Once and Always

by Alyssa Deane

  After Max had rescued the willful kite for the dozenth time, he advised Sera to start reeling in the string. It was getting late, and would soon be time for dinner. Moving away from his younger daughter, he came to stand beside his elder at the parapet. He clasped his hands behind his back.

  “In my heart,” he said, “I never stopped being your father, Roxane. I never did stop loving you."

  Roxane stared off at the distant glimmer of the river.

  “Then why did you stay away?"

  He rocked back, slightly, on his heels. “That was something between me and your mother. It was pride, and stubbornness, and jealousy, and stupidity—in short, a mistake so encompassing that even now I can't quite comprehend the enormity. But I cannot go back to alter those years, Roxane, although I wish that I could."

  “I know,” said Roxane.

  “Do you? Not so fast, Sera. If that kite comes down now, it will hit poor Govind on the head again. You know how upset he was last time."

  Roxane smiled at the mental picture of the tall, composed Indian being struck on the head with a runaway kite. There was very little chance of his being hurt, but she knew the damage to his esteem would be great.

  “Yes, do be careful,” she urged and went to assist the little girl in winding the string she was permitting to drape over the rooftop. With the string wound on the stick, Sera took the kite and darted away. Below, in the garden, her mother was calling her name in their pattering tongue.

  “Was Cesya a substitute for my mother?” Roxane asked, very quietly.

  Beside her, Max Sheffield made an abrupt movement of his hands at his sides.

  “One could not substitute for the other, Roxane. They were not, nor could they ever have been, anything resembling the same person. But Cesya is a good woman."

  Roxane was silent, scraping lichen from the wall with her nail. Oh yes, the pain was great. If she did not take a moment, now, to harness it, she would surely choke.

  Max looked away to the dusty road beyond the garden wall.

  “Where are the men in your life, Roxane? Have you turned them all away?"

  A rage of anger beat upon the circle of pain, like many hands upon a loaf of rising bread. Roxane swallowed hard.

  “Not all,” she answered him. Her voice caught, but did not break. The balance held.

  “Who is this man, Roxane? Do you love him? Where is the fellow now, by God?"

  Roxane closed her eyes. The first tears, the hot, seeping vanguard of salt liquid, slid out from beneath her dark lashes.

  “His name no longer matters, Father,” whispered Roxane. “But I do love him. And today, he was married."

  Chapter Eleven

  “It is my great-uncle's pleasure to sit for hours composing rhymes in flawless Persian. He exists, cloistered, in his own universe of marble colonnades and jeweled fountains, Miss Sheffield. He no longer has any conception of the world beyond his palace walls. At eighty-two years old he has reigned for twenty years as the last of the Moguls, supported by an East India Company stipend of 120,000 a year, maintaining his retinue of five thousand courtiers. He sees few Englishmen since declaring that even the Governor General must remove his shoes in the royal presence. He is old, and embittered, and lost in his belief that the Company will abolish his title with his death."

  Ahmed spoke with resigned affection, shaking his dark head.

  “I did, however, translate your gratitude for the roses, and that you have placed them honorably."

  Roxane inclined her head in acknowledgement and continued walking at the man's side along the wide, tree-lined street. His servants held a large palm-leaf fan over his head to protect it from the sun. Due to her proximity as they spoke, the shade fell upon her also. She felt ludicrous, but accepted the gracious treatment with stoicism. Sera clutched her hand, while the ayah followed several paces behind. Another of Ahmed's servants, a bearer, carried the bolt of shining cloth Roxane had purchased for Cesya. Roxane had confided to Ahmed at the time of purchase that the shopkeeper, with whom she previously had an uneventful professional relationship, would not now accept her cheque, and Ahmed had spoken with the man, forcing him to do so. She could not help but notice the malignant glance trailing her departure from the shop.

  “You are continuing with your shooting lessons, are you not?” Ahmed asked her as they moved on through the city.

  Although she thought the question oddly timed, she answered him truthfully that she was. In early January, nearly six weeks before, he had given her a brace of pistols as a gift, and though she had tried to decline the offer, he would not hear of it. He told her to speak with a jemadar with whom he was acquainted about the lessons; they had already been arranged. When pressed as to his reasons, Ahmed had smiled and said, “You may wish to hunt, one day."

  “With pistols?” she had countered.

  Ahmed had shrugged. “Who knows? You English are strange."

  “I hear you are a fine shot,” he said now.

  Roxane frowned up at the man. “Who speaks untruthfully to you?"

  He laughed. “The man who tells me this would not lie."

  Knowing him well enough to understand that he liked to keep an aura of mystery regarding certain details in his life, Roxane did not press her friend for the identity of this fellow, but bent to answer Sera's abrupt question about the man who was watching them. Roxane followed the girl's direction and met the gaze of a dark man whose head and face were wrapped about with cloth. He was tall, roughly dressed, and strongly built, and he carried both a large sword and a pistol in his belt.

  “Turn away,” said Ahmed suddenly. “He is a Pathan. They are reputed to be astonishingly foul-tempered. Any chance for a fight, they will take. Come, come, we have tarried too long in the streets. Did you think you would get away with avoiding your Persian lesson so easily? Sera, turn aside. Let us make haste. I have sugared fruit awaiting you on the table. If you do not hurry, I will give it all to Drachma."

  Drachma, although a monetary unit in Greece, was also the name of Ahmed's myna, which he kept as a pet on a perch by the window. Sera announced confidently that she knew he would not feed all of the fruit to the bird, as it would be made ill, but she hastened her step anyway. At the corner, Roxane glanced back. The man, if he was still there, was lost to her sight in the crowd. Still touched by the urgency in Ahmed's voice, and the strange incident earlier in the day, Roxane felt a cat's paw of trepidation ripple up her spine.

  On the way home, having stayed overlong in Ahmed's apartments enjoying the lesson, his company, and the bowl of sliced, sugared melons and oranges, Roxane took a short cut with the pony cart through the regimental lines. It was the middle of the day, and most of the men were frankly asleep in their charpoys outside their huts, or sitting in quiet conversation with one another in the shade. A few of them she knew by sight, and greeted with a nod. The smell of smoke and dung and cesspit circulated in the warm air. Camels were picketed along the tree line, making the strange noise in their throats which sounded to Roxane like a growl. A group of men, having shed their uniforms for loose white trousers, were engaged in vehement discussion beyond the picketed beasts. They became silent, dark eyes following the slow rotation of the wheels as the cart rolled past.

  Roxane gave Sera the bolt of fabric to carry to her mother, and went in search of the colonel. Outside his office, she paused, aware of voices within. She listened, unabashed, as two men related an incident which had occurred several days earlier at an evening parade of the 2nd Native Infantry at Barrackpore. Apparently, the sepoys had denounced a new cartridge for the Enfield rifle, stating that even if they were permitted to use their own greasing materials, they would remain unhappy about them because of the suspect feel of the paper. One of the men stated that a court of inquiry was held regarding this insubordination, but he did not know the result. All he knew was that two days later, a captain of the 34th Infantry had been approached alone by one of his sepoys, who had told him that there was a plot amongst the regiments at
Barrackpore to rise up against their officers and burn down the bungalows in protest of being forced to give up their caste and become Christians. Roxane could not hear her father's murmured reply, but one of the men laughed, a short, barking sound.

  Roxane, immediately recalling Collier Harrison's warnings to her with a shock like cold water in her bloodstream, knocked once on the doorframe and went in, pushing under the red cloth.

  “Roxane! Gentlemen, this is my daughter. She comes to me, after a long separation, from her home in England."

  Roxane nodded, recognizing one officer, but not the other.

  “Is it true?” she asked. The men exchanged puzzled glances before retiring once more to meet hers.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the red-haired Lieutenant Witmon.

  “Is it true? Are the cartridges greased with the fat of cows and pigs?"

  “Roxane,” said her father, “whatever have you been listening to?"

  “Is it true?” she persisted.

  “No.” This, from the lieutenant, who swiveled in his seat to regard her with new interest. “It isn't."

  “But the men believe it is so."

  “Some do,” agreed the officer.

  “A ... a man I knew once warned that if ever there should be found a common cause strong enough to unite all the sepoys, then they would rise up, and India with them, in insurrection. This is it, isn't it?"

  “Nonsense,” stated Max.

  “Possibly,” said the lieutenant. The other officer remained mute, narrowing his eyes at Roxane as if she were an annoyance he was considering how to deal with.

  “Good God.” Max Sheffield laughed. “This is my daughter, possibly one of the few women in Victoria's reign who would dare to walk into a man's sanctuary to advise him, and his guests, of her viewpoint on matters which should be more or less beyond her realm of concern."

  Roxane drew herself up to her full height. Her chin lifted. “The possibility of those I care for being killed is well within my realm of concern, Father,” she stated flatly.

  Max shifted in his chair. “Roxane, I didn't mean to imply—look, even if such a thing should occur, they would only be isolated incidents, which would be put down straightaway. There would be no danger to women or children, don't you see?"

  “It is not only of women and children I am thinking,” she said, and left the room. Lieutenant Witmon called after her, but she did not answer. Exiting the house, she went to the tiny structure where Cesya and Sera resided, and knocked on the door. Sera answered, her eyes red and swollen.

  “What's wrong?"

  Sera shook her head. “My mother, she is much afraid."

  “Of what?” demanded Roxane. Her very skin seemed alert to nuance and drift, as if fear were a contagion floating on the air.

  “She does not say."

  “Let me in, Sera."

  In the center of the room, Cesya was pacing in circles, tearing at her hair and sobbing in Hindustani, too swift and muttered for Roxane to follow. Roxane grabbed the smaller woman's arm. She spun about, the shining color of her sari like blood in the candlelight. Her kohl-lined eyes widened, and she stepped away, clutching the crucifix at her throat.

  “Cesya—"

  “They will come,” she said, in English. “We who have accepted your faith, we shall die, too, more horribly, perhaps, than do you."

  “Cesya, who will come?"

  Shaking her head, the Indian woman began once more to pace, her soft voice rising in a wail. Sera backed into the corner, covering her ears and cringing.

  “Who?” Roxane repeated. “When?"

  “The chupatties,” Cesya paused to whisper, the white showing all around her dark iris. Chupatties, so far as Roxane knew, were nothing more than a thin, flat cake of unleavened bread. “The chupatties have gone round. They ... they bore the sign...” Her voice lifted again in a single syllable of sound, high-pitched and keening. In the corner, Sera began once more to cry. Snatching Cesya by the arm, Roxane spun her around and slapped her.

  There was a gasp, whether from Cesya or Sera, Roxane did not know, and then silence. Momentarily, Cesya's labored breathing began anew, but she remained relatively composed.

  “Cesya,” Roxane said, “I do not care, for the time being, to know what it is that you have viewed as a sign of your imminent destruction. I care very much that you are frightening the wits out of Sera. I suggest that the both of you come into the main house tonight, and stay there. You will be safe—"

  “No!"

  Roxane drew back, wide-eyed, at the vehemence of her protest.

  “Yes,” said Roxane.

  “I will not, I will not, I will not come into that house,” Cesya spat rapidly, taking a turn away, and back. “I will go—I will go to my family. Though they can no longer so much as share a meal with me, they will hide me, I know they will. You! You will take Sera. Take her into the house with you, if that is what you wish!” Grabbing the little girl by the shoulders, she shoved her in Roxane's direction. Roxane gathered her half-sister up against her skirt.

  “Why,” she asked, calmly, “will you permit me to take your daughter into the house, if you do not feel it is a safe haven?"

  Cesya went on as if she had not heard. “I will leave tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning!” And she clutched her black hair, pulling at the roots with both hands.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Roxane, “you might care to discuss this with Colonel Max?"

  “Why?” the Indian woman cried, pivoting like a dervish. “He has done this to me!"

  Lifting Sera into her arms, Roxane left the hut, pulling the door shut behind her. Unlike most of the buildings in the compound, Cesya's had been accorded a door, with a bolt. Roxane heard it slam into place as she hurried up the path petting Sera's fine, flying hair and crooning to the weeping child.

  Roxane insisted Sera take a tepid bath and get into the nightclothes which were kept in a bureau along with her other garments in the small room next to Roxane's. Dinner was brought to her on a tray, and consumed in silence. Roxane stood at the window, watching Cesya's door. It remained closed.

  After Sera was asleep, Roxane told her father about the confrontation. He agreed to go speak with the woman, returning a short time later with nothing to relate. He went into his office, pouring himself a double dram of Scotch whiskey, which he drank down straightaway. The second glass he tossed off in the manner of the first.

  Roxane, watching him from the doorway, felt the same sense of foreboding she had known at the Government House ball, when the shadow of the moth had fallen on those below, unlooked for in content, and unexpected in its potency. Suppressing a shiver, she turned away.

  “Roxane?"

  “Yes?"

  “Have my dinner brought to me here, will you? I have some paperwork to which I must attend."

  Roxane ate alone that night, the servants hovering near to attend her. Vexed by their attentions, she dismissed them, asking them to return in an hour's time to collect the plates. They seemed reluctant, as though disoriented by the alteration in routine. After she had eaten, she wrapped a light shawl about her shoulders and went out to the gatehouse, checking for herself to see that the gate was secure. Since the death of the night watchman, this duty had alternated between the gardener and her father's groom, but both had gone to their families for a short visit. Darkness had fallen in a wash of blue-black ink, stars like jewels floating beyond a gossamer web of cirrus cloud. Shadows in the distance, by the sepoy lines, were pierced by the apricot blossoms of multiple fires burning. She could hear the voices drifting on the air, and the pitched bark of a pariah dog. Nearer, on the other side of the gate, a pair of soldiers walked, speaking in conversational tones that seemed overloud in the night. Having inspected the latch, Roxane hurried back toward the house, glancing briefly in the direction of Cesya's hut to assure herself that a light burned and the door remained closed. Inside the small structure, all appeared quiet.

  Roxane's father was still in his office, seated behind
the desk, the bottle of whiskey in plain view at his elbow. Beside the bottle, a tumbler stood empty but for a small amount of liquid at the bottom, refracting light in a rainbowed whorl across the desktop. He shuffled the papers in his hands upon her approach, but it seemed to Roxane an act performed more for her benefit than a process of his work. When Max Sheffield finally looked up at her, she saw that his eyes were bloodshot and glazed in the lamp's illumination.

  “Will you be needing anything else, Father?"

  “Going to bed, Roxane?"

  “Yes."

  “Look in on Sera, won't you?"

  “Of course."

  “Good night.” Even as the dulled red cloth drifted back over the open doorway, Roxane saw him reach again for the bottle. Glass tapping glass, he filled the tumbler with a noticeably unsteady hand.

  * * * *

  Roxane clawed the gauze of mosquito netting away from her face, bolting from the bed. Her heart beat in a powerful, breath-robbing rhythm. The resonance of screaming vibrated in her ears, a violent echo of horrible nightmare. The house was, in point of fact, dead silent, with a denseness so absolute, it mired her senses in a fear that burrowed deeper still. Throwing the shawl over her body, sweat-sheened beneath her nightdress, Roxane raced to the room next door. Sera lay senseless, snoring gently in untroubled slumber. Roxane frantically touched the girl's face and arms, finding them satiny and cool and very much whole. Mumbling, Sera rolled over, onto her side. Roxane drew the light coverlet up about her sister's shoulders.

  At the door, Roxane leaned heavily against the frame, in an endeavor to steady her racing pulse. The dream had been so unholy and tangible, the hair was still standing on end at the back of her neck and along her arms. Hugging the shawl closer, she listened to the noises of the house around her. From her father's room, there came sonorous evidence of the man's sleeping, no doubt aided by the amount of whiskey he had consumed. In the house below, there was a light creaking of the timbers, an innocent sound that nonetheless made her listen more closely for an evil behind it. After a few minutes, she pushed off from the doorway and into the hall, drawing a shuddering, stabilizing breath.