Once and Always

by Alyssa Deane

  “The eighty-five,” Collier said, keeping his tone casual, “who would not take the cartridges two weeks ago?"

  “Yes, sahib, the very same. Their sentence is to be read out two days hence, but we—I mean to say, they,” and he indicated with a nod of his head the shadows of men moving quietly around the fires, “have already heard that it is to be ten years hard labor."

  “Good God!” said Collier sharply, beneath his breath. The groom started where he stood, black eyes showing white all around as he stared at Collier. The distant firelight danced across the slick surface of the man's dark skin.

  "Sahib?"

  Collier glanced back to the closed door, then out over the cantonment. Lifting his hand, he rubbed the flat plane between his eyes wearily. With a curt command, he sent his groom running to one of the bungalows, where he thought he had seen a light, to request the officer to come at once to speak with him. Then he pivoted about and went inside.

  Roxane was sitting up in bed, calmly reaching for her clothing. She had tucked the bedsheets modestly beneath her arms. The mass of her brown hair was badly in need of brushing. Her face, when she turned to look at him over her bare shoulder, was composed and alert. There was no fear in her gaze, nor even excessive curiosity.

  “Has it come?” she asked.

  “I don't know."

  “What is happening outside?"

  He watched as she rose from the berth, slipping into her undergarments, followed, without undue haste, by her gown. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the length of it up, twisting the unruly locks at the nape of her neck and securing them by some mysterious means he could not, in the dim illumination, discern.

  “Some of the sepoys are gathering to discuss the fate of the mutineers at Meerut. The sentence is to be read out on Saturday."

  “Then they know,” was her comment as she tossed up her skirts and bent to pull on her hose. Collier noted that she did not ask how the men had come by the knowledge. Ever since the story of the passing of the chupatties through the villages and into the camps, no one questioned the swiftness with which news traveled across India.

  “Yes, they know,” he said.

  Maintaining her balance by a slender grasp on the table, Roxane slipped her feet into her shoes. She pulled and smoothed the wrinkled gown over her body. Task completed, she stood straight, hands resting on her hips as she lifted her head to smile at him. It was a brave smile that nearly broke his heart.

  “I must go home,” she said.

  A sound escaped his throat, beyond his control, and he went forward, fingers circling tightly about her upper arms as he pulled her near. He kissed the top of her head, where dark tendrils curled up from the crown, brushing across his lips.

  “My dearest, courageous love,” he whispered.

  When the door opened, they had parted, but only barely. Lieutenant Witmon entered, half dressed and bearing a smoking lamp. Shadows reeled around the walls. The groom came behind, apologizing to Collier in rapid Hindustani.

  “Collier! What the devil do you suppose is going—oh! Ah ... ah...” Witmon's breath escaped him in a rush. “M-Miss Sheffield. Good evening."

  Standing beside Collier, Roxane coolly nodded her head. A small smile curled her mouth. Collier put his hand protectively on her shoulder.

  “Bart,” he said, “off the record, Miss Sheffield and I were married on the twenty-third of March."

  The lieutenant was silent, and then he laughed, handing the lamp to the syce so that he could take Collier's hand. He pumped it enthusiastically in both of his own.

  “Were you, by Jove? Quick work, man—or is it safe to assume that your acquaintance in Calcutta was more than trifling? Oh, congratulations, both of you! Especially you, Collier, you lucky cur!"

  Collier smiled, shaking his head like a friendly dog as he attempted to stem the other man's felicitations.

  “You must keep this quiet, Witmon. No one knows, and for now, it must be that way."

  “Oh?” The lieutenant grinned. “Is there—?” He made an obvious, cradling gesture with his arms.

  Collier frowned, all friendliness gone. “No, there is not, and I would appreciate no allusions regarding the same. Look, Roxane's father is not aware of the marriage, nor are the powers that be. The story is too long, just now, to explain. However, as you are a gentleman, I would expect you to guard your tongue regarding what you have just learned."

  “Of course, Collier. Upon pain of death—"

  “No!"

  Both men turned to look at Roxane. She had gone dreadfully pale. Collier reached out, gathering her beneath his arm.

  “Forgive me,” she murmured, distressed. “Just, please do not say such a thing, Lieutenant Witmon, I beg you."

  Collier stared hard at Roxane's blanched countenance, and then he patted her arm with a calm reassurance he did not feel. Oddly, his heart had begun to beat quite rapidly. Witmon moved, reaching once more for the lamp. He made no further comment.

  “I need to see Roxane home,” Collier told him. “Perhaps you can gather a number of the others and merely watch this assembly from a distance. So far, I would say it is peaceful, and there is no reason to see the men dispersed. However, if need be, awaken a senior officer. In the meantime...” He let the sentence hang, unfinished, meeting the other man's eyes with a look they both understood.

  After the lieutenant had departed, Collier advised his groom that he would need the man's assistance on the road, seeing the memsahib home. He wanted no narrative of his brief discussion with Witmon to spread elsewhere before he was ready.

  Sending the syce slightly ahead with a shielded lamp, Collier walked beside Roxane. She stepped quietly, not speaking. Her hair had come loose, and she reached up to contain it. As she lifted her arms, her rounded breast pressed against her bodice, and he saw a blush upon the skin from the rough shadow of his unshaven jaw. She touched the area with her fingertips, briefly, pulling the cloth away as though the area was tender. He felt a strong urge to apologize to her, but as the moment passed, he did not.

  “Roxane,” he said, as they neared her father's residence. His voice did not carry as far as the servant ahead. “I still possess standing orders regarding this situation. If there is trouble here, I will see you safe, I promise you.” He saw her nod, and the flashing glint of her eyes, in the night. “If no problems arise within the next twelve hours in Delhi, I will be away, to Meerut. It is necessary that I am present at the sentencing of those men. I am not certain what, if anything, I can do there, except to report what I have seen."

  Roxane stopped and stood in the shadow, just short of the gate to the drive. Collier felt her searching for his hands with her own, and he grasped them both, holding them close against his jacket. Though the night was more than temperate, her fingers were chilled.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Have you the pistols still?"

  “Yes."

  With a swift movement, he seized her in his arms. Her hair against his cheek was fragrant and soft.

  “Oh, God, Roxane,” he whispered, afraid to let her go.

  “All will be well, Collier,” she soothed, but there was, to him, no conviction behind her words. He held her without moving, just breathing in the scent of her and of the night all around them, of the day's heat still pouring out from the stone wall behind her back, and the dust, India's perpetual red dust, and the decay, and the closed flowers in the garden, allowing all of it to coalesce, indelibly, into memory.

  * * * *

  Standing just within the gate, Roxane listened to the quiet sound of converse as Collier and his groom made their way back down the road. He had promised, if all went well, to return before Monday morning. If he did not return before Monday, she could assume their outing was cancelled, and he would be making his way home as quickly as prudently possible. She was not to worry about him, but take all precautions for her own safety. There was no mention of the contingency of his not returning at all. Of that, she refused to
even allow the words loose into the air.

  Turning toward the house, she began to tally in her mind the things she thought she could do to keep it safe and whole. It did not occur to her that in the event of full-scale rebellion, the house might not be a reasonable place of refuge for her family and others. Should the trouble travel so far, she counted on the house being sturdier than most, and windows and doors could be blocked off. She had stores locked away, along with jars of boiled water. Her father's personal ammunition was kept in his study, and her own was in her room. She thought of that, for a moment, of using a weapon against another human being, and pushed it aside. Although she had no desire to harm anyone, she would have to do what was necessary in order to protect those she loved.

  In the coming days, she would be more careful than ever to ensure that Sera went nowhere without her knowledge and company. To Ahmed she would send a message, suggesting that the outing on Monday might be postponed, and to be prepared for such an eventuality. As for her father ... her father was a grown man, whom she could do nothing to convince of imminent danger, but perhaps she could enlist him to take certain precautions for her benefit and Sera's. He might be persuaded by such an argument.

  Engrossed in her planning, she did not see that there was someone in the deeper shadow of the verandah as she mounted the stairs. She was nearly past when a winking object, catching what little light existed, caused her to turn. With a gasp, she clutched her stomach reflexively.

  “Roxane."

  “Papa!"

  Relieved to find that it was her father, and not another, more sinister figure, she stood for a few seconds gulping drafts of air as she tried to contain the brief alarm of her reaction. He took a step nearer, and she heard the clink of a glass in his hand, bumping up against the railing.

  “I see fire in the distance,” he said, but not as though it interested him.

  “The sepoys,” Roxane told him. “They are meeting, apparently to discuss the court-martial in Meerut."

  “Are they?"

  “Yes, it seems—"

  “Who was that out in the road, Roxane?"

  Once more, Roxane's hand strayed to her stomach and rested there, in an already instinctive gesture of protection. She was nearly two weeks late in her cycle; just this morning, she had asked, in a discreet, roundabout manner, corroborating questions of Harriet Tytler, who was pregnant herself with her fourth child, regarding the matter. She had not yet told Collier, wanting to be certain. She realized, with her father's inquiry, that it was time for particular truths to be disclosed.

  “It was Collier,” she said, “and his syce. They were seeing me home."

  “Home,” echoed her father, with a peculiar strain to his voice. “From where? I do not recall that I heard you leave."

  “Most likely you did not, Papa."

  He stirred and, with a quick movement of his arm, tossed the contents of his glass out into the garden, arcing in the starlight.

  “This is not the first time you have stolen away in the small hours, is it? How many times have you been in the company of that man at such an hour, Roxane?” he demanded, voice rising.

  “Father,” interrupted Roxane, straightening her spine and maintaining a tight control on her temper, understanding the reasons for his anger, “please, listen for a moment."

  “Listen? Was it not you who said no shame would be brought to this house?"

  “Yes,” she answered, quietly. “And so none has. Please, sit down."

  She took a seat in one of the chairs up against the wall. After a moment, her father followed suit, dragging a chair nearer to her own. Roxane could hear his fingernail tapping irregularly on the glass he held, as he waited for her to continue.

  “Papa,” she said, and faltered. Her hand came up, settling on her abdomen. In the darkness, she smiled suddenly, and drew a deep breath. She leaned her head back against the wall, startling a moth which flew, pale-winged, into the night.

  She reached out to lay her fingers over his hand on the arm of the chair.

  “Papa,” she said, “'That man,’ as you put it, is my husband. We married at St. James's, more than a month ago."

  Beside her, Max Sheffield reclined into his chair. She could hear his breath escaping his lungs in a long, low sigh. He lifted her hand and kissed it, a gesture of paternal affection, and then, for a very long time, he was silent.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Meerut

  For a mile, the horizon was an unbroken wall of flame, more vivid than sunset, licking up into the night sky as a thousand bungalows in the sepoy lines burned. Sparks flew like moths. Smoke billowed in gray, roiling, ominous clouds. From where he stood, Collier could feel the heat of it and hear the crackling of timber, the snapping of thatch, and the small explosions as pockets of air in mud walls heated and blew out. Collier reached up, dashing a hand across his sweating brow, and came away with blood. He must have received the wound, he decided, as he galloped through the bazaar.

  Budmashes had appeared from outlying villages within an hour, so it was said, of the sentencing, and had begun looting shops and stalls, attacking all Europeans in sight. The sepoys, taunted by the harlots, had broken out into the city, making for the prison to release their comrades. In the bazaar, Collier's progress had been treacherously impeded by the nine-foot-long lathis belonging to the native police. Remembering, he looked down to where his own sword was nicked and dripping red with blood.

  There had been a warning the night before, while he was dining at the bungalow of his friend, Lieutenant Gough, from a native officer who ostensibly came to speak with the lieutenant regarding accounts. The native officer had warned Gough that the men meant to rise today, to free the prisoners who had been court-martialed, with relatively uneventful dispatch, on Saturday, beneath a sky dark with storm clouds. Collier had accompanied Gough, first to Colonel Carmichael-Smyth, then to Brigadier Archdale Wilson. The story had been discounted, and Gough had received a mild reproof from both senior officials.

  Crouching, Collier reloaded his gun. In the near distance, he could see sepoys dancing and leaping in the ocher light of the flames, shooting in all directions with ammunition stolen from the bells-of-arms, the very same cartridges, he thought grimly, which they had once been loathe to touch.

  Colonel Finnis was dead, twenty bullets tearing into him from the ranks of the 20th Native Infantry. The recruit who fired the first shot had been set upon by the mob and torn to pieces, for it had not, it seemed, been in the mind of the mutinous 20th to kill British officers. However, this was, for them, a turning point, for they knew they would all be viewed as guilty. They had fled the lines.

  The swift carnage was near to choking Collier with rage. In his anger, he forgot his need to be level-headed, forgot his former ideals of being a man who viewed both sides of the issue. He had seen men, good men, killed before his eyes, officers unaware of the enormity of the conflict and thinking to call upon the loyalty of their men for peace. He had, just a few moments ago, come across a European woman, lying dead and mutilated in the dew-laden grass, the child butchered from her womb in a bloody, nearly unrecognizable heap beside her. Another, already dead in the carriage she had taken as she fled, had earlier been discovered with her exanimate body being repeatedly stabbed by a mounted sowar keeping steady pace beside the wildly careening buggy. That man's life had been justly ended by Lieutenant Mackenzie and another—the same Lt. Mackenzie whose own servant, a low-caste sweeper still faithful to his British master, had aided the lieutenant and a sergeant to escape through a garden wall, only to be hacked to death by enraged sepoys clambering behind. Collier had witnessed all these things in a passage of time he could not fully comprehend.

  Cries of “Din! Din!” “For the faith! For the faith!” carried in the night air from all directions, and others, more sinister, which translated quite simply to, “With the aid of Allah, we will kill all foreigners!"

  Collier wiped the blood from his eyes again, wondering how bad the wound migh
t be, for he could not feel it. He was numb, his entire body was numbed, though his mind was working at a fevered pitch. His one aim was to meet the other officers who had determined to ride to the gaol to prevent the release of the prisoners, hoping, somehow, to depress the momentum of the mob. He had become separated from them, split, as they were, by the force thrown against them, but he knew the way. He had been there on Saturday with Gough, and found the emotional state of most of the prisoners heartrending. There were soldiers there who had been many years in service, having gained medals in desperate battles fought under the direction of British officers, and they had wept in lamentation, entreating the officers to preserve them from their fate—a fate worse to these men than if they had been sentenced to death.

  “This whole thing might have been averted,” Gough told him, after, “had Carmichael-Smyth not taken it into his head to parade the men before issuing them the cartridges, instead of handing them out the night before, as is usually done. This was enough to make them suspicious. And they are not, as you may have heard, overly fond of Smyth."

  Collier had snorted at the other fellow's understatement, and then they had gone on to dinner. Even sharing the particular knowledge of the situation they both thought themselves privy to, they had been as trusting, in their own way, as any other man, hopeful, regardless of fact, that sanity and prudence would prevail.

  “By the way,” Gough had asked him, as if such matters, like a talisman, might keep those more fearful at bay, “did you ever marry that girl who passed through here on her way to Lahore with her father? What was her name? Alice? No, no, it was—"

  “Olivia,” Collier had said.

  “Yes! Olivia. So you did, then?"

  “No."

  “Still the inveterate bachelor, eh, Harrison?” Gough had jibed, jabbing him rather painfully in the forearm with the point of his shako.