A Necessary Evil

by Abir Mukherjee

  ‘We’ll never make it in this thing,’ I said, opening the cab door. ‘We need to go on foot.’

  Surrender-not parked the truck at the side of the road as best he could, then jumped down to join me as I sprinted across the bridge then fought through the procession. Up ahead, the Juggernaut grew closer. It seemed to have stopped and a cheer went up from the crowd.

  ‘Jagannath has reached the temple,’ shouted Surrender-not above the din.

  Suddenly there was a bang, as of a pistol going off. Surrender-not and I stopped and looked at each other. A chill went up my spine. Then came several more explosions.

  ‘Firecrackers!’ cried Surrender-not.

  ‘Come on,’ I shouted, ‘there’s still time!’

  We made it to the temple compound. The Juggernaut and a few hundred pilgrims had been allowed within its walls, with the rest of the throng held back by a line of soldiers. I spotted Major Bhardwaj under an umbrella near the entrance and ran up to him.

  ‘I need to see Prince Punit immediately!’

  He seemed shocked by my sodden, mud-spattered appearance. He shook his head. ‘His Highness is inside the temple for the prayers.’

  ‘Colonel Arora, then,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The colonel is with him.’

  ‘I need to speak to Arora immediately!’ I shouted. ‘If I don’t, the consequences will be on your head.’

  He stared at me for a moment, then shook his head again. I didn’t have the time to argue, so I pushed past him and ran forward with Surrender-not at my heels.

  Inside the compound, on a raised dais under an awning stood members of the royal court, dressed to the nines despite the weather. Annie was among them, chatting to Emily Carmichael. She was as surprised to see me as Major Bhardwaj had been. Hurrying over to the railing, she called down.

  ‘What are you doing here, Sam?’

  I ignored her and ran towards the temple doors. As I reached them, I was grabbed by two guards, while another two accosted Surrender-not. I should have remonstrated, but instead opted to punch my way free. Ten hours in the monsoon rains has a tendency to cloud your judgement. I managed to throw a right hook before being coshed on the head by something hard, and then the wet ground rose up to greet me. Close by, I could hear Surrender-not shouting. He at least was still on his feet.

  I was lifted unceremoniously back up, pushed against the side of the dais, in preparation for a blow to the face, when the temple doors opened. Out strode Punit. The priest I’d seen with the Maharani Shubhadra was at his left hand and Colonel Arora at his right. He was dressed in a silk Kurta and turban, both encrusted in diamonds and emeralds, and it was fair to say he looked a bit better than I did. A conch shell rang out. Cymbals crashed and the crowds cheered, drowning out my shouts. The chief priest glanced over. He must have seen the guards restraining me. I hoped the sight of the struggle would cause him to pause. I hoped he’d realise something was dreadfully wrong and stop the coronation. But he looked straight through me.

  Another saffron-clad priest walked over to him with a silver tray. The chief priest lifted a sweetmeat from it, blessed it and then placed it in the prince’s mouth. The conch shell sounded once more. A line of priests exited the temple and began distributing sweetmeats to the assembled dignitaries on the dais.

  I called out one last time and Colonel Arora finally caught sight of me. After the initial shock, he walked over, his head protected by a flunkey carrying an umbrella, and ordered the guards to release me.

  ‘Wyndham?’ he said. ‘What the devil are you doing here? You look like a drowned goat.’

  ‘You need to get the prince out of here and back to the palace,’ I shouted. ‘He’s still in danger!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said sharply. ‘We’ve arrested Devika, and Davé. What further threat can there be?’

  ‘You need to trust me,’ I said urgently.

  He stopped for a moment, then walked towards me. His neat, starched uniform darkened under the rain. He stopped inches from me. Water ran in rivulets down the crags of his face and into his beard. His expression hardened.

  ‘Tell me this isn’t some sort of joke.’

  ‘It’s deadly serious.’

  He barked some orders at the guards who instantly surrounded a startled Punit. He began to argue, then suddenly stopped and clutched at his chest. His legs gave way. Arora ran towards him, still shouting orders. My captors released their grip and I sprinted forward.

  Arora cradled the prince’s head in his arms and shouted something at the soldiers. They lifted Punit and carried him to the shelter of the canopy. The prince writhed in pain, a crown of perspiration dotting his forehead.

  ‘Get a doctor,’ I shouted to Major Bhardwaj. At the sound of my voice, Punit opened his eyes and looked straight at me. His silk tunic was mud-spattered and sodden. He seemed to want to tell me something. I knelt down and put my ear close to his face. But no sound came from his lips.

  Suddenly I felt Annie beside me. She had her hand on Punit’s neck, searching for a pulse.

  ‘His heart’s stopped.’

  I tore open his tunic and began to pound at his sternum. A pre-cordial thump they’d called it in the army. They said it offered a chance of resuscitation if applied appropriately and quickly enough. I’d never seen it work, but I had to try. Twenty seconds passed, then forty, then a minute. I kept pounding. I felt Annie’s hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Sam.’

  I looked up.

  Tears ran down her face. Or maybe it was the rain. I looked back at Punit and hit his chest once more. A diamond studded button fell from his tunic. It skittered off the platform and landed in the mud at the foot of Lord Jagannath’s chariot.

  EPILOGUE

  The flames rose high into the air, orange tongues leaping from charred, cracked wood as though carrying the very soul of the dead man skywards. This was my third funeral in Sambalpore: it was almost becoming a habit. Still, in terms of spectacle, if there was one worth attending, it was probably this one. They’d pulled out all the stops this time. Princes were one thing, the old Maharaja was something else.

  His body had been carried here to the sound of bagpipes and trumpets, atop a golden gun carriage, flanked by mounted lancers in emerald tunics and golden turbans. Ahead of them, the obligatory elephants – dozens of them adorned in gold and silken finery. They processed along roads strewn with rose petals and through a hail of flowers thrown from the rooftops, to the burning ghat on the river, just outside the temple to Lord Jagannath. It was the same spot where two of his sons had been cremated.

  The funeral pyre had been lit by his third son, the infant Prince Alok, the new Maharaja of Sambalpore. The boy had to be helped by his prime minister, the Dewan, Harish Chandra Davé. What is it the French say? Plus ça change . . .

  Davé stood between the prince and the other dignitaries: princelings from the neighbouring kingdoms, British officers in plumed pith helmets, and Carmichael in his morning suit. But the person I wanted to see wasn’t up there.

  I turned away as the flames died down and walked back towards the temple compound. It was drier than the last time I’d been here, the mud baked hard again by the sun. I stared up at a blue sky. It was the first time I’d seen it that colour over Sambalpore. A new purdah car was parked to one side, in the same place that the old one had been that first morning, several months ago, when Annie and I had come here in the old Mercedes. That was good. It meant all I had to do was wait.

  Sure enough, after fifteen minutes, the doors opened and into the sunshine stepped the old Maharani Shubhadra, accompanied by the priest who’d fed Punit his final meal.

  ‘Your Highness,’ I said as I walked over.

  ‘Captain Wyndham.’ She smiled. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’

  She betrayed no hint of surprise at seeing me. But why would she? From the start she’d known everything.

  She joined me at the foot of the temple stairs. ‘It was good of you to come. My husband would
have welcomed your presence.’

  ‘I seem to be attending quite a few funerals in Sambalpore,’ I said. ‘I sincerely hope this is the last one.’

  ‘As do I,’ she replied. ‘The new Maharaja is very young. I am confident he shall have a long and happy reign.’

  ‘With your guidance, Your Highness, I’m sure he will. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I came to congratulate you on your appointment as regent.’

  The Maharani smiled graciously.

  ‘And yet I feel there may be something more to your visit, Captain. Would you care to accompany me to my car?’

  ‘Your Highness is perceptive,’ I replied as we set off slowly across the compound. ‘May I speak candidly?’

  ‘I would expect nothing less from you, Captain.’

  I’d been building up to this moment for days, but now that the time had arrived, I fell mute, unsure of how to begin.

  ‘Prince Adhir,’ I said finally.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘By all accounts he would have made a good ruler . . .’

  ‘Do you have a question, Captain?’

  ‘Was it necessary for him to die? Punit I can perhaps understand – he was feckless, irresponsible – but Adhir was different.’

  ‘Why are you asking me, Captain? Do you think I was somehow responsible for their deaths? Adhir was killed in Calcutta, far from here, and Punit died of heart failure from his exertions during the Rath Yatra. You saw him collapse. The post-mortem confirmed it.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt that’s what the doctor’s report would have said, but I saw him eat the offering given to him by your priest that day.’

  She stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘If you suspect foul play, Captain, you should report it. Indeed, you should have done so immediately. I take it you have some proof that the offering was tainted?’

  ‘You know I’ve no proof, Your Highness, simply a craving for the truth.’

  Her lips turned up in a half-smile. ‘Perhaps the Lord Jagannath, in his wisdom, decided that neither Adhir nor Punit would be fit to rule Sambalpore?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I agreed, ‘but I suspect there was another power at work. On the night the monsoon rains came, I realised something. It struck me that you’ve always been the real ruler of Sambalpore. Your late husband might have been Maharaja, but by all accounts he was more interested in living the high life. I think he was content to leave the running of the kingdom to you.’

  She tapped my arm gently and we started walking, once more around the courtyard. The temple towered above us, imposing. In the bright sunlight, its marble carvings shone in a way they hadn’t in the days before the monsoon. I should have paid them more attention. The answer had been up there all along, carved into the temple walls in explicit detail. The coupling of the divine and the mortal. Gods and women entwined.

  ‘When your husband fell ill, you realised your days as de facto ruler were numbered. Adhir was next in line to the throne, but he was his own man, with his own ideas of how to run the kingdom. You weren’t his mother. If you were, you may have had some influence over him, but he was never likely to follow your counsel. Worse, he might even have followed that of his white mistress, Miss Pemberley.’

  The Maharani seemed to shrink at the mention of the Englishwoman.

  ‘So you had him assassinated. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why the assassin would kill himself rather than submit to arrest and questioning. That sort of devotion comes only from political or religious zeal. The man was obviously a devotee -he had the mark of the Sricharanam on his forehead and he carried out his assassination on the first day of the festival of Lord Jagannath. But I couldn’t understand why? By all accounts Adhir had never upset any religious orders. Why would they want to kill him?

  ‘It was on the night that the rains came that I realised. The assassin wasn’t just a devotee of Lord Jagannath, he was also a devotee of his high priestess. You. You’re the daughter of the King of Puri, the Sweeper King, the keeper of Jagannath’s most holy shrine. Your very name – Shubhadra – is the name of Lord Jagannath’s own sister! And of course, let’s not forget poor Punit, who died on the steps of this temple – a temple that you had built. If all this truly was Lord Jagannath’s will, then you were the more-than-willing vessel doing his bidding.

  ‘I think you convinced the young maharani, Devika to go along with your plan. She’s not much more than a child and I’d imagine quite impressionable. You told her that with her help, you’d place her son on the throne. All you wanted in return was to be appointed regent until the boy reached majority.’

  The Maharani brushed back a stray strand of grey hair which the breeze had blown across her face. ‘That’s quite a story, Captain. Let me ask you this: do you think Adhir would have made a good ruler?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. I only met him on the day you had him killed.’

  ‘Let me tell you about Prince Adhir,’ she continued. ‘In his own way, he was as arrogant and foolish as his brother. Refusing to accede to the Chamber of Princes on a matter of principle – what presumptuous nonsense. Sambalpore needs a voice and friends in high places if it is to survive. He dabbled in socialism, held discussions with the Congress and those ridiculous Bengali radicals. Adhir would have sidelined us, destroyed our credibility with the British and with it our sway over our neighbours.’

  ‘He would have had advisers,’ I said. ‘Colonel Arora for one.’ I wondered what had happened to the colonel. He’d disappeared shortly after Punit’s death. The rumour was that he’d been arrested. Maybe he’d had his skull crushed.

  ‘Advisers?’ she spat. ‘The only person he ever listened to was that English mistress of his. She had him wrapped around her finger. And once he was Maharaja, I have no doubt she would have convinced him to marry her. And then? What message do you think that would send to the people? Sambalpore is a conservative place. The bond between the ruling family and our subjects is one built on more than simple loyalty. It is built on faith and devotion, theirs and ours. The people would never have accepted a white maharani. God forbid they should have had a child. Believe me, Captain, the kingdom most certainly would not have been safe in his hands.’

  ‘But it is safe in yours?’

  She stopped and looked at me like a mother at a stubborn child.

  ‘Do you think a woman cannot lead a nation? Would you believe me if I told you that the opposite is true? For two hundred years, your people have wielded a malign power in India, corrupting our rulers till they are no more than your feckless lackeys. In such a world, it is us, the women of the zenana, safe in our sanctuary beyond the pernicious reach of your Residents and your advisers, who have been the guardians of our culture and our heritage. For fifty years I have given my life to Sambalpore and its people. I have cared for them, educated them, protected them. I won’t abandon them now. I fear, though, that may be beyond your comprehension.’

  I shook my head. The way she told it, Adhir and Punit’s deaths were necessary for the very survival of the kingdom and her actions almost noble. ‘And was it for the betterment of the people of Sambalpore that you reinstated Davé as Dewan? A man who stole millions of rupees’ worth of revenue from this kingdom and had an Englishman murdered to cover it up?’

  ‘Davé stole nothing,’ she said as if it was a matter of fact.

  ‘I saw the two reports,’ I said. ‘Golding’s original and the one Davé doctored, increasing the value of resources in the diamond mines. Golding discovered the discrepancy and confronted Davé. He paid for that with his life.’

  The Maharani paused. ‘You are aware that Sambalpore is the only kingdom in the whole of Orissa where diamonds are found. It is one of the blessings bestowed on this land by the Lord Jagannath, and we have been mining them for centuries. It is a closely guarded secret, but for years we have known that the reserves of diamonds in our mines were reaching exhaustion. And we knew because Mr Golding told us.

  ‘Every year he employed geologists to produce an estimate o
f what was left. As you are aware, Sambalpore’s influence lies chiefly in the economic power that our diamond production bestows upon us. Without that power, we are nothing.

  ‘Fortuitously, the British came to our rescue. For a hundred and fifty years you have been trying to get your hands on our mines, and Sir Ernest Fitzmaurice is merely the latest in a long line of suitors. This time, however, it was deemed beneficial to accept his advances. But Fitzmaurice wouldn’t want the mines if he knew their true position. Davé therefore suggested that we paint a rosier picture for him, but neither Adhir nor Mr Golding would countenance such a thing, Adhir because he was pig-headed and Golding because of his scruples. The plan was shelved, that is until Adhir’s unfortunate demise, at which point Davé resurrected it. Golding, of course, objected. He was not meant to be harmed but in the course of rather heated discussions, he suffered a heart attack.’

  ‘A bit like Punit,’ I said.

  ‘It is the truth, Captain.’

  ‘But selling the mines, at whatever value, doesn’t solve your problem,’ I said. ‘Without them, you lose your influence.’

  ‘The world is changing, Captain.’ She smiled. ‘These days there are other things that are almost as valuable as diamonds.’

  And then it hit me. ‘Coal,’ I said.

  ‘The funds received from the sale to Anglo-Indian Diamond will be used to exploit Sambalpore’s coal deposits. In fact, Mr Golding was the first to advocate their commercialisation. The coal mines shall be his legacy.’

  I felt the bile rising in my throat. ‘You can’t simply murder an Englishman and expect there to be no consequences.’

  ‘There was no murder,’ she said. ‘He died of natural causes.’

  ‘I found his body at the bottom of a mine shaft,’ I said. ‘Was that natural, too? His death demands justice.’