelled at as much as a hint from holy Siva. It was the priests who made it possible for Jaimihr to dare take his part in the ceremony; without them he would not have entered his brother’s palace-yard unless five thousand men at least were there to guard his back — but, if there was danger where the priests were, there was safety too.
As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man guard; there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery to the palace-entrance — censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously acting duty to their gods and state.
The moon — and that, too, was custom-rested with her lower rim one full hand’s breadth above the temple dome as viewed from the palace-gate, when a gong clanged resonantly, died to silence, music of pipes and cymbals broke on the evening quiet, and the strange procession started from the temple door, the Maharajah leading.
Generally it passed uninterrupted over the intervening street to the palace-entrance, between the ranks of a salaaming, silent crowd, and disappeared from view. This time, though, for the first time in living memory, and possibly for the first time in all history, the unforeseen, amazing happened. The procession stopped. Moon-bathed, between the carved posts of the palace-gate, two people blocked the way.
The music ceased. The sudden silence framed itself against the distant thunder of a hundred drums. The crowd — all heads bowed, as decreed — drew in its breath and held it. A sea of pugrees moved as brown eyes looked up surreptitiously — stared — memorized — and then looked down again. There was no precedent for this happening, and even the Maharajah and the priests were at a momentary loss — stood waiting, staring — and said nothing.
“Maharajah-sahib! — I must interrupt your ceremony. I must have word with you at once!”
It was Duncan McClean, bareheaded, holding his daughter’s hand. They had no weapons; they were messengers of peace, protesting, or so
they looked. No longer timid, but resigned to what might happen — they held each other’s hands, and blocked the way of Siva’s votaries — Siva’s tools — and Siva’s ritual.
Jaimihr whispered to his brother — the first time he had dared one word to him in person for years — the high priest of the temple pressed forward angrily, saying nothing, but trying to combine rage and dignity with an attempt to turn the incident to priestly advantage. Surely this was a crisis out of which the priests must come triumphant; they held all the cards — knew how and when rebellion was timed, and could compare, as the principals themselves could not do, Howrah’s strength with Jaimihr’s. And the priests had the crowd to back them — the ignorant, superstitious crowd that can make or dethrone emperors.
But some strange freak of real dignity — curiosity perhaps, or possibly occasion — spurred desire to act of his own initiative and keep the high priest in his place — impelled the Maharajah in that minute. Men said afterward that Jaimihr had whispered to him advice which he knew was barbed because it was his brother whispering, and that he promptly did the opposite; but, whatever the motive, he drew himself up in all his jewelled splendor and demanded: “What do you people wish?”
The McCleans were given no time to reply. The priests did not see fit to let the reins of this occasion slip; the word went out, panic-voiced, that sacrilege to Siva was afoot.
“Slay them! Slay them!” yelled the crowd. “They violate the sacred rites!”
There were no Mohammedans among that crowd to take delight in seeing Hindoo priests discomfited and Hindoo ritual disturbed. There came no counter-shout. The crowd did not, as so often happens, turn and rend itself; and yet, though a surge from behind pressed forward, the men in front pressed back.
“Slay them! Slay the sacrilegious foreigners!” The yell grew louder and more widely voiced, but no man in the front ranks moved.
The Maharajah looked from the company of guards that lined the palace-steps to the priests and his brother and the crowd — and then to the McCleans again.
He remembered Alwa and his Rangars, thought of the messenger whom he had sent, remembered that a regiment of lance-armed horsemen would be worth a risk or two to win over to his side, and made decision.
“You are in danger,” he asserted, using a pronoun not intended to convey politeness, but — Eastern of the East — counteracting that by courtesy of manner. “Do you ask my aid?”
“Yes, among other things,” Duncan McClean answered him. “I wish also to speak about a Rangar, who I know is held prisoner in a cage in the Jaimihr-sahib’s palace.”
“Speak of that later,” answered Howrah. “Guard!”
He made a sign. A spoken word might have told the priests too much, and have set them busy fore-stalling him. The guards rushed down the steps, seized both McCleans, and half-carried, half-hustled them up the palace-steps, through the great carved doors, and presently returned without them.
“They are my prisoners,” said the Maharajah, turning to the high priest. “We will now proceed.”
The crowd was satisfied, at least for the time being. Well versed in the kind of treatment meted out to prisoners, partly informed of what was preparing for the British all through India, the crowd never doubted for an instant but that grizzly vengeance awaited the Christians who had dared to remonstrate against time-honored custom. It looked for the moment as though the high priest’s word had moved the Maharajah to order the arrest, and the high priest realized it. By skilful play and well-used dignity he might contrive to snatch all the credit yet. He ordered; the pipes and cymbals started up again at once; and, one by one — Maharajah, Jaimihr, high priest, then royal guard, Jaimihr’s guard, priest again — the procession wound ahead, jewelled and egretted, sabred and spurred, priest-robed, representative of all the many cancers eating at the heart of India.
Chanting, clanging, wailing minor dirges to the night, it circled all the front projections of the palace, turned where a small door opened on a courtyard at one side, entered, and disappeared.
CHAPTER XVIII
Oh, is it good, my soldier prince and is the wisdom clear,
To guard thy front a thousand strong, while ten may take thy rear?
Now, because it was impregnable to almost anything except a yet-to-be-invented air-ship, the Alwa-sahib owned a fortress still, high-perched on a crag that overlooked a glittering expanse of desert. More precious than its bulk in diamonds, a spring of clear, cold water from the rock-lined depths of mother earth gushed out through a fissure near the Summit, and round that spring had been built, in bygone centuries, a battlemented nest to breed and turn out warriors. Alwa’s grandfather had come by it through complicated bargaining and dowry-contracts, and Alwa now held it as the rallying-point for the Rangars thereabout.
But its defensibility was practically all the crag fort had to offer by way of attraction. Down at its foot, where the stream of rushing water splashed in a series of cascades to the thirsty, sandy earth, there were an acre or two of cultivation — sufficient, in time of peace, to support an attenuated garrison and its horses. But for his revenues the Alwa-sahib had to look many a long day’s march afield. Leagues of desert lay between him and the nearest farm he owned, and since — more in the East than anywhere — a landlord’s chief absorption is the watching of his rents, it followed that he spent the greater part of his existence in the saddle, riding from one widely scattered tenant to another.
It was luck or fortuitous circumstance — Fate, he would have called it, had he wasted time to give it name — that brought him along a road where, many miles from Howrah City, he caught sight of Joanna. Needless to say, he took no slightest notice of her.
Dog-weary, parched, sore-footed, she was hurrying along the burning, sandy trail that led in the direction of Alwa’s fort. The trail was narrow, and the horsemen whose mounts ambled tirelessly behind Alwa’s plain-bred Arab pressed on past him, to curse the hag and bid her make horse-room for her betters. She sunk on the sand and begged of them. Laughingly, they asked her what a coin would buy in all that arid waste.
“Have the jackals, then, turned tradesman?” they jeered; but she only mumbled, and displayed her swollen tongue, and held her hands in an attitude of pitiful supplication. Then Alwa cantered up — rode past — heard one of his men jeering — drew rein and wheeled.
“Give her water!” he commanded.
He sat and watched her while she knelt, face upward, and a Rangar poured lukewarm water from a bottle down her tortured throat. He held it high and let the water splash, for fear his dignity might suffer should he or the bottle touch her. Strictly speaking, Rangars have no caste, but they retain by instinct and tradition many of the Hindoo prejudices. Alwa himself saw nothing to object to in the man’s precaution.
“Ask the old crows’ meat whither she was running.”
“She says she would find the Alwa-sahib.”
“Tell her I am he.”
Joanna fawned and laid her wrinkled forehead in the dust.
“Get up!” he growled. “Thy service is dishonor and my ears are deaf to it! Now, speak! Hast thou a message? Who is it sends a rat to bring me news?”
“Ali Partab.”
“Soho! And who is Ali Partab? He needs to learn manners. He has come to a stern school for them!”
“Sahib — great one — Prince of swordsmen! — Ali Partab is Mahommed Gunga-sahib’s man. He bid me say that he is held a prisoner in a bear-cage in Jaimihr’s palace and needs aid.”
Alwa’s black beard dropped onto his chest as he frowned in thought. He had nine men with him. Jaimihr had by this time, perhaps, as many as nine thousand, for no one knew but Jaimihr and the priests how many in the district waited to espouse his cause. The odds seemed about as stupendous as any that a man of his word had ever been called upon to take.
A moment more, and without consulting any one, he bade one of his men dismount.
“Put that hag on thy horse!” he commanded. “Mount thou behind another!”
The order was obeyed. Another Rangar took the led horse, and Joanna found herself, perched like a monkey on a horse that objected to the change of riders, between two troopers whose iron-thewed legs squeezed hers into the saddle.
“To Howrah City!” ordered Alwa, starting off at an easy, desert-eating amble; and without a word of comment, but with downward glances at their swords and a little back-stiffening which was all of excitement that they deigned to show, his men wheeled three and three behind him.
It was no affair of Alwa’s that a full moon shone that night — none of his arranging that on that one night of the month Jaimihr and his most trusted body-guard should go with the priests and the Maharajah to inspect the treasure. Alwa was a soldier, born to take instant advantage of chance — sent opportunity; Jaimihr was a schemer, born to indecision and the cunning that seeks underhanded means but overlooks the obvious. Because the streets were full of men whose allegiance was doubtful yet, because he himself would be too occupied to sit like a spider in a web and watch the intentions of the crowd unfold, Jaimihr had turned out every retainer to his name, and had scattered them about the city, with orders, if they were needed, to rally on a certain point.
He did think that at any minute a disturbance might break out which would lead to civil war, and he saw the necessity for watchfulness at every point; but he did not see the rather obvious necessity for leaving more than twenty men on guard inside his palace. Not even the thoughtfulness of Siva’s priests could have anticipated that ten horse-men would be riding out of nowhere, with the spirit in them that ignores side issues and leads them only straight to their objective.
