by Alyssa Deane
Roxane felt a chill paw its way along her spine, but recovered with a stern look of reproach.
“And none of you thought to bring this to my attention sooner?"
No one had an answer, and as the question was rhetorical, Roxane turned and left them, seeking out her father in his office. He was standing near the window, where the chik was not yet lowered, strapping on his sword.
“Oh, there you are, Roxane. I must go and get this business over with. There is a special morning parade to announce the sentences recently meted out and to translate Lord Canning's proclamation of warning to the men. I must be there, to show my support and authority. Did you find Sera?"
Mutely, Roxane shook her head. Her father paused in his struggle with the trappings of his holster to look up.
“No? Surely, the child cannot have gone into the city alone? What would possess her to do such a thing?"
“I am certain,” Roxane answered with growing exasperation and worry, “that I do not know."
At the window, her father continued readying his uniform. “Don't fret,” he said. “Take my syce to look for her. How far could she have gotten in an hour's time, and on foot? It is not as though she is any danger, for goodness’ sake, Roxane. Once you bring her home, I will see she is suitably punished for her actions."
Standing beside her father's desk, Roxane lifted a paperweight, hefting it in her hand, then slowly lowered the green, flat-bottomed glass ball, positioning it carefully on the stack of papers, aligning the bottom to a ridge of ruddy dust. A slight, errant breeze ruffled the edge of her sleeve against her elbow, and the curling corners of her father's memos, and then was still.
It was no use trying to convince him of the peril of Sera's foray into the city unattended. Even if the situation within the cantonment were not so prickly, there were other hazards facing a young child, a Eurasian child, and a pretty one at that, out alone. But here, words were useless in conveying to her father the possibilities of anyone within his realm of knowledge being anything less than respectful, courteous, and loyal, whether they were the soldiers beneath him, the natives in his household, or the shopkeepers in the bazaar. He believed in his ultimate right to govern and command obeisance and regard. Though the underlying sentiment was nothing short of pompous, his sincere affection for those with which he treated had, heretofore, prevented ill will. Now, however, that attitude merely left him blinded and unprotected.
“I will do that, Papa,” she said. “Thank you."
Turning on her heel, she headed for the door, pausing on the threshold. With her hand on the door jamb, she looked back at the man over her shoulder. He was still standing at the window, where the sun now shone golden and already much too warm, casting his shadow long across the room. At his feet, Roxane could see the rolling, glittering crest of a button, which had fallen from his sleeve. As she watched, he bent and picked the object up, frowning at the loose, empty threads hanging from the edge of his jacket sleeve.
“I will sew that later for you, Papa, good as new,” she told him, suddenly overwhelmed by the expression of concern on his countenance, which far outweighed the import of the occurrence. On impulse, she returned to his side, laying her hand on his sleeve.
“Papa,” she said, “please be careful today."
He blinked, and frowned, then shook his head in a gruff manner of dismissal.
“Always am,” he said. “No more of your nonsense, now, child. Be on your way. I have other matters to attend to."
“Of course,” she agreed with a twist of her lips that could not be prevented. She moved nearer, kissing his weathered cheek, as she often did of late, then put her arms around him in a swift embrace. He was startled, at first—she could feel that in the stiffening of his stance—and then he patted her self-consciously on the back.
“Really, Roxane,” he muttered, and said no more.
Roxane took the pair of pistols, as heavy as they were, and placed them in a bag along with the ammunition to load them both, once, before going in search of her father's groom. When she found him, the man seemed reluctant to accompany her, but after a brief discussion weighted with reference to her appreciation of his loyalty, he agreed and went around to get the buggy. Roxane next sought out the gardener, Govind, and took him aside. She reached into the small pocket at her waist and removed a key. Lifting his brown hand into her own, she pressed the gleaming key into the dark curve of his palm.
“If, for some reason, I should not return, this is to the pantry and storeroom. I trust you to keep the contents well, Govind, and to aid those who will need it."
He did not ask why she said these things to him, nor why she expected she might not return. This alone was more unnerving than if he had protested or questioned. He took the key with a look of gravity and slipped it onto a chain about his neck, which then disappeared beneath the white gauze of his shirt.
“Be safe, Miss Sheffield,” he said.
The groom handled the reins of the buggy horse with ease, while Roxane sat beside him scouring the road and the brush for any sign of Sera's passing. She stopped and asked several travelers on the road if they had seen a young girl with a dog, but none of them had, shrugging or pointing helpfully in the direction where they might go, were they a little girl with a puppy. Roxane thanked them with uncharacteristic impatience and had the syce drive on.
Upon passing the parade ground at a distance, Roxane saw the sepoys in formation across the open, tree-lined space. Someone was speaking, one of the officers, his back to her, so that she could not clearly hear the words spoken. She saw the men shuffle their feet, and from some a low hissing arose. More alarmed still, she urged the groom to greater speed, anxiously scanning the roadside and the places between structures and small stands of trees. There were many people about, but none of them were a tiny, almond-skinned, green-eyed child.
When they reached the bridge that crossed the dry nullah before one of the gates to the city, the press in the road caused the buggy to come to a halt. Standing, the groom began to shout over the heads of those below, and then he sat down resignedly.
“They will not move,” he said to Roxane.
“I see that,” she commented ruefully. “We will have to leave the buggy and walk."
“Leave the buggy?” cried the servant, incredulous. “And if someone should steal it? What will the sahib say?"
Roxane turned to the man, her expression fierce. “He will say nothing,” she stated. “We are looking for his daughter. The worth of a buggy and pony are nothing compared to that."
Still, the syce refused to leave the conveyance. Finally, Roxane dismounted from the buggy unaided, and although he made a futile grasp at her arm and a plea that she stay inside until such time as the people moved, she ignored her father's groom, pushing forward into the crowd. The weight of the bag with the guns over her arm was a hindrance, catching on the bodies of those she passed through, but she gave no thought of relinquishing it. It was not likely in the press that she could load the guns, if need be, but their bulk within the bag might deter aggression if wielded properly. She was frightened by the frenzied populace, and angry, and apprehensive for Sera's sake, but she refused to give in to any of her emotions, for nothing would serve her save a good, clear head.
Forcing a way through to pass beneath the gate, she noted that the guard of sepoys was absent, disturbingly so, and that the city itself was under the influence of a humming turmoil. For a moment she stood staring, her heart leaping into her throat, her breath caught, mid-gasp, in her lungs. Shops and stalls were closed, though many had been broken into and uniformed sepoys were in the process of openly looting them. They were being aided in their vandalism by other men, obvious brigands. The few native police visible to Roxane's eye were either powerless to halt the activity, or were joining in. One man, an infantry soldier in scarlet and white, was holding his sword above his head, and on the shimmering point of it, speared through the abdomen, was the flopping body of a doll. An English doll, the porcela
in head jouncing continually against the blade so that bits of fine pottery were flying about the head of the soldier, strands of the doll's human blond hair still attached. The clothing had been torn free, except the tattered shred of an apron still clinging to the waist, and a single black shoe.
“Sera,” said Roxane, though she knew the doll was not hers. It was but a general, pervading fear which made her speak her sister's name, for she could not now imagine that the girl might have passed through the city to the palace, to Ahmed, unharmed. For to Ahmed she would go, perhaps seeking solace, or merely a conspirator to help re-plan their activities. Sera was very fond of Bahadur Shah's great-nephew.
“This way!"
A harsh whisper, nearly in her ear. Roxane turned to view the harried, anxious countenance of a Eurasian shopkeeper, in the shadow of an awning. She knew his face, as a patron of his, but not his name.
“This way!” the man repeated, with an urgent gesture. “They will kill you if they see you."
Roxane hesitated only briefly, then slipped into a side door in the white daubed structure behind the shopkeeper. Inside, his family, his wife and two children, and an elderly woman who resembled him closely enough for Roxane to assume it was his mother, were standing pressed against the wall. Their eyes were wide and staring, and none of them spoke. Even the children were silent, open gazes following Roxane's entrance into the shop.
“We are leaving the city by another route. You would be wise to travel with us."
Roxane shook her head. “I—I cannot. Do you recall the little girl who was ofttimes with me?” she asked, signifying Sera's height by a movement of her hand, palm parallel to the floor at a point near her waist. “Sera is her name."
The shopkeeper frowned, then nodded. “She was in possession of a little dog, when we met."
“Yes!” Roxane cried. “You have seen her today?"
The man shook his head. “I have seen nothing of the child since last you and she patronized my establishment. Why? Has she run off from you this day? A very bad time to do so, a very bad time."
Closing her eyes, Roxane made a negative indication. Outside, the noise of rioting grew steadily louder. Odd, she thought, how they knew nothing of this in the cantonments. Someone must get word to them.
“I believe,” said Roxane, “that she has gone to the palace."
“No!” This, in unison, from not only the shopkeeper, but also his wife.
“The palace is the heart of it! This morning, at dawn, the mutineers from Meerut rode in, two thousand men, and demanded the king's blessing on them, which he granted! He laid his hand, most solemnly, upon the head of each of the two hundred who had come forward. The sepoys have abandoned the gates to join their brothers in vandalizing the streets. Did you not notice the gate unguarded? Captain Douglas, the guard commander, whom you might have known, he is dead! And Reverend Jennings and his daughter, and a friend of hers, slain. Countless other Europeans have died this day, and more to come, on that you may rest assured, lest a larger force of your kind than we have here in Delhi does something to prevent it!"
In a brief tangle of indecision, Roxane raised her two fists into the air before her breast, not knowing what to do, what course to take. And then she lowered them against her thighs. She shifted the bag on her shoulder.
“If you can manage it, go to my father, Colonel Sheffield. He will see that you are safe. And tell him what has occurred here."
“You are not coming?” The shopkeeper was incredulous.
“I cannot."
Roxane exited the way she had entered, but crept behind the shop into a long, narrow alley. She stood a moment in an attempt to reclaim her frightened wits, and then moved on, keeping close within the purple shadows. At one point, she paused and reached under her skirt, divesting herself of the cumbersome hoop. A piece of broken glass lay in the dirt, and she picked it up, cutting into the fabric of her skirt, tearing away a long strip at the hemline which might otherwise have dragged on the ground. This strip of gingham she placed into the bag with the pistols, should she find a need for it. Please God, she prayed as she wound the cloth into a cylinder, let me be doing the right thing. If Sera is within this city, I must not leave without doing my best to bring her out of it. I cannot wait for any other to do it for me. There is no time.
The mutineers from Meerut, the shopkeeper had said. This could only mean an uprising. Where was Collier? She entreated in another rush of prayer that he was out of harm's way, and not thinking overmuch of her, in his need to be cautious and level-headed. She could take care of herself. He had always said that, hadn't he? And she would. Once she had found Sera—and she would not allow herself to think that she might not—then she would steal back out of the city under cover of darkness and return home, there to ensure the safety of the household.
It did not occur to her that this was not her job, her duty to perform, and that many a man would have, in saner times, been appalled by her nearly masculine manner of thinking. She only knew that it felt right, in her heart, an instinct of survival, of preservation of those who were precious to her; and in this, she would later learn, she was not alone. For now, however, she knew nothing of those others, nothing of the banker's wife who, with her husband, was even at that moment keeping the rebels from her family, if only for a short time, with the length of a hog spear. She thought herself unaided in the city of madness, in a seriously canted world, but was not overly troubled by the knowledge. For like the raging fever which clarifies the mind, she felt almost preternaturally composed and balanced. A man of battle, a soldier, would have recognized this calm. Collier would have known it, the minute he spied it in her eyes. But to Roxane it was a thing both strange and new, and she floated, trusting, within its fringe like an enveloping raiment of armor.
* * * *
Roxane had paused long enough to load both weapons, and she now carried them at her side. She had witnessed scenes in the past hour that she knew she would not ever forget. She had fired one of the pistols into the center of a man's back to prevent him from butchering a woman he had dragged from hiding; too late, however, to save her, for another fell upon the woman's prostrate form, and in a twinkling arc of a bloodstained blade, she was dead. The chaos was so complete that none looked in the direction from which the shot that had killed their comrade had come, but continued in their bestial behavior unabated.
No, Roxane decided, not like beasts, for animals do not murder so rampantly as do men, nor so methodically in the midst of madness. Having killed the sepoy, Roxane turned away, vomiting onto the ground. After, she rose from her knees and thought no more about it.
She passed in caution near the wide, tree-lined avenue, beyond which rose the bell tower of the church of St. James, where she and Collier had married. The bells were ringing clamorously, whether in warning or because the mob, in its frenzy, had chosen this as mockery, she knew not. And then she heard a horrendous noise, as the bells hurtled down the long, hollow steeple, apparently severed from their ropes, bouncing from the walls to land in the church below with enough force to rock the earth where she stood. Above, the sun shone down into the city with relentless ivory heat, reflecting on the onion domes and the red walls of the fort. Offal steamed in the streets, and soil, already cracked and parched, crumbled and blew away in ruddy clouds of dust. The grass was trampled and torn in places where, just days ago, it had been lovingly tended. A hapless vendor's flowers scattered over the pavement, dried petals blowing into small, colorful heaps against a building's base, or miring in the refuse. Roxane hastened towards Ahmed's palace apartments, not knowing what she would do once she arrived, if entrance could not now be gained.
Seeking cover once again, this time in a shadowed alleyway behind an overturned cart from which the bullock had been cut loose, Roxane crouched inside the white, framed wagon. Fruit was tumbled all around her, and she picked up a small, bruised, yellow globe, wiping it on a skirt already much stained and torn. Calmly, she took the time to eat it, and to rest, for h
ere, nearest to the palace, the concentration of rioting was less than elsewhere. Peering through the slats of the cart, she saw the kites had landed in the sun of the street to feast on something which lay on the cobbles. She looked away without haste, merely as though her eyes had found the glare of sunlight too much to stand.
Roxane ate a second piece of fruit, and then began on a third, but she stopped herself halfway through, considering that an unexpected flux of the bowels might be inconvenient, at best. She picked up several others, those which were least damaged, and put them in the bag on her shoulder. Sera, she told herself, might be hungry.
A sudden tumult interrupted the kites’ feast and they rose, with great, gap-feathered wings, to the air. Hoofbeats pounded the cobbles, vibrating in the narrow tunnel of the alley like thunder. First one, then two, then four abreast, mounted sowars cantered past the opening to the street, brightly uniformed and fully armed. They rode with an order and a purpose that gave Roxane hope, and she crept from her hiding place for a better look at these men who appeared to be soldiers still in control of themselves, who had, perhaps, come to quell the rebellious actions of their brothers. Then, just as she would have stepped from the concealment of shadow into the street, another among them rode by, dragging behind him by a rope attached to the pommel of his saddle a dead soldier, all that was left of the man bloodied and beaten by the road beyond recognition of what he must have been in life, except for the telltale insignia of an officer's stripes upon his battered jacket and the sandy-brown shade of his hair.
Throwing herself against the wall, Roxane held her breath. A stirring behind her, in the alley, caused her to turn. Baring yellowed teeth, a pariah dog approached, made brave by the strangeness of the day. Still clinging to the half-eaten fruit, Roxane threw it at the animal, hitting it squarely on the nose. With a yelp, the beast skittered away.
